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Published: December 10th 2012
On the water again...
This is one of the seven ferry rides I took during this trip. This will likely be the most rustic one though...This is truly the Island Tour. On my first riding day from Costa Aguada Island Resort, I effectively travelled through three of them. It only ended up being a 40 km day by bike, but a lot more when I include the boat rides. I will have to take ferries eight times on this trip to visit the seven islands on my itinerary. They vary from the small canoe like boats (called bangkas) to car ferries (called RORO (roll-on roll-off)) .
Iloilo was my first stop and my introduction to the island of Panay. Iloilo is the biggest city on the island with about 500,000 people. Like many of the other places I have visited to date in the Philippines, there is a quite the contrast between the old and new parts of town. Unlike most countries, there doesn't seem to be anything cool here about redeveloping older buildings into boutique hotels or restaurants (perhaps that will be different in Manila). All the better hotels and restaurants are in the newer parts of town. That became evident when I asked the receptionist at my hotel for a restaurant recommendation and she directed me to the new part of
town, which ended up being a $2 taxi ride each way.
At dinner that night, it was interesting watching a couple of large tables of Filipinos prepare for dinner. Both tables had about 12 people at them and both seemed to be celebrating a family event (e.g. birthday). What was interesting was noting that no one ate or drank anything until
all of the food was on the table (remember like many parts of Asia all dishes are shared). Once everything had arrived, and I am sure at this point no longer hot, the elder of group went through a long prayer before everyone ate. Both tables were only drinking 7-Up or Mountain Dew… I just found it interesting because everything was so similar between the two tables even though they didn't seem to know each other.
One thing I did notice was how winding it was for an evening. That was unusual and I would need to check the weather forecast for tomorrow. Before heading back to my hotel, a cover band was playing at one of the local bars, so I stopped in for a drink. I found this group and the ones I was to
Apartment living for cocks
This was a common sight through the countryside. I am not quite sure why these cocks need so much space, but our chickens have to be envious... Cockfighting is huge here. see going forward quite good and entertaining. Lonely Planet had mentioned how many Filipino cover bands were exported internationally. This was a good example of the quality of the music I was to experience on the trip. On that note, it isn't unusual to see a musical shop in a mall where customers are playing instruments in them complete with amps...
When I got home, I checked the weather forecast and it was calling for headwinds of 64 km/hr for tomorrow! Something must be up… I then went downstairs to the lobby and saw a local newspaper, which had the following headlines, "Get Ready". A super (category 5) typhoon was approaching the south-eastern part of the Philippines. The only plus was that while it was powerful its size was not huge. The forecasted path of the typhoon was suppose to come close to Iloilo, so after some discussion with Shauna I decided to hold up for the day. As well, it looked like the following day the winds might actually end up being a tailwind (remember hurricanes and typhoons move in a circular motion). The next morning things were unsettled, but nothing unusual. Then about 10:00 the winds and
The ubiquitous statue
All of the towns here have a statue like this commemorating someone. They reminded me a bit of the ones I saw in Paraguay. Once again, the Spanish influence lives on... rain picked up noticeably. It really didn't get much worse than that and certainly none of the locals seemed too concerned because business was going on as usual -- the malls were actually full. The typhoon got within 180 km south-west of Iloila during the night, but the winds and rain they were forecasting (110 km/hr and 30 mm) for the area just never materialized.
On Wednesday, the wind had died down noticeably and the rain had stopped. I took this as an opportunity to get an early start. In my research the night before, I realized there was a short-cut to Kalibo that might make it possible to only take one day to cycle there. It would be a long day (160 kms) but doable if the weather cooperated. I did find a local resort at 95 kms that could be a backup. I thought that if I was close to 100 km by noon I would make the push for Kalibo and that is exactly what happened. It is always difficult cycling through the hours of 11:00 to 15:00, but this would allow me to regain the day I lost because of the typhoon. One thing that
Working hard in the rice fields
I hope that hat makes a difference, because it was so hot when I was taking this picture... didn't go right for the day is that my front derailleur broke. This is the first time ever I have had a derailleur break. A spring broke, which made it impossible to shift down with just the shifter.
One other event of interest that morning was the stop I had for breakfast in a small town. I was served by a transvestite waitress, but I couldn't believe how much I was sweating. My shorts and shirt were just soaked (it was like I had just got out of a pool) in it and it was so bad there was a little pool of sweat building underneath my chair. To make matters worse, when I went up to get another drink of water I had footprints across from the floor from a combination of the pool of sweat under my chair and my dirtying cycling shoes. A bit embarrassing, but I am not sure what I could have done to prevent it. The joys of cycling in the tropics...
After a brief overnight stop in Kalibo, I was headed to Boracay (this is the Philippines equivalent of Phuket or Bali). I was prepared for a much different experience, but I was overwhelmed at the amount of people and the amount of development. I seemed like every single tourist in the country was here… For a country with 7,000 islands, every tourist seemed to have picked here as their tourist destination. Construction was going on everywhere. There was also the old and new combined with 5-star hotels like you would see on Miami Beach to beach huts like I have seen throughout the Philippines. Remember though money always seems to win in at this game, so I am sure the huts will be gone by the next time I visit. The other interesting thing was the mix of tourists. There was a large contingent of them from Japan, South Korea, and China.
White Breach, which was so highly hyped here, wasn't as "white" as I thought, but then again Bermuda's pink beaches are not quite as pink as the travel promos make them appear to be. There is an interesting contrast between White Beach and Bulabog Beach, which is on the opposite side of the islan. Bulabog wasn't as nice, but was mostly used by windsurfers and kiteboarders. It had a much different feel to it.
For dinner, I headed to "the strip", which was the store fronts along White Beach. Some of the hotels had an interesting concept going in front of their establishments on the beach. They had buffets with entertainment, which was again mainly cover bands. However, for the last night there were some fire performers that literally and figuratively lit up the night.
Side Notes on Culture
Tagalog, the national language, is interesting. On top of using latin script (introduced by the Spanish), the language also seemed to have a lot of Spanish words in it. After doing some digging on the internet, I found the following Wikipedia piece, " of the 30,000 root words in the Tagalog language, there are close to 5,000 from Spanish, 3,200 from Malay and Chamorro, 1,500 from English, 1,500 from both Hokkien (Min Nan) and YuehChinese dialects, 300 from Sanskrit, 200 from Arabic, and a few hundred altogether from other languages". Remember that even when Magellan arrived in the 16th century, Cebu was a bustling port with traders from all over the region there.
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liliram
liliram
hi panchoy!
so you were in iloilo during the typhoon. are you swinging by manila anytime soon? the binkleys are leaving the country on the 14th but there's an arranged meet-up on the 13th for early dinner. tynnie and jay exiomo would be joining too. hope you're around. we meet in rockwell in makati, around 6:30pm. cheers!