Flying into the Philippines and the Bizarreness of Boracay

Last week, Nathalie and I left Vietnam and headed to our next destination: The Philippines. We weren't initially planning on going here, but then again, we haven't really stuck with any plans we've made to begin with. So after leaving Vietnam and a quick stopover in Kuala Lumpur, we took off for the eastern-most leg of our trip.

We picked the Philippines about a week before we left Vietnam. Initially, we were supposed to fly west and head over to Myanmar, but after constantly moving for nearly three weeks without of a break and more to come (the pedometer on my phone told me that I was averaging around 8km/5 miles of walking a day with around 10-12 Km the norm if I took out the rest days) , we simply didn't have it in us to do another month of non-stop exploring.

We were missing critical downtime and, oddly enough, tropical weather. We wanted to get out of the noise of the city and get back to nature. We thought about going ahead and heading off to Indonesia, but as it's still rainy season there, we pushed that idea back (we're probably going there next...or not).

I started to remember what some folks back in Brussels had told me about the Philippines: "it's fantastic","it's great for outdoor activities","it's really relaxed","it what Thailand was like 15 years ago", etc. After doing some research online, we settled on coming here, booked our return flights and figured out what we were going to do.

The Philippines is known for its fantastic scuba diving and its world-class surfing. Since we already invested quite a lot of money to become certified divers, we planned on doing as much diving as we could afford. Additionally, we wanted to learn to surf, because, why not? With that in mind we built an itinerary that's taking us slowly from west to east, slowly moving around the center of the country.

Looking onto White Beach from the water

Our first stop was the tiny island of Boracay off of the coast of Kabisayaan. Every article we read about the place recommended it. There are over 40 dive centers and the beach is one of the most pristine ones in the country. As we found out, it wasn't quite the case.

We arrived in the town of Kalibo directly from Kuala Lumpur. After an uneventful four hour flight, we stepped out of the plane, cleared customs and made our way to the ATM. Once we loaded up on Pesos, we found a transfer out to Boracay.

We didn't book any accommodation in advance, having honed our hotel scouting skills in Vietnam. Also, we couldn't find anything close to our budget on Agoda/Booking.com so we took it as a sign to just look when we got to the island. As soon as we arrived, we soon found out our premonition wasn't exactly correct.

Boracay is billed as a tropical paradise and, at least in terms of underlying beauty, rightfully so. The sea is a clear green-blue that you can see right to the bottom of while wadding through its calm, warm waters. The white sands of the beach contrast divinely through the palm trees up to the azure sky. Unfortunately, the word got around and as it turned out, everyone and their mother was on the island the day we arrived.

As it would turn out, we had landed in Boracay smack in the heat of Filipino summer. Add in the hordes of foreign tourists to the already enormous ranks of domestic visitors and it's no wonder why we had difficulty finding a place to stay.

The people of Boracay seem to be on top of this though; as they have a small army of women around the port willing to help the last-minute travelers like myself find accommodation. Of course, this meant that they would usually take us to their friends' places and then take a commission on top, but seeing as this was probably the only real solution that we had at the moment, we took it and set off to town the three of us in a trike (the Filipino version of a tuk-tuk).

After 30 minutes of looking, we finally took a place that was just at the cap of our budget. We had been traveling for almost nine hours by this point and were just looking for a bed and a place to put the bags down. The room that we took was an 'annex' to a cottage style lodging smack in the middle of station two on White Beach.

White Beach is the headquarters of Boracay, spawning 3 Km/1.8 miles along the coast of the Tablas Straight with the 'postcard-perfect' shore line being the gem of the island. What the postcard fails to show you though, is the hundreds of restaurants, shops, bars and hotels crammed along the beach front with the hundreds of thousands of people jammed into the tiny pathways in front of them.

More Beach

This stretch of the island is broken down into three different zone, lovingly called 'station 1','station 2' and 'station 3.' As luck would have it, station 2 is the epicenter of Boracay's renowned party life and as such, we had landed smack in the middle of the heart of it. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that we were there to get away from people and noise and get some much needed peace.

Feeling a bit disgusted, I took a walk down the 'boardwalk' to try and cool off and scope out a dive center. During my walk, I realized that the Philippines are unlike any other place I've been to so far on this trip. English was spoken everywhere. American influence, from food to pop culture to basketball, was laid on thickly over almost everything I saw.

Homegrown pizza franchises and burger joints left me fooled that I was back in the US of A instead of being on the other end of the Pacific ocean. In the previous places I visited, the music we heard playing everywhere was something decidedly local; eastern. Here, the radio could've been piped in from the US or the UK and I wouldn't have noticed a difference. Oddly enough, I've never felt so comforted hearing Journey playing over the loudspeakers in an outdoor shopping mall.

After I had found my bearings, I went back to the hotel and briefed Nathalie on my findings (she had stayed back to take a shower and rest up a little bit). We hit the strip once again to book a slot at a dive center and grab something to eat.

Pizza

Over dinner (it was pizza), we agreed that we would change hotels the next day and then figure out where we'd go from there. After we finished eating, we took a walk along the beach to try and unwind a little bit. Maybe that wasn't the best of ideas.

As mentioned earlier, white beach was jam-packed with bars and restaurants. As we entered into the sea of people, we began to notice a pattern at each establishment: overpowering music, fire shows, and live bands. It seems that at some point in the recent history of Boracay, a pioneering bar or restaurant decided to add these gimmicks as a way to draw in crowds. It apparently worked, because practically every establishment had a least one of these spectacles playing out enticing passerby to come in and partake in their fun.

The problem with all of this was that with the intimate proximity of each bar and club meant that there was little isolation of the sound coming from the sound system. Coupled with the one-upmanship mentality that "my sound system is loud than yours, making mine better" between every venue meant that everyone of the beach was treated to the chaotic cacophony of copycat competition.

We wound up walking to a relatively quiet spot on the beach where we away from the brightest of lights but still within in ear shot of a few bars. We took advantage of the opportunity to look up to the star filled sky and to talk about our next moves.

The following morning, we woke up, packed our bags and headed off to the dive center. We had signed up for two dives with one of the many dive centers but before going into the sea, Nathalie and I spent an hour looking for another place to stay. Going against everyone's advice, we headed to the backside of the island where the beach was supposedly dirty and windy. As it would turn out, dirty meant that there were palm leaves and seaweed washed on shore and windy only meant that there were kite surfers.

What we did find, though, was a much more laid back part of the island, away from the stress of white beach. We were able to snag a room at a hotel near the kite surfing beach and headed back to our dive center to go underwater.

The dive themselves were probably the most pleasant part of the stay. Maybe it had to do with the warm, clear water. Maybe it had to do with the rich sea life we encountered (we did both a wreck dive, meaning tons of different fish and a coral dive. We even saw a baby shark). Or maybe it was just the only time during our whole stay in Boracay that we had fine some semblance of peace.

After we had finished our dive, we settled our bill and set out to have a much deserved late lunch-early dinner. Shortly into our meal, Nathalie and I both agreed that we needed to leave the island as soon as possible. We began looking for flights out and within 30 minutes, had found a flight for the next evening, after our required diving surface interval would expire (in scuba diving, you have to give your body a certain amount of time to decompress from being underwater before you get in a pressurized airplane) heading out to Cebu.

We booked it and, strangely enough, began to relax. Maybe it had to do with the fact that we finally had a way out or perhaps we came to terms with the reality of where we were. In any case, we had a fun last evening going people watching and again eating pizza (before you judge, it's freaking difficult to come across half-decent pizza on this side of the planet. We weren't going to let the opportunity pass us by).

We left the next day, after an easy transfer back to the “mainland” and to the nearby airport. We arrived in Cebu with one objective in mind: get out of Cebu and on to the next outdoor paradise. We wound up settling on the small town of Moalboal to do yet some more diving. How was it? Great question!  I'm working on it now...