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Published: January 2nd 2012
We woke up early in the morning, ate breakfast at our hostel (more eggs, bread, and fruit. Perfect!) and headed out to the Underground River, recently named one of the 7 Natural wonders of the World (by popular vote). Since we had some extra time, and our necessary permit for the Underground River didn’t allow us to get there until 12:30, we stopped first at Ubong Caves (Ubong means Echo in Tagalog) where we did some spelunking. There were 3 tricky parts, which our guides called “The Sexy Body Tests”. Every time you got through one, the older guide would yell out “Congratulations! You are sexy!” It was hilarious. One text you had to use ropes to pull yourself up a steep cliff and through a gap in the rocks. The second test you had to crawl through a small circular hole in a rock. The third test involved fitting through a thin vertical space between 2 rocks. The first test was definitely the hardest. Especially with my ankle.
When you got to the top of the caves, you got to zip-line down. Awesome! It’s like they knew me or something. The only one who was really scared was
Lindsey and she had been pretty gung-ho about doing it when we started at the bottom. She was playing it pretty cool until they hooked her harness to the ropes. And then she absolutely freaked out, but we just cheered for her. And she was glad she did it in the end.
After zip-lining, they took us to the beach in Sabang where we ate lunch in a mass tourist-feeding area. The Puerto Princesa area is much more tourist-y than the northern parts of Palawan were. Despite this, the food was amazing. I ate grilled tuna and they always have cucumber salads and these banana/orange hybrids. There was a group of kids, maybe 9 or 10-year-olds who were playing Christmas music. The boys were on guitar and percussion and the row of girls was playing what looked like mandolins, but we weren’t sure what they were. It was a bit late for Christmas music, but they were REALLY good. So nobody minded.
While we were eating, we were offered the ability to buy these worms. They looked like the grubs from the Lion King, but slimier. Obviously the boys ate them. And by “the boys ate them”,
I mean Joel and David each ate one and Dave practically licked the bowl clean. I thought I was going to be sick watching them.
After lunch, we finally headed to the wharf, where we took boats to the island where you get new boats, which take you down the underground river. Sam and I took turns being in charge of the flashlight, which is harder than it sounds. The boat driver gives you directions, but you can’t really hear him from the front of the boat. So everyone else has to tell you where to point the flashlight. And it can be difficult to find exactly which rock he wants you to shine the light on. This could be frustrating, but Sam found it MUCH more frustrating than I did.
We took our boat back to Sabang and our van back to Puerto Princesa and they dropped up off in a souvenir market for a while. We bought a lot of snacks. We asked the owner of the hostel where to eat dinner and she immediately recommended Kinabuchs. To get to the restaurant, we got to take our first trikes (motorized tricycles with a cab on the
side for passengers). They are ridiculously cheap and go really slow with 3 passengers, but they were so useful to us when we were in Puerto Princesa. We were finally able to eat crab (apparently out-of-season so no other restaurant had it) and we pretty much ordered everything on their menu between us. And then the bill came to about $20 a person. It was sort of inappropriately cheap. After dinner we checked out a street market and went to a bar with live music. Some of their songs were in English and some of them were in Tagalog. When you sent in requests, you could give money too and the amount of money you gave determined how much of the song they played. I guess some of the foreigners there didn’t understand the process before they started requesting songs because the band had to stop and explain. If you only give 20 pesos, you only get the intro to the song. 50 pesos (about $1) gets you half of the song. And 100 pesos gets you the whole song. Again we had to go to sleep early because our next tour was leaving at 7:00 am the next day.
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ian martin
non-member comment
Worms
The worms are called Tamiloks, they live in mangrove trees in Palawan. I always think they resemble umbilical chords (sorry, i hope you are not eating when you read this). I am enjoying reading about your trip to Palawan, why ? I live in the south, but not much for tourists in south, YOU are the main attraction if you are a female (or male) tourist in the south of Palawan ! They call out "Hello Joe" to me, i don't know what the kids would shout at a female westerner, i will read your next pages now