Christmas in the Philippines

The holidays are always a tough time to be away from loved ones, but spending them in the tropics just feels so completely unlike Canadian Christmastime that it sort of feels like a time warp. Throw in an unreliable wifi connection and suddenly Christmas is just a distant dream... it helps a little with the homesickness.

Rather than hang out in rainy Bali over the Christmas holidays, I decided to spend a week in the Philippines. Rosalind had been travelling in the Philippines for over a month and it seemed like a great chance to explore a new country with a close friend. We planned to meet in Palawan, an archipelagic province known for its unspoiled beaches, incredible scuba-diving, and stunning limestone rock formations.

My second flight from Manila to Puerto Princessa was delayed by over twelve hours. The red circle is where I spent most of my holiday.

I set out on an early flight from Denpasar to Manila on December 23rd. My “pretend-it’s-not-Christmas” attitude was only mildly shaken by a few incidents, like participating in a “Christmas quiz” on the flight and walking past walls of Christmas decorations in the airports as carols blasted on the speakers.

Inevitably, my travels didn’t quite go according to plan (I’m starting to get used to unpredictable air travel). A severe tropic storm was working its way across the southwest Philippine islands, and my flight from Manila to Puerta Princessa was delayed by twelve hours. Luckily we were put up in a hotel, and I had a bit of time to “explore” Manila. By “explore,” I mean I took the hotel shuttle to (allegedly) the only nearby attraction: The Mall of Asia. It was a gigantic and overwhelming mecca of consumerism and I became quickly overwhelmed by it all, so I ducked into a movie theatre to watch Star Wars. Yay!

Luckily the storm moved along on its merry way and my flight took off early on the 24th. I made it to Puerta Princessa around 8am and promptly hopped into a van outside the airport that took me north to El Nido. The drive took about five hours and the landscape was absolutely jaw-droppingly beautiful. Luscious green jungles covered the dramatic hilly landscape; we passed giant, beautiful trees dripping with ferns, huge rivers, and plenty of tiny villages along the way.

Sitting in front of me in the van was an adorable father-daughter duo from China. The father, a doctor in his late thirties / early forties, was friendly and chatted with most of the passengers. I learned that they were travelling for ten days while his wife took care of their younger daughter back in China. The girl looked to be about eight or nine years old; her favourite place so far had been an area famous for its fireflies. Halfway through the drive we stopped for snacks and when I got back into the van he asked me, “So you travel alone?” And I said yes, sort of, well I’m meeting a friend in El Nido. And he turns to his little daughter and he says “That will be you someday. You can do that too someday.”

It was so precious to see him trying to instill a sense of adventure and freedom into his little girl. I am so grateful to have parents that have always been supportive of my desire to study and work abroad – even if it makes them worry, or miss me, or even sometimes when try really hard to convince me to just move home - I’ve never felt like I couldn’t do something I’d set my mind to. Thanks Mum and Dad – I love you!!

Back in the van, we continued to race our way north, the driver blasting Bryan Adams music the whole way. Sometime in the second half of the drive the skies opened up and it started to pour; sheets of rain slammed the van as we navigated a super curvy, steep road at crazy speeds (sorry Mum, you would have been horrified). We made it to El Nido safe and sound, though, and were dropped a few kilometres outside of town. I hopped into the local transport method – a motorbike adapted into a tricycle – to get to the hostel.

Local transport.

Even my first glimpses of El Nido were stunning. It’s nestled amongst limestone monoliths, bursting with greenery, fringed with white sand beaches and lapped by turquoise waters. It’s also a tourist haven, so I was quickly overwhelmed by signs and salespeople, and was a bit shocked by how English everything was. I didn’t realize that the Philippines has the third-largest English speaking population in the world. Very different from Indonesia!

I got some food (El Nido has the most amazing falafel stand, surprisingly) and an hour or so later I was united with Rosalind at the hostel. It was great to see her and catch up on all of the adventures she’d had throughout the Philippines! We celebrated Christmas eve with the other hostel guests, but I crashed pretty early - I was exhausted after two nights of less than four hours of sleep.

On Christmas morning, we exchanged small gifts and enjoyed a delicious pancake breakfast. We headed out to a nearby beach, Las Cabanas, for a day in the sun. We got there in a unique way, though – we took a zipline across the water! It was amazing!

Ziplining to Las Cabanas beach!

We had a mellow day lounging on the beach and swimming. I had a “small world” moment when I ran into one of my officemates from Vancouver – she was staying on the beach with her family for a couple of weeks over Christmas. What a coincidence!

Ros and I had a tropical Christmas photoshoot.

At sunset, the sky exploded into beautiful streaks of orange and pink. We spotted an odd bird flying over the water and as I looked closer I realized it was a huge bat! As the sun set, hundreds of these giant bats flew out from the limestone karsts and over the water. It was stunning.

We got up early the next day and packed for our next adventure. Rosalind had booked boat tour that would take us from El Nido to Coron over the course of five days, stopping at remote beaches to snorkel, camp, and explore. She’d had the trip recommended to her by a friend who described it as “the best experience they’d ever had while travelling,” and it was a pretty great deal too. Rosalind had found three other travellers to join us: two Germans, Catrina and Yannick, and Thijs, from the Netherlands.

I have no idea if this is actually what our route looked like, but it was something like this. Ish.

We’d had trouble communicating with our budget boat tour company, and the information we had about the trip was patchy at best. The first major misunderstanding was where the boat would be picking us up. We thought it was in El Nido; it turns out it was 40 km away in Sibaltan. We scrambled to book a van at the last minute to take us to another part of the island where the boat was waiting for us. When we arrived there about hour later, we were met by a woman who introduced herself as our tour guide, although she didn’t really know much about what was going on and seemed a bit confused about the entire trip. 

We finally made it to the boat!

The boat was a classic banca, a double outrigger with an inboard engine. We waded out to the boat and loaded our packs onboard and were on our way. We motored for an hour or so before we landed at a beach on Iloc Island where we’d be spending the night. We dropped off our bags and were served lunch before we got back on the boat to check out a couple of beautiful beaches in the area. We enjoyed coconuts in the afternoon sun and felt like the luckiest people on earth – it was too good to be true! The only problem was that our guide and crew seemed to have no idea what was going on or what the plan was. We asked what we might expect from the trip, or where we’d be going, or what activities we might be doing, and we mostly got confused and convoluted answers. I guess we were supposed to just go with the flow? 

Absolute paradise.

We returned to Iloc Island for sunset and dinner followed by a bonfire and drinks… and sorting out what we’d be doing for the next four days, which was still unclear. Luckily there was another group of foreigners staying on the same island who were on the last night of their boat tour, coming from the opposite direction. They told us all about their amazing experiences snorkelling and exploring the islands… then we figured out they were with a different company.

We eventually figured out that our tour “company” (if I can call it that) was a relatively new enterprise, with only one experienced tour guide. We’d booked at the same time as another group, so we’d been given a brand-new tour guide, Shao, who was actually one of the village school teachers, and had never done a tour before. She was only with us for the first two days though, and then the experienced guide took over.

I’d been looking longingly at the craggy hills of Palawan since I’d arrived in the Philippines, imagining climbing or hiking up to the tops of the lush green knolls. On our first day, I asked our boat captain if there was any hiking on the five-day excursion, and he said there was. Shao, despite her general timidity as a guide, seemed enthusiastic about taking us on a hike. She invited her students along, and our second day began with our little troop traipsing through the village to first see the local school, then heading upward into the hills.

Shao showing us around the local school.

We were barely 100m up the gentle slope behind the school before our feet and legs were covered in biting ants. Shao decided we should take a different route, so we walked back down to the village and followed a path along the beach. We plodded along the sand for about half an hour before I asked Shao when we would start heading uphill. She seemed confused and explained that we were heading to some neat rocks on a beach around the corner.

We spent the next ten minutes trying to explain that we wanted to do a hike to the top of the island, to see views of the water and other islands. I pointed desperately to the islands across from us, trying to describe the fact that we wanted to go to the top of hills like those. Eventually something seemed to click – apparently the students knew where we should go – and we marched back along the beach and into the village.

First things first, if we were going on a hike, we needed to make a flag. I’m not kidding, A FLAG. At this point we were 100% sure that no one had ever asked to go for a hike before. Despite our protests that this felt weirdly colonial, yellow fabric was produced and the flag was built. At least we managed to get everyone to sign it. We packed a few snacks (bananas and cakes), and off we went.

As we paraded through the village again, we were stopped by an old man who was quite curious about our journey. “What is your business on the top of the mountain?!” he asked, and this quickly became our favourite quote of the trip.

Despite the hours of hubbub that morning, the hike up took us all of twenty minutes, with machete-wielding twelve-year-olds leading the way. We got some pretty decent views, planted our yellow flag, and clambered back down the hill. Amazingly, the flag was visible from the water! Although I imagine it won’t be long until a typhoon comes along and rips it away.

After lunch, we packed up and left Iloc. We waved goodbye to our new friends, certain they wouldn’t forget the crazy foreigners who’d been hell-bent on sweating themselves to death to get to the top of their island.

The next four days were heavenly, despite a few hiccups. We spent our days and nights in absolutely gorgeous locations, but there always seemed to be some aspect of the trip that was a little off, whether it was the food (way too much or not enough), the tents we slept in (which collapsed), or the fact that we kept visiting coral reefs that Ramon, our second guide, touted as “pristine” but were actually dead from cyanide fishing and coral bleaching.

Yannick, Thijs, Rosalind, Catrina, and I

By and large though, the trip was fantastic. Our little group got along swimmingly, and the days passed by in a sun-soaked state of bliss. We caught amazing sunsets, went cliff jumping, checked out freshwater lakes nestled in the limestone cliffs… we even tried to convince Ramon to take us on another hike, but he openly hated hiking and told us “No, there’s no path and there are snakes.”

Can you spot the jumpers?

Eventually we made it to Coron and it was time to part ways with our boat crew. We enjoyed our first showers in five days, ate ice cream, and… how could we resist a hike?! We climbed up the 723 steps to Mt Tapyas, overlooking Coron, where we caught a stunning sunset.

Ros, Catrina and I

The next day, December 31st, was my final day with Ros. We went for a short ridge walk above Coron and ate more ice cream before all too soon it was time for me to depart.

Houses of Coron with Mt Tapyas in the background

There’s a tiny little airport that’s about 30 minutes outside of Coron, and despite the fact that my flight wasn’t until 5pm, the last van left town at 1:45pm. I thought I was going to be unbearably early for my flight, but I spent less time waiting at the airport than I’d anticipated because our flight boarded and took off almost an hour ahead of schedule. Bizarre! But it was a beautiful flight, gliding over undulating islands and golden beaches and green hills and puffy creamsicle clouds lit up by the late day sun.

We landed in Manila at 5pm (incredibly, our scheduled departure time had become our arrival time), and I had ten hours to kill until my flight to Denpasar. I considered heading into Manila to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and Rosalind was urging me to do so as she celebrated in Coron; but as you know, my dear friends and family, I am a hermit, so I read my book and napped on an uncomfortable airport bench until 11:45pm. I groggily watched fireworks explode across the skyline for nearly an hour, wished Happy New Year to the other ghosts wandering the Manila airport at midnight, and fantasized that I was on one of the flights taking off or landing amidst the amazing firework display.

I made it back to Bali safe and sound on New Year’s Day and promptly took a long nap.

Happy 2018, everyone!

My first sunrise of 2018 from the plane to Denpasar.

Happy New Year!