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Published: October 16th 2007
Before we start this blog, we'd like to draw your attention to our updated profile section, which we decided to update to reflect our experience of travelling after one year!
It all started to go wrong stepping off our flight at Manila airport, we couldn't get to our luggage because there was so many people crowding around the conveyor belt, Donna got her ankles rammed by a woman trying to push in to the exit queue (yes, the exit queue!) and the taxi driver we got decided to take the piss. Every time we get to Manila, it all goes a bit wrong!
So the taxi driver decided to drop us off where it was easier for him, he pretended not to speak English and dumped us in a random place which was convenient for him and then sped off before we had even shut the boot! So we ended up walking...again...in the heat for about 2km to find a bus terminal for a bus to take us to Batangas, the port town which is the jumping off point for Mindoro. The problem with Manila is that there is no central bus terminal, each bus company has it's own
Small La Laguna beach
...erm if you can call it a beach?terminal and finding out where these buses go to is near to impossible (and taxi drivers who don't take you to the one you want don't help!). We finally found a bus terminal which said on the sign it went to Batangas, so we walked into the terminal, well parking area for the buses and asked the guys working there for the bus to Batangas. They ushered us to some seats and told us to wait with a Japanese guy. Now 20 minutes passed and we realised something was wrong, if a bus hadn't left by now then there probably wasn't a bus in the first place. We then found out that the Japanese guy had been waiting for 2 hours for a bus, at that point Neil then asked the guys working there again who promptly told us that there was no bus to Batangas and started laughing at us...suffice it to say we were not impressed and with one evil glare from Donna, they soon stopped laughing and scarpered.
Cue another 3km walk to another bus terminal which we weren't even sure had buses to our destination. It's all good exercise and on the plus point our
our injuries
boo-hoo they really hurt! beer bellies have disappeared! 1km into the walk disaster struck, well not really disaster, Donna slipped on some oil and fell with her big rucksack on her back and little rucksack on her front. Now at this point in our walk there was at least 15 people around us and not one person stopped to help us, in fact most of them had a good laugh at us while Neil tried to get his rucksacks off to rescue Donna. The only person that helped was a nice little man who brought a chair for her to sit on while Neil did his doctor to the rescue with the medical kit we had yet to use in our year long travels! The man even tried to give us iodine to put on the cuts, but we preferred to use the antiseptic wipes we had. Braving the pain we walked on and found the bus station which delivered us to Batangas slightly frozen in the middle due to the fierce air con! The hour's boat journey to Sabang on Mindoro gave us a chance to thaw out. At this point we had been travelling for 10 hours (since 4am that morning!) and
we were exhausted.
Arriving into Sabang was quite shocking. We had visited in February of this year and the change was very noticeable. Considering it was low season the prices were extraordinarily high. We managed to find a fan room with a kitchen which was ok for 500 pesos (£5), but there was only 2 places in the entire beach area (including two neighbouring beaches) that had rooms at that rates, everywhere else was extortionate prices. The room was so noisy as well, there was constant drilling, grinding, hammering and karaoke singing from 6:30am to well past midnight, it was a complete nightmare. Most days we ended up eating in and cooking for ourselves as the prices in the restaurants were high. One restaurant in particular was awful for service and over-charging, McRom's was the name...here is the shame. We decided to have a treat of a pizza here, we asked for it with no garlic or onions, the pizzas came loaded with huge chunks of garlic and onions so we had to pick half the pizza off. We complained but the staff really didn't care. We also ordered 2 cokes, which on the menu said they were 25
pesos, the bill came and the staff had charged 45 pesos...there were no soft drinks listed on the menu at this price so naturally we asked why they had charged this price. It turns out if you want a 25 peso drink you have to specify a bottle but it doesn't say this on the menu. Grrrrr! So that's why we opted to eat in!
Since our last visit the beach in Sabang and the beaches of neighbouring Small La Laguna and Big La Laguna seem to have disappeared even more and the water quality was even worse than we remembered. We really don't understand why Sabang is so popular with divers when the visibility is mediocre at best. Every diver we asked grumbled about the visibility...so why was Sabang so busy? We didn't take many pics either because we weren't very inspired by the scenery!
After a day or so we started to get very annoyed at the locals in Sabang as it seemed like every person was out to scam money from us. People would say 'hello', we thought they were being friendly like in other parts of the Philippines, and before you could count to
2, they were trying to sell us something, shoving things in our faces saying 'you buy now' quite aggressively. We ended up shouting 'don't say hello unless you mean it' to quite a lot of vendors!
It's amazing how much a place can change in 7 months...Sabang now has the feeling of Alona beach, overpriced, snooty divers who look down their noses at non-divers and you are also trapped there. The motorbikes were a whopping 1000 pesos (£10) a day to hire and jeepneys didn't run regularly to Puerto Galera (the main town 2km away), so to visit White beach for the day was nearly impossible.
To make things worse a typhoon was moving over the Philippines area whilst we were in Sabang which brought lots of rain and some pretty bad storm surges. These storm surges caused a lot of damage and crumbled 2 foot of an 8 foot high solid concrete path in a couple of hours, bringing the sea even closer to the resorts built so close to the beach. It's not going to be long until the resorts fall into the sea! To make things doubly worse, Neil then came down with flu, Donna
slipped on some moss and badly cut her foot and then Neil impaled his hand on a spikey metal fence when trying to avoid being swept away by a storm surge wave on the crumbling concrete path! See the pics for our injuries...they were pretty bad (cue the sympathy please!!). After a couple of days of storm surges and boat cancellations, we had to risk getting out of Sabang to make it to northern Luzon. We made it out in one piece and managed another 3km walk through Manila in the heat, actually we are getting used to these now and a journey wouldn't be complete without them!
This draws to a close our time in the Philippines, our next destinations being Hong Kong, China and Myanmar. We have spent 3 months in this lovely country with quite a few ups and downs. We have seen the best beaches in the world (officially according to Conde Nast!), swum with fish like we were in an aquarium, experienced more typhoons than we'd have liked and been stared at like we are celebrities! Do we think we will come back to the Philippines? Undoubtedly...there is just something about this country which has captivated us!
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phaedrus
Felix San Roque
Rock On!
Hahaha....great blog guys...I've been frustrated myself with the Philippine transport system but I can only laugh about it now. Looing forward to your next entries.