8- Philippines: Paradise Lost

How do you cover a country that consists of 7,102 islands in just seven days? Well, you don’t really. Due to our limited time, we picked a few spots and just did our best to do as much as we could. It was a short but sweet visit, beautiful place, lovely people. Pity we got to see so little of it but I’d reckon you could spend a couple of months here and still feel the same way.

So after such an introduction, we must have had quite the first impression of the place. Well, we definitely did but not in a good way!

For anyone travelling to Philippines be pre-warned, Manila airport is an absolute nightmare. People everywhere, no public transport, various coloured taxis around the place with no real sign of what’s what or how to get from the airport to the city. We had been told our hotel was a 15 minute drive away, on enquiring what the best approach was we were advised to join the queue for the metered taxis, these would get us to our destination for a bargain price of 300 pesos ($8). We were also advised to avoid the non-metered taxis as these would overcharge you and were unregulated- well, isn’t that great advice we thought, easy as. So, on we go to join the queue waiting for metered cabs. It was a long queue but what harm. The locals were happy queuing and so were we. Our happy feelings lasted maybe an hour when as far as we could tell our only progress up the still very long queue was due to people leaving the queue (mostly Westerners!) rather then any cabs actually turning up! As we got more and more antsy, one of us left the queue to try to decipher what the heck was going on. This involved queuing up to get back into the airport so we could ask someone else- slow progress all round!

The clock had ticked onto two hours of queuing and in our non-local eyes it appeared that the queue had another three hours to go, we took the chance and said we’d go with the un-metered cabs, life’s too short and so was our time in Manila. As soon as this decision was made we had a cab in two minutes at the price of 1,500 pesos ($40) or five times what the price should have been. To be fair to the cab drivers, I’d do the same, why would I run a metered cab when I can sit around for hours at the airport and then fleece the tourists who don’t like waiting around indefinitely! Of course the staff at the airport took their cut of the plunder as well. So all of the Filippinos involved were happy while all the tourists were exasperated and badly needed a drink! Welcome to Manila!

Philippines tip #1- arrange transport from the airport in advance!

The following morning, our return journey to the airport arranged by our hotel cost us 190 pesos ($5)- so that’s how the system is supposed to work. All adds to the charm of the place, sure what else would we have to talk about!?!

All in all, we had about twelve hours to see Manila- not much time when you’re including sleep. Hard to get a feel for the place. The one thing we wanted to tick off was to see some jeepneys. These are American army transport vehicles left in Philippines after World War II and have been used ever since as public transport vehicles. What makes them so famous is that the locals have painted them with all sorts of colours and designs. All very cool and funky looking although probably leave a lot to be desired in the comfort and environmentally friendly stakes, but they make up for it in personality and as we all know personality goes a long way!

After our very brief sojourn to Manila, it was island time. After all, the Philippines is famous for it’s islands and beaches, not for its cities. First stop was Carabao island which is an hour away from the much more famous Boracay island (our next stop). While Borocay is very tourist centric, on Carabao the locals don’t pay a blind bit of a notice to you- it’s great. Nobody repeatedly asking you to buy a hat, sunglasses or would you like a massaaaaaaaage! Here we had a beach to ourselves and had some lovely relaxation time- life has been very stressful as of late- we deserved it! Lovely few days in our island seclusion, eat, drink, swim, read, sunbathe, repeat.

On getting on and off the island, our guesthouse had it’s own boat from which they transport you across to Boracay. Best to predict these things ahead of time as a dress code of jeans, shoes and socks aren’t very conducive to jumping out of a boat into thigh high water at disembarkation time. Lucky for me there was “good drying weather” on the island!

Philippines tip #2- Best to wear shorts and flip flops when travelling between islands, just in case!

So after alone time on Carabao, we joined the masses and made for Boracay island- famous for white sand, beautiful blue water all surrounded by palm trees. Sometimes, these really popular places are over-run with tourists and over developed to the detriment of what made them famous in the first place. Borocay somehow manages to not cross that line. There are crowds but a quiet spot of beach is never too far away. Keeping the palm trees or at least a large amount of them blocks the developments behind quite nicely. You can go for some beautiful walks taking in not just the beaches but the rock formations that are along the way.

So this was where we spent Christmas, not a bad spot to enjoy our turkey and ham. Quite festive here in a hot, beachy kind of way. To add to our festive spirit, the locals have a thriving sandcastle building industry going on. They build these magnificent sculptures and then tourists come along and stand next to them for photos. Genius. If they’re lucky enough, the tourist’s friends and families will make the easy mistake of assuming that said tourist built the amazing sculptures. Win win! They build quite an array of them too from sandmen to life size Santa Clauses to bikini-clad babes to castles as fancy as you could imagine. After dark they insert night-lights in them. It’s all very clever. Then each night the tide washes them away and they start again the next morning. The circle of life!

Philippines tip #3- never take on a Filippino in a sand castle building competition!

So time to move onto our next stop and it seems only appropriate that I leave with another airport story. To leave Philippines, we were flying via Manila again. Wahoo! We had four hours between landing into Manila and flying out but as we were changing terminals and had experienced the general chaos that surrounds all Filipino airports, we were genuinely nervous as to whether we’d make it or not! I suppose if push came to shove we could find another non-metered taxi to get us between terminals!

As we arrived into the baggage collection area we saw our bags on the carousal up ahead but didn’t get there before they went back in behind. So we waited diligently for our bags to come out the other side again…. And we waited and we waited. The carousal wasn’t that long so someone had obviously taken our bags off the carousal. Just before my wife was going to stick her head out the back and find out who took our bags off the carousal, a local lady who recognized us from the queue (we do stand out I suppose!) came up to us to tell us that our bags were going round and round the priority carousal next door! So even when they’re trying to help us out, we ended up waiting longer! Well at least they tried I suppose.

Lovely people the Filipinos, we’d happily come back and visit many more of their islands and if we do, at least we’ll be pre-warned about the airports!

Click here to see a selection of photos from our Philippines trip

Our route: Fly to Manila, fly to Kalibo, boat to Carabao Island, boat to Boracay Island