B-Rod left this morning to try his luck with catching some flights home. Last I heard, he had been granted a ticket by the “magic ticket master” and he will soon be on his way to Hong Kong. Maybe he’ll let us all know how things go from there ; )
So, this chapter of B-Rod and Rocky’s excellent Asian adventure has come to a close. B-Rod starts his new adventure of getting home and returning to “regular” life, and I head to another area of the Philippines tomorrow to meet up with my parents, reconnect with many family members I haven’t seen for a long time, and experience a Filipino city festival.
Our last couple of days were spent in Puerto Princessa which is the capital of Palawan. Many people go here to take a tour of the Underground River. Other than that, I find there’s nothing much else interesting in Puerto. I think it is mainly used as a jumping off point to go elsewhere, and were we to do it again (or when we do it again?), only one night will be spent when we arrive and leave. It was definitely a good choice to stay in El Nido for an extra night.
After our super comfy, pleasant bus ride, we headed to our hotel. The one thing I had wanted to do last year that I didn’t get a chance to do was a firefly watching tour. We checked with the hotel to see if it was possible to do it that night, and they booked us in. So, we basically enjoyed the pool and hung around a few hours waiting for our tour which got delayed an hour and a half. When it came time to go, we were told that it was a bit windy out there (it’s at a place called Iwahig which is about half an hour out of town) and cloudy, so the chances of seeing a lot of fireflies wasn’t very good. We opted out of the tour and headed out to walk around where we were greeted by this sight on the main road.
I don’t remember that the last time around. It was really pretty and I guess we could just imagine they were really big fireflies?
The next day we went to take care of some business. Our dive instructor has his shop in Puerto Princessa and we still hadn’t paid for our course (pretty funny that we had been trained and done a recreational dive already, and we hadn’t yet paid a centavo!) We dealt with that and just hung out at the shop chatting. Turns out that literally after we had finished our dive course, there were some bureaucratic issues with the use of the dive boat in Port Barton. After we left up until now, the owner of the Port Barton shop was trying to deal with this stuff. His boat hasn’t gone out since we left and there has been no diving in Port Barton. Pretty crappy, but pretty good timing for us – we got our course done just in time!
We decided that we were going to try our luck with the fireflies again that night, but instead of going on a tour, we had the number of the trike driver that had driven us to the airport the last time we were in Puerto. He convinced us to do a half day tour (really . . . . what else were we going to do) and he would take us to the fireflies later in the evening from there. So, we hopped into Elmer’s trike and off we went.
It was better then when I had gone on an organized tour last year, but tourist stuff is still pretty cheesy. B-Rod had a really hard time getting into it (which is why I am in most of the pics . . . . he couldn’t even pretend that some of it was remotely interesting). We headed to the Butterfly Gardens and Tribal Village first. Piddy, this is a warning for you right now . . . . some of the pics are going to make you feel really uncomfortable!!
From there we headed to Baker’s Hill. A big tourist thing to do in Puerto. I had been a bit rushed last time around, so I hadn’t seen everything. It’s a bit of a confusing place. Is it a bakery? Is it an outdoor food court? Is it a theme park? Is it a zoo? Is it an exercise spot? Is it a lookout point? I guess it’s all of the above?
Elmer pressured us into having shots in the “usual” tourists stops in the park.
Evenntually B couldn’t handle it anymore and I was on my own.
So, Elmer stepped in.
Until the exercise stations came up.
From there we were to the Crocodile Farm which is actually quite interesting, but again B had no interest in the cheesy tourist stuff. Jilly Putter, this one’s for you!
When I was here last time, it ended up pouring rain and I found some shelter under a tree which I loved (I have a thing for trees!) I was so happy to find it again (it’s pretty hard to miss)
After we left, the best part of the tour came up for B-Rod. Elmer let him be a trike driver for a short amount of time.
From here the tour got a little bit weird and awkward. We went to a penitentiary! In Elmer’s defence, this wasn’t his plan and he had never been here himself. I had kind of heard about it and our dive instructor had recommended it as the top thing to see in Puerto. He said there was a swimming hole here that was great to spend the afternoon at. Basically, it’s this big piece of guarded land where they have a prison, but outside the prison there’s a settlement. The people that have settled here are ex-prisoners with their familes. They have a hard time making it outside the prison walls, so they set up a little town outside of the prison, but still within the prison compound. Prisoner’s can opt to work in the settlement as farmer’s or in other areas such as making crafts for tourists. Prisoners can roam free in the settlement during the day (as long as they’re doing their jobs I think) and then head back to the prison at night. It looks like any Filipino town once you get past the initial guard gates. We were taken to the main hall, where they sell their crafts. We arrived just as a tour van left, so we were the only ones there and there was a lot of pressure to buy things (we were told how their families don’t visit them, they don’t have enough to eat, etc.) This is how B ended up with a bright orange prison T-shirt. To top this off, a few of the prisoners started doing a hip hop performance. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we weren’t the only ones there. But we were, so it was just awkward. Only got the one pic because we were so weirded out, we forgot about the camera!
The swimming spot was a bit better and it was nice, but we didn’t have any swim gear and clouds were starting to build up, so we did a walk through and were on our way.
The water comes from the mountains, so it is super clean, clear and fresh.
It is actually quite beautiful there.
We came to the end of the day tour (earlier than Elmer anticipated) and we were at the firefly spot 2 hours early. Not willing to wait that long, seeing that it was most likely going to rain and just being done with toursit stuff, we opted out of fireflies (it just wasn’t meant to happen this time around either) and headed to the mall : ) Wandered around mostly the grocery store (Piddy . . . . you know what we’re talking about), and then we were so excited to find this in the food court.
Korean food. YES!! One of our favorite types of food!
Our last day in Palawan coming to an end, we headed back to get ready for our Manila journey the next day.
Got into Manila to see Beauty, George and Vivien again. B-Rod got a chance to say goodbye and to experience the seafood restaurant that they take most of their visitors to. First, you go to the market to select the seafood you would like to have at that time.
“Eat Me”
I think the thought bubble from the Filipino lady probably says “Those crazy white guys. They all do the same things for pictures!”
After you select your seafood, you head to the restaurant where they cook it up for you however you want it.
Shrimp and crab . . . . yum, yum!!
B-Rod actually enjoyed it, and liked the hot chili sauce on the crabs, but still thinks crab is way too much work.
I, however, LOVED it!! At the end we looked around the table to see who had done the best at destroying the shellfish. The marker was to look at everyone’s shell pile. George and I were pretty close. Who do you think is the winner?
Unlike the rest of us who were digging in and getting right in there, Vivien wasn’t having any of it. I enjoyed my meal, but I could definitely get behind her meal at some point!
After dinner we headed home and B worked out what his strategy would be for today. Looks like it is working out so far. Hope you had a great time on your Philippines adventure B-Rod – see you in Canada. In the meantime, stay tuned for some more highlights from the Philippines – this time from the province of Negros Occidental.
It's going very well actually. RB wrecked those crabs!!
Better than the crabs wrecking her!! Ho-yay!
Btw…I caught a glimpse, got the gist, scrolled on past.