We arrived in Cebu City after an hour taxi journey from the airport that should only have taken 30 mins. So what you may think. Well the problem was that the traffic cues were horrible, so many cars, jeepneys, tricycles and buses polluting the air in what is already a dirty city. Arriving here really doesn’t portray what the Philippines is really like. After being in Singapore for a few days and experiencing a clean and modern city, this place couldn’t be further removed. Initially before coming here, we had thought of visiting the city a bit to see some of the sites but we were really put off and we quickly decided to get out and make our way north to Malapascua. It’s a sad reflection of a city when you ‘want’ to go the shopping mall to escape the dirt.
So we made our way up to Maya on the bus which took over five hours, it should only take four but it took us one hour to get out of Cebu City. Once in Maya at the top of Cebu Island, we got a Bangka (small boat) to Malapascua Island and found a nice little bungalow on the beach in a very idyllic setting.
In complete contrast to Cebu City, Malapascua is a relatively peaceful place with not many people and no pollution, crystal clear waters and an easy way of life.
Unlike a lot of the beach places we have visited on our travels, this place was first and foremost where locals lived with a small strip of beach for dive shops and a few places to eat. a complete contrast to Gili Air or Koh Tao. The locals go about their business, which is pretty much fishing for food and singing karaoke in between sitting around and doing what looks like not much at all.
So we joined in with that ethos of not doing much and spent a few days reading our books on the beach and planning a bit of where we were going to go during our two months in the Philippines.
We did get a dive in however, in the hope of seeing a Thresher Shark. Malapascua is perhaps the best place in the world where you are 90% guaranteed of spotting them, usually they spend their time below 30 metres but early in the morning at sunrise they go to ‘cleaning stations’ where the Wrasses eat the barnacles and other marine life that may have clung on to the shark during the day. So we had to get up very early, 4am in fact, to catch a boat out at 5am just before sunrise to then be in the water by 6am. It was a bit surreal getting up in the dark to go diving but once we were in the water it was business as usual. The visibility wasn’t great down at 30 metres but we did spot one shark with that impressive tail of theirs. It wasn’t just the shark, we also saw some smaller things like Nudibranch and Lionfish but the best thing for us was probably the Spotted Eagle Rays that swam around us, what a treat that was, they were literally at arms length, such beautiful animals.
Six days later, we made our way back to Cebu City so we could then catch a boat to Bohol Island.
We spent three days on Bohol, we based ourselves in the main city, Tagbilaran as it was a good place to rent a scooter to visit the inside of the island and also make our way south to Alona beach to the dive shops down there.
So on our first full day, we rode around the island stopping at a couple of note-worthy places. The first stop was at the Tarsier Sanctuary were we spotted five of these tiny creatures. They are possibly the cutest animal we have seen on our travels and if you could pick one up, they would fit into the palm of your hand. We also stopped at the Chocolate Hills to view them from a platform, it’s a series of mounds that when we saw them were greener than the brown chocolate colour they are named after, apparently this colour change happens in the dry season so we were too early as the wet season has just finished. Not a wow moment, but still quite nice to look at. We spent a good few hours going around and it was a very peaceful ride with not much traffic and beautiful scenery.
The next day we headed back down to Alona Beach to go diving to Balicasag Island.
We decided to go with Goscuba because the owner was from Steyning originally! We enjoyed two nice dives with them and we saw some new things, including the funny looking FrogFish, we also saw a huge Turtle, the biggest we’ve seen so far, the size of a small car!
After Bohol, we then made our way to the next island, Siquijor. This is such a peaceful island, there are no big towns at all, the only thing to do around here is relax by the beach or again, hire a scooter and ride around the island. This is exactly what we did.
We spent three days here and on two of them we just rode around seeing the island, very much like Bohol in many ways, it was quiet and with lovely scenery.
We stayed in a nice room next to the beach and were treated to some of the best sunsets we’ve seen on our travels, truly amazing colours and the sun actually going behind the water on the horizon without clouds getting in the way.
Our next island was Negros, a short boat journey from Siquijor. We arrived in Dumaguete which was a slight shock after having seen no real traffic for a few days, we quickly got out and made our way south to Dauin, (a far more peaceful place) to stay in a nice bungalow at Bongo Bongo divers where we met a good bunch of people.
We came to Dauin as it is a good place for diving, one can dive straight off the beach as it offers some great Muck diving which we had not done before. This gave us the opportunity to see macro life such as very new/juvenile fish, nudibranch and cuttlefish and we also saw some Sea-Horses for the first time!
We stayed around here for four/five days and included a day trip on a scooter around Valencia, a town in the nearby hills that was near a very impressive waterfall about 30 metres high. It was a bit of a challenge to get to it as the walkways had been swept away in a typhoon some two years back, so we had to do a bit of rock scrambling but very much worth it.
Next, we made our way to the north of Negros to a little place called Silay which took around 9 hours and involved 3 Jeepneys and 2 Buses, the long bus ride over the mountains was fantastic though, such beautiful scenery. We arrived in Silay, quickly checked in to a guest house and then went out to see what was going on around the plaza. The Filipinos love Christmas just as much as Westerners do, lots of lights and Nativity scenes on display. This being a Sunday, there were lots of people around and there was even a Primary School Choirs competition which Wendy enjoyed very much while I sat and drunk San Miguel!
The reason we came to Silay was to see a bit of History. It’s actually quite difficult to do in the Philippines, aside from a few Spanish churches, there isn’t too much in the way of old architecture. Silay was part of the sugar plantation boom in the 1800s and all the rich plantation owners (Westerners mostly) built lovely big houses. Half of the historic houses in the Philippines can be found down one road in this little town.
We enjoyed walking around this sleepy place and being treated like rockstars as there really aren’t many foreigners at all in this town.
We planned to move on to Iloilo the following day on the island of Panay, a short boat journey from Negros but due to Typhoon Melor (Nona) hitting the north of the Philippines, there was restriction on boat travel so we decided to stay one more day in Silay instead which meant we didn’t get to see Iloilo sadly.
Well, the Typhoon moved on and allowed us to travel the next day, so off we went to Boracay, a 10hr journey on jeepney, taxi, bus and boat. We arrived safely at our rented apartment to enjoy the Christmas holidays in a homely surrounding.
