A Little Complain and Contrast

I returned to Puerto Princesa today after my trip around Palawan Island.  Tomorrow, I’ll go back to Manila for a few days before taking another trip to some other islands.  Tonight, I’m really living it up.  I’m staying at a place called The Citadel Bed and Breakfast.  It’s a little bit outside of the town center, but I really don’t mind because I don’t have any major need to go into town.

This hotel is pretty swanky compared to the places I’ve stayed so far.  I’m really dipping into my budget (paying maybe $18 US a night rather than $12).   The places I stayed at in El Nido and Sabang were much cheaper, but…I just took a hot shower!  What a luxury.  It’s true, for most of the past week, I’ve been too hot to even want anything other than a cold shower, particularly since the rooms I’ve had didn’t have air conditioning.  Here, I’m spoiling myself – I have A/C and this place has a swimming pool.  After I arrived, I chilled (literally) in my room for a bit before going for a swim, followed by a hot shower.  Luxury.

Don’t get me wrong, the other places were great in their own way.  In El Nido, I stayed in a guesthouse above the dive shop where I was doing my rescue dive course.  Convenient.  And literally steps away from the sea.  But the room was cooled by a single, wall-mounted fan.  Since it was on the third floor, it could get rather toasty up there.  The room was open to the outdoors, with wooden slats over the windows, making it easy-access for bugs.  This included an ant colony which got steadily larger during my visit.  By the fourth night, the smallest had declared war and were nibbling on me when I lay in bed.

In addition, the typical toilet in the Philippines lacks a seat.  It’s just the porcelain bowl.  Luckily, the shower (which had broken the first night) was fixable, as I was so hot, sweaty, and generally gross most of the time, I needed a shower every time I returned to my room and each night before bed.

On the positive side, the building was right along the beach, so the waves crashing provided a constant lullaby. It was loud enough that I could hear it over the sound of my fan, even when it was on high.  The bay was lined with multiple “restobars” and so music from several competed with the sea for attention until late in the night.  In the mornings, however, I certainly didn’t have far to go to reach my class!  And the dive boat pulled right up, nearly to the shore, to load up tanks, divers, and other equipment.

I got up the day after completing my rescue course in El Nido and took a van to Sabang, where the Underground River starts.  It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The river goes something like 15 miles  underground and empties out into the ocean.

It’s a beautiful cave and one can take a tour that takes you into the cave and up the river about a 1.5 kilometers.  There are beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations inside.  I went on the tour the next morning, catching a ride with the tour group back to Puerto Princesa.

One fun, rather crazy thing I did was try tamilok, a local food that is actually a grub which lives in the mangrove tree.  They’re eaten after being soaked in vinegar.  They look like large, white worms. Someone in my tour group had heard of it, so some of us tried it.  Have to say it did NOT taste like chicken…more like oysters!

The van ride to Sabang was not terrible. It was not great either.  It took several hours to get to the place where the road diverges to either Puerto Princesa or Sabang.  From there, I had to transfer to a different van after waiting at a restobar for about an hour.  I befriended a little girl there as I sat coloring in my coloring book.  When the other van came, it was pretty full, and I got to sit in the very back row.  This meant that I also got to fight car-sickness for the hour-plus curvy-road ride into Sabang.  When I arrived in Sabang, it was full dark, and the guys with the tricycles were trying to overcharge me for a ride to my hotel.  Luckily, some nice guy called the hotel and the owner’s husband came to get me.  He was strong and just carried my big suitcase along the beach to the hotel.  It wasn’t far, but apparently there was some toll road the tricycles would’ve had to take.

In Sabang, I was staying in a little cottage, also right on the beach.  There was a shared bathroom with a few rooms attached around it, each with their own entrance.  Mine faced the ocean!  It was beautiful, made of bamboo, mostly, with a thatched roof.  The floor was also bamboo, and in the morning, light shone through the slats – not exactly airtight, so this place was also a bit buggy.  And I think a bunch of the ants had hitched a ride from my last hotel in my suitcase!  Plus, there was a welcoming committee of some of their cousins on my bed already!  There was a mosquito net on the bed, but it didn’t really help to keep the ants out that were coming from below…  These ants weren’t as bitey as their El Nido cousins, luckily!

Dinner at that hotel’s restaurant was delicious.  I got to drink a buko (fresh young coconut, aka daab)!They showed me a fish that they had and then cooked it right there on an open fire by the sea.  They also made me some eggplant, cooked and then fried in egg – delicious!    I ate it in an open hut (also bamboo), the roof of which was lined with bamboo chimes.  There was a strong breeze blowing in off the ocean, carrying the scent of salt and sea, making music with the chimes.  There were kids watching Pilipino telenovelas on the tv, and I enjoyed watching them – the kids, not the telenovelas, although the shows and commercials reminded me of Indian tv.

So tonight, I’m sitting by the bar of my comparatively swanky hotel in Puerto Princesa, enjoying some fish and chips and mango juice while watching music videos projected onto the side of part of the building by the pool.  I’m marveling at some of the crazy American videos that have come out this year.  And I’m looking forward to returning to my delightfully cool room and sleeping in A/C for the night.  My toilet even has a seat on it!

Tomorrow, when I return to Manila, I’ll join Steven, Caroline, and Jacob at their American friends’ home for a real Thanksgiving dinner.  Apparently, that holiday happens already this week!  How quickly time flies!  So many things have happened.  Hard to believe I’ve been traveling for over 20 months already….  Admittedly, I complain about these little things, but there are so many contrasting positives – I love my life!