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Published: September 23rd 2008
As travellers, it always seems like a good idea to go back to places where you had a good experience. For the second time in 6 months we have been very disappointed by places we have revisited.
We should have known things would not go smoothly when stupid Cebu Pacific wouldn’t allow us to book flights online, it’s website has an inability to accept foreign bank issued credit cards. When we finally managed to book our flights to Cebu, a week before leaving we had the flight times first changed (both going and returning) then the return flight was cancelled and then the return flight was re-instated only 3 days later than originally scheduled!
So arriving into Cebu went a little more smoothly and surprisingly the hotel we had booked in Cebu city had kept our room (this was a first!) and we had a nice early night in preparation for our 4am start. These early starts are something we still can’t get used to, even after 2 years of travelling! One beef flavour cup noodle (Neil) and one boiled egg (Donna) later we were on our way on the 6am bus to Maya so we could catch a boat
to Malapascua island at the far northern tip of Cebu.
The first change on Malapascua to note is that boats arriving and departing the island have been stopped docking on Bounty beach (the main beach for accommodation on the island) which is a very good thing as the beach was beginning to get a little overcrowded with boats. Although on our approach to Logon beach we had suspicions that the boat docking had been moved so locals could make a little bit of money ‘escorting’ the tourists to look at accommodation! Suspicions confirmed and we moved swiftly away from the beach to find a room to base ourselves for the next 8 nights.
We thought this would be an easy task...an hour later we were still looking! Bearing in mind we were visiting in typhoon season (that is, LOW season!) we expected to be paying around 500-600 pesos (£6-7) a night, after all last year at the same time we had paid 600 pesos for a room with 24 hour electricity. It was not to be, some places (notably Dano where we had stayed last year!) were asking 800 pesos minimum (£9.50!) for a room with cold shower,
fan and only 5 hours of electricity per day...that is a ridiculous sum of money for a room in Asia. We eventually found a place which had 24 hour electricity, cold shower and fan for 800 pesos, although we really begrudged paying £9.50 or $16.50 for such a basic room. One day we were even without water for 12 hours, when you are paying this much you expect to have water at least!
We got into a nice routine going to the beach and wallowing in the nice warm sea and tried to put out of our minds how expensive this place was. For once we had managed to plan a trip to the beach when a typhoon didn’t hit which meant we had lovely weather.
The food situation, however, was not as pleasant! Our biggest thing we don’t like about travelling is having to struggle with food. On Malapascua, there is only really one place to eat (La Isla Bonita) if you want semi-good quality food, but even this place struggled to supply good value portions for the £2.65 plus meals...they charged 20 pesos for a portion of rice which was literally 2 spoonfuls (considering a kilo
of rice in the Philippines has been fixed at 35 pesos, this place was making a lot of money!). We went there for breakfast and found that they never had croissants (as advertised on the set breakfast menu) and instead gave people 3 slices of bread instead of 2 slices...wow, generous! Add to this the fact that the cook here couldn’t boil an egg. Yes, honestly, Donna ordered soft boiled eggs at this restaurant for breakfast and 5 out of 7 times they came uncooked - that is the white of the egg was still clear. One day we had to send eggs back 3 times because they weren’t cooked...maybe we should buy them a ‘Delia’s How to Cook’ DVD for them to watch?!
As we said in our blog last year, Malapascua is famous for thresher shark sightings, every diver and dive shop owner we have overheard has said that there haven’t been any proper sightings of these sharks for a couple of years...the most people have seen is at quite a far distance. We think this island is being kept alive by this myth of thresher sharks, we have heard other divers elsewhere in Asia saying that
the sharks have moved on from Malapascua. The pull of these sharks to us was obvious as the island was full of divers, we were the only ones who weren’t diving and as a consequence no-one really talked to us.
Improvements to note about Malapascua is that the local government has got it’s way and has cleared the beach of the accommodation which they deemed to be too close to the sea. The main stretch of the beach is much improved, but the part of the beach near Dano cottages (last year this was the best part of the beach) is littered with boats and we even saw locals just squatting and using the beach as a toilet and then kicking sand over their...erm...‘deposits’. Nice!
More paths seem to have been closed off on the island, so it is more difficult to walk around the island, but not to worry there is always a local there on a motorbike offering to take you where you want to go for a price! The number of motorbikes seems to have doubled, not that motorbikes are really needed when you can walk around the island in an hour!
Generally we
really enjoyed our time on Malapascua as it was a nice lazy time on the beach, but this island has changed so much in just one year. The island government is also considering charging a 250 peso (£3) entrance fee to all tourists to get onto the island, if this happens we think the island will continue to change rapidly. We just had to put it out of our mind that we were spending £20 a night on a room and 2 meals each...we didn’t even drink alcohol for that! To us, for Asia this is expensive, a lot more expensive than we expected.
Oh well, we just put it down to experience that over 2 years when we revisit places they won’t be the same!
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two4deroad
Vibert & Shanna & Ty & Nathan
Sounds familiar..
So sorry this trip wasn't as exciting as expected. Just make sure you make up for it at your next destination! Have fun and travel safe.....