The Filipino Chill Pill

Where we were staying - Mengi's Resort
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According to our guidebook, White Beach is a quiet beach for relaxing compared with other Puerto Galera beaches.  Since the book is out of date, a lot has changed in 5 years.  Although the low season, we arrived to find that the beach was doing an imitation of the cliche sardine can.  The touts attempted a beach assault on us, which made us decide on Talipanan Beach instead.  The tricycle cost us P150 (normally P100) to get there and we settled on Mengi's Resort (P500 per night), with our own bathroom containing a real shower!  There are about 5 places to choose from.  By this stage we were buggered, having left Sagada at 7am the previous morning.  As you can guess it was a quiet night; laundry dinner, beer and sleep.

This is what greeted us at White Beach
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Our time at the beach was a chilled out relaxing experience.  We didn't do too much.  White Beach was crowded but we did enjoy a walk along the beaches to get there.  The Aninuan Falls were nearby and took about an hour to reach, including taking the wrong path at a fork.  After the wrong turn we took a guide (P50) to show us the right way.  It was the dry season, so the falls weren't that great, more of a wet season thing.  We met an Aussie who had a sweet setup: working for one month, holiday for eleven.  His business is taking photos of oil rigs for safety manuals and prospectus'.

...attempted a beach assault on us...

Walking to Talipanan Beach
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We had our first and second try of halo halo.  It's a sweet mixture of shaved ice, tinned milk, jelly and beans.  We highly recommend it.  The food was always great, especially with a freshly made fruit shake or beer.  And, of course, we swam: before breakfast, in the afternoon, the beach was right at our doorstep.  The water was slightly more refreshing than we experience in Noosa but warmer than you can get at home in NZ!

Sadly, our relaxation time had to come to an end.  On Monday morning we jumped back on the boat to Batangas Pier making our way to Manila.