Island of touts

Indonesia has been Ben's travel favourite for a long time. He has always wanted to go back since spending a month in Sulawesi a few years ago. We debated for a long time whether or not visit Bali, the most famous of all the islands in Indonesia. Over 80 per cent of travellers going to Indonesia visit only Bali. What we experienced so far with most of the famous places is that we understand why they originally got famous, but they are now ruined by too much tourism. That's how we felt about almost the whole south of Thailand, especially Ao Nang and Ko Phi Phi, and some parts of Vietnam, for example. We read in many places how Bali is now drowning in rubbish, loud dance music playing into the early morning hours in Kuta beach and the cheap poison booze killing travellers even in the 5-star resorts. Didn't sound too good. But then again, in a way we were curious to see what all the fuss was about.

What really decided it for us was the flights. Most of the cheaper flights obviously go to Bali. And it is a good place to start exploring the islands to the east. Lombok, Komodo and Flores were all waiting in a reasonable distance. Two days after Ben's sister and brother had left Vietnam we were already off to Bali. Obviously, the cheap flight comes with a cost: it includes a long stop in Kuala Lumpur airport, once again.

Our first experiences in Bali were indeed not the best ones. We arrived in Bali just after midnight, which was okay for us, meaning that we get an extra day to do a visa extension, which should be done one week before the 30-day visa on arrival expires. We had read many different things on the internet about extending the visa, so on arrival Ben wanted to check with the immigration officer stamping his passport that it is for sure possible to extend this visa. Instantly, the officer wanted to help him do it, wanting to give him his phone number and listed all the friends he had in different offices, who could offer him help with the extension, probably for a special fee or something... That was funny, but we got our passports stamped and got out. And then we got to meet the taxi mafia.

Midnight is not really the best time to haggle for cheaper prices. They know you've just flown in, queued for a while, you're tired, and you just want to go to bed. They have all the power unless you happen to feel like walking. We had come to the conclusion that we'd head to Denpasar, where also the airport was located, for a few nights and then keep going north instead of the usual destination of Kuta beach in the south. We really didn't have to see that. We had booked a guesthouse, and on the website they had said that we shouldn't pay more than 90,000 rupiahs for the taxi. We talked a while with the taxi drivers, whose set price of 20-25 dollars (a set price, is it?) was way over two times more than that. We tried to haggle and only got laughed at, all taxi drivers working together and agreeing to the prices in Indonesian right in front of us. Then we walked to the other side of the terminal, and the same thing followed, until Ben said to me "okay, we go back to the guy who agreed on 150 then". We started to leave, and that's when the price started to drop. We ended up paying still too much, but at least we had done our best now. Finally, a 20-minute drive later we got to our guesthouse, Nakula Familiar Inn, happy that we had decided to stay there and not Kuta. Not because of Denpasar being that nice, but because we now knew that Kuta would probably be a place full of similar attitudes and rip-offs and it wouldn't offer that much for us anyway.

After few days of recovering from the long flight we took a bemo, which is a local way of public transport, basically a minivan, to a bus terminal, where we switched to another bemo, which took us to a place in central highlands of Bali, Candikuning. Candikuning is famous for fruit production, flowers and cool mountain climate. We checked into a guesthouse and met a guy called Amin, who works as a tour guide. He's the one who helped us find our guesthouse. Normally we would be a bit wary of these guys. Amin however seemed to be a genuinely likable guy, he spoke great English and his little book of recommendations was full of good reviews in many languages. He made us a good offer for a motorbike-hiking-sightseeing day tour, which would end in Lovina (or wherever we wanted) on the north coast. That was good, because then we wouldn't have to worry about transport to the next destination. We signed up for the next day. Candikuning itself is nothing special, it has nice botanical gardens and a nice little temple on a lake, but mostly it's the surroundings that people come there for. We thought we might as well do a tour and see a little bit of central Bali.

 

The tour started early as Amin woke us up before sunrise. We took the motorbikes up a mountain, where we spent a while watching the sunrise. Then on schedule was seeing the temple on the lake, which is also pictured on the 50,000 bank note. After that we went back to the guesthouse for western style breakfast, and after finishing that Amin came back with a local breakfast! A day that starts with two breakfasts can't be a bad one, can it? We spent the day with Amin and as the hours went by we realised we made a good decision with hiring this guy. He was funny, full of information of local plants and foods, we tasted many fruits, hiked past two waterfalls and rice fields, learned a lot about culture and we even saw a little chameleon! We finished the day with swimming in thermal pools, a good way to relax after a long day, if nothing special otherwise. After that it was a short ride to Lovina, where we checked into a hotel that Amin recommended.

 

We had planned to rest the next day, but we accidentally haggled ourselves into a doing a dive trip. As soon as we had sat down at the hotel restaurant, a guy approached us, wanting to sell us a dive trip. We said that we just got back from a long tour and wanted to sleep long the next day. However, we looked at the brochures just in case we wanted to go later and it sure looked nice. It was about Menjangan island, probably the most famous dive spot in Bali. We also knew it would be expensive. But this guy wanted us to go tomorrow, because they clearly needed a full boat. We could have considered it, but he asked 90 euros for two dives! That was way too much for us even if the diving was nice. We told him that. We told that we really weren't even planning to go and it was too much for us anyway, so we said that we don't have to dive, we are just happy to relax. But he kept asking, "well how much you want to pay?" again and again. So we said that 25 per dive was the maximum we pay for a dive and there was really no point having this conversation anyway because we wouldn't go up with the price, we didn't even want to dive in the first place. He tried with 75 for two dives, and we were already getting a little annoyed, we just wanted this dude to leave, but then he made a phone call to someone and went "okay", and we, a little bit surprised of what just happened, ended up booking the dives.

The diving was surprisingly good. We were looking for pygmy seahorses and managed to find some! We also saw massive schools of jackfish, huge scorpionfish, nudibranchs and lots of other interesting stuff. There was also a small cave that we got to swim into. The softcorals were beautiful and diving was in the end worth it. We were tired but happy it worked out in the end. In the evening Amin came to visit us and gave us a bottle or Arak, the famous local home made coconut booze. He assured that it was safe, because it was made by a family he knows. He said he is careful with arak and he even knows a guy who died on the cheap stuff. We had no reason to doubt him, so Ben tried a little bit. And he liked it.

Lovina itself wasn't that special, the beach was okay at most and the town itself was on the touristy side but pleasant enough, but what mattered to us was that the sea water wasn't clear so there was not much snorkelling at that moment. We stayed for a few days, since we had a nice place with a pool and wifi, so we did some planning, reading and relaxing. And soon we were off again, this time to Jemeluk.

When we travel in the tropics, we have mostly one thing in mind: the underwater world. Enthusiastic snorkellers and divers, we often choose our destinations based on how good the snorkelling or diving is. And that's why Jemeluk was next on the list. We had heard of Jemeluk Bay being a good snorkelling destination, so we hired a car for about 20 dollars to drive us the 2 hour journey to Amed. Jemeluk is actually a part of Amed, 500 metres away and often mentioned as the same place. And we weren't disappointed! The place kept us busy for a week! First we stayed on the Amed side, just snorkeling off the beach, which was already very nice with lots of fish and the occasional stingray hiding under the table corals. And then we decided to move on to the Jemeluk side and we were amazed! It is a very unusual place, the current sweeping through the protected bay, beautiful hard and soft corals on both sides of the bay and a steep sandy drop off in the middle. 15 metres off the beach the water gets so deep that you only see blue. And one of the best thing is that this brings in an unusual amount of big fishes, coming to clean and feed at the reefs. There is almost everything you might want to see while snorkeling. In fact snorkeling was so good that we decided to leave diving aside. Why pay, when you can just go off the beach with the basic gear and see about the same things? We saw stingrays, scorpionfish, stonefish, a mimic octopus, a bigger octopus of some kind, nemos, unicornfish, triggerfish, surgeonfish and so many things we can't even name them all here. Only thing missing was sharks. We were told they see them occasionally, but we were not lucky enough to see one. But we were extremely happy. This was what we had been hoping for.

But all good things come to an end. We had spent already over two weeks in Bali, and in a week we would have to to drop off our visa extension applications in an office in Lombok, the next island. So reluctantly we decided to move on to Padangbai, our last stop in Bali and the main port for ferries going on to Lombok.

Padangbai was a nice enough place, with a weird beach with the craziest sand we've ever seen. Every step you took you sank very deep, and looking closely we realised why: the sand wasn't actually sand, it was small, perfectly round pebbles of some sort. We never found out why is it like this, but it was funny. We also tried snorkeling in the nearby Blue Lagoon, but it was disapponting. We happened to be there at low tide, and the waves crashing hard on the coral and sharp rocks half a metre below the surface made it kind of dangerous to go out, so we abandoned the plan and just chilled watching lizards for a few minutes before walking back to the guesthouse.

Bali is a beautiful island and what makes it special is the Hindu culture that you can't really find elsewhere. Bali is full of life, culture, temples, music and flowers. But it is also full of touts, rip-off prices, dishonest people and party places. We wanted to give Bali a chance, but it just isn't our kind of place. Don't get me wrong - it's a nice island. But somehow it doesn't feel like real Indonesia, whatever that means. When we think of Indonesia, we think of different things: Muslims, smoking volcanos, deep jungle, orangutans, big lizards, curious locals, beautiful coral reefs and only a few other tourists. So we felt like changing scenery and we booked tickets to Lombok.

 

Wet dreams

Apo island. A village, some resorts and home stays and that's about it. On land. But who cares about that if there's this amazing under water world? It's one of the best places I've ever snorkelled and I've snorkelled in a few (Indonesia still wins though). In the morning at high tide there are turtles everywhere! And they don't give a damn about some humans playing fish and let you really close. We took some great photos with us and them and only being close to hypothermia brought us back ashore. Apart from those friendly creatures there's beautiful coral, nice rock formations and a lot of small things like nudibranchs. Like everywhere else, also on Apo island we couldn't find anything you could describeas big except one grouper. (That's why Indonesia is still my number one). We also went diving which was pretty amazing given the fact that we rode the boat 2 minutes from the beach.

Right after the dive we found someone who was going back to Dumaguete and we took the chance. There was still Bohol and Cebu left on the itinerary. Now we were really low on time and decided to give Bohol just a couple of days. Everything worked out so well that we arrived on Bohol the same day we left Apo island! What a change to the provinces where there's one bangka or jeepney at 06:00 and the rest of the day nothing, absolutely nothing (I still can't forget being described as lazy by a guy on Sibuyan). We didn't want to stay in Tagbilaran, Bohol's main town so we headed to Alona beach where we could find something in our price range. We did eventually, our tricycle driver ignored our orders to drive to a place we picked from the guide book, he just said no, no. So we drove to the places where he gets commission, they were on the way anyway. The first 3 were all full only the 4th had vacancy. There we said no, we want to go to the place we picked, but a lady from the resort said no, they're renovating. Fair enough, we thought, but we planned to check that out later. We finally stayed at the place of this helpful lady named Joy and got a decent bungalow for 700 pesos, 200m from the beach.

Alona beach itself is not really a beach. It's a concrete catwalk with some sandy patches in between. And the prices are steep. 70 pesos for a San Miguel! We paid 30 on Sibuyan! We tried to eat cheap and called it a day. The next day we slept long, swam a bit and ate like kings, it was our one-year-travel-anniversary! We really enjoyed spending money on food and drinks without thinking about it and we wisely picked a cheaper place away from the beach. Okay, maybe we still looked a bit after the money... This night brought back memories from everything we've been through so far and we suddenly saw how much we did in these 12 months. It did feel much longer than that and the thought of going back home was suppressed (as almost always).

We didn't really care about the beach this time, we were here for the Chocolate hills and the tarsiers. The Joy lady said we should rent a motorbike from her, it's only one hour drive to these places. Earlier we heard from other travellers that it takes about 3 hours one way, so we skipped that option, also the option of riding on the back of the bike of the night guard. We got ourselves a tricycle again and for some 1300 pesos he promised to drive us to those two sites. After an amazing breakfast we took off on a trip that my ears will remember for the rest of their life. Sitting next to the engine and exhaust of an old, battered Kawasaki bike is not very relaxing especially if this keeps going for over two hours...One way. The chocolate hills were pretty good, sadly though the weather was a bit in a changing mood and thick clouds put dark shadows over these hills. The tarsiers were absolutely cute. There are about 10 of these tiny lemurs spread throughout the sanctuary and the trees where they hide where marked with flags (they were not really hiding though, miraculously they all sat in the open at eye level). The whole sanctuary was a bit of a joke anyway, they tell everyone not to use the flash and to be quiet as these animals are nocturnal and need to sleep during visiting hours. But because they have such cute big eyes people don't give a shit about any of these rules. The whole place was an asian madhouse. If someone ever says that the youth in Europe has no manners anymore I'm gonna tell him about those old asian ladies. We also checked out the place where they were renovating, according to the Joy lady, they weren't, it was business as usual. Another lie, we were used to it by now.

We skipped diving on Bohol even if there's a chance of seeing whales, the chances are too small to spend valuable pesos on an overloaded boat. We only had one more goal now and that was Malapascua and the thresher sharks! We took the space ship ferry again to Cebu's massive port. There we resisted the temptation of a taxi ride for 2000 pesos straight to Maya, from where the bangkas leave to Malapascua. The problem was that our tricycle driver on Bohol said the ferry to Cebu leaves at 10:00. It didn't, it did at 11:50. The last boat to Malapascua was somewhere between 16:00 or 17:00 as far as we knew and we really wanted to make it straight to the island. But the bus took long, too long, even though the driver drove like an idiot and didn't stop for anyone at the end, we arrived in Maya at 19:00. But there's always a solution: private charter, the favourite solution of any Filipino bangka captain. 1500 pesos he wanted and after a long discussion we agreed. We just didn't want to spend another night in the province with no food (people in these places tend to close shops and restaurants at 20:00 and be in bed at 21:00). First we thought it to be madness to spend so much money but it turned out to be worth it. Because of low tide the bangka sat in the sand/mud and four guys pushed and pulled for over 1.5 hours to get us free (we eventually had to transfer to another boat, also stuck in the sand) and in the pitch black night on the way to Malapascua we drove through glowing plankton again! The whole boat was gliding through thousands of little stars, it was indescribable!

Malapascua looks like a dream. Just perfect. White beach, green, turquoise, blue water and palm trees. Along Bounty beach, the main drag, are some resorts lined up with prices three times higher than I would dare, but throughout the village behind the concrete blocks there are still good deals available. Our room cost 600 a night and was about 100m from the beach. All good. Then Anni got a cold and couldn't even think about diving but snorkelling worked good. Sadly there's not much to see for snorkelers. Same story as everywhere. Still we spent the days with the face facing the seabed and had good fun. But then the end of our stay came closer and the highlight was still waiting, thresher sharks! Anni was fit again and we went from dive shop to dive shop and compared prices and services. We found a good dive company away from the beach where we made a 4 dives-deal and booked an early morning dive.

Early morning it was! At 04:45 I was wide awake, which is worth mentioning, we grabbed our gear at the dive shop and left the island for Monad Shoal. This place is an underwater mount that rises from over 200m up to like 15m below the surface and the only place in the world with almost guaranteed sightings of thresher sharks! They normally live in the deep, as deep as 350m, and to see them in 20-30m is just unique. What makes them so special is their long tail fin that can reach the same length as the shark's body. It's said that they use the tail to smack it into schools of fish to stun them. Anyway, they look gorgeous on photos! We descended the mooring line and hit the top of the plateau at around 15m. From there we swam to the edge of the drop off and went to 28m where we sat/lied on a little ridge. Even before we arrived there we saw from above that there were sharks around! While we tried to find a comfortable position in our brand new 5,5mm suits (all equipment from the dive centre was brand new) we couldn't believe we were actually here! All in all we saw 3 sharks, and all of them came pretty close. I couldn't take a decent photo though, first it was very early, the sun just got up and second we were not allowed to use the flash, this would scare them away (most good photos you see in the internet were taken with flash though. Very respectful, just for a photo...). After the last shark left we followed the wall a bit, then turned back for another chance but didn't see any (only Anni did!) and then back to the line. There was plenty of stuff to see on the plateau, but I couldn't concentrate any more, I was just so happy. The following dive site was close to the first one, with chances to see manta rays but our luck was all used, it was quite an empty dive.

Two more dives followed the next day, we got a deal but for that we had to do at least four dives. One in the morning was at a pinnacle with very strong current and bad visibility. It was still fantastic, we've never seen that many softcoral in one place before. But the real draw at this place are the pygmy seahorses. The guide found two in a purple fan coral, we knew they're tiny, but barely a centimeter is really small! The second dive was different to anything we knew. It started short before sunset in front of the lighthouse and was focused on mandarin fish. With slowly disappearing light we followed the guide who was looking for them. Apparently they have a meeting ritual almost every day before dark where the small female and the big male first chase each other through corals and holes and then suddenly start to "dance". They swim around each other and slowly rise from the coral upwards in a spiral, it's so impressive and cute I forgot to take photos at that moment. Sadly there's also a negative side to that spectacle. It brings tourists. The photo hunters. As we found the place of these fish meetings there were already two tourists with a guide present and one had a massive camera ready. The other carried something that looked like a midsized submarine, I would've fit easily in that one. It wasn't a submarine in the end but the biggest camera one can imagine and the guy operating it made himself comfortable on a block of coral. Yes, he was lying on this table coral with his full weight so he can balance his submarine camera better. I couldn't believe it. This guy probably flew to the Philippines just to get a shot of the thresher shark and then a prize winning photo of dancing mandarin fish and for this he had to sacrifice a table coral. It's probably worth it for him. But because of dickheads like this the whole area down there looks like a Filipino dynamite fishing ground. I was complaining earlier about this practise but this is locals ruining their neighbourhood. What I find much more disgusting is these white tech freaks jetting around the world for some photos and leaving nothing but ruins.

After I calmed down I concentrated on these beautiful fish and tried to get some photos myself with my humble camera. But every time the fish couple rose and danced for a few seconds this guy's double flash went off and all the fish were gone. I guess the guys with the small cameras were not cool enough to play in the same league as Mr. Submarine. We left the playground of the techies and switched on our torches, it was pitch black by now. Everytime a diver found something it soon started to attract others and every seahorse or cuttlefish was soon surrounded by several divers fighting for a photo opportunity. We had enough of that and went further away and started looking for our own highlights. And we saw a lot of nice creatures you normally don't see during daytime like cuttlefish, many different crabs and an absolute highlight while hanging on the mooring line during our safety stop: bioluminescent plankton! We knew it was around when we arrived on Malapascua but didn't know it was still here. We switched off our torches and had the best three minutes of safety stop ever! By the time we climbed back aboard the bangka we were shivering uncontrolled, we didn't realise earlier that we were freezing. Probably the best sign for a good dive!

Then it was time to leave. For good. We had a flight waiting in Cebu and wanted to be there the day before. This time we crossed over to Maya via the regular bangka for 80 pesos. Then some sweaty, cramped four hours with the Ceres Liner bus and we were in Cebu where we shared a cab with a nice Australian couple that had been on the road for almost as long as us. We followed our amazing guide book and checked in to Pensionne Florentina, a nice guesthouse in a old building. For dinner we thought to head to the big mall around the corner where we would sure find a Max's, we just wanted this sizzling tofu again we had in Laoag! There was none. Only stalls selling local food like meat. Chicken, pork, beef, corned beef, fish, shrimp, crab, squid. Everything grilled or roasted or fried (which means deep fried) or in dumplings or on a stick or in balls or in a sauce. And white rice. That's it. And that's why we were happy to leave the Philippines. It's been amazing, beautiful, sometimes frustrating and annoying. And hot. Always hot. But we can deal with that. What makes it very hard for us is the lack of edible food. I eat meat but in normal portions. But there it's just meat! A big lump of something meaty, white rice and that's it. I didn't like it. And don't even ask Anni.

We left early to the airport so we could get breakfast/lunch there. The taxi was surprisingly cheap, 200 pesos for quite a long journey. At the airport we checked the luggage in and then had to pay the terminal fee. 550 pesos which is pretty much 10 euros. As with everything so far in this country there's always an additional fee but this was just too much! With this money they could build a new airport every year! So we handed our last pesos over, sure we could buy food with credit card, it's Cebu international airport after all. But no. There's one cafe where they ask you to leave if you sit down and don't consume something and a restaurant but neither of them accepts credit card and the nearest ATM is outside the terminal building. So we spent our remaining 80 pesos on an old fruit salad and a peanut bar. Cebu/Mactan international airport is the main way in and out the Visayas but for that it's pretty disappointing. So bring enough cash if you ever use this place, I wouldn't.

We left the Philippines with mixed feelings. The nature and the size of this country is absolutely incredible but if you look close, so much is destroyed or on the way there and in the case of the reefs it will take centuries to recover. Also there are only a few places actually prepared for tourism, no restaurants, no information about transportation (mostly not even the locals know when the jeepneys and boats leave and this on small islands with one jeepney and one boat a day...) and also no clue how to deal with these foreigners. Most people are absolutely lovely and try their best to help but we also met a fair share of bad characters which are hard to avoid once you're in their village. So travelling the Philippines is easy if you follow the package tourists. If you don't, you will experience some serious travelling with all the troubles it brings along. After 2 months in the Philippines we just didn't have the energy for this anymore.

 

High speed travelling

According to the guidebook Sibuyan island is supposed to be an amazing place for snorkeling and diving with nice beaches and beautiful reefs. It isn't. The island itself is beautiful with Mount Guiting Guiting in the middle and quite a big forest coverage. The beaches we saw were rocky or muddy between mangroves and for snorkeling you have to go far to find reefs. We did exactly that one day, the owner of the place we stayed invited us to join him on a speedboat (everything that floats, has an engine and doesn't look like a bangka is a speedboat) to do a daytrip to the Isla de Gallo some 45 minutes away. We agreed after some hard haggling together with a fellow traveller and spent some nice hours on the uninhabited island which consists of sand and some bushes. He also brought some meat to barbecue (for free he kept repeating. Not really, we paid quite a sum for this trip...) and a bottle of brandy. Also off this island there were no corals so on the way back we stopped at the surrounding reef and had some good snorkeling. In the end we saw some fishes and he was drunk and happy.

San Fernando isn't touristy. Absolutely not. There's a homestay straight ahead from the pier and the place we stayed "Sea breeze", at the western end of town. There are two small "restaurants" whose opening hours we couldn't figure out and a market. And you are a sight there if you're white. We soon saw that there wasn't much for us to do (no, we don't want to climb that mountain, thank you) and the food options were really, really bad for a vegetarian, so we tried to figure out how to leave the island. The book says there's a ferry everyday from San Fernando to Romblon island. There isn't. It's from Magdiwang on the north coast. We missed the jeepney that left 5am because we had no clue that day that there is one and after we were accused by the owner of being too lazy to get up early we got ourselves a tricycle for 600 pesos all the way to Magdiwang. It took 1.5 hours along the east coast and was very scenic and bumpy, exactly how it should be. Happy to be on the way again we checked the boat schedule at the pier and got some guesthouses pointed out by a lady in a stall. We picked one of them, "Beach house", and got a room for 150 each. That night the parking lot suddenly started to fill up with tricycles and pick ups, people everywhere. The guy who checked in next to us solved the mystery, he was the personal security chief of the governor of Romblon province and this night was big election party (free beers = free votes?). He also invited us to go to Romblon island the next day aboard the yacht of the governor. We accepted.

The next morning we got up early enough to catch the regular ferry (our backup plan) because we didn't really think it would work out with the yacht and it didn't in the end. And we thought this yacht will probably be a big, nice bangka but no, it was a shiny white yacht and probably the reason the ring road around Sibuyan is only half concrete before the money run out... (our point of view). Instead we left aboard a big Montenegro Lines ferry and we were happy to be finally in an area where the services don't only consist of bangkas.

Arriving in Romblon town on Romblon island is quite impressive. First the ferry navigates around several islands and then enters the natural harbour of Romblon town. The guide book says it's one of the prettiest towns in the Philippines. Well that's just crap. We followed our guide book again and ended up in a place surrounded by 8 angry dogs where once a guesthouse was. Several years ago. So we kept going along the road for about 7 kms until we arrived at San Pedro resort on Talipasak beach where we hoped to find a cheapie on an unspoiled beach. Sounds impossible? We found it! Thanks to the guide book, I have to say, we got ourselves a big bungalow a bit above the water in a forest for 700 pesos. And the beach was world class! The snorkeling was decent, also a lot of signs of dynamite fishing but the area is protected now and happily there are still corals left. The rock formations at the left end of the beach were quite impressive under water. Also there was some improvement, loads of concrete structures have been sunk as basis for new corals and they also destroy the nets of fishermen who are not allowed to fish there. We enjoyed four days there and then decided to keep moving, our time was running out. Only 3 weeks left in the Philippines!

Again, a bangka brought us over to Tablas island to a town called San Agustin. From there we rode a jeepney roof to Looc, mostly along the coast with some priceless views. In Looc we stayed over night because the bangka only leaves in the morning to our next goal, Carabao island. In the morning we first had to catch a jeepney to Santa Fe from where the bangka was leaving. No one knew exactly when the jeepney was supposed to leave Looc, 07:00 or 08:00 was mostly the answer. We thought 07:00 is the better bet and the jeepney was indeed already filling up. We got seats inside this time but we didn't leave until all 12'657 passengers were aboard. Then we left to fill up the tank. Then we went back to Looc to pick up more people and cargo, mostly rice. I calculated that at least 2'000kg of rice were loaded onto the roof which was only made of some leftover steel bars and tin. How can that work? No one knows but it does (I think it's the paint that gives that extra stability). 20 minutes before our bankga was due to leave we left Looc for a journey that takes at least an hour. But the bankga won't leave without all this passengers, the driver said. Good!

The 1.5 hours to Carabao were easy enough and a guy we met on the boat gave us a ride on his and his nephew's bike to a resort on the west coast. "Is this your aunt working here"?, I asked. "No, my nephew's sister". "So everyone is somehow related to everyone here on Carabao"? "Basically, yes". And true enough in all the conversations with the staff in the resort there were all the time people referred to "uncle" or "grandfather" or "sister-in-law" and so on. The beach was again brillant but the snorkeling that the guide book mentions as terrific and all the people that come here from Boracay only because of that wasn't true again. Nothing terrific and no one from Boracay. Not one boat. The reef looked like Hiroshima 60 years ago, all nice levelled out. We still managed to keep ourselves busy with snorkeling and always found new stuff. We also did a beach dive with a Swiss divemaster. There we could clearly see that all the corals a bit deeper were in ok condition whereas the ones in dynamiting distance weren't. Climate change and tsunamis were the normal explanations for the destroyed reefs. Sure, this all doesn't help and also does a lot of damage but it doesn't make big holes in reefs, does it? Even the government says that 40% of Philippine's reefs are in poor condition. That's truly shocking! What surprised us the most was that the further away from tourism you go, the worse the reef conditions are. It's probably not the best when the police or national park officer is related to everyone on the island... (our opinion).

Then came the question whether to visit Boracay, the next island, or not. Since we started our travels in the Philippines, the question we heard the most, was "have you been to Boracay yet?". Every local that works there or worked there says it's horrible, overcrowded and expensive. We could maybe deal with one but that didn't sound good. But we also thought that all these tourists don't probably go there for nothing. In the end we voted for no. An early morning bangka (sounds repetitive?) brought as straight to Caticlan on Panay island. On the way we drove past Boracay and it's white beach, it does look amazing! But everything also looks so clean and man made that it doesn't quite seem to be a place for two penny pinchers like us. From Caticlan it took us 5 hours in a minivan to Iloilo. There we got dropped off at the pier where we were able to catch the next ferry to Bacolod on Negros island. The ferry felt like a spaceship out of the 80's compared to our usual bangka.

In Bacolod we found a decent place to sleep (with aircon an tv!) and after 2 hours of walking through the city for a vegetarian place we crashed in front of the tv and got a good night's sleep. Ceres liner brought us to Dumaguete in one of their buses in about 6 hours. The whole island seems to be planted with sugar cane, they even call it sugarlandia. Dumaguete we found quite nice, it's also an important port at Negros east coast. There are ferries to Cebu, Bohol and Siquijor as well as bangkas to Apo island. We thought about doing some diving there from Dumaguete as the prices are the same as on the island but we do love snorkeling and needed some time out from traveling. The next day we hopped on a bus to Malatapay from where the bangkas leave to Apo island. The guys in charge of the boats try to persuade tourists to charter a private bangka, because the next regular and cheaper one leaves in several hours, they say. But after so long on the road and in the Philippines in particular we knew the games already and after an hour wait we got a cheap ride on a tiny bangka. Pretty soaked we arrived on Apo island which was bigger than we expected. There's no pier, everyone has to walk over the slippery rocks covered in sea urchins and one of us did quite a dance on the slippery stuff. The only affordable option for people like us is a homestay, ours was called Ronor's, bright orange and a bit back in the village. Before the sun disappeared we had to go and see how the snorkeling is on this highly prized island. We barely managed to swim out, it was low, low, low tide but what we saw in the disappearing light was just enough to bring wet dreams upon a snorkeler!