I also had the first of a series of odd bathroom experiences, involving roosters, being scolded for not knowing how to flush the toilet, and wandering barefoot through what appeared to be a partly-completed home. I was pretty glad that Jess and I had done that girly thing and gone to the bathroom as a pair.
The day after we finished building (Saturday), we took a somewhat less successful trip to one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, the Underground River in Sabang. Unfortunately, you will have to take someone else’s word that it is a wonder of the world: the torrential rains on Thursday and Friday had created currents so strong that it wasn’t safe to go into the caves. We hung out on the beach for a while, ate the last of the very large lunches and then parted ways. One of our team members had already left for Canada; six of the remaining headed north to El Nido, famed for its beaches, snorkeling, and scuba diving. The four of us left had the afternoon and evening to entertain ourselves before catching morning flights.
For the afternoon, we were taken to the Crocodile Farm (more officially known as the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Centre) as a consolation prize. Given that the Palawan government can’t afford to house its people (hence our presence), it shouldn’t have really surprised us that its zoo was decrepit and poorly cared for. It was interesting to see some of the animals endemic to Palawan that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see, but it was rather depressing to see them under such circumstances.
To be fair, the Centre’s policies (as outlined on various signs and in various brochures) were quite fair and humane. They are doing the best they can; sadly, the area is just too poor for their best to be very good.
The next day, Russell left on an early morning flight back to Japan. Taylor and Kaleb and I caught a somewhat later flight to Bohol, a small island tucked in the middle of the Philippines. It is famous for basically two things:
1. very odd geological formations, known as the Chocolate Hills.
2. the world’s smallest primates, known as Philippine Tarsiers.
There are also a bunch of very old churches and bridges, a butterfly sanctuary, various hiking/biking/canoeing adventures, and a river cutting through the middle of the island that features cruises and floating restaurants. Bohol is doing its best to become one of the tourist destinations of the Philippines. Sadly, because we only stayed for two full days, we had to confine ourselves mostly to the Hills and the Tarsiers.
We stayed for the first two nights at a guesthouse called Nuts Huts, which is run by a Belgian couple who have lived in the Philippines for ten years and who are the hippie-est hippies I have ever met. They provided extremely useful travel advice, albeit with a sometimes annoying emphasis on being “real,” and extremely good food. They also started drinking rum at about ten o’clock every morning, which explains why the wife was drunk when I tried to call one evening to reserve rooms.
The rooms were in a Nipa hut right by the edge of the river.
To reach the huts, you have to climb down a hundred stairs from the open-air lobby/lounge/restaurant (and also walk down a path that could become dangerous if the goats had been let out of their pen to graze; ever tried to get past a goat that has decided you shouldn’t have breakfast?). To reach the lobby from the nearest city, you have to negotiate with a taxi/tricycle/motorbike driver, who all know Nuts Huts and don’t particularly want to take you there because they have to go down an access road extremely inhospitable to their automobiles and extremely inefficient given the “time is money” principle of driving people around for a living. Then, once your automobile driver of choice has decided he can’t take you any further, you walk down however much of the access road is left before finding the first set of 150 stairs to the lobby area.
(One night, we walked the entire length of the access road, armed with two flashlights. It’s no wonder the locals think that foreign tourists are weird.)
Speaking of locals, perhaps my favorite adventure on the island was when the three of us decided to take the public bus to the Chocolate Hills. I don’t speak Tagalog, but it didn’t take much to understand what was going on when everyone craned around their neighbours to peer at me and then whisper to said neighbours about “la blanca.” I then got into relatively long chats with two of the middle-aged men standing near me, one of them because he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I want to talk with you.”
What did they want to talk about? Well, let’s see... was I married to Taylor or to Kaleb? To neither? Well, then, which one was my boyfriend?... My boyfriend didn’t mind that I was travelling with two guys?... Why didn’t I have a boyfriend?... How old was I?... 23?! At 23, most Filipina women are married with five kids! (That last bit is actually a direct quote.)
Once we managed to get off the subject of my disappointing marital status, one of them told me that people in Bohol are so proud when foreigners come to their island. They don’t consider it worthy of visiting because everyone is so poor. Somehow, telling him how beautiful I thought it was didn’t seem to ease the guilt of such unearned gratitude. (It was at about that point that I stopped worrying about being pickpocketed.)
In the morning of the first full day, before the Chocolate Hills (I know, I know, my chronology is getting all messed up), Taylor and I joined a girl from Malaysia and a guy from the UK on a hike up this cliff:
and into these caves:
Nothing like climbing up a cliff in 100-degree heat and then getting to escape into cool, quiet, bat-filled (as in, when they got startled by our flashlights and flew, there were so many wings going that it sounded like the wind was blowing) set of caves. They did quite nicely as Consolation Caves in place of our failed trip to the Underground River.
On the second full day, we left Nuts Huts in the morning via the river to the nearest town. From there, we negotiated with a jeepney driver to take us to the Tarsier Sanctuary, which may or may not be completely off course for all public transportation (a man trying to negotiate a private hire is certainly not above lying about such things), and then to the main city of the island. This is our jeepney:
I am pretty glad to say that I have now ridden in a vehicle reading “Sex, Drugs, and Alcohol.” Especially one that also had a plastic Jesus on the dashboard and a glow-in-the-dark rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.
The Tarsiers were... freakin’ adorable. There are no other words. I cannot properly describe just how small they are; you just can’t believe how small they are until you’ve seen them, and even so I find I’m already forgetting. They are nocturnal, and smart enough to sleep at the sanctuary, where food appears at relatively regular intervals. So in the morning before opening, the guides go around the trails and find the sleeping Tarsiers. Then they take the visitors to see them. It takes maybe 20 minutes. It was totally worth the entire side trip to a different island.
We spent that afternoon at Alona Beach, the resort destination of Bohol. We had briefly considered going Boracay, the resort destination of the Philippines, but gave up due to time constraints. Alona Beach is apparently like a mini-Boracay... which makes me glad we didn’t try too hard to get to Boracay. I mean, it was nice enough. There was white sand, and lots of hotels, and even more restaurants, and plenty of boats that would take you scuba diving. And all the people selling sunglasses, shell necklaces, and massages that you could ever need. But it was just kind of... boring. I had more fun on the public bus.
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