gabanie
Gabe and Stephanie Joined: February 27th 2009
Logged in: September 12th 2010
Logged in: September 12th 2010
Trip is over! We hit China, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand (briefly), Laos, Thailand, and ended in the Philippines. Six countries in six months. Until next time!
Travel Blog Posts
Boracay was our last stop of our 6 month journey. AAAAUUGGHHHH! I still can't believe how fast this trip went. Boracay is an island that is home to a beautiful 2 km stretch of white sand - and is also the most popular and overdeveloped tourist area in the Philippines. Still, it's pros outweighed the cons for us. As long as you don't mind saying "no" to hundreds of touts a day, the beach really is top notch. That is, as long as you don't mind wading through a few feet of green slime on your way out into the ocean - that was a little weird. Our plan was to do nothing for the 4 days we were there, and I think we executed the plan nicely. Just hanging out at the beach, swimming (past ... read more
When we first read about swimming with the whale sharks in Donsol, and that the best time of the year is March, we knew we had to go. Donsol will probably rank as one of the best experiences of the trip. From Manila we flew to Legaspi, and then got on a bus to Donsol. On the bus we met a friendly American couple, who I'll call Mr. and Mrs. D, and we agreed to go out on the same boat to see the whale sharks the next day. The first thing we did when we got to Donsol was head to the visitors center and pay for a boat the next day. The boat holds a max of 6 people (not including the boat men, spotters and the BIO - I'll get to them later). ... read more
We spent one night in Manila, in between Coron and Donsol. Basically all we did in Manila was drop off our bags at our hotel and head straight to the Mall of Asia. The Mall of Asia pales in comparison to the Mall of America in Minnesota, but it was still pretty impressive. They have an ice rink, a bowling alley, and an IMAX theater among many other things. We had a pretty great time there. After exploring a bit we hit up the ice rink for some ice skating. Steph learned of my secret talent for ice skating. I'm really not very good at all but she is terrible so I guess she was impressed. For dinner I had a Wendy's double cheeseburger. Steph had a few pretzels from Annie's. Ahhhh, American junk food. We ... read more
Coron town (the port town on the island of Busuanga) doesn't have a whole lot going for it - it is mostly just boat docks and tricycles - but the surrounding islands and Japanese ship wrecks are what people come for. Our boat from El Nido to Coron was advertised to take 4 hours, but most people we asked said it would take 6 or 7. It ended up taking over 9 hours. This was partly due to an engine break down shortly after we left El Nido, which took them a while to fix, and then another one about half an hour later. We were a little worried that the engine would fail when we weren't so close to shore but the boat men just laughed and said that if we did break down we ... read more
El Nido is the crown jewel of Palawan, and rightfully so. It is surrounded by over 1000 islands of the Bacuit Archipelago, many of which are a short boat ride away from town. The island hopping is amazing. The boat ride from Port Barton to El Nido took about 5 hours. It was pleasant enough, but the longer ride when compared to the Sabang-Port Barton trip had us dreading the much longer El Nido to Coron trip to come. As we got close to El Nido we marveled at all the karst limestone islands. The cliffs go straight down to the water, with an overhang 5-10 feet above the water due to erosion. Most islands have little hidden coves of white sand beach. The town of El Nido is surrounded by limestone cliffs, making it a ... read more
We left Sabang bright and early for Port Barton. Our boat supposedly could hold 12 people but only 8 booked, so we were light in the water. On the way we passed another fully loaded boat that was headed to El Nido. The ride to Port Barton was actually really nice. Only 3 hours long, with great views of the Palawan coast along the way. We saw a lot of flying fish that were scared by the boat and soared for probably 300 feet or more, just barely above the water. We also saw two sea turtles, just hanging out on the surface. One of them was probably 3 feet wide and 4 feet long. He stuck his head up and looked at us as we passed. Port Barton is a quiet and secluded beach town. ... read more
We left Puerto Princesa early in the morning on a minibus bound for Sabang. Sabang is famous for it's underground river, which at 8 km long is supposedly the longest in the world. As popular as the underground river is, the town of Sabang is still pretty undeveloped. Most people do a day trip from Puerto Princesa and don't stay the night. There are still no power lines or phone lines, so every place with power has its own generator. For some reason my dad picked a guest house that was in the jungle even though Sabang has plenty of beautiful beach side spots. That was the last time we let him pick the place. That afternoon we went on a tour of the underground river. The tour starts by getting on a pump boat that ... read more
We flew from Cebu to Puerto Princesa on feb 18th, a few hours ahead of my parents, who flew in from Manila. My parents had been planning on taking a 2 week vacation to meet steph and I wherever we might be in our trip, and they followed through! It was pretty cool to be able to meet up on the other side of the world like that. They even brought us rice crispy treats (steph ate them all in 2 days), and a bunch of Trader Joe's beef jerky (it's the best). Puerto princesa is by far the biggest city on Palawan Island, which is a long, skinny, undeveloped island in the western Philippines. Puerto princesa itself was not a big attraction to us, but the nearby Honda Bay made it worth staying one full ... read more
I'm now 2 weeks behind on blogs, thanks to limited internet access on Palawan, but I'm not giving up! Many more to come. There isn't that much to say about Cebu City... it really isn't much of a tourist destination, more of a layover city. We decided to stay two nights anyway, and made the most of it, but two nights was definitely enough. When we got off the boat from Bohol it was already late afternoon, so we made a bee-line to our hotel. Our taxi driver said his meter was broken, and tried to charge us 200 pesos, but when I threatened to report him he turned on the meter and it only cost 50 pesos to get there. Our hotel (Allson's Inn) was actually pretty nice but it is in a kind of ... read more
Our original plan was to go to Bohol for a few days, and hit up at least one more spot before catching our flight to Palawan on the 18th. But somehow we ended up staying for 8 days, and we ran out of time to go anywhere else. Some places are just hard to leave. After flying to Cebu city from Davao, we took a taxi to the ports and booked a ferry to Tagbilaran, the port city of Bohol. The ferry ride started out going pretty fast, but then the sound changed and we slowed down a LOT. It was soon announced that we were operating on only 1 engine. The ride was supposed to take 2 hours, but at this rate it probably would take 2 or 3 times as long. But luckily it ... read more
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Stephanie 
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