Our Big Explore: Manila in luxury and reunion in Puerto Princesa

Monday 12th May

We arrived in Manila early in the morning. We were absolutely knackered after the crazy flight.

We tried in vain to find a nice hotel in Malate to a reasonable price, but either they were too expensive for our budget or surrounded by bars and clubs, which meant we wouldn't get a prober sleep.

We had a lunch date with a danish guy (Kristoffer) at 1 pm, who lives in Manila, so we decided to meet up with him and hoped that he could help us to find a decent place to stay. We didn't actually know him, but I'll make the story short.. My mom studied with his mom ages ago, and my mom sat me up with his e-mail, in case we needed help with anything while we were there.

We had just been e-mailing him and asked a few questions about attractions and stuff to see in Manila, and it had turned out to this lunch date with him.

We were meeting up at a fancy thai restaurant in Greenbelt mall in Makati (the safest area in Manila). Manila dosen't exactly have a good reputation when it comes to crimes like tourist scams, pickpocketing and so on - that's also one of the reasons why we contacted Kristoffer. He could probably tell us what to do and what to avoid. During the lunch we got a better insight in Manila, according to Kristoffer it's not more dangerous than any other big city, some areas gets dodgy at night, but as long as you don't walk around alone, in dark sidestreets at night - you'll be alright.

Kristoffer was overwhelming friendly to us, already from the beginnning, and it didn't take long before he offered us to stay with him. He had a spare room he didn't use anyway, so our accomodation problem was solved. He lives in a hotel apartment only a short distance from the restaurant, and when we entered his appartment we felt home straight away. It was really overwhelming that this "stranger" just let us stay with him, after only 2 hours of talking in a random restaurant. We were undoubtly the luckiest people in the world. The hotel had a swimming pool, spabath, steambath and a gym we could use at anytime. Kristoffers maid (Linda) took care of all our laundry, and at night when Kristoffer had a meeting, we borrowed his private car, with driver - Nestor.

Nestor took us to a nice shopping area, here we walked around and killed time before we went to "The Keg", a bar that apparently has stand up comedy. We read about this little place in a flight magazine, and we thought it sounded interesting, so we went to check it out. The bar just started these comedy mondays, there was free entrance and it all seemed new to everyone, like comedy zoo in the early years. The comedians was okay, and some of the show was in english, the only bad thing was that all the punchlines was in philippino, so we didn't get any of the points - only the stories before!

Nestor had just been hanging around in the area, and was ready to drive us home when we texted him - we felt so spoiled. Thanks AGAIN to Kristoffer..;)

AMAZING thai food (@ People's Palace in Greenbelt 3)

The building Kristoffer lives in

Our nice room at K's place

We quickly felt at home, in K's cool apartment

We have to get a wall like this, when we get back home.

Enjoying the pool

Nestor and K's car

Standup @ The Keg

Tuesday 13th May

We simply had the best sleep ever, sleeping in a aircon room with a quality bed, normal sheets, no roosters or barking dogs to disturb our beauty sleep, was nothing less than incredible.

It was time to get some new clothes. Soon we're going back to the civilized world (Australia), so we feel like we have to get some prober stuff to wear, instead of our ragged and worn out clothes that we've been wearing for ages now. So this day went by with shopping, and we both got a lot of new and nice clothes.

Everything was really cheap, even international popular brands are really cheap. I got denim pants from wrangler and lee for only 1600 pesos (190 kr) per piece. It was soo cheap that I had to buy two pairs.

The shopping mall was massive, and they were all attached to each other, so it was easy to get lost and all of a sudden be located in a different one, than the one we were meant to be in.

After a long day of shopping a dip in the pool was well deserved. We ordered Indian food and spend some time with Kristoffer. We had a great thing in common with him - we all love diving!

We watched some of his amazing dive videos, he's been everywhere - twice or more, and it made us feel like we haven't seen anything yet. We got confirmed, once again, that the marine life in Australia is spectacular, and we're really looking forward to explore it, but also he mentioned a place in the Philippines, that we haven't dived yet, and actually didn't put in our program for this month either - we will try to change that, cause it's suppose to be, if not the best, then the second best dive site in this lovely country!

Some of the only daylight we saw this day, because of all the shopping

If you tend to forget you're in Manila, the jeepneys will help you remember

Erik's shoppings for the total of 994 Dkr

I used twice as much as Erik, but also bought more.

Wednesday 14th May

We went to the gym in the morning, and got pretty lazy after that. Ever since we got to Manila, Kristoffer had been so nice to us.. Like in the morning we would have fresh made orange juice, fresh fruits, yoghurt and musli, that Linda had made for us. He payed our lunch the first day and insisted to pay our Indian dinner the next. We started to feel bad, cause it wasn't our intention that he should pay for anything for us. Off course we appreciated it, but it also gets to a point where you start to feel bad about generous people like that. Anyway, during the day we got some blog done, and we also went to the shopping malls again to buy the last stuff we needed for our further travels.

At night we had dinner with Kristoffer at a vietnamese restaurant, and we just really didn't want him to pay anything more for us, so we got our will and payed. We had a quiet one and watched a couple of movies together with Kristoffer.

Thursday 15th May

We had been feeling so comfortable at K's place, that we didn't bother going for a lot of sightseeing the other days.. There isn't much to see in Manila anyway, so it could easily be done in one day.

A famous tour guide, Carlos Celdran, is arranging tours around the old town of Manila (Intramuros) every thursday, but unfortunately it was cancelled this afternoon. We decided to take a cap to the Intramuros area, and walk around the area by ourselves. We started at the Fort Santiago, which was used as a prisoner-of-war camp by the Japanese, during WWII, then we found a cheap tricycle, with a private guide who took us around Intramuros, past Manilas Cathedral, Intramuros museum, lovely plazas and colonial houses.

The trike dropped us off close to a 6-laned busy highway, there we could find a cab home, he said.. Easier said than done - we walked for ages in the side of the road, we didn't get any cab.

It was rush hour and the traffic was crazy. After probably an hour of walking a guy told us it would be faster to take a jeepney. We found the jeepney and we litterally got stucked in Manilas traffic. The jeepney wasn't exactly going in the right direction, and we didn't get far in that hour we spend in the jeepney.

We talked to some locals, who helped us to get off at the right busstop. We got out of the bus on the chaotic street, where trikes, motorbikes, busses, jeepneys, lorries and cabs (no one available) were in a huge traffic jam. Luckily the guys from the jeepney helped us to get on the right bus towards Makati, otherwise we would have been lost there. It was a bloody busy time of the day!

Eventually we got to the Greenbelt area in Makati. We were exhausted and hungry. After a small dinner at Shakeys pizzaria we returned to the cold and decent appartment. Kristoffer was having a meeting, so we ventured down to the pool with some cold beers, and relaxed for a while. Oh life is treating us good, SO GOOD!

Later we went out for some drinks and met some of K's friends. One is owning a club in Manila, others were local celebrities, old models and Kristoffer is by the way independant with his own software company (or actually several companies), and is doing a lot of other stuff as well. So we were surrounded by all these fancy people and thanks to our shopping day a few days before, we didn't feel like backpackers this night.

We had small fancy drinks, and some excellents shots, respectively with chokolade cake and apple cake taste.. They were fantastic! After all Manila isn't that bad - certainly not when knowing the right people!

Sightseeing around Intramuros

Our private tourguide - we paid 150 pesos (19 Dkr) for 30 minutes

Hopefully this tour is even cheaper!

A really nice area, with the spanish buildings

Oh yeah, and in the middle of it all, theres a 18-hole golf course.

This reminded us so much of our home town.

After all that tourist stuff, it was nice to get back "home" to the pool

Out for drinks with K, hopefully we can do this again, before we leave Manila

Friday 16th May

Time to leave the sweet life. We left one of our bags at K's appartment, filled up with all our new clothes and the stuff we didn't need for our 3 weeks of travelling around Palawan, Coron and Boracay. We will pick it up before we fly out of Manila. Nestor (K's private driver) drove us to the airport and we waved goodbye to our luxury, and got ready for the backpacker life again.

Manila's airport system is the most undeveloped and disorganized we have experienced, even the small airport on Timor in Indonesia, is better developed. Our flight was delayed more than 1.5 hours, aswell as all the other flights in the domestic airport. The waiting area is only cooled down by fans and the place was packed with people, so you can imagine how hot it got.

It only took around 2 hours to Puerto Princesa (PP) on Palawan. Here we planned to stay for two days, to wait for our english friends, Tom & Verity to arrive on sunday. We quickly found a tricycle that took us into town, and the first place we saw was actually lovely, a small wooden house with a big common area, nice furnitures and nicely decorated, the only bad thing was all the mosquitoes. We used double as much mosquito repellent as usually, but the place was fantastic.

We walked around in the town to find something to eat, but it only seemed like they had the classic filipino food - premade stuff in trays, where most of the food is cold, or a lot of different options in wellknown fastfood chains.

Last time on the Philippines we ate a lot on Jollibee, not particularly because the food is great, but it's cheap and when there's nothing else around, it's acceptable food. So that was our choice for dining out at dinner time. Must say I remember it as being better, but we got full, so mission was completed.

It's really true, what it says on the airplane

Puerto Princesa

We really like these small cosy streets in the small towns and villages

We've been almost addicted to the fresh mangos, price 60-80 pesos (8-10Dkr) pr. kilo

Rice

Saturday 17th May

We planned to rent a motorbike and drive around, but after we both got too comfortable in the common area, time was running away from us. So we ended up with taking a jeepney out to Baker's hill, a famous bakery with a little flower garden, peacocks, a playground for children and people young at heart.

A lovely place for families who wants to get out of town and relax during the weekends. The moist chocolate cake was amazing. It was just a short visit from us, basically just wanted to see the place, since it's one of the biggest attractions in Puerto Princesa. After seeing it, we didn't mind that we skipped out on the biketour.

It wasn't really exciting, so a bike trip would probably just have been a waste of money.

We got some blog done at night and had some delicious food at Banwa guesthouse.

The Baker's Hill area is really beautiful made and decorated - worth a visit if you're in PP anyway

They also have a lot of peacocks - amazing animal!

Shreks family

Shrek

Sunday 18th May

We waited for Tom & Verity to arrive from Manila, and of course their flight was delayed as well. It was great seeing them again, and we will travel together for the next 3 weeks.

We met them in southern Thailand and travelled together through Malaysia for some weeks, then our ways seperated. We went to Borneo, and they went to Singapore. We had been putting good words in about the Philippines to them, and apparently we had convinced them to see the country.. It was a coincidence that it happend to fit perfectly together with our visit here. We had been looking forward to get some travel company, besides of each others.

We catched up quickly in the guesthouse and then we looked for a bus to Sabang. This was the first time in the Philippines where locals tried to rip us off.

One of the things that we loved about Philippines last time, was that we never got ripped off, and we never had a hassle with buying the right bustickets and paying the right price. Obviously they're too use to tourists here.. And that gives us another sight on this part of the country - it made us a bit sad to experience the rip off. Anyway, we got on the right bus, but I'm not sure we got it for the right price.

Most people take a daytrip out of PP to see the underground river in Sabang, but we had decided to go there and arrange the tour by ourselves. We had to get a permission for the river, but unfortunately the ticket office was closed when we arrived.

Locals didn't sound promising about getting the permission in the morning - depends on bookings from PP. They "only" allow 900 visitors per day. We were forced to get up early the next morning, and hopefully get the permission by then.

Sabang was a quiet and peaceful little coastal village filled with aggresive mosquitoes, which didn't hestitate to attack our pale western skins, eventhough we put repellent on.

We sat by the small pier, watched the sunset and introduced the amazing good tasting and cheap Philippino rum (80 pesos = 10kr) to Tom & V. Dinner was a bit lame, but we might have been expecting too much, and the fact that we were surrounded by smelly wetdogs, didn't make the food more inviting.

Tom is addicted to pets, and pet everyone he sees, so no wonder they were begging us for food and attention. We had to chase them out of the restaurant - the smell was that bad. The waiters came with brooms and pushed the dogs away. Dogs are not treated like babys in these countrys, here they're in their natural enviroment and get treated as the animals they are..!! Eventually we got rid off the smell and finished our food.

4 people and baggage = 80 peso (10Dkr) for the 15-20 minutes motorbike ride

The only place for locals i Sabang to hang out at night (and loose their pocketmoney)

Monday 19th May

Luckily we didn't have any troubles with getting the permissions from the office, so when that was sorted, we went to sort out a bus to our further travels up to El Nido, and then our day was fully booked.

The underground river is first of all a world heritage site and also one of the seven finalists to the search for the new 7 wonders of the world. It's a spectacular limestone cave which is navigable up to 4,3 km and is reputed to be the longest underground river in the world.

A pumpboat dropped us off on a beautiful white sand beach near the river. We then got placed in a paddle boat, and started to sail towards the mouth of the cave. The cave was a natural beauty with different rock formations and a thousands of bats that inhabit the cave. It's was a must to have a good imagination, to be able to see the different creatures and people that our guide pointed out in the rock formations.

Our guide gave us a good laugh by the way he told his stories, and at the same time we got a bit annoyed by his voice, and also by the tourist in the front of the boat, who was "controlling" the flashlight, he was pointing it all the wrong places.

Back in Sabang we packed our stuff together and escaped from the mosquito village - first with a overloaded jeepney to Salvation, and not surprising we had a long waiting time there before the bus from PP, that should take us to El Nido arrived.

The road to El Nido was in much worse conditions that I would have thought, maybe half of it was gravel roads, and the rest normal concrete with potholes. The driver used the horn a lot, and that's always annoying to listen to. El nido is one of the most visited places in the Philppines, but I guess most people arrive with a plane, so they don't experience these "delightful" roads.

We got to our destination around dinner time. From the busstation is was only a short walk to cliffside cottages, where we planned to stay. We got two rooms in the same little building, with a common area with table and plastic chairs. We had access to the kitchen - it was one of our priority requests.

We're fed up with going out 3 times a day for food, so we would enjoy to make our own food for once.

The family who runned the guesthouse had two dogs and three small puppies running around, and after Tom & Erik pet them just once, they were around us all the time, they loved the attention.

We were all starving and it was a bit late to do groceries for dinner, so we went out for burgers, and planned what we should buy for our homemade meals the following days.