man, the Philippines has a hold on me. I'm really liking it here, and both Dave and I really dont want to leave. In the end we have to meet people (he in Indonesia, I in Thailand) so we're going to be on our way in a couple weeks.
We've basically spent the last two weeks just enjoying Puerto and all it has to offer. We've become regulars at the Kinabuch resturant/bar/pool hall. They have an stir-fry dish that costs only P80 which is incredibly delicious. We've come to know the owner of the Hangar nightclub who now lets us in for free, which is cool as its the only place in town that has a cover charge- and an expensive one at that. We've come to know a good number of the people in town through Daves jam sessions and just hanging out. We've got a little routine of dinner at Kinabuch, dancing and hanging at Hangar, then to Christines (the towns 24-hour outdoor bar) for one last beer while ordering some of the P20 burgers they sell outside. You can get anywhere in town by moto-trike for P4, which at about 8 cents is the deal of the century. Our hotel is nice, quiet, clean, cheap, friendly and has a great view. Yep, we really dont want to leave.
Puerto Princesa has some weird signs.
Trying to delay the inevitable leaving, and not really having a plan of where to go at this point, we decided to head out to Honda bay with our friends Alan and Zsa Zsa, who we'd been hanging out with practically non-stop since we arrived in Puerto. We had met the two of them on our jeepney ride from Sabang to Peurto. Alan is from Scotland and Zsa Zsa is a native Filipina from the southern island of Mindinao.
So many people had told us about Honda Bay and told us it was a must see while we were staying in Peurto. The mainland dock is only about 30 minutes away by moto-trike, and from there you can spend as many hours or days as you like touring the surrounding islands. Only 2 of the islands have resorts on them. Our plan was to stay at the resort on Starfish Island for 2 nights and spend some time the first day touring around the islands, and then the second day just lounging around.
The touring around on the first day was amazing, just like the other great spots we'd visited in the Philippines. The snorkeling was great, as were the beaches. A couple of neat things were at Snake Island where there was an area you could swim in with bread, and the fish would come and eat out of your hands. Then we went to the grouper farm. Groupers are large (up to 4 feet long) fish with broad mouths. Due to over-fishing, the population is dwindling. So the grouper farm is breeding them and sending them back out. The farm is made of a few net-cages supported by floating planks which you can walk along. It was sort of a fear-factor-ish moment. Walking along these narrow planks with mean-looking shark-sized fish on either side. Cool.
honda bay
We returned to Starfish Island and Zsa Zsa cooked up some amazing shish-ka-bobs, and we ate like champs. We noticed that the island was nearly deserted. We rented one of the 6 cottages on the island for P500 (about 9 bucks) and essentially had the whole island to ourselves. There was a couple who rented another cottage, but we barely saw them all night long. Throughout the discussions of the evening, Zsa Zsa mentioned that her grandparents actually own the island. It used to get a lot more business, but since business dropped off, they were thinking about selling it. She also mentioned that they might be interested in leasing it. The 4 of us had a lot of fun discussing ideas of what we might do to make it more popular again if we were able to lease the island. We had so much fun with it and came up with so many good ideas, that a few days later we were giving a proposal to her grandparents to do just that. So, in the end, it looks like theres a possibility we could be here for a bit longer.
After returning to Peurto, we settled back in to our usual enjoyable routines of doing everything and nothing at all at the same time. Dave and I decided we wanted to make good on our idea to visit our friends, Romeo and Josie, in the fishing village where we got off our sailing boat.
So last Tuesday afternoon, we headed off towards a fishing village where before our original arrival, had never seen a tourist. We were hoping to work on one of the fishing boats as we had discussed before.