Saturday 11-10-07 We woke early and set off for the ferry, planning to meet Asher and Megha and Charles later at the hostel. They showed War of the Worlds on the ferry there, which was funny because they showed Jerry Maguire on the way back- apparently Weesum ferries have a thing for Tom Cruise. Anski, Aubrey and I had a pleasant ride to Tagbilaran. When we got off the boat, we knew we'd picked the right place to come. Already it was gorgeous, and sunny. As soon as we got off there were loads of tour guides. We weren't originally planning on taking a tour, we were just going to go to the hostel. But we knew it would be a while til everyone was meeting us, and the tour was pretty cheap. The tour guide was a really cool guy and we would get our own private car so we could basically do whatever we wanted along the way and skip whatever we didn't want to do. So we went for it and headed to Jojo's car. We sat around his subwoofer, haha. He had a fun mix up hip hop, reggae, and rock that he played on our trip. He was really funny, and he said, "let's rock n roll!" which was pretty awesome.
We just drove by the churches and skipped right to the river. The Loboc river is really scenic. It was funny because Jojo knows everyone on such a small island and all the guys were like you are lucky, nice passengers (because we are such hot girls, obviously!). This is also where we held tarsiers, the smallest species of monkey in the world. They were so cute and soft! By the time we arranged our private boat to tour the river, it was pouring. But we didn't mind the rain, it was warm and tropical. We took our boat down to the waterfalls, where we got out and swam underneath. It was warm and lovely.
Then we went to this area of clear, colder, greenish blue water where you could feel the water bubbling up from the springs. We swam there a while and children stared at us and played on our boat. The locals stared at us and waved and said hello the whole trip, as a matter of fact. We then rode our boat all the way down the river, as the sky cleared up and the sun came out, it was beautiful. Our driver even let us drive the boat a bit. We ate lunch at a floating restaurant buffet, which was pretty delish- more filipino food and fruit, including the always yummy mini bananas. After that we drove through the dense man-made forest (to prevent soil erosion) to the Chocolate Hills, a weird natural phenomenon of very round hills, so named by an American officer's wife during the occupation because in the summer the grass of the hills turns brown. They sort of look like something from outer space, see my facebook album for pics. We then drove to our final sightseeing spot, a hanging bridge made of bamboo over the river. We stopped by Jojo's house so he could give his wife money on the way. His daughter waved at us shyly, so cute! His house is small like everyone's, with his dogs and Christmas lights. He has been tour guiding for 11 years apparently, crazy. Jojo then drove us to Panglao island to find our hostel. He didn't know where it was, and as we discovered apparently no one really did, it was quite small and unknown. The sun would go down fast, starting at 5:30, we discovered. It was getting to be nighttime by the time we arrived. A German woman owned the hostel, and we headed to our hut, where Asher was already waiting. It was so cool! It had a nice porch and big beds with mosquito nets, just like in a movie or something.
We then headed to the beach. The only way to get there was to ride on the back of some guys on motorbikes, 2 passengers on each. Aubrey and I hopped on the back of this guys bike and he zoomed off (on my first motorcycle ride). It was really cool, as we rode the dirt road through the dark and quiet jungle, with a million stars out. We all arrived at the beach, which was a small white sand beach with many seaside restaurants and little shops and bars. We ate dinner on the beach under a palm umbrella, I drank from a buko fruit which was delicious (coconut) and ate shrimp gambas. Then we walked down the beach, literally when you think of tropical paradise it is the Philippines. White sand, tiki torches, coconuts, palm trees, chill little bars with tropical drinks. Anski and I went for a nightswim- the water was so warm and clear! Very salty too. It was sooo nice, dark and quiet and cool. After that we went to a bar right on the beach, it was nice drinking mango and having my toes in the sand. It was sort of a disco, a small one but fun music and lights. After that we grabbed our motorbike rides back home to the hostel. Charles and Megha had made it by then. I don't think the hostel owner liked us very much as more and more of us kept showing up to the hut. But there was plenty of room for all of us, with two cots on the floor and a mosquito repellent.
Sunday 11-11-07: We woke up in the morning and set off for Tagbilaran, the only place with an ATM (I had stupidly not gotten enough money) and also to buy our ferry tickets home the following day. We went to a mall, got money, and ate at Jollibee's, a fast food chain very common in the Philippines. It was pretty good, cheap, some Filipino and some more Westernish foods. After that we grabbed a driver (who of course knew Jojo) to take us to Panglao and to his friend who could rent us a boat for the day. We decided to go the island of Balicasag. We took the boat from a gorgeous white beach, sunny and light blue water, just amazing. We rented snorkels and walked to our boat which is the picture on the right at my blog. So surreally beautiful. The boat ride there was amazing, picturesque and relaxing as we zipped toward the island about an hour or so away, tanning (er, burning actually) on the front of the boat and dipping our feet in the warm deep blue water. The island was quite small, and we hopped out of our boat and went snorkeling in the coral reef just offshore. SO AMAZING! I can't even explain, it was like being in an IMAX movie, I saw brain coral and other types and colorful tropical fish, and I found NEMO. The water was quite shallow too so perfect for snorkeling. We swam out to the edge of this cliff, where the reef dropped off to a blue abyss. So so absolutely amazing. Watching the schools of silver fish swim below. After a couple hours of snorkeling, we were hungry. A random lady approached us and said we COULD eat lunch at an expensive resort, or come with her and choose a fresh fish to cook. We decided to go with her. It was basically just a family (or families). She took all of these fish out of a bucket and said we could choose (barricuda, tuna, etc). We chose one and the woman gutted it and cooked it on fire from coconut rinds.
In the meantime, the ladies brought out their jewelry of pearls, coconut shells, and so on to sell us. I bargained the hardest I could for some pretty stuff.
We got our fish, half grilled and half sweet and sour style. The BEST fish ever. So delish. And we ate right by the water with no company except the locals, got a bottle of coke and fresh fish to share for under $5 US.
Pretty fantastic. One cool thing about the whole trip was there were often no tourists around except for us, which felt pretty cool. After that, we snorkeled a bit more and then jumped back on our boat since it was getting dark. A storm sort of passed us over, but as we headed back we saw an incredible double rainbow over the island. Perfection.
The sun set on our ride back, pink and purples (lovely, made me actually miss Arizona, we still have the best sunsets in the world, I'm convinced) and as we approached Panglao, there was an incredible lightning storm over the island. Once again I felt like I was in a surreal Van Gogh painting, with the water silver smooth and glassy.
The best part may have been approaching Alona beach from the sea, with the glittering tiki torchlights and dark smooth water. What a day. We headed off to find Megha and Charles, who had stayed behind since Megha was still recovering. Just as we were deciding whether or not to go back to the hostel for them, we found them at the internet cafe! Yay! Megha was getting better now too! We went to get food at a nearby restaurant, the Powder Keg, which had a variety of food and of course yum fruit smoothies. We finally had our whole group together, which was fun. It was rainy as we headed back to the hostel to our lovely hut. I sat outside and journaled a bit and watched some rain, so tropical paradise. The others did some poker playing (our latest addiction), but I was tired and sunburned so I headed off to sleep quite nicely under my mosquito netted bed.
Monday 11-12-07: The next day I woke pretty early and packed up. We all packed and moved out of our tropical hut and headed to Alona Beach. It was raining by the time we ate, a yummy breakfast of native cacao hot chocolate, pineapple pancakes and an omelette. Once again we had some lovely ridiculous conversation and watched the rain. Some Europeans a bit older than us were playing Uno, things like that make me smile. It was still raining but we decided to not let that stop us. Aubrey and rented kayaks while everyone else snorkeled. I wish I had a waterproof camera, because kayaking was FANTASTIC. We got around to parts of the island more inaccessible by overland. We tried to find a cave, but no luck, just very small crevices. Clear green and blue water, tropical rain...oh, and we found a little cove with boats and fishing nets draped that looked like the set of Lost. Except it was real. Ballin. Then we found a gorgeous resort with amazing buildings, the perfect white beach with a net, hammocks, perfectly cut grass. We turned it back around as it began to rain harder. It was lovely. We found the others, snorkeling.
We got out and grabbed a quick meal at Powder Keg again before heading off to the ferry pier (after a minor mix up of meeting Charles and our driver and riding back and forth to our hostel). We barely made our ferry (why are these things always so rushed) but we did, and left Bohol, sadly. We arrived back in Cebu by dark already. We actually had quite a nice dinner at the airport, I had nice fish, mango shake, hot chocolate, and banana split.
I managed to spend all my money and we caught our flight. Woo. Exhausted, we got back to Hong Kong at around 12:30. And the next day I studied and took a quiz. Wooo.
Overall, gotta be the best vacation ever. Literally tropical paradise. I returned suburned, motorcycle burned- got a really gross burn on my leg- but man. How lucky am I.
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