A Tough Start to El Nido

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While the surrounding limestone karst cliffs are undeniably stunning, we were not overly impressed with El Nido town and beach. Scott was shocked and saddened by the changes he'd seen over the last eight years. The sleepy quiet town he'd known had become a loud and noisy place, a smaller version of Hat Rin in Thailand. Whereas you'd walk down the street and see a foreigner or two, now you are brushing past dozens at a time. Instead of having to actively seek out a tricycle to get to another beach, now you spend your whole time trying not to get run over by one, especially problematic when traveling with young children. Whereas island boat trips had once been about three tourists on a boat, there were now boats all over the place all packed with at least twenty tourists each. The once acceptable town beach is now dirty and full of hawkers selling fake pearls and dogs fighting one another and leaving their "presents" on the beach. That's even if you can get to the beach. The buildings are so close together that it's hard to even find a pathway to the beach. And prices had of course gone up to meet demand. Boat trips had gone from $10 eight years ago to $25 now. Scott's old room on the beachfront for $15 was now $50! If this is progress, you can keep it!



So after all of these disparaging remarks, I'll now tell you about Corong Corong. This is a beach just a 10 minute and 150 peso tricycle ride away from the town but it's a world away. On our first full day, after realizing that we didn't want to spend a month in town (we were booked in for a week), we went to check out Corong Corong as we'd had it highly recommended by the Chileans we'd met on Ko Lanta. As soon as we were dropped off at Green View Resort we felt a wave of serenity come over us. No honking, revving tricycles was a big part of it. We could finally let go of the children's hands and let them run free. They instantly found a small playhouse hut, so Kyla was already won over! The resort itself looked lovely with flowers and creeping plants everywhere. We actually ended up booking a week of accommodation in the neighboring resort for two reasons - a) we couldn't get a straight answer as to how long Green View was available as the owner was napping, and b) the next door place cut us a better deal if we stayed a week or more.



The next few days were a little tough still due to sickness and errands. Tom wasn't feeling well so spent big chunks of time in his darkened room. We, meanwhile, had a lot of errands to do, and errands are much harder here than in Thailand. We needed to do laundry and incredibly found it hard to find anywhere that could do it. So many places were closed! When we did find somewhere, it was going to take two days to come back instead of the same day as in Thailand, and it cost twice as much! Hard not to compare. The real bummer was that when we picked it up, they'd bleached many of our clothes, leaving them totally washed out of color, and they all had staples and tags in them, which took forever to get out if you wanted to avoid getting holes in your clothes. So annoying!



Another big errand was dealing with Bank of America yet again as they'd blocked my ATM card again. We easily got a SIM card for our phone but soon realized that it cost an outrageous 40c/minute to call the US. That's bad news when Bank of America keeps you on hold in their automated system for about 45 minutes each time! We supposedly have it unblocked now but I've yet to test this theory as the ATM machine in town has been out of order for days!



Once the bank was finally sorted out we had some other tasks to complete. One was to send money to some accommodation we were trying to book on tiny Cabilao island by PayPal. The problem was that I couldn't remember my PayPal password so my account got locked, and with Internet being seriously shoddy here, it was hard to unlock. Luckily we had a friend back home pay it from his account for us in the end. Now that accommodation was booked on Cabilao, we had to buy a flight there. Not easy to do with pathetic internet, but we managed it finally. Phew! Time to start enjoying ourselves!



As Tom was still under the weather, we put off going on a boat trip and instead took a tricycle to check out Las Cabanas beach. I'm happy to say that we finally found our paradise! The beach wasn't deserted by any means, but it was clean and the water was good for swimming in, and the scenery was amazing. Importantly for Jake and Kyla, the sand was the perfect consistency for sand castle building. Finding a bucket and spade to buy was another challenge! We spent a fun day there and ate lunch on swings at the Maremarmar Beach Bar. Well, I didn't actually eat anything as I wasn't feeling too well myself by this point. Jake had a slight fever too but was being a trooper.



That night, everything came out of Jake (bottom end) and he was totally lethargic in the morning instead of his usual bouncy self. We spent some time in the air-conditioned room watching Scooby Doo in Tagalog (the Philippino language) before venturing out to Las Cabanas beach again. Tom stayed home again as he was feeling dizzy.



It's now Friday night. We've been here since Monday, which is as long as most people stay and we STILL haven't done any of the famous boat trips! Hopefully in the next few days we will all be back to normal and ready for an adventure at sea.





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Comments

[sheila woolley]

development
We said El Nido was no longer the idyllic place Scott had described sadly. It seems like you are enjoying it now though.