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Published: December 19th 2008
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We arrived at 4 a.m. at Manila airport, where we had to wait four and a half hours to catch our next flight to Puerto Princesa, capital of Palawan Island. The 'arrival hall' was one of the smallest I've ever seen, with just one luggage belt it certainly was getting crowded, having just 2 airplanes landed of which one being an Philippines Airlines Boeing 737.....
When we finally had our bags we took our first tricycle to our guesthouse. It was a very nice place, with a massive garden / courtyard and everything done in wood. After a much needed shower and some food, we decided it was time for our first beach; There wasn't a whole lot of choice apart from Honda Bay, for which it was a little too late in the day to make arrangements for, so we decided instead on White Beach, not far from town actually. It wasn't speactacular or anything, but it was nice enough. More like a local beach with some kids playing about and parents hiding from the mid-day sun.
I was able to buy my very first San Miguel here though, and I have to say, a very nice beer indeed! (Any
change from Qingdao would've been nice.)
At around 5-ish we decided on some beauty sleep, and woke up again at 9. Great sleep though, and that first visit to the beach had already given us a nice bit of colour on the cheeks.
After rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, we had a fantastic 4 course dinner in a place called Japanese Flower Garden.
(If I remember well)
Again, the setting was just stunning, like a tropical jungle garden, complete with ponds and goldfish. Seated in Buddha position on cushions on the ground, we were served a Thai ginger soup, a tropical salad, sissling pork, seafood and some kind of caramel ice-cream cake for desert. Fabulous!
A drink would go well after that, so walking around we found a bar with some very very nice ladies, seemingly out of their minds, so happy they were that we choose their little establishment to clench our thirst.
So after ordering 2 beers, and, so we were told, a 20 Pesos Coke for the ladies, it started daunting on us that these ladies actually weren't as sincere as we initially thought...
So when the bill came and we were told
to pay a total of 400 or so Pesos, we politely thanked the 'ladies' for their entertainment, paid the 100 Pesos for our beers, and took off. (Lesson learned, ladies and gentlemen?)
That night it started pissing with rain, a torrential downpour with no breaks in between. After having slept in until 10-ish, we headed out for breakfast during a period which could be described as a rainstorm category 3 kinda condition, instead of the category 5 the previous night and following morning...
Long enough to feed our bellies, and check the internet for a weather forecast. This promised us another 5 days of more of the same, and seeing that our little outing to the Philippines was only going to take 2 weeks, and therefore all we wanted was SUN, we booked ourselves for the next day on another (very cheap) flight to Cebu.
The rest of the afternoon, which was too short to do a lot of sightseeing, we spend riding a tricycle to the local butterfly garden. Not very big, but nice enough, it shows you a short and extremely boring video of the life-cycle of a butterfly, which we skipt by going for a
Our first accomodation
You can't see it, but the garden is an absolute pool of rainwater piss. The garden itself has a variety of butterflies, all very horny and chasing each other to do some business. (At least, that's what it looked like to me.) It gave us an idea or two as well, so we didn't spend an awful lot of time.
I definitely plan to come back to Palawan, and when we booked I really felt a little dissapointed of leaving the island behind so quickly, but reconciled myself with the thought of island-hopping in the Visayas, of course bathing in gorgeous sunshine....
Cebu, here we come!
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