27.1. – 31.1.2023
The flight to Manila arrived after 1AM, so we had booked a hotel room near the airport for just one night. The area, where the hotel was located, wasn’t the nicest one, but it was a cheap and nice place, so it was good enough for us. Getting there was a bit difficult at first. The first taxi operator told us that we won’t fit into their cars, and the second one said that they do only long distance drives. Eventually we ended up with the first operator. We hopped in the taxi and the driver started driving. We asked what was the price for the ride, and the driver told us that it’s 300 pesos (5€). It wasn’t much, but we had been told that the ride should cost around 120 pesos, so we asked the driver to put the meter on. He didn’t want to do that at first, but we insisted on it long enough, so finally he did. When we got to the hotel the price was only 87 pesos, so we understood, why he didn’t want to use the meter. When Marko tried to pay to the driver, he said that we didn’t have to pay at all. We guess he was afraid that we’ll report him to the airport taxi dispatcher for trying to rip us off.
The next morning we went to the airport again to catch the flight to the Palawan island. When arriving to Puerto Princesa we experienced the hassle number two with the taxis. There were a lot of people waiting outside the airport, not in the line, no. It looked more like a flock of pigeons running around after bird seeds. The people working at the airport told people just to wait there. We weren’t exactly sure what we were waiting for, but Jaana stayed there and waited, while Marko walked to the metered taxi stop to wait for a taxi there. The taxi arrived, and we hopped in. All the other travellers we left behind to wait for something mysterious to happen.
We had booked our apartment through Airbnb. It was located a bit outside of the centre, which made the area very quiet. At the same time it also meant that there wasn’t much there, so we had to take a tricycle to the centre to get groceries and dinner. The ride was cheap, only 100 pesos (1,70€) for all of us
We walked for a while on their Bay Walk area and ended up in one of the restaurants. We tried a dish called “boodlefight” recommended by our friend. (Thanks Maria for the tip!) It was a massive portion of chicken, rice and different kinds of seafood. The kids also tried crab, clams and squid, but mainly ate the chicken and rice. After a visit to the supermarket at the mall, we drove back home on the tricycle. Surprisingly enough we all fit in even though we had two full bags of groceries with us. Only the eggs fell from the bench during the bumpy ride, so instead of 10 eggs, we had only 8 left when we got home.
The next morning we decided to walk to the beach nearby us. Well, relatively near, around two kilometres. While walking there we noticed that the area where we’re living in, is a bit run down and relatively poor. The beach also was a bit run down (even though it was called Pristine Beach) and at the end of a very muddy road, but the water was warm, so we spent a good while there swimming.
The next morning we were supposed to take the trip to the underground river, but in the morning we were informed that the trip was cancelled due to the wind conditions. We’ll try again the next morning. Now that we didn’t have anything to do for the day, we just stayed in and relaxed. The most exciting part of the day was when we spotted a gigantic spider outside of our kitchen window. We googled this fellow and it’s called St Andrew’s cross spider. It has venom, but it’s not dangerous to humans. We decided to keep our window closed though, because we don’t want this creature creeping into our beds at night, dangerous or not.
In the evening, it was time for another motorcycle taxi ride to get dinner, as there aren’t any restaurants nearby where Western tourists would dare to eat. We ended up at some kind of Pizza Hut knockoff next to a supermarket, where we got a huge meal for 1,600 pesos (about €27) that included garlic bread, fried chicken, some kind of fried potato cakes, two large pizzas, a large serving of minced meat pasta and a large jug of iced tea to drink. We certainly weren’t left hungry! We were able to take the rest of the food with us, so now we have food for the next day too!
The boat trip was cancelled the next day too due to the weather conditions. We were told that the best months to visit the place are March and April. Even though we now missed this sight that is apparently on UNESCO’s world heritage list, we won’t be returning here later.
We didn’t want to book anything else for today, so again we mainly just stayed home. To get lunch we had to take a tricycle to the centre. We had lunch at the local shopping mall and after that we walked back to the Bay Walk area to see it in the daylight. That didn’t significantly improve the looks of the place, but we bumped into a group of local school kids. First they surrounded Ronja and Risto and started shooting questions at them. For a while our kids answered them, but then they ran away to us saying “We have to go now.” The locals didn’t give up. They ran after the kids to us and started talking again. They told Ronja is very beautiful and Risto is handsome. They also were surprised at how tall they are. Also the fact that we don’t use school uniforms in Finland was a surprise to them. After a while we said goodbye to the kids and returned back home. The next day we’re supposed to take a minibus to the next destination El Nido. Let’s see, how that goes. Maybe that trip in cancelled too…
