World ExploraSean: Patience, My Young Palawan

My delay in Iloilo meant I didn't have time to get my Open Water diving certification in Palawan, but I keep thinking there's a reason I always get delayed on diving, like the Universe has something important planned for me when the time finally comes. I left my hostel at 6 AM to catch the boat, which was definitely the worst one I've been on, but it's views were by far the best. There was a group of birds fishing right off the boat; It was incredible watching them casually fly around and then chaotically dart towards the water and snatch up a fish. Absolutely amazing. I also got to see pods of the fish that can fly when they jump out of the water. It was so cool to watch them zigzag over the waves and flutter their wings. I felt like I was living in an episode of Planet Earth.

I was also so happy it was the last time I have to board a gigantic liner anytime soon. I'm 5'10 and a quarter, which basically rounds to 5'10 and a half, which basically rounds to 6 feet. So not only am I unnaturally tall, but I'm not exactly skinny either. I mean, I'm basically built like a tornado. Cramming myself and two bags onto the tiny beds of these boats is torturous. I have to line my big bag up at the foot of the bed and raise my feet over it, except my feet extend past where my bed ends and the next person's starts, so I can't lay flat. Plus I have to curl my torso around my computer/camera bag, so I basically end up in this awkward fetal position with my legs elevated over my big bag. Let's just say I get excited when I get to leave the boat!!!

The best sunset I've seen since Indonesia

People thought I was crazy for leaving my old life behind... I think they're crazy for not joining me!

I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word. Now in the morning I sweep alone, sweep the streets I used to own....

At 7 PM, the boat stopped and we had a three hour layover on an island called Cuyo before hopping back on the boat so we could sail through the night. When I awoke for the sunrise, it was so amazing that I didn't even grab my camera. I just wanted to enjoy the moment. Later that morning I watched a pod of dolphins jumping out of the water and another cruising underwater at unreal speeds. I got crazy lucky on the scenery. We finally arrived in Puerto Princesa at 1:30 in the afternoon and I grabbed a Jeepney to the bus station, because it was 50 cents compared to a 3.50 tricycle ride. I ended up getting there in time to catch the 2:30 bus to the northernmost city in Palawan, El Nido. That bus took nearly 8 hours, so I didn't get there until 10 o'clock at night. All in all my journey from Iloilo to El Nido was 40 hours.

If I had a do over I would take a flight from Cebu to Puerto Princesa vs. doing all the boats. The boats are an adventure and save you money since they cover overnight lodging, but I lost 2 days waiting on a boat from Cebu to Iloilo, another 3 days in Iloilo, and then the 2 day boat to Puerto. So in hindsight, I basically wasted 7 days in order to save $80. Yup, I'm an idiot. I only had 5 days to spend on Palawan before I had to fly out, so I had to skip the town of Sabang, which houses the world's longest underground river. But I wasn't too upset, that's more of something to say you've done vs. something that's actually awesome.

Bah, still terrible at photographing stars, too blurry. But here's a shot of the night sky from Cuyo. The three dots clumped together are Orion's Belt and you can make out rest of the Orion constellation

There were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven...

If I had one super power, it would totally be to fly....Well that and to be able to steal everyone else's super powers. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!

Since I got into El Nido so late, I figured I would just go with a Lonely Planet suggestion for accommodation since I didn't have time to walk around and find something. The place was called Alternative Cafe and was supposed to be 250 pisos for a dorm....They didn't even have dorms and rooms were 600. I walked around but everything close by was the same price or more, so I had to suck it up. My only guess is that there's two places with the same name and my tricycle person took me to the expensive one. After I went to bed that night, I started to hear something crinkling, but I deduced the fan must have been blowing on a plastic sack I left on the table. Thinking nothing more, I went to sleep.

As soon as I stepped outside the next morning I realized that El Nido was a paradise. The view of the beach, surrounded by limestone cliffs and an ocean full of boats was exactly what I needed after my long journey. The tours in El Nido have standardized prices and itineraries regardless of vendor, so you simply choose Tour A, B, C, or D. I went with Tour A, since Max had told me it was awesome when I met him in Manila.

Fun Fact #1: Part of The Bourne Legacy was filmed in El Nido!

Fun Fact #2: When I was eleven, a unicorn farted in my eye. I've been Asian ever since.

Palawan was easily my favorite place in the Philippines

In addition to myself, the group contained seven women from Manila, a Filipino guy that currently lives in Florida, and a Swiss couple. We started off the morning by snorkeling in two different areas and sailing through a place called Big Lagoon, which is where the ending of The Bourne Legacy was filmed. The water wasn't the clearest and there wasn't a ton of diversity or fish I haven't seen before, but I still loved it. It'd been too long since I last snorkeled.

Our lunch was the best day trip meal I've ever had. We had tons of fresh fruit, including yellow watermelon. I was a little leery about grabbing a piece because it was covered by bees, but I had to try it! Turns out it tastes exactly like a red watermelon. In addition there were bananas, mangoes, and pineapples. For the main courses we had rice, steak, squid, and a couple of gigantic fish. The Filipino ladies were so nice, making sure we all had plenty to eat and were enjoying everything. They even gave me cookies!

After lunch we went to a secret cove that you could only access by crawling through a tiny hole in the rock wall, but once you got to the other side you were in the middle of a knee deep pool of water surrounded by cliffs on all sides. It was unbelievable. After departing from there we ended up snorkeling into a secret lagoon type place, where you swam through some rocks and ended up in an even bigger lagoon that some people were kayaking through. Such an amazing tour, if I had the time and money I would have done all 4 tours.

I was really hoping to see some a bird called a Swiftlet while we were boating around, because they make their nests entirely out of their own spit. The nests are then harvested and turned into birds nest soup, which is a huge delicacy in China. A bowl of the soup can cost over $100 and a kilo (2.2 pounds) of nests can cost up to $10,000. However, I wasn't able to come accross any and my dream of harvesting the nests and making a fortune were crushed.

Big Lagoon

A) This is the worst group photo ever, one dude is completely off to the side. B) I totally pass as full Asian with the black hair

How you doin? ;)

After I got back from Tour A, I sat down on my bed so I could upload the photos from my GoPro and check out what footage I got. After a few minutes I looked over at my bag and I saw a tail move. My eyes rolled up the tail and I was expecting the torso to be a gecko, but nope...There was a mouse on my bag! When it saw me looking at it, it freaked out and jumped towards me, but luckily it was just jumping under the bed. I then realized the crinkling sound from the night before was the mouse going through the plastic bag in hopes it would contain food. I will admit he was a cute little bastard, but not exactly the roommate I was looking for.

I didn't take out money before going to El Nido and there are no ATMs there, so I needed to exchange money. Exchange people never take your money if there is even a millimeter sized tear, so I had a 50 and a 20 that were no good and one of my remaining 20s got turned down for looking old (Seriously, what does that even mean? It was the same 2004 series as the one she accepted), so I could only exchange enough cash to stay one additional night than I originally planned.

Since I couldn't afford another tour, I decided to spend the next day getting back into shape since I hadn't worked out properly in a few weeks. 150 push ups, 150 sit ups, some bag curls, and a grueling ten minutes of cardio. After my workout, I just swam in the ocean in lieu of taking a shower... That's become pretty normal for me now, take advantage of what nature gives you. I spent the rest of the afternoon taking photos and strolling the beach. In the meantime, a sticky pad was placed in my room to catch the mouse, but when I got back to my room I noticed it caught a small mouse I hadn't seen before. While that mouse was trapped I also saw a new mouse that was bright brown. I felt like I was in the scene at the end of Ratatouille where he walks into the kitchen and there's a million rats. All in all I saw at least three different mice in my room and a rat the size of a rhinoceros running through the restaurant area.

Until we meet again El Nido

That night I met a pair of girls, Mirjam and Sasha, while I was eating dinner and ended up meeting with Mirjam for drinks. We ended up hanging out until the bar closed and when we went to grab our flip flops, we noticed they were missing. Thus for the second time on this trip, my footwear had been stolen! We told the guy working there it seemed a little strange that both our flip flops were missing and he said maybe drunk people accidentally took them instead of their own. But if that was the case, their shoes should still have been there. Plus what are the chances two people walked by that had my size shoe and Mirjam's size shoe. But it happens out here, so you just have to roll with it. I am a little worried about my shoe karma though, I'm on my fifth pair of shoes and fourth pair of flip flops now! Don't even get me started on my headphone karma, I think I'm on pair fifteen.

The next morning I had to take a bus back to Puerto since I was flying out of there. I'm pretty sure the lady next to me on the bus was a crackhead as she was unnaturally skinny and had pockmarks all over her arm that were pure white in comparison to her extremely dark skin. She had a giant patch of white on her elbow and it touched me a few times. I'm not gonna lie I was having a little bit of an inward anxiety attack, thinking about whether or not it was leprosy or something. But there was a little kid sitting on her lap, so I figured he would have marks all over if it was contagious, thus I quelled my fears. I thought maybe I could turn the bad situation of sitting next to a druggie into a positive thing, but she didn't have any hard drugs on her for purchase. Lord knows I would have loved me some crack!!!!

I went with another Lonely Planet recommendation when I arrived in Puerto, Banwa Art House. The place was incredible in comparison to what I was coming from. It was extremely clean, there was even hand soap dispensers in the bathrooms, the food was stellar, best Chicken Adobo ever, and the staff was crazy nice. It was almost half the price of where I stayed in El Nido and it was at least 10 times nicer, funny how it works out like that sometimes. Definitely stay there if you're passing through!

Puerto Princesa is a pretty interesting town. The streets are lined with all these overstocked clothing shops that sell shirts, shorts, hats, flip flops, etc. for prices between 50 cents and 3 dollars. The only bad thing is all the men's clothing were gigantic, so you either have to love baggy clothes or have a little extra weight around the waist, but considering I have the waist line of Jack Skellington, there weren't any bargains to be had for me. I also had a zombie girl come at me with her hands out just moaning and latching on to me while I was buying headphone set #15. I mean, use your words, the whole zombie thing just freaks me out. I'm not going to give money to someone that just moans, so ask me for water or a pop tart or something.

Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see. I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy, because I'm easy come, easy go; little high, little low. Anyway the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me...

She's a killer queen. Gunpowder, gelatine. Dynamite with a laser beam. Guaranteed to blow your mind.

Macau was my next stop, but I had to take two flights to get there. My first flight from Puerto Princesa to Manila was at 6 in the morning, so I was planning to sleep at the airport to save a night's accommodation, although I wasn't sure it would be open 24/7 since it's a small airport. The most likely scenario was that I would be sleeping on a bench outside the airport, hoping to not get mugged and or raped. However, the lady at the hostel told me the airport would be closed, but I could just crash on a bed downstairs for free. People are so nice in the Philippines! After I got to Manila, I transferred terminals, endured the worst airport setup ever and a three hour delay before boarding my flight to Macau.

The Philippines were the hardest country I've traveled by far, as there's no set route for backpackers. If you don't book your flights in advance, you will struggle to find them cheaply and will likely end up boating. I reckon I lost 1/3 of my time in the Philippines to traveling. To anyone visiting, I recommend picking two or three islands and getting flights between them in advance so you have more time to sight see. Definitely an amazing place, with some of the nicest people you will ever meet. I finally made it to Macau, but that's a story for another blog...

Random GoPros

You don't get sheets with the beds. Before I started this journey, I probably would have considered that to be too sketchy and placed a tshirt down as a pillow cover...Now I just sleep on it, no worries.

In case you were wondering what it's like to watch it rain while in the ocean. Also, about 2/3 down in the center, where there's the patch of blue, totally looks like a weird blue mask with a pair of blue lips...