Dougie and I returned to Manila on February 24, and after 9 days on Mindoro we were kind of happy to do so. Even though I finished a couple of books on Middle-Eastern history and various other subjects, there is a limit to how many days I can survive without checking my email. One of the reasons why I had to return to Manila so many times is that I did not apply for an extended visa before entering the Philippines, and extending my visa while in the damn country proved to be both expensive and time consuming. I will describe this in greater detail once I get time to write down my general thoughts on the Philippines, but one can of course wonder why the Philippines has any visa requirements at all. It is after all far from being the land of unlimited opportunities, to put it lightly.
Dougie and I spent our two last days together watching movies as "Bats", "The Insiders" and "Sleepy Hollow". We stayed in room 233 at Malate Pension, and enjoyed their horrible service. Before going to Mindoro I booked two plane tickets to Palawan, this through the very nice people at STA Travel. Their office is located just a couple of blocks from Malate Pension, and offer very cheap student fares. I checked about 10 different travel agents in Manila, but STA beat every single one. Don't remember how much the ticket cost, but even though it is more expensive that taking a boat, the latter takes 24 hours to El Nido. When it comes to safety I guess both ways of travelling can be considered unsafe. Boats sink all the time in the Philippines, and a plane crashed killing a couple of hundred passengers in May this year. The plane reportedly hit a coconut tree when attempting to land, and thus failed to perform a proper landing. Another plane was hijacked the same month by a crazy dude armed with a knife. First he robbed every passenger onboard, this before he escaped by jumping off the plane in a home-made parachute. Everything went well until the parachute loosened, thus making the landing a bit harder than what the hijacker had planned for. Search crews reportedly discovered that his body parts ultimately ended up on different islands. Don't try it at home.
My girlfriend, Miho, arrived the same day as Dougie returned to Tokyo. We headed for Puerto Princessa the following day, a busy town one should attempt to leave as early as possible. The only thing I missed out on was eating at Phoo, a Vietnamese restaurant just outside of town that is supposed to be excellent. Almost everyone we met in El Nido later on brought it up, so eating lunch before leaving Puerto Princessa is probably a good idea.
We bargained to get the bus fare to Sabang down a little bit, but when arriving the bastards charged us for the luggage too, so we were ultimately outsmarted by some jungle guys. Sitting on top of the jeepney is the thing to do, this as the view along the road at times is beautiful. When arriving in Sabang we had some difficulties finding available accommodation, but Mary's Beach Cottages on the far end of the beach had a nice cottages available at 400p.
Sabang is not good for
snorkeling, but the waves are fairly big and pleasant for primitive body surfing. Additionally is Sabang much more laid-back than El Nido, this as the latter is more developed. The thing to see while in Sabang is obviously the underground river that flows through limestone for about eight km. It is full of bats that inhabit the cave during the day, so going there certainly is a must. We decided to take the monkey trail from Sabang, which is supposed to take two hours. Yet, since my girlfriend is from Tokyo and not used to animals that don't live in zoos (which after all is their natural habitat), we probably did the walk in less than an hour as Miho decided to run most of the way. I will suggest other city girls to charter a boat when going to the cave, this as one needs to spend more time on the trail if one wishes to see the incredible wildlife.
When reaching the cave I felt pretty tired, this as we had run continuously for about an hour. Yet there were wild monkeys and even an iguana flirting with tourists at the cave entrance area, so at least I got to see some animals living in what seems to be a jungle. It did not beat seeing
orangutans on Borneo last year though! One obviously enters the cave by boat, and everything is well organised and a bit Disneyland-like. In our group we had a bunch of old women from Batangas, so I did not exactly feel like I was taking part in some adventure movie.
You get to stay inside the cave for about an hour, but that does of course not provide time enough to go through the entire thing. There are lot of interesting rock formations inside though, not to mention the bats, so going to Sabang is still highly recommended. It is important to buy a permit before entering the UNESCO protected area though, this as one is not able to get one at the park entrance. Permits are sold in Puerto Princessa, but are also very easy to get in Sabang.