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Published: March 11th 2007
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Another early morning flight from Manila (how we love getting up at 4 in the am!) this time from the new airport that mainly lies empty due to some dispute over payment between the government and the building contractors. Only Air Philippines can fly from here.
The view as we flew over Honda Bay was stunning, small islands surrounded by white sandy beaches sitting in turquoise water. Our plane seemed to fly up the main street of Puerto Princesa meaning we got to see most of what was there before we even landed (at the end of the street - we've never seen a more central airport!).
Not much to report from PP, it's a town like any other. The kids were delighted to see a camera and flocked in front of anything we tried to take photos of, their faces beaming with huge Philipina smiles. We found a great bar and restaurant eventually after a few close shaves including Tom's neon pizza. He couldn't even try it, it looked so rank. Mark opted for the Smoker's delight cocktail (see photo) which was more of an evening's activity than a quick drink! It was lit, transferred to another glass,
extinguished, drunk then the fumes had to be sooked through a straw from the overturned glass. Bit more to it than a flaming sambucca!
We tried to go to see Iwahig Penal Farm one day. Our enthusiastic tricycle driver kindly suggested a few other places we might like to see and after changing a tyre and refuelling we were off. First stop was the Butterfly Garden where we saw lots of butterflies (no, really). Then we were off th the Crocodile Farm where we were greeted by the skeleton of a 9m croc! He was huge and his head took up a good proportion of those 9m! They had over 1200 baby crocs chilling out together in big basins and the outside they had adolescent crocs in bigger cages. There are 2 types of crocs here, the freshwater are an endangered species and only grow up to 3m, and the salt-water big boys. It was less than reassuring to see that they lived in all the places we were planning to visit while in Palawan! There were some other rescued animals in the grounds including the 'gallus gallus' a wild hen that was surely imported from the Vale.
By this time on the trip we were looking forward to getting to the prison but were taken to a ranch to see the view. When we asked about the prison he said it'd be another 2 hours and his front tyre was dodgy so we headed back to Puerto.
Next day we tried again and this time we made it with our driver who laughed at everything! The prison has a great work programme for inmates although this has been cut back in recent years as the Government keep selling off prison land to real estate developers. The whole fisheries dept has gone and there's now a luxury beach-front resort in it's place.
Prisoners wear different colours of t-shirts to show their category, orange for maximum security, blue for medium, and khaki for minimum. Mark bought an orange T-shirt and refused to haggle over the clearly inflated price because "who wants to argue with murderers?" We were met and shown round the prison by Paul who was minimum security and up for release fairly soon. Minimum security prisoners are free to go wherever they like within the estate as long as they are in their rooms for
check in twice a day. They can work with the visitors. Most of the buildings are over 100 years old and in some of them it shows. The prisoners have basketball courts and KTV (video karaoke - it's everywhere here) but they are not allowed to use the many tennis courts or badminton courts, they're only for guards!.
After seeing round the main campus, Paul persuaded us to go and see 'a beautiful place, with waterfalls and a view over the whole of Puerto Princesa'. It was only as we were hurtling up a dirt track through the woods that we started to feel a little vulnerable! Of course there was no need and we arrived at a nice picnic area and got a guided tour from another murderer.
Joking aside, it was interesting to visit a penal institution that takes rehabilitation seriously. Each of the prisoners we met told us about their crimes straight away and they were all very optimistic about their future. The work programme and the responsibility that minimum security prisoners are given seems to be preparing them well for their release. There was no blame culture or chips on shoulders even though they
had served long sentences. We can only hope that on release they are treated as rehabilitated offenders and given the opportunity to build new lives away from crime.
After this we headed to the hot springs to soak in the healing waters (it's hard work travelling, you know). We had a pool to ourselves with a waterfall coming straight from the spring. It was roasting!
We spent a few frantic days trying to organise the rest of our time in Palawan. We created so many plans and plan Bs before we finally got organised. Travelling here can be a tad frustrating, you'd think we'd have learned that already!
See our map http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/create.html?blog_id=120651
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