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Published: September 15th 2018
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August 31st - Hualien to Taipei - Dia 71
Needing to catch a plane from Taipei to the Philippines I took the train back to Taipei. Today was just a long day of traveling.
4 hour train ride reaching the city of Taipei. I had booked a Hostel relatively close to the airport to reduce the taxi fee. My flight left at 4am so I could not take the liberty to take the public transport.
In the metro, trying to figure out how I was going to get to my Hostel, I met a really helpful 65 year old woman who did much more then help me out. Realizing we were heading the same direction I followed, she guided. Taking a bus together she told me everything about her life. She was worried as a mother would be worried for their child about me getting to my Hostel safely ☺️. Mothers natural instinct, I guess ?
After a long day I arrived to a bed and slept.
Bye Taiwan Hello Philippines - Dia 71
Waking up 4am ? I took a taxi to the airport. Not as cheap as I wished it would be.
Another long day of traveling ?
While checking in and getting my boarding pass I encountered a small issue. In order to get into the Philippines I needed to have booked a flight out. Not having done that I had to quickly book a flight out of Cebu and towards China in two weeks time. I already knew where I was going, so it was not too much trouble doing it on the spot?
Philippines was completely different then Taiwan. Arriving to the city, I was not surrounded anymore with the Asian face I had been seeing the past 2 months. It honestly does not have any of the Asian features. I find Philippines having more of a Latin American face. Dark colored, dark eyed, short and slightly less rounded eyes then Latin Americans. And the whole city is covered in English signs, you rarely see Philippine words. All of this makes it much easier to travel through! Makes me realize how hard it was to traveling through China. Here every person speaks English ?
Talking and figuring out exactly how to get to the ferry station was easy, Philippines are really kind people. I just needed to take a series of buses.
Riding through the
city I realized how heavily trashed it was. Something I had not seen in either China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. I immediately felt I was in a much lesser developed country. It looked and felt so similar to a costal city in my own country. And this feeling of the Philippines being similar to a Latin American country continued throughout my trip here. I have to say it's a Latin American country infused with Asian culture.?
Slowly making way through traffic I had not seen in a long time I made it to the ferry station. Buying the next possible ticket to Bohol.
Leaving the port I expected to see the crystalline dark and light blue water of the Philippine coastline. It was more like a grayish color. I would not have swam in it ?.
But after 2 hours of taking the ferry I was welcomed to the beautiful little island called Bohol. With the oceanic views I was looking forward too ?
Renting a motorbike immediately for the next 6 days ? I zoomed to the Hostel.
Riding through a narrow street with palm trees and coastal vibes made me feel like I was back home. Arriving to the Hostel I felt as if I was in the summer camp I used to attend when I was a kid. You had wooden cabins situated all around an open area separated by trees. A trail leading to each cabin and farther in you had the restroom & showering house. Just like a summer camp ? What a nice feeling. I was sleeping in one of those wooden cabins with around 12 other beds, each one with a mosquito net. Sounds bad but I slept like a baby.
Amazingly as soon as I arrived I was introduced to a diving instructor named Laura living in the Hostel. Which after talking a couple of minutes with agreed to teach me the Open Water Diving Course for the next 3 days. I was going to go diving!!
I stayed around the Hostel for the rest of the evening getting to know Laura and her friends. Meeting the people I was going to hangout and become good friends for the next 6 days. Monica, a local girl born and raised in the Philippines. Gareth, a New Zealand guy traveling for a long time now and deciding to stay in Bohol to be a diving instructor. Ej, a local guy who owned the Hostel.
We went and had dinner at a local BBQ restaurant. Philippines love meat.. We tried out some weird stuff: chicken intestines and the head of a chicken. I don't recommend the head of the chicken ? it was too chewy and had too many weird textures and flavors.. especially the brain. Jajajaja
Excited to start my diving course tomorrow I went to bed
September 1st-4th:Diving Panglao Island:Dia 72-75
Spent my first 4 full days in Panglao Islands learning how to dive. My first day was the most boring since I had to watch some videos through the morning and then do a pool session in the evening. Busy all day with diving. Could not have asked for a better teacher, Laura. Great mix of energy and seriousness and as the days went by we became great friends. Making the diving experiences even more wonderful.
I found diving to be extremely straight forward. The worst feeling was the exercise of having to take your visors off in the water. And well it took me a couple of tries to get control of the neutral beuyancy. All of this I did in the pool and revisited quickly on our first day at sea.
My next three days where dive dive dive. I managed to see 5 different diving sites. Getting more and more comfortable as the days went through. I LOVE the feeling of looking up towards the surface of the water and seeing the air bubbles rise through the water and the sun rays scatter through the water.
I saw all kinds of fishes and the water was extremely blue and clear for all my dives. I loved every single one of my dives. By the end I had mastered all body and breathing control and could really start looking for little sea animals hiding behind corals. It's another life down there... Hard to describe jajajaja
For my last dive we where diving next to a huge coral wall that dropped vertically to the black blue depths of the sea. A completely different wall then the ones I am used to climbing. Filled with life at every single corner you look. With extremely colorful corals spiking themselves outwards.
On another dive we were lucky to have found a school of huge fish, maybe half a meter in length? Swimming through the school and getting yourself immersed in the middle of it was another kind of feeling. Amazing to see so many spinal dorsal fins moving back and forth with such a repetitive cycle, making it look as if the fish were robotic.
My days had a morning dive and an afternoon dive, finishing the day at around 3pm. For the evenings we either chilled in the hammocks around the Hostel, visited a beautiful beach called White Beach or drank beers in a bar next to the beach as the sun set. Not used to the diving I ended up falling asleep at around 10pm every day ??
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