Boracay, Bohol, Cebu...and lots of rain!!!

After all the hardship, we finally made it to the island of Boracay. Its amazing how a PSP, a laptop and an MP4 player can help pass the hours when stuck in a godforsaken ferry port in the middle of a rainstorm.

Boracay is the main tourist destination of the Philippines – a tiny tropical island, 9km long and 2km wide with a long white sandy beach all down one side, fringed by palm trees, and of course hundreds of resorts. Should be heaven I know, and it would have been, had it ever stopped raining the whole 3 days we were there!! We caught the end of the typhoon that was battering China, so unfortunately, couldn’t do much on our island paradise. We were near the shopping arcade and pubs and restaurants though and had satellite TV in our room, so all wasn’t completely lost! Plus, it was great to be back somewhere with modern facilities, buildings made of concrete, and actual shop fronts!! 

We did venture out a few times, on the second day it looked like it had cleared so we went for a walk down the beach, only to get soaked wetter than I think I’ve ever been before!! The highlight of the few days was probably our dinner in the “Hobbit House” – a restaurant/ pub where only ‘little people’ work! Seriously, its not a joke – the place is actually owned by an Irish guy (with a warped sense of humour!). Dinner was lovely, and the staff were really friendly, and don’t seem to mind at all if you make a fuss out of their littleness!!

After two days, we resigned ourselves to the fact that the weather wasn’t gonna get any better and we were best just to get the hell out of there. Our ‘backpacker’ option was a 6 hour bus, then 12 hour ferry, and given our previous luck with Filipino transport systems, we decided to use the “rainy day” money (and there was a lot of rainy days) my lovely flatmates in Sydney had given me and treat ourselves to the next cheap flight out of there!!

We arrived in Cebu Friday evening. On first glance Cebu seemed like a much nicer city than Manila, but its quite deceptive. While Manila has a lovely city centre, the outskirts is a dump. Cebu is the opposite, the uptown area is lovely and green, the people really friendly (speak great English too) and drive proper cars, while the city centre is a shithole. The main street is called Colon street, which I think is quite apt, given what the city is full of!!

Saturday we decided to head to the nearby island of Bohol to do some exploring. Bohol is famous for two things – Chocolate Hills and Tarsiers. The Chocolate Hills are 100s of little hills in the centre of the island, which in the dry season look like they are made out of chocolate…and if you haven’t already picked up on it, we are in the Philippines smack bang in the middle of the wet season, so the hills are lovely and green. They are still really spectacular though, and they go on for ages. Tarsiers are the smallest monkeys in the world, and are native to Bohol. They have massive eyes (each one is twice the size of their brains) so they always look afraid. I got to feed one a massive cockroach, while Mark got to hold another monkey which is native to the Philippines. The poor little thing took quite a liking to his arm hair (thought he’d found a mate I think!!). We managed to get mass in the ferry terminal while waiting to go back yesterday evening! It was my first mass since I’ve been away (don’t tell the Grannys), and was really nice. I dunno why I thought it was strange but it’s the exact same as home, with the exact same words, responses, sit up, sit downs all of that, expect you get bread AND wine at communion. Mark, the heathen, sat and read his book about how there is no Christ, the whole way through (definitely don’t tell the Grannys!!).

Today (Sunday) we did some exploring of the city of Cebu, hoping to find something worth seeing! And wouldn’t you know it given our luck…but the sun beamed down from the sky today…the first sun we see in over a week is when we’re stuck in a sweaty hot smog ridden city!! Anyway, there’s not much to see in Cebu. Catholicism was introduced to the Phillipines by the Spanish in Cebu, so they have a massive basilica which has a statue like the child of Prague (except its called Santa Nino de Cebu – the Holy Child of Cebu) which constantly has a queue of hundreds going up to kiss it. There’s also a Spanish fort in the city – Fort Pedro, which isn’t nearly as impressive as the one in Manila. With time to kill we decided to have our first encounter with Buddha (Mark was getting very tired of Catholicism at this stage) and made our way up to the Taoist Temple, which has impressive views of the city of Cebu and a few Buddha statues, but not much else.

Having seen the entire city in about 4 hours, we made our way out to the airport, with over three hours to spare for our flight, just cos there was nothing else to do. We’re now waiting for our flight to Hong Kong. So its goodbye to the Phillipines. We’ve seen some great places while we’ve been here, and understood a new way of life. If the weather had been in order, it would have been so much more spectacular. This country also needs to get itself in order and make things easier for tourists, as time and time again (including right now, when we have no option but to eat Pringles for dinner) their systems and lack of organisation really messes things up for independent travellers. That said, the country itself is a truly amazing, undiscovered paradise.