Neil says: 'what do you mean there are only 4 hours a day of electricity?!'

So we arrived into Sabang a little bit shook up, the Abortion road to Sabang had lived up to its name and Donna's boobs were hurting from all the bouncing up and down. Sabang itself is a sleepy village made up of around 5 resorts, all offering very similar standard of accommodation ie cottage with private bathroom and fan, all a stone's throw from the beach for between £4.50 and £6. We opted for the £6 cottage as it was on stilts (we hoped it would stop insects crawling in) and also had a flush toilet with toilet seat and everything!

We soon learned that the fan was of little use as the electricity generator was only switched on between 6:30 and 10pm. But we didn't care as the view from our balcony was to die for and we had mentally prepared ourselves to 'rough it' for a few weeks.

The beach itself was, dare we say it, the best we have seen on our travels yet and as this was just the start of our exploration of Palawan it gave us so much hope. What was really strange was that we seemed to be the only Western tourists and part of only a handful of people on the beach. Just imagine it...a white, powdery sand beach, sea with water so cleaner than what comes out of the tap, backed by palm trees and rugged limestone cliff formations with pristine rainforest with just us on the beach and the sounds of nature. We fell asleep and awoke each day to the sound of small waves lapping the beach. If this isn't paradise, we don't know what is.

However, as with the rest of the Philippines, the food options again were pretty crap, maybe more so here because there were no established food supply routes to the main cities and as power was limited to 4 hours a day, refrigeration is difficult (as Donna found out with a 48 hour bout of the squitz and sickness!). So instead of getting ice cold beers you get lukewarm beers and when presented with a one page menu at the restaurant it's not unusual for half the dishes to be unavailable due to herbs, spices or even meat being out of stock.

It's an early to bed kinda place because of the power and supply issues, but this was a nice experience too as it allowed our livers a rest from the many nights of alcohol drinking we have endured on our travels! The only excitement there was, was when the tour buses arrived into Sabang to bring tourists from Puerto Princesa to the nearby UNESCO declared Underground River. The tourists were whisked to the river and back in under an hour and were allowed to spend an hour or two on the beach before looking very sad that they had to leave this paradise. Each day we sat on our balcony with great smugness because we didn't have to leave! This smugness soon rapidly disappeared when we realised that our next destinations to the north of Palawan were very difficult to reach from Sabang. The problem being that if you were to go to either Port Barton or El Nido in the north you would either have to pay £40-80 to charter a boat or car or face a gruelling 8-12 hour journey on the top or back of a jeepney.

We had been told it was possible to reduce the costs of the transport by sharing the boat or car with other people and not surprisingly we found this difficult as we were the only tourists in Sabang! We were however, lucky enough to find another couple who wanted to travel to Port Barton and because the boat people quoted only a slightly expensive rate of £35 for the 4 of us, we opted for the 2 hour boat journey over the jeepney...of course this meant staying another day in paradise, oh well things could be worse!

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