Another Island Stopover

We have a nice quick flight to an island called Palawan. Nothing better than an hour long flight. Quick, easy, and you get somewhere completely different. Our first night there we stayed in Puerto Princessa. That place is not that cool. Some people use it for a jumping off point for day trips, but everything interesting is at least 2 hours away. We went island hopping the day next day and it was not that great the islands were just so so. The good thing was going to the market and buying shrimp, chicken, and pork and BBQ an awesome dinner that night.

Our first night there we also went walking to the beach about 20 minutes from the place we were staying. It got pretty dark and we found ourselves wnadering over this really rickety wooden bridge that we could not even see. We figured we had to go back the next morning and get some photos and see what the hell we were walking on.

We wised up after that and rented motorbikes to head up to Sabang. It is a decent beach on the West coast of palawan. I must say that the ride there was extremely interesting. It is only 50 miles, but takes 2.5 hours. Half the road is paved and the rest is dirt, gravel, and mud. For some reason it always seems to be perpetually muddy there. I guess that might be because this is the rainy season. The nice thing is that anywhere that is that difficult to get to is going to be peaceful and a cool destination. I will also say it has had the best food I have eaten in the Philippines so far. The seafood there is so fresh and amazing. We ate fish, Shrimp, and Crab for breakfast lunch and dinner.

In Sabang we stayed in Bungalow for $10 a night right on the sand. They were fan with a mosquito net, but who cares we were in paradise. I could have stayed there for weeks. Our first night there I went to a store to buy some mosquito coils and instead I was offered a drink and some small whole fish to munch on. I sat down with the locals there and had a few drinks. I then invited to a bonfire I was going to have on the beach and to have a few more drinks. It turned into a party with about 15 people showing up with drinks. It was a great time. I brought out my speakers and we all just got completey drunk on the beach. The best thing no driving home drunk, just wander 20 steps to mu bungalow.

The next morning we went to the underground river. It is one of the natural wonders on the world and is the longest underground river anywhere. Unfortunately the camera's batteries died so no photos inside the cave for you. It was really cool having the bats and sparrows flying around you. We only traveled in 1.5km, but it was still really cool. There were some spots where the ceiling was almost 200 feet high and other spots where it was as low as 10 feet.

Around the cave there is a lot of monkeys and monitor lizards and I mean big monitor lizards, like 4 or 5 feet. They are not very shy either and of course not having zoom on my camera I had to get quite close to geta photo. We also walked to a waterfall one day and on the way found a green tree snake. Jon I am sure you can tell better what kind it was, but that was also kind of interesting having to get about 4 feet away from it to get a good photo.

All in all Sabang was quite a cool experience I would not mind doing it again. I may have to spend some time in a couple of years wandering around the filipino islands. So like a good plan, even better if I have a sailboat.

---

---