after the rain: Palawan or paradise as local people temp to call it.

Somewhere there in Palawan...

Hi there, so it’s started for me already, no more lying down till early afternoon, no more expensive hotels on the daily basis, big malls with fancy restaurants. We are going off road this weekend; we were off to Puerto Princessa, unfortunately only for couple of days. Then this coming Tuesday I’m off to Sagada till Saturday morning to go back to Manila again for the weekend. It’ll be the first weekend in Manila I gonna have with Emi every since I’ve arrived, I’m also doing 10k run on Sunday morning, which slightly complicates it but hey, it’s for the mother EarthJ. Then after the weekend on the 30^th I’m flying to Kuala Lumpur, for 8 days, where we also visit Singapore for couple of days. Then on the way back

Wasn't a bad view he had during our dinner.

I’m flying to Cebu, from where I’m planning to visit few local Islands and maybe few towns, which means I might be not back to Manila for good few weeks. Still will be hooking up with Emi each weekend, only traveling on my own during weekdays, sounds like a plan. But let me go back to our trip to Palawan, as it was a quite interesting one, but as I’ve mentioned already, far to short so we couldn’t do much. Still having ambitious plans we have rented a bike, hoping we can go to the beech, then get some food and still go and see crocodiles in a farm few miles down the road where we were staying. So sounds possible when you have whole day, but we only arrived to Puerto after 2pm, so by the time I got the hostel and moved again, it’s few minutes after 3. Thankfully we didn’t have problems with finding a cheap bike, and after few minutes we were mobile and ready to go. First few minutes as always wasn’t any good, ride slow trying to adjust, especially I had Emi with me carrying big bag, but after few minutes we were doing it local style, riding wrong side of the road doing U-turns on busy roads without indicating (I only had left indicator working occasionally, right one wasn’t working at all). It’s a good fun riding a bike and it’s by far one of my favorite attractions in Asia, especially that you can rent a bigger bike even without a valid driving license. Any way, as we were set, first plan was to go to the beach, which we didn’t now where to find, but few questions later we were already on a well-hidden one.

There was still room for one more person even though 5 was already on board. (tricycles in this country are usually125cc!!!)

It wasn’t the white beach we have seen in Boracay, but quite, with local bar, few square meters of clean sandy beach, so what else you expect. As we later found out, it was a beach more like a local beach with very cheap alcohol were 2 San Miguel’s were 90 pesos (1.20 sterling) in a bar with American bartender. A true American war hero I would say, hahaha, a bloke with scars on chest and shoulder, which were looking like bullet wounds. I found him strange to be honest, were friendly guy but all conversations we had were going back to one thing, war, violence, crime, fighting, doesn’t really matter what were you talking about, he was diverting the topic in to one of those above. So we quickly got bored of those war conversations, I mean, I could carry them on, but as I wasn’t the alone and we were still planning to do few more things it was time to move. But as were not the only ones who were hungry, (there were a couple, Spanish girl with Czech guy talking there with us) our American friend offered that he could take us to very nice seafood restaurant. So we eventually end up going all together the other couple, the American and us.

oh well:)

And here I have to give him a credit for taking us to a place you wouldn’t find yourself, one of those floating restaurants with an amazing view on the sunset. Again inexpensive one compare to Boracay, where for drinks and plenty of seafood we paid 16 pounds for 2 of us (had a tuna steak and it was much better this time). Obviously there were more war chats, and as we were still planning to go and use some of the petrol we have put to the bike it was time to move. Any way, by the time we have kicked off it was already dark and far to late to visit the crocodile farm, so we only decided to have a quick ride across town to see what we missed. So we have done some riding trying to learn the neighborhood, which would be useful if were staying there longer (still hoping we gonna have more time next day).

yet another view

Unfortunately, next day wasn’t as smooth as we expected, the underground river tour is a proper pain, as you start early in morning, to then do bunch of other stuff while you wait for your permit, which is a big scum but if you have only couple of days, that’s not enough to do it yourself and it would probably take same amount of time, so enough of moaning. So starting the trip after 7am, we only manage to get on the boat to take us to the cave after 3pm, so we’re back to Puerto by 7pm. Whole day trip to visit the cave for 40 min, but can’t complain, it’s a good fun and there is not many underground rivers like this one in the world, apparently 3 this long, so definitively a must do.

Ugong caves

The cave itself is awesome; I mean it would be as good without our guide, who was a amazing entertainer. A good example of Pilipino sense of humor was showing us some rocks shaped as humans or different objects, which was very funny at that time. Also before we got to Sabang, I have also done some caving and apparently the longest zip lining around, more than 130 meters, which was good fun too. So very time consuming but nice day, finished with yet another fancy dinner.

more boats:)

This time we have been recommended a place serving a crocodile meat, a thing you can’t refuse. And have to say one thing, if you ever make it to Puerto Princessa go and visit ‘kina buchs,’ amazing food with reasonable prices, where for big portion of rice, mackerel steak, big prawns, portion of crocodile meat in very nice coconut sauce, couple of beers and mango juice you pay 1100 pesos which include the service charge already, happy days. But soon after the meal we call the day, we had enough, especially that we had to wake up at 6am. So to sum it up, we didn’t manage to see much; it was more like a culinary treat for us. And almost forgotten to mention, we have also tried a worm called Tamilok, strange structure, strange taste but eatable, so definitively successful trip in terms of trying new food.