No Underground River, back to Manila!

Tuesday June 12

Michael and I decided not to go to Sabang and to the underground river. It was way to difficult and expensive to get to Sabang from El Nido. We loved El Nido and we weren't ready to leave, so we stayed! El Nido was a great place, very relaxed and easy going. I loved it!

Sunday we did another boat tour. Michael wanted to go back to a little beach we found that had some boulders to rock climb. We headed out in the afternoon and stayed until 5pm. There were tons of boulders and rocks and Michael definitely had fun! I watched and played in the water all day. 

Monday was our long van ride back to Puerto Princesa. This time we had seats in the front of the van, which made the bumps much more bearable. However our driver was a little crazier, so going around the curves (and there were many!) was not so fun. 

Today is our flight back to Manila. From there we are going to Nagcarlan, the place where Michael grew up. 

El Nido, Sunburn and rock climbing

Saturday June 9

Friday morning Michael went scrambling, a.k.a hiking that is more like rock climbing without a rope. I'm really glad I didn't go, I don't think I would have liked it much. He said it was basically like 5.7 climbing for 1.5 hours up, and 1.5 hours back down. He did that early in the morning and was back by 9:45. They asked 500 pesos for a guide.

We debated going on another tour of the little islands, and decided to do it even though it  was only for half a day. It cost around 1500 pesos for both of us. We had a private boat and went to 2 snorkeling spots and a beach. My favorite place was called helicopter island. As the name says, the rock formations looked like an actual helicopter. There were tons of different fish to look at while snorkeling. We even saw two (dead) jellyfish! 

I put sunscreen on three times yesterday, but still managed to get sunburnt. It's not horrible but sunburn always sucks!

We stayed out of the sun today because of my sunburn. We laid on the beach in the shade all day reading our kindle books and taking photos. The past two days it has been very sunny and extremely hot! Our room sucks during the day because there is no electricity, so that means no fan and no air. Our room is not well ventilated either. Even with the fan it's very muggy and hot in our room. But we can't complain! It only costs about $8 each per night!

El Nido!

Thursday June 7

We left Puerto Princesa Tuesday morning at about 7am. We took a 6 hour ride in an air conditioned (thank god!) van to El Nido. The van ride was an adventure in itself! The first few hours on paved roads were tolerable. 

Then the road was no longer paved. 

Imagine the worst gravel road you've even driven on. Now add A LOT more pot holes. Finally, sit in the back of a van with virtually no shocks.

The last few hours were rough to say the least! 

Once we arrived it was 1:30pm and we found a place to stay called Davayne's. It's 700 pesos per night with a fan. 850 with air conditioning. We have our own little cottage room on the main road, very near the beach. The place is nice, we chose to only have a fan and no air conditioning. El Nido only has electricity from 2:30pm to 6:30 am, and the rest of the day there is none. So we figured we could survive without it. 

We walked around and found a restaurant on the beach. It was open air and there was no floor, only sand. It had an awesome view of the giant rocks and cliffs coming out of the water. Plus the water was only about 10 steps away from the restaurant. There are several places similar to this along the beach.

On Wednesday we went on an island hopping tour, Tour A. It was Michael and I plus another family with a really cute kid, he was about 10-13 years old. The water was rough and the boat ride to the first stop was not so pleasant. The water was really rough that day. The spray from the boat was constantly in our face and we were completely soaked by the time we got there. The first place was a lagoon where you had to swim through a tiny little 3 foot tunnel of rocks to get to the lagoon. We went snorkeling and saw a few fish, but they made us leave this stop after only about 15 mints. I was very disappointed. Then we drove around the other lagoon but didn't stop for some reason. After that they made us an awesome lunch of grilled fresh fish. It was delicious! Did I mention how much I love the food here?? Lunch on the beach was great, but a storm came in and it started raining, so we got ready to leave. Our guides took the leftover food and fed the fish from the boat. Some people got in the water to watch, and I wish that I had! The fish were literally eating the food right out of their hands! There were a ton of them, and a lot of them were neon colors!

After the fish feeding we went to the last stop which was a nice big beach. It was rainy though so we didn't want to swim. We huddled under a little food shop/bar. They happened to have the most adorable one-week old kittens! We played with them and took many pictures of course. The sun finally came out as we were getting ready to leave and head back to El Nido. Overall it was worth it, but I was disappointed that we didn't get to snorkel more. It cost 900 pesos each.

Today we went to a secluded beach about 10 minutes outside of El Nido. We laid out on the hammock all day and read our kindles! Fantastic day for sure. I'm starting to get a little more of a tan finally! By tan I mean burned of course!

The weather has been better than I expected. It is the rainy season now, but it has only sprinkled a few times when we were out, and rained for about 45 minutes yesterday. It has been cloudy all the time, not usually very sunny, but thats okay because it isn't quite as hot that way!

Philippines

Monday June 4th

Moving out was such a hassle! We stayed up until about 3 am the night before, did A LOT of last minute packing in the morning, and left the English Village for the last time at about 2:15pm. It was a weird feeling to be leaving. I am happy that I am finished, but I think I will miss the place a little bit. 

Today we arrived in Manilla, Philippines! Well, last night at about 1am anyway. We met Michael's cousin Audrey and her husband who picked us up at the airport. They brought us to their house where I met his god daughter Kim, another cousin, Rens, his aunt and his grandmother. We had to repack again, because we had brought so many things that were going to stay with his family in the Philippines. So we packed most things in our giant backpacks, and went to sleep around 3:30am again. Our flight to go to Puerto Princesa was today at 11am, so we had to leave his cousins house at 9am. We also needed to finish packing. So we woke up around 7am, and did some more last minute packing!

We made it to Puerto Princesa at about 1:30pm. We decided to stay here for a night, and head out to El Nido tomorrow. On the 10th we are going to Sabang, to the underground river. In El Nido and Sabang, they only have electricity from about 2:30pm to 6:30am.

Today we got a tricycle, which is like a motorcycle with a cart attached. He drove us around all day while we figured out everything we need to go to the underground river (which is actually a lot of work and a lot of waiting!) and to get a van to El Nido. Tomorrow we leave at 7am for a long 6 hour ride to El Nido.

We also ate delicious food! This food is a MILLION times better than Korean food (in my opinion). We ate fried chicken at Jollibee, a fast food chain. Then we ate BBQ chicken and some stir fried veggies at a restaurant called Ugong Rock. Our supper was very delicious at Balinsasayaw Chicken Grill and Restaurant Inc. We ate some fried fish in sweet and sour sauce (amazing!) eggplant, garlic rice, fresh lumpier (a spring roll type thing), and I even drank the juice out of a fresh coconut! 

Time for sleep!

Let the adventure begin!

We leave exactly one week from today!

View Full Size Travel Map at Travellerspoint

DIY Decorations!

I decided the boring white walls in my apartment in Korea were too much to bear any longer. I wanted something bright and colorful to put up on the wall.

My boyfriend and I are fairly adventurous...let's just say we like to play outside. Our three favorite things to do are rock climbing, snowboarding and slacklining. So I created some silhouettes of these three things, typed up the word 'adventure' (in Century Gothic, of course) and taped it up to the wall! Simple as that.

What you need:

- tempera paint

- pictures of what you want to silhouette

- frames (or thick black paper)

- a printer

Instructions:

 

1. First you need to tape down your picture. This is important so the paint doesn't get under the picture!

Try to be as precise as possible so you have less touch ups later. This process takes a long time as well, so be patient!

2. Paint over the picture with your desired color, let it dry and peel off the picture and tape.

I found that it works better to add water to the paint (at least with my Korean brand poster paint). This way it is easier to spread and not so thick.

3. Let it dry!

4. Add your frame. I just used thicker black paper and cut out a square frame. 

5. Hang them up! Add some text, or not. Totally up to you!

Now, if I were not moving out of here within 3 months, I would have gotten real frames and made the letters in vinyl, but since these will likely end up in the trash in 3 months, I made them cheaply. And I am very happy with the turn out! You can see that mine are not perfect, but I didn't intend them to be. I ended up painting over the silhouette with white paint because of my bad tape job. However if this was going to be a semi-permanent thing in my house, I probably would have re-done them!

Please post pictures if you try this out! Any comments or suggestions are also welcome!

Surprise!

Jeju Video! (Made by Michael)

Jeju-Do