Traveling in the Philippines

Philippines is not a very well traveled country but is well worth it. It has anything from coral islands to mountain jungles. There are many endemic animal species and different indigenous cultures. It’s also generally a safe and healthy place to travel. The only thing that keeps it out of travelers’ maps is its remoteness.


Logistically, Philippines is not a very easy place to travel. First, it is not near anywhere; it just sits by itself near the edge of the vast expanse of Pacific Ocean. It’s not on the way between any two locations unless you’re going from Australia to China. Then, it consists of 7.107 islands, spread out from north to south. There is a big national highway that runs all across but the roads are not always in good condition and neither are the busses. Trains are virtually nonexistent. To travel between distant islands one has two choices, the ferry and the airplane. Like Indonesia, Philippines also has many local airlines with cheap prices and some with old propeller planes. Ferries take more time and depending on the boat and the class you choose it can be either very comfortable or not comfortable at all. I took Superferry once for 13 hours on “tourist” class (second cheapest of the four classes) and it was a big AC hall with about a hundred double deck beds and was very comfortable. You can even travel very cheap by cargo boats if you have the time and the guts.

The good thing about traveling in the Philippines is that you can speak English to anyone and they will understand you. This makes traveling more hassle-free and also sometimes leads to forgetting that it’s still Asia where the bus arriving “just now” may in fact come an hour later.

The prices for transportation are similar to other SE Asian countries (such as a 6 hr bus ride for about $10) but the visa is the most expensive I’ve seen. You get a 3 weeks free on entry which is extendible up to two years without leaving the country. But each 2 months extension costs about $70-80 (different charges apply each time), which makes it around $250 for 6 months which is simply unheard of. On the other hand, Philippines being the only country in SE Asia which doesn’t have any land borders, it may be seen as a blessing that they extend it here, rather than forcing you to fly somewhere after two months, like they do in Indonesia. That would surely be less nice and more expensive. This also explains why and how there are more expats here then there.

Since it’s way out of the way to anywhere, there are not many foreign travelers in the Philippines. The foreigners are either expats who are settled here, students (mostly Korean) or missionaries. So in touristic places the accommodation and services are adjusted for Filipino tourists. And they travel in groups, sometimes big groups. So what you find are rooms good for 6 or good for 10 or 15. Sometimes it is hard to find a double room and single rooms are nonexistent although sometimes there are dormitories. So when it comes to renting a room it makes it so much cheaper to share it with a group, and more expensive if you’re just a couple. I have stayed in a room good for 8 just by myself but the owner was kind enough to let me pay for one. And it is close to impossible to guess from the name what kind of accommodation is waiting for you. A resort can be a hostel, an inn can be a guesthouse and cottages can be a hotel. Transient usually is a place for groups which also has kitchen, cable TV and other furnishing. Homestay or pension is usually the cheapest but has less privacy. And prices for a similar room in different places can change dramatically with no objective reason.

On planning a trip to the Philippines, one must be careful with the seasons. With around 30 typhoons hitting the country every year, typhoon season, June to November can sometimes be unpleasant. Roads can be closed due to flooding or landslides and the mountains can be too cold and wet. Ferries and planes also may become unreliable. But of course this is also the discount season while Christmas and Easter times are the high seasons when it may even be hard to find bus tickets or rooms.

But apart from all these practical aspects, Philippines is a very pleasant place to travel. People are just great, they are kind and when you are in need they will sort you out. If you ever get the chance, don’t say no to going there. You can hardly regret it.

Some more impressions on the Philippines

The Philippines is a unique country on the eastern edge of South East Asia. First of all it has that “the” in its name as if there are other Philippines. Before I came around here, I thought it was somewhere in Latin America, thanks to all the Spanish names. It was the only big Spanish colony in Asia as well as the first colony there. This also caused Philippines to be the only majority Christian country in Asia. Famous “explorer” Magellan was the one who “discovered” Philippines and in fact, contrary to what’s generally told about him, he couldn’t go on with his famous tour around the world because he was killed here (his fleet completed the tour without him).

In other countries of Asia there are usually different cultural influences on the culture because people from different cultures live together or close to each other. Especially the Chinese communities which you can find all over SE Asia is a good example to that. But in the Philippines even the Chinese change their names and “mix in”. The society in general looks more homogenous then other places. There are Catholics and some Muslims. But when it comes to cultural influence there are all sorts of influences. First the Spanish, than the Japanese and the American, all of which colonized the country for some time, plus Chinese. As I wrote on the other post on names, these influences are very clear in names. But also food, games, daily things are all a mix.

Market in Manila

Popular sports in one country is a good sign of where the cultural influences come from. In the Philippines the most popular sport seems to be basketball. There are basketball fields everywhere and it’s always on TV. Soccer is almost nonexistent and it was pretty much a disappointment for me to realize that even the Euro Football championship was not in any news or papers (when Turkey was once again miraculously making it all the way to the semi-finals). Occasionally I see kids in school yards playing baseball or throwing this strange shaped American football to each other. But perhaps next to basketball the most national ‘sport’ is cock-fighting. This is a very South East Asian sport. Although in most countries today it’s deemed violent, thus banned, or only allowed on temple grounds as a part of religious ceremonies like in Indonesia (as if there is no gambling), here it is very public and includes lots of gambling. Although I haven’t seen live games, I always see it on TV and all around there are these posters advertising a breed of fight cocks or vitamins and feed for them (like the one in the photo). And it is a very violent ‘sport’. It’s not like they let two cocks fight like they’d do if they let them in a pen by themselves; they attach a 8 to 10 cm blade to one of their legs so when they attempt to grab the opponent they actually stab or cut them. The games usually last less then a minute and ends with one competent dead or fatally injured. I feel the justification behind this cruel treatment goes something like “we do cut and eat these chickens anyway, we’re even doing them a favor by offering them an honorable death through fighting which is their nature anyway.” So it’s not only the cat and dog owners who associate human feelings with animals!

Fighting cock advertisement, includes a complete list of
achievements and a brand vitamin for best strength (click).

When you ask someone they say they are all Christians giving you the impression of a strong unity but the fact is a bit different. Before the Spanish arrived people of the islands carried beliefs mainly of animism and shamanism with a strong Muslim tradition in the south as well as some Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. When the Spanish came they quickly started to convert people to Catholicism but they were not that successful in remote places, such as the Mountain Region where the people were finally converted about a 100 years ago. Catholics also made the laws of the country some of which remain today. For example there is no official divorce in the Philippines and the age of sexual consent is only 12 (which leads to child prostitution but there are people who are trying to bring it up to 16). But Catholics also welcomed the integration of local beliefs (perhaps it was how they could succeed in the first place). I saw a half-documentary film which showed shamans performing a ritual for good rice harvest while villagers join singing Christian hymns. But with the Americans arrives the fundamentalists. These are the backwards protestant churches which are mostly very inflexible in their beliefs. They supposedly only follow the Bible. If it was true than there’d be a single Bible-only church but the fact is that all towns are littered with small ‘fundy’ churches and there are all these American missionaries everywhere. They also approach me sometimes, and I don’t mind pushing their buttons. The sad thing about their existence is that, according to what I’ve heard, in places they get established they try to eliminate all the traditional elements, saying it’s all superstitious and non-Christian. There are all the apocalyptic churches from Mormons to Scientologists and their existence is as irritating as any other religious fundamentalists. The good thing about missionaries is that they do some social work, such as free medical care and education. On the other hand there are not many expressions of religion in public places and occasions. There is no special costume or a way of salutation. It’s comforting that religion is less of an item for showing off here than in some other places around. And I like to see the little stone cave-like places that people create in the nature as houses for Mary and also the Baby Jesus, which is so clearly one and the same as baby Krishna, Gopal.

El Nido St.Fancis Church

There are very many Filipino people; with around 90 millions it is the 12th most populated country in the world. It is very sad to see so many “kid factories” in suburbs of big cities while the country is having difficulty feeding itself. There is close to no birth control, thanks to the Catholic religion. Abortion is illegal and there is a lack of sexual education. There is this very touching statistic which compares Philippines with Thailand “In 1975 both countries had similar population sizes of 41 to 42 million. Then Bangkok launched a major family planning effort. Now Thailand has a population of around 64 million and is the world's top exporter of rice. Meanwhile, the Philippines with a population of 90 million is the world's top importer of the grain.” This also owes to the ‘democracy’ of Philippines being far more corrupt than the ‘kingdom’ of Thailand. In any case, Philippines is a crowded country with swollen cities and an uncontrolled birth rate.

Baguio City with its cathedral on the hill, as seen from the SM Mall

Because it consists of thousands of islands (7.107), people speak many different languages and literally come from different tribes. The idea of one nation is still in the creation and even for the communists here nationalism is not a bad thing. It makes it clearer to see that nationalism has its place in the making of a country and only after sometime it becomes an obstacle to development. Here most people speak more than one language. They speak their very local language, and then the language of the region they are from, in addition to the almost national languages of Tagalog and English. This is very good in the sense that a person learning to think in a different language is a different, a more sophisticated person. But it has its downside that some people are not that good in their mother languages, which leaves them with a secondary language to express everything, which will perhaps never be as good as a mother language. As a foreigner here, it is a great boon to be able to talk to anyone in English though.

Igorot boys playing the gongs and dancing

Filipina girls posing with guard soldiers

Filipino people love to sing and dance. And they are surprisingly good at it. But apparently, the traditional music and dances are rather simple, similar to other SE Asian traditions. For example, in the area where I spent most of my time here, mountains of Luzon, the traditional music is performed with gongs and bamboo percussions with the occasional addition of the mouth harp. The shamanic and animist roots they have are still there. Today the most common social music is the music in karaoke bars. For those of you who don’t know the word, karaoke (“empty box”) is a Japanese invention where people sing to the background music of famous songs with the help of the lyrics on the screen. There are few different types of karaoke places, the ones where you can rent a private room with your friends or those which offer a karaoke automat in the middle of a bar. The song lists usually consist of popular American oldies and Filipino songs but there are the occasional Nirvana or Christmas carols for a change. People are so practiced with these things that most people sound well when they sing and sometimes it is hard to tell if the music is coming from a nearby karaoke or is the original version (but of course there are also those which just shouldn’t sing to a microphone). And people also seem to watch MTV and learn how to dance well. There are many dance bars in most places and different types of them. One type of bar which is on the decline is the American country music bars. For me it was a very interesting experience to see Filipino people dressed like cowboys, playing really good cowboy music and dancing the cowboy dances. But these are mostly for the old generation who knew when the Canos (Americanos) were still here. New generation prefer really loud music. As a related note, I have to add that Filipino people, especially women, pose very well. As soon as they see a camera they put on this pose one can see in a fashion magazine or TV. Perhaps they are the most photogenic people. They just seem to practice a lot.

A Filipina girl, Maya, testing her singing in karaoke.

Local pork sausages longanisa is a mix of
fat, sugar, nerves, cartilage and also some meat.

After seeing all the talent in music and dance, one wishes they also cooked well but unfortunately they don’t. Philippines is for me the worst place for food in SE Asia. There is neither the variety nor the sensitivity put on food in other places. They eat a lot of meat and only a little vegetables. Being a tropic country it’s a shame that they don’t even have good fresh fruit juice (in fact, I even see pineapple juice imported from Turkey). Of course there are occasional delicacies but that’s a rarity rather than the general rule. Fast food is very big. There are all sorts of fast food outlets everywhere and the most common street foods are hot dogs and hamburgers accompanied with barbecued meat on a little stick. The interesting foods I’ve found were a bit too strange. Balut, which is supposedly an energy food, is a fertilized chicken egg on its day 12 to 18, with a semi-grown up chick inside. It is strange to gulp a whole embryo like that but it is tasty and full of protein. They also have the one day old chick barbecue or deep fry but you can find that in other countries of SE Asia too.

Balut, a fertilized and semi developed chicken egg,
well cooked and yummy.

Gloria cares. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the second woman president of the Philippines. Everywhere you see posters saying “Gloria cares” under her cute motherly face. Many believe that she’s also corrupt “but who isn’t”. Just like Corazon “Cory” Aquino, who came with the People’s Power revolution against the dictator Marcos and was the wife of an assassinated popular politician, Gloria is the daughter of a former president. It’s not easy to find woman politicians who are not related to a more successful man anyway. Her photo of surfing has the same feeling of Bill Clinton playing the sax. But after all she’s a politician, she represents a government, etc. all of which we’ll have to dispose of soon.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo surfing

In the Philippines everybody seems to want to go abroad. It already has the biggest diaspora in the world, with over 10 million Filipinos living abroad. On one side all the money these people send to their families back home contributes greatly to the economy (family ties are very important here). On the other hand, there is an immense brain drain. For example, Philippines is the biggest exporter of nurses. So much that you see nursing schools everywhere. But I heard that it’s such a popular way to make an escape from this country that even doctors take nursing training and go abroad, leaving the country’s hospitals lacking in personnel.

And because I’m being and I’ll be asked, I have to add, yes, Filipina girls are beautiful. Just like the rest of Southeast Asia, people here are rather small, tanned, mostly with slightly ‘Chinese’ eyes and are gentle in spirit. As is the case everywhere, people of the mountains are chubbier then the lowlanders. The most significant difference in physical appearance of Filipinos to the rest of Southeast Asians is that there are more plump and fat people then in other places, possibly due to the consumption of so much meat and cooking everything in lard.

After all, Philippines is a country worth visiting. People are truly kind and helpful but they don’t overdo it. The nature is pretty diverse and has many surprises. And the culture is quite unique. You wouldn’t regret being there.

[For information on how to do it, read the next post titled Traveling in the Philippines.]

El Nido, North Palawan

El Nido is at the northern tip of the very long island of Palawan which almost touches Borneo in the south. It is a little fisherman village sheltered in a crescent shaped beach, which leaves no doubt why Palawan was called "The Land of Safe Harbors" by early Chinese traders. What made El Nido one of the major tourist destinations in the Philippines is not the town or the beach but the nearby islands. The Bacuit Bay is dotted with many islands most of which are just inaccessible straight up walls of limestone (resembling the views of Krabi in Thailand and the famous bay in Vietnam the name of which I can’t remember). There are some postcard beaches and great coral reefs as well as some really posh resort hotels on some islands. The place is also one of the few places where the last dugongs live (reputed to be the origin of mermaids).


On our first night out eating and drinking with some friends on the beach I was startled when I heard a loud siren go off for a meaningfully long time but nobody around me seemed to take notice and went on with their lives as usual. I had just received a strange e-mail and was wondering if it could be the TR3 something something the triangular UFOs coming from DUMBs (Deep Underwater Military Bases) to declare worldwide martial law when somebody told me that it’s bedtime for kids. It was a strange relief. “What are you talking about? They have sirens around the town going off in the evening to tell kids to go to bed?” “This was the first one at 9.30 and there’ll be another one half an hour later. After that it’s curfew for all kids in town.” Wow. What an organized town, I thought, they must have heard of child abuse and prostitution in some other places in Philippines and wanted to keep things in shape, which is not that bad. As I was slipping into asking why they don’t think of this solution in other places I realized I wouldn’t want to live in a society where there are sirens, curfews and all-inclusive rules. But still on this little beach town it felt fine. Every evening after that I realized kids and youngsters playing on the beach right until the sirens and then leaving it for the adults. Surprisingly the only one time I went to the beach after midnight and in full moon light, it was completely deserted save a few dogs and all the bars were also closed.


El Nido is not a place for big night life. Especially in a country like Philippines where night life is night life in some places, El Nido appears to be serving other needs. What one does here is wake up around 7 in the morning, have breakfast on the beach and join one of the tours (conveniently separated as tours A, B, C and sometiimes a suspicious D), marvel at the natural wonders of limestone islands and green waters, snorkel over the remaining corals and not believe your eyes in some of the lagoons, if lucky see some turtles or dolphins, have fish barbecue on one Robinson beach, come back to town’s beach just before sunset and feel nicely tired already. Many people have just enough time to complete this 3 or 4 tours.
The ones who stay longer like we did take long sunset walks in either direction from town or rent kayaks to test their paddling skills and "discover" some deserted island.


Once again we rented a local paddle banca and went to the nearest Not-Not beach on the Cadlao Island right opposite the town. We had a whole day privacy save 3 little cats. It was great to have time to imagine being stranded on a remote island beach. We had many coconut trees and the corals right in front of us were abundant in fish, squid and crabs. We had a little creek and a lake (we had heard before) further inland. We had great shade of big trees where colorful birds would come to eat the fruits of. Yes, we could actually live there sometime.

But of course we human beings are not that well with rain. Here in the tropics it doesn’t necessarily get cold when it rains but it may get very wet. And this whole trip we had an amazingly wrong timing with our tours. Our first boat tour was very rainy in the beginning and although it stopped after, it didn’t clear up completely and plus all the discharge from the mangroves because of the rain, made the visibility too little to enjoy snorkeling. The second tour started very sunny and gave us enough sun to admire the two famous lagoons and the caves. But in the afternoon it rained so strong that we got more wet in the boat than in the sea and we cut it short. On our third and the last tour it was sunny and as I started to develop fever and fell completely sick midday, the clouds were so thick it made us think it could be hard to go back with this little boat when that storm hit us. Fortunately it didn’t come our way and we went back safely, my fever reaching a hallucinogenic 40 degrees. That happens when you end up sweating a lot and fall asleep in front of the fan! (Thank God we don't take A/C rooms)



Few things I found interesting about El Nido:


- I saw some amazing fish while snorkeling and reconsidered why I dive when snorkeling is so rewarding. Apart from the usual beauties the surgeons, butterflies, angels, parrots etc. we spotted a group of 10 squids and swam with them for a while. They are very trippy when they stare at you with their huge eyes and start changing colors quickly trying to hypnotize you. One of them even made an ink cloud when I attempted to chase it. And once again we saw many boxfishes and puffers none of which puffed…


- Although the town is small (perhaps a few thousand households) there are churches everywhere. There is the main Catholic church which is the biggest and the oldest of course (1901) but there are also lots of fundamentalist churches all around. This, according to a friend, is more a recent influence from missionaries of USA. There are Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jesus of Latter Day Saints, Iglesia Ni Cristo, Jesus I Am Church, Full Gospel Church, Baptist Church, etc. and when you ask everyone is Christian, as if they all believe in the same thing. I keep thinking whether it is so hard to see that this is a part of the divide and conquer program. The number of American fundies around is sometimes very disturbing. Once in Baguio, I even once saw a group of people wearing Scientology T-shirts.


- El Nido supposed to be a fishermen’s village but we couldn’t locate them until we decided to walk to the very end of the beach. There is the port on one side of the beach and to the left of it is the town and all the touristic places. But there is the “other side” of the pier, which is normally completely out of sight of the tourists, and which occupy maybe a tenth of the whole beach. That is the fishing village. There are many streets of mostly very simply constructed houses on top of each other. The streets are full of kids, just too many kids. The beach is of course full of fishing boats and fishing nets. And a good thing, there is a basketball field also. But the contrast of this side of town to the other side stroke me. One side is planned with wide streets, houses with gardens and mostly busy with tourism while the other side reflects far more poverty, illiteracy and all that comes with it. Of course these people are far more fortunate than people living in the suburbs of big cities like Manila and they are even more fortunate that they live where the sea gives them food. I even find their natural setting pretty amazing although I don’t know if they think about it.


- Corals are fragile. And wherever I’ve seen corals I’ve seen them destroyed out of greed and ignorance. In all countries I had a chance to swim over corals I saw fields and fields of corals bombed, crushed, poisoned. The view is mostly like a big big city after it has been carpet bombed. It’s such a sad thing to see a few fish over this landscape looking for a bit of life so they can feed themselves.

And this is because there were some greedy fisherman who were also ignorant. Nobody told them that corals won’t grow back quickly (one centimeter of hard coral grows in 3 to 10 years). But nevertheless they were sold the tools to destroy them. Perhaps they were not the traditional fishermen, but those who came to these places or chose this practice later. What they did was get some dynamite, go over the coral, drop it and collect the dead fish on the surface. Only for once. Next time next coral, until they ran out of corals and fish. Or they would do the same with cyanide. Drop it, collect the fish. This time the corals wouldn’t break but they’d die all the same, along with some of the people who ate that fish over the years. Or they get some heavy drag nets and vacuum clean whatever is on the bottom. The result is always the same: heavily damaged or completely dead coral fields extending to the underwater horizon with few islands of life remaining. That’s where they take tourists to but you inevitably see the destruction. Plus because neither the boatmen nor the tourists are told anything about the fragility of corals, each tour causes more destruction. It’s a sad sad situation.


And as a last note, I have to say before we went to Palawan we asked people "shall we go to El Nido or Coron?". We also serahed on the internet. We were mostly told that they are very much the same thing but Coron is less developed. That's why we went there first (we were not sure we would go to El Nido). Coron was nice for diving and snorkeling also but in general it is not nearly as breath taking as El Nido. We also thought El Nido would be too developed and more expensive. Wrong. It was even cheaper than Coron and the big resort development were out of sight. I believe if you are very rich and can stay in one of those private island resorts, than it wouldn't make a big difference to stay in Coron or El Nido, but if you are a budget traveler than definitely El Nido. Coron doesn't have a town beach and even the nearest swimable beacch is an expensive boat ride away. El Nido doesn't have the nice wreck dives or the island lakes of Coron, and that's why one can choose to go there. But if you are choosing one go to El Nido and not Coron.

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Coron, North Palawan

Due to weather conditions, the difficulty in leaving very beautiful places and our laziness we went to Coron for a few weeks and ended up staying over a month (including El Nido). We expected different things from where we went as well as from ourselves and once again remembered that traveling usually happens to you (if you let it) and it is not that easy to be prepared. Another thing we realized about the place was that it was very easy to be confused by the names. Coron Island for example was opposite to Coron Town which was on Busuanga Island, which had a Mount Culion opposite to a little island where Culion village was, while Culion Island was a big island further down South. We didn’t ask why. Culion Island by the way, used to be the biggest leper colony in South East Asia, which means when leprosy was an incurable and scary disease they would just send lepers to this island to live with other lepers and sort themselves out. There are some museums on the island telling this story but we didn’t go to that island, with a similar reason to why we hadn’t visited the killing fields in Cambodia. I don’t really enjoy visiting traces of human suffering as tourist objects (while I acknowledge that learning about past suffering we inflicted on each other can help us see it and stop it when it’s happening again in the future).

The day after we arrived, there was a nearby typhoon and dark skies for 3 days.

We expected (not hoped) Coron to be a little undeveloped island with great coral reefs around and good wreck diving. Instead we spend our first days in our guesthouse (which are all called “resorts” here) waiting for the rain to stop while doing more internet than we ever did thanks to the free wi-fi and free coffee in the restaurant. The first relatively sunny day we rented a kayak to discover the nearby islands. After the tranquility of some nice mangroves our first discovery was a fisherman village on stilts. I find it not very easy to understand why here most local people live right over the water when there seems to be enough land just behind the houses. It seems, some of them being sea gypsies, they trust sea more than they trust earth. They have their kitchens, washrooms, and even pig pens right over the water on stilts. It seemed to me that the first building on land was the government school (which was perhaps centrally designed without regard to environment anyway.)

Coron Island

Then we paddled to a tiny island with little beaches and nice corals to snorkel and then to the big and most famous Coron Island which is a huge chunk of sharp limestone shooting straight up from the ocean. This is supposed to be the biggest limestone formation “on earth”. The white sand beaches were like really white and green and the rocks really razor sharp. They are in fact so sharp that even if you wear shoes you wouldn’t find a good place to hold without cutting your hands unless you have been a manual farm worker or a fisherman all your life. Still it felt pretty insane to learn that the aboriginal Tagbanwa people of this island climb to the highest edges of these rocks to harvest swift nests! The bird nest soup is an expensive delicacy found all over South East Asia and is made from the nest of accurately named bird edible-nest swift, which is some fine mud mixed with the bird’s saliva. One kilogram of these nests fetches over 200 dollars and this is enough reason for some locals to risk their lives for their harvest. It also seems to have made them a little more conscious of the environment. The most touristic attractions on Coron Island, Barracuda and Kayangan Lakes close at 4 PM because that’s when the birds come down to drink water and in some parts there are restrictions on using pesticides and even tourists are warned to go easy on the mosquito repellant.

Little lagoon on the entrance to Barracuda Lake on Coron Island

After the Banul Beach, we started to follow the ragged edge of the Coron Island, discovering many hidden lagoons in the process. We had seen the name Secret Lagoon on the list of places to visit on a boat tour but some of the lagoons we visited were obviously not accessible by anything bigger than, well, a kayak like ours. The clarity of the water helped us watch all the sea life without having to get wet and we even saw a small black-tip shark among a multitude of other fish. In one place the lagoon bent to one side and the rocks on two sides got higher until there appeared a straight up wall in front of us. As we got closer to it we saw a tiny opening in the rocks, just big enough to glide through and access the deep blue lagoon fed by many fresh water streams around it. When we snorkeled there we realized the thermoclines and the psychedelic visuals of mixing fresh and salty water. At the end of our kayaking we had a little walk up and down in the jungle to visit the Kayangan Lake just before the swifts came to drink and were lucky enough to be there alone to feel the serenity of this outworldly environment, walls of limestone rocks going straight into a deep blue lake. When we were back to our kayak we realized we were too tired to do the last one hour of paddling back to town and got a relieving lift by the last tourist boat there. When we arrived back at our “resort” soon after dark, there were few people already waiting for us at the pier, fearing that something happened to us. The girl we rented the kayak from said she was going to call the coast guard if we didn’t appear soon because “nobody ever did that”! There are still waters of almost an inner sea over great corals surrounded by the best white beaches and lagoons to discover and nobody ever took a whole day of kayak and went all the way to Coron Island which is just 2 miles away? Hmmmm… What to say!

This is not the kayak in the story (we didn't carry the camera that time)

This is the local kayak, small bangka, paddling near Concepcion

Wreck Diving in Coron

I’m not an experienced diver. I just got my PADI open water diver license last November in Sumatra. I had only 10 dives before I arrived here in Coron, Palawan which is supposed to be the “World capital of wreck diving” because in 1944 the US navy sank 24 Japanese warships around here. At least half of these ships still lie in shallow waters, good to dive. During the past 64 years much marine life have made their homes around these dead warships. Also the area consists of many coral islands, so diving would still be great without the wrecks.

I choose to dive with local dive shops (Coron Divers in this case), not necessarily because they are usually cheaper but also to make sure more of the money I spend here stays in the local economy. The feeling is also very nice; we quickly make friends with them. The funny (!) thing about diving with local dive masters is that usually they do many things most western dive masters would warn you not to do. My dive guide in Bali, Ketut had tried really hard to make a puffer fish puff, poking it with his stick but later I learned that this fish can puff a couple of times in a whole lifetime and then it dies. So this is not a great thing to do; better not to touch things. Yesterday’s feat was the table-size giant clams which were quite reluctant to close up like the small ones but our guides managed to do it anyway.

Another thing many western dive masters would think twice before doing was guiding us into those wrecks. Although we were 3 inexperienced divers (one first-timer) and two dive masters, some of the entries and exits were pretty scary. Our pipes and dangly parts got stuck several times but nothing serious happened because they were really carefully watching everybody’s moves and we were following each other closely. But next time I attempt a wreck dive I’ll ask for gloves; 60 year old rusty metal cuts are pretty irritating.


I can’t help it; when I’m inside a dead ship I think about the people who died there and think this place can also be my grave if I make just a couple of wrong moves. Although driving feels far more risky then diving, the chances of being rescued is greater and the time during which one can be saved is longer, whereas in diving it is a matter of seconds or minutes. In fact just the day before we took a sightseeing/snorkeling boat tour with 6 other people we just met. While we were snorkeling in our first stop, one of them, a 64 year old professor drowned. We tried to rescue her. We were fortunate to have a first aid instructor with us who knew CPR and emergency breathing and all that stuff but we were too late to save her. She just died snorkeling with a life vest on. Well it was surely her time but also it was just a few crucial minutes between saving her and not. Makes one reflect on how thin this string we are attached to life is.

Inside the wrecks is magic. Small doors opening in to big dark spaces where one looses the sense of direction (including up and down), little holes which let in rays of deep blue sunlight and families of fish around their chosen little cavities. I try in vain to find a bone or any sign of past human life but all I found was rusty metal and broken glass. We move from one hull to the other through narrow corridors of a capsized shipwreck and suddenly I realized a beautiful but deadly poisonous lionfish only one meter right in front of my face. We both have no space to back off; so I remember the no-panic principle and my encounters with snakes and keep floating with tiny beats of my fins. One of the guys in front of me step on the dusty bottom creating a big dust cloud in which we are lost once more. I hold on to a rusty door pane and wait a little to see what’s in front of me. We turn around and enter a big space with two gigantic metal circles which are perhaps engines or tanks. A big triggerfish is nesting in the bottom. I see once more how life springs from death of another thing and death is just the result of life.


At the end of each of my spacewalks in the ocean universe I get anxious to breath freely, be in my own habitat. I love the alien feeling and the no-gravity effect under water but once again the other place becomes a mirror and I learn the value of our nice and perfectly habitable sphere of existence. I give thanks, move on.

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I didn't take these photos ;)

Tomorrow will be blue skies

I’m in Coron. It’s a really beautiful coral island paradise. The only thing is that it didn’t stop raining since we arrived 4 days ago. So I came here hoping to stay away from any civilization for a while and ended up more online than ever. I also wanted to write about Coron later but I’m almost bored so I start now.


They say there are no typhoons in this side of the Philippines but this is obviously a bit too much for just the monsoon rain. There is the huge Typhoon Nina passing by the Philippines and this seems to be a “tail” from it and this hour it looks like we are just about to leave the cloud cover soon. The sky is still completely covered but the clouds are less dark today and the rain less frequent. Tomorrow will be my day of kayaking and snorkeling, yes, tomorrow will be blue skies…

Fruits of Manila

We were headed for the historic center of Manila when we decided to take a horse-cart ride through it. While Rambo the horse pulled us not through but around the fort, our driver Rolando Miguel Gonzales played guide and informed us about everything we saw.

“This is the old wall.” (it is, obviously)

“This is the statue of Magellan who died here in the Philippines.” (ah, nice)

"This is China Town." (Lots of banks)

“This is a child factory” (oh my God, this street is sooo full of kids, some just naked, seemingly living in these cardboard houses.)

“This is a papaya tree. Do you have papaya trees in Turkey?”

“No.”

“And this is coconut. Do you have coconut trees in Turkey?”

“No, we don’t.”

“This is a banana tree.”

“Yes, yes, we have banana trees in Turkey, in fact we have them everywhere and Turkish bananas are so much sweeter than the bananas here.”


I learned to enjoy tropical fruits but it took some time and I still have some reservations. And although I saw all sorts of fruits growing wild in tropic countries it was still surprising to see these around the crowded streets of downtown Manila. But each city has it’s surprises. And I know some blueberries in downtown Istanbul.

Experiencing the Typhoon with an I

Today I’m locked inside the house by the most forceful typhoon I’ve experienced so far. This being the third one, does not scare me as much as the first two. But the wind is very strong and it is pouring. It is a surprise that we still have electricity and even the cable TV is working.

This will be the typhoon with the letter I. My first one was Frank, which killed a thousand people in the Philippines but was just a rainy day in Baguio. Then we got caught in Helen when we were on the northern tip of the Luzon Island, attempting to go sightseeing around Pagudpud. But then we thought, what the hell happened to the letter G? There was supposed to be one with G between Frank and Helen. They couldn’t have missed it, in fact they love G here in the Philippines, they have it everywhere. The language is TaGaloG, the national breakfast is lonGGanisa, they have BaGuio, BenGuet, iGorots and Rufa Gutierrez. Then we realized that the president was Gloria M. Arroyo and perhaps some American meteorologist had named a typhoon Gloria and the Filipino authorities had decided to ignore that one. We never heard of it.

In any case, it seems these big storms are more problematic in the lowlands. Up here in the mountains it gets wet and cold but that’s all about it. It’s not necessarily a disaster. When we were on the way back to Baguio during the heaviest time of Helen, we had to pass a flooded road near Laoag. The river next to the highway had burst its banks and the road was indistinguishable apart from the line of trees between the river and the road. It was strange for me to see the land that sees 30 typhoons a year so unprepared.

When it got deeper and deeper and the water level reached the first step of the door of the bus and the traffic came to a standstill I said to myself “wow, I’m stranded in a typhoon, so cool.” But then, when the bus was trying to move a few centimeters forward I felt the river push the bus a few centimeters to the side, I thought maybe it was not that cool. I had been in some such river crossings in North India but I was usually on top of the bus and had felt I could just jump down if the river took the bus. Here though, we were all inside and even the doors were closed due to the heavy rain. I looked around me to see if people were getting anxious about the situation but saw that I was the only one making it into a big deal. I was just being the foreigner.

How do disasters happen? Do they come slowly and give you time to reflect whether it’s been a worthwhile lifetime or not? Or do they come when you least expect them? There we were in a bus, the size of a nutshell compared to the size of the swollen river, and we thought we are fully safe because there is the road, although we cannot see it, there is the 3 tons of the bus, although it’s slowly being pushed to the side, and there are all the other vehicles on the road, although they are also half swimming. When we hear a bus has been taken by the river during a storm, do the passengers there also feel the way we do till the last moment? Or when these accidents happen you know it from the very beginning that something’s going to happen?

Perhaps our bus was not being pushed to the side at all and the flood adventure lasted about half an hour and the rest of the 8 hour ride was uneventful apart from the little argument we had with Maya but that was because of the full moon energy.

Did you know there were more violent crimes during the full moons than at other times? Luckily all the accident we had was a bite on the arm and a slap on the head.

***

It’s so flattering to receive a quick personal reply from God. Right after I wrote the above stuff, the house started to rock. It is a 3 storey concrete villa by the side of a steep hill. It’s hard to believe any wind would shake it like an earthquake. It was scary. Then Maya texted me asking if I want to go out! I couldn’t even imagine that it’d be possible to walk around without flying. But she said the main road and around the mall it must be full of people now (it’s Sunday). People just go on with their lives as usual, always experiencing that there is a greater power we cannot control.