Mystical Anda

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For the second week of our holiday we decided to head over to Bohol as we have never experienced The Visayas. We were craving a bit of hard travel and a destination that was not too common so we settled on Anda at the far East of the Island. From El Nido this is how the travel went:



Minibus to Puerto Princesa (5 hours) – Flight to Cebu (1 hour) – Tricycle to Port – Boat to Tagbilaran (2 hours) – Tricycle to local bus station – local bus to Anda (3.5 hours).



I was quite impressed with the local bus service that we caught across the length of Bohol. It was relatively comfortable and it was amazingly cheap (100PHP each). There is not much information on Anda in the lonely planet guide and I was unable to find any blogs on travelblog. This meant that when we saw signs saying we were in Anda we were not quite sure where to jump off. We took a gamble and got off the bus near some local shops and then waited for a tricycle to drive us to DapDap Beach resort – the cheapest option on the coast.



There was no one else at this resort when we arrived and it seemed like we had disturbed the people who worked here. It was eerily quiet and we went for a quick walk along the coast as we were under the impression you could walk from resort to resort and we were looking for some good food. This was not the case. All the resorts along this stretch are between 700 – 1000m off the main road and these dirt tracks are not lit. This means if you cannot arrange to get a tricycle to come into the resort to pick you up you need to walk the 1km in the pitch black to get to the main road and jump on some public transport. All of this confusion made us quite angry and we were worried we had made a bad decision. After finding some food and returning to our resort we realised it had its own beach hidden in a beautiful cove and with no one else at the resort, this was all ours! It helped us to relax a little and we decided to stay here for the 4 remaining days of the week and give it a chance to woo us.



And woo us it did. I grew to love Anda even though there is pretty much nothing to do and there are minimal food/entertainment options. None of that mattered because the people here are amazing and quietness becomes addictive. The family that run DapDap are lovely and they just so happened to be looking after a young niece of theirs who we ended up spending a lot of time entertaining! They pretty much forced us to do Karaoke every night in the Gazebo they have set up on the top of a min cliff at the back of the resort. This is their main form of fun and they love it when the guests get up and give it a go – no matter how bad you are! The volume of this machine echoes across the whole resort and over the ocean so you need to be confident with all the locals hearing your voice!!



Our days normally went as follows: Wake up and walk the 20 metres down to the beach. Lay on the beach and go swimming. Head into town on tricycle at about midday. Walk along the public beach, speak to locals and eat at the local bakeries. Tricycle back to our resort where we would normally spend some time jumping into the local cave pools or entertaining some of the younger family members at the resort. Have some dinner at the resort and then sit and sing karaoke with the locals until late sipping Tanduay. Now that I have written it out I realise why it became so addictive. It was bliss and the place really grew on me. Oh I forgot - They love their basketball here and I was even called on court a few times whenever we were on our way back from town.



A few things we learnt about Anda whilst we were there – There are a couple of travellers inn’s in the town around the public beach that we saw. These are cheaper options and looked fine but they were full to the brim with locals when we were there. Big Filipina families had rented out the whole building in some cases and after speaking to a few, it would seem that Anda is a very popular holiday destination for Filipina families, especially those from Bohol. The main road that leads back out of the town runs about 1km parallel to the coast. All of the expensive resorts lead off of this road down private dirt tracks – the last one being DapDap resort (4km from town). All of these resorts are very expensive and we visited one for dinner one night as we were intrigued to see if there were any tourists staying in Anda – as we had seen none in town and none at our resort! Low and behold they were all in the resorts! These places are set up to cater for families every need - with swimming pools, private beach fronts, boat trips, dive centres and restaurants (with expensive food as we were going to find out).



This is what I think gave the place it’s “mystical feel” (a direct quote from the mayor of the municipality of Anda). You do always feel like you are in a place that is popular but you never see any tourists unless you are in one of the resorts. We saw dive boats and other boats heading out across the water all the time but you never meet any of these people. This was exactly what we were after. We were still uncommon enough to get those quizzical looks from the locals and the smiles and waves from others. On one of my runs from town back to my resort I was waved at by dozens of people, egged on by others, and even had some young companions for some of the sections!



In conclusion I would say that you need to be patient with Anda and give it some time to grow on you. We were joined by 2 tourists on our second from last day at DapDap and they left the next morning. We bumped into them again in Manila 2 days later and asked why they had left so quickly and they said it wasn’t what they had expected and it was too quiet. They found it a bit strange. So did we for the first day – but we fell in love with Anda by the time we had left, and so might you!

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