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Published: December 21st 2010
North Pandan is a small, privately owned resort island just off the west coast coast of Mindoro in the Philippines. It has a pale-sand beach that bends and curves as it follows two sides of the island in an unbroken sweep of silica. Studding the sand a few metres above the high water mark are hundreds of coconut palms, all leaning with their heads bowed in supplication towards the clear warm waters of the Mindoro Strait. Between the palms are strung several hammocks and just behind them are to be found the resorts accommodation, some rather fancy wood, rattan and bamboo bungalows with enormous raised wooden porches that contain comfy sofas, armchairs and occasional tables. The view from our bungalow, which I can see now as I raise my eyes from my netbook's screen, is a study in contrasts; the deep, infinite blue of the tropical sky, broken only by a few perfectly white clouds is segmented by the vertical brown trunks of the palms and framed by the yellow and green explosion of their fronds. The sea, which is the same colour as the sky, commands the middle distance, and without the green lozenge of South Pandan Island to denote
the horizon it would seem to bleed uninterupted with the sky. The foreground, especially under the influence of the morning sun, is a carpet of glowing orange from which grows Yukka and Hibiscus, whose magnificent, rude pink flowers nod lazily against the sky. This is where we are now; what follows is how we arrived here.
In my last blog I ended by saying how we had abandoned Ko Phayam in Thailand to head south to Satun in an attempt to escape the incessant rain. Unfortunately, the four days we spent there brought us more of the same. To fill our days we cast our plans of more island life into the stormy waters of the Andaman sea and instead hired a bike to allow us to explore Satun province's inland attractions. Upon consulting a colourful but eminently confusing tourist brochure of Satun province, it seemed that the main attractions here were Namtoks, or waterfalls. In my experience waterfalls are the fallback attraction of a district tourism office that has very little else to offer and are often a massive disappointment. The fact that there were eight waterfalls listed in this brochure further reduced my expectations of anything spectacular,
no matter how excitable the descriptions were. But given that there was so much rain around and that we had very little else to do, we decided to spend a couple of days hunting them out.
Our first day began with a ride to the Thale Ban National park which took us through some gorgeous limestone karst country, paddy fields and forest. The route, unusually, was very well sign posted and we made it there in a very pleasant hour. We paid our park entrance fee and went to enquire at the information desk about the trails we had read about, both in that venerable bible for unimaginative travellers the "Lonely Planet", and the aforementioned tourism brochure. Unfortunately, we were quickly informed that those trails we had read about no longer existed and the only possibility of entering the 195,200 sq.kms of forest was a 500 metre "nature walk" that briefly sneaked into the forest as though scared. This was not the first time Asia has disappointed me with its national parks, but this one was a breed apart. It had several accommodation options surrounding a beautiful lake, three modern offices, a tourist information desk, two restaurants, a museum,
conference hall and vast carpark. It seemed very well run, financed and staffed. I enquired as to just what the other people who visited the park actually did when they came here; I was told that they either came for conferences or to relax by the lake. The otherwise very helpful lady seemed not to understand my confusion at this answer and thought it most reasonable that there was absolutely no access to the forest that must surely be the principle reason in coming here.
We walked the nature walk and unsurprisingly failed to see any animals whatsoever, though we could here some gibbons in the distance, but that only served to add to our frustration. From the park we drove the five kilometres to Namtok Ya Roi, the first of our waterfalls and one that should have been accessible on foot from the park. Ya Roi waterfall was actually moderately impressive, falling as it was in four separate cascades through a fascinating tangle of thick jungle. The top two falls both had small pools that Anny took a little swim in. The following day we drove a beautiful ninety kilometres to visit Namtok Wang Sai Tong in the
far north of the province. Again the falls were sign posted in English for the whole way there, but strangely when we arrived, or deduced we must have arrived, the sign for the actual waterfall was nowhere to be seen. Heading north there was a large sign detailing that the falls were a further kilometre down the road but after travelling said kilometre we found nothing at all. Turning round and heading back south we quickly came upon a sign advising us that the falls were a kilometre further south, but this only took us back to the original sign.
We did eventually find Namtok Wang Sai Tong, the reason we had missed it was because, unlike the hundreds of large signs in English that had lined the route from Satun, the sign for the falls was covered by foliage and written in Thai. It seems that in Thailand they can lead a man to water but they have no intention of letting you drink. The falls, thankfully, were something of a revelation. They were neither that wide nor that tall and the amount of water that descended was hardly a deluge, but they were staggeringly beautiful. There must
have been over a hundred individual cataracts that fell from fairy pool to little basin over sculpted rock that looked as though it had been carved by gnomes. It was shrouded by several trees whose tangled roots added to the mystical ambience and which let through only a soft, dappled light. We came so far to see this waterfall because, according to our brochure, there was a Tham, or cave, nearby. A one hour ride bought us to a wooden shack surrounded by seemingly abandoned kayaks that appeared to be where we could enter the cave. Unfortunately it was locked up and there was nobody around. We were a little upset as the description in our tourist brochure had considerably raised our expectations. Apparently it was possible to kayak through the cave where, and I quote, "the white and clean sandy dank is shiny as if diamond all over the doth danks. The tourist can make a map without rain and horsefly slightly wind and no stuffiness." Impossible to miss, I'm sure you'd agree.
From out of nowhere a man arrived and we were paddled through the cave which was nice enough, but the two hour river trip in
the rain which followed was not as pleasant, especially as when at the end they had no arrangements in place to get us back to our bikes. It was a long and cold wait. On the ride back to Satun we were constantly dodging downpours, as well as erratically driving men on scooters who had no control over their bikes as they were all carrying at least one large bird cage, many two. The Thais really love caged birds, to the extent that they seem to regularly take them for drives in the country as a substitute for actual flight. At one point, to avoid a particularly heavy deluge, we left the road to join a large crowd of Thais under a canvas roof who appeared to be avoiding the rain themselves. We said our Sawadees and sat down amongst them. We were immediately given a large glass of whisky each and urged to drink it quickly. Another was procured and we sat down in our steaming clothes to watch the crowd of people who were excitedly milling around in the field opposite. Suddenly, half the men who were sat with us stood up and stepped outside into the rain,
they were all armed, either with machine guns or pistols, and they proceeded to let loose a volley of shots into the air which coincided with the detonation of some ridiculously huge bombs in the field. The noise was deafening, and had it not been for the smiles and laughter it would also have been pretty frightening. As nobody spoke any English we had no idea what the reason for all the excitement was.
Our final two days in Thailand were completely washed out by the rain so we positioned ourselves in the lovely bar owned by On and had her daughter Poo bring us a steady flow of beer. From Satun we caught a longtail to ferry us round the corner to Kuala Perlis in Malaysia, from where we caught a bus to Arau. From here we hoped to catch the sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur, unfortunately we could only get seating tickets and therefore got no sleep at all. In Kuala Lumpur we tried but failed to get a Philippine visa as we only had two days in which to procure it and we were told that it would take three to process. This would not stop
us entering the Philippines, it only meant that we would now have to extend our VOA somewhere on route. Our AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Clark airport was leaving at seven in the morning which, due to the vagaries of public transport, meant we had to catch the last shuttle bus the night before and spend the night at the airport, getting another sleepless night in the process.
We arrived at Clark airport, three hours north of Manila, at half eleven in the morning of the 15th of December. We had, for the first time this trip, made an advance reservation to stay on the above mentioned North Pandan Island Resort. The reservation was for the 16th. When I made the booking I assumed that this would give us plenty of time to each the island, upon researching the actual logistics of this the day before we flew, it transpired that the journey would be much harder than anticipated. We needed to navigate our way from the airport, to Manila and then south to Batangas, from where we could catch a ferry to the north of Minado. One problem being that the "Lonely Planet" stated that all boats
cease sailing at four. We'd never make it there in time, meaning we'd have to sail on the 16th and, due to the length of the road trip from Abro De Ilog to Sablayan, potentially miss the last boat from there to Pandan.
The only other option left was to try and fly. Cebu Pacific, I learnt, had a daily flight at 3.40pm from Manila to San Jose, the only airport on Minado and only three hours from Sablayan. Upon making it through immigration we booked ourselves onto a bus bound for Manila airport and hoped it would get us there in time. We made it to the airport at three O'clock, no thanks to the driver who made a huge detour into Manila to drop off a couple of his friends at their doors, and went to book our seats. Unfortunately that days flight had been cancelled. We learnt that there was a flight with Philippines Airlines at 5am the next day, but when we tried to get a seat we found out they only had one left, due to heavy demand from the cancelled Cebu Pacific flight. The only option remaining to us now was to catch
a bus to Batangas, so as to guarantee we would be on the first boat in the morning. To that end we hailed a cab to drive us two kilometres to the bus station. The crazy driver wanted to charge us 900 Pesos each, or almost £15, for this ten minute trip. The bastard scam artist even had a mocked up charge sheet to substantiate his ridiculous claims. We pissed and moaned from the back seat to no avail and in the end had to jump out when he stopped for gas, which he wanted us to pay for. An angry exchange ensued during which I thought he was going to hit me, but in the end I paid him 300 Pesos and walked the remaining distance.
We found our bus and reached Batangas pier at seven in the evening, very tired from having no sleep the night before at KL airport. After getting some money from the ATM I randomly enquired from a port official, more from desperation than expectation, if there were any night sailings to Abro De Ilog. Surprisingly, and counter to all the "Lonely Planets" hard researched information, we learnt that there was indeed a
night boat and that it was sailing in an hour. We even managed to buy a combined ticket that would secure us a bus from Abro De Ilog all the way to Sablayan. We arrived in Abro De Ilog in the small hours of the morning and boarded the bus to Sablayan, which took five incredibly jarring hours to reach its destination. At five in the morning, after our second night without a wink of sleep, we walked into an all night beer and soup joint and waited the two hours till dawn with a slightly unnerving bunch of young drunk men. The rest of the journey was a breeze, a simple twenty minute journey from the pretty port of Sablayan across a calm stretch of ocean in a bangka to be deposited on the white sand beach of Pandan. After almost sixty hours without sleep we were desperate to enter our bungalow, but as we had in the end arrived early, we had to wait until midday until the room was ready.
When we tell friends that we are off travelling again, they often have the impression that we spend our days rushing about, continually on the move.
The two and a half days spent travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Pandan island seem to support this theory, but more frequently these days we seem to travel to stand still. The six days we have spent on Pandan island have been an immaculate study of stillness. We have paid for this pleasure however, and not metaphorically. This expensive (for us) resort island has been our Christmas present to each other and, so as not to seem ungrateful, we have taken each and every pleasure that is on offer. We are staying full board and have turned into a regular pair of gluttons. The Lonely Planet says the food here is the equal of any five star resort and, for once, we couldn't agree more; not that we have the ability to compare. The evening fish buffet has been a constant sours of pleasure, as have the finest mangos I've ever tasted.
There is not much to do on Pandan save swinging in a hammock and snorkelling, but thankfully these are both activities at which we excel, and having the possibility of further activity nullified by the islands size, we have not felt in the least bit guilty about
our lassitude. The snorkelling here is absolutely fantastic. The house reef stretches all the way along the main beach as has a good amount of live coral and an excellent array of fish. It was here that we saw a banded sea snake. Amazing. Round the corner from the reef is a large patch of sea grass that regularly attracts turtles, though unfortunately we didn't manage to spot any; till the last day that is. To swim with these, much larger than expected green turtles, was the singular thrill of the past six days, a genuinely incredible moment. The carapace of one of the turtles was easily two foot across and it dwarfed Anny when she swam down to stroke it. On the same snorkelling trip we also saw a lion fish, a blue spotted stingray and some butterfly fish. Tomorrow we move to another island for Christmas, we are exceptionally excited as to what lazy pleasures it brings. Have a very merry Christmas, enjoy the snow!
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Globester
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good post!!! providing variety of information.....thnx