Beaching in the Phillies

Just a few of the many islands...
Here I am again! After all the rice terraces in the north we went straight down to Manilla where we had to catch a flight to Bacolod on Negros Island. Everything went well and in the afternoon of the 1st of August we moved directly from the "airport" to the bus station to catch a bus to Cadiz. Again no problems!! Got a room and the next morning we took the boat to Bantayan Island where we were planning to do some serious beach time. However... we both didn't like the island! It is to big to get the real island feeling and the beaches were far from extremely nice. That called for a quick decision and resulted in us leaving the next day and heading for Malaspascua Island. After a tiresome boat, tricycle, bus, boat trip we arrived at Malapascua and this was great! Nice small island, very friendly people, white beaches... just what we wanted.

Besides being on the beach and doing nothing I also went for three dives. Malapascua is known for the Thresher Sharkes and of course I wanted to see those! But no luck for me! Just a nice dive but no sharks. In the afternoon I did two more dives around Gato-Gato Island and those were very good. After 5 days we decided it was enough (and honestly we got a little bored because there is absolutely nothing to do besides doing nothing...). However the local kids were practising for some kind of festival and they had the best music and dance ever! Drums, trumpets and dancing kids, great way to spend an evening! And to share this experience with you I made you a movie (turn up the volume!!):

Yesterday we moved to Moalboal, a beach/divers town in the middle of the eastern side of Cebu Island. Going to look for the White beach this afternoon and I will tell you next time what we think of this place. Up to this point I am still a little unsure whether to recommend the Philippines as a destination to anyone. For divers there is no doubt that they should come here but for "normal" backpackers... I don't know. There isn't a lively backpackers scene as in Thailand or Laos but there are some beautiful sights here. The rice terraces in Luzon are beautiful, some of the beaches are great, but it just doesn't excite me as much as other places. The easy thing is that most people speak good to great English, so getting around is very easy!
Another "fun" thing here is that we are really getting into the Philippine way of living especially when we were on Malapascua. That means waking up at 6.00 and going to bed at 21.00-22.00... Strange, but there is so much noise outside that you just can't continue sleeping. On Saturday we have a flight to Puerta Princessa and that will be the last real destination for us in the Philippines. More on that in the next post!

Hastelavista,
Ikke