Today is my last day in Nacpan and it’s been so much fun. The people I met in Where 2 Next have made the last few days unforgettable. Last night, the 7 of us bought some chicken, rice and some salad bits and used the bbq at the hostel to have a delicious dinner, luckily I had soy sauce in my bag which made a few people smile. After the dinner we ran to Mad Monkeys to grab the free drinks, had to run cuz we only left the hostel at 1930, and time is money at that point. When we got there most of the people were crazy drunk as they’d been on a party boat tour and been drinking since 9am, Harry was asleep on the bar floor when I arrived. So I carried him to bed, started drinking, and then 5 minutes later he was dancing on the table and rubbing someone’s burger on his face😅. As Harry made me down a lot of drinks, by the end of the night, about 2am, I had to crash in Harry’s bed because I couldn’t be bothered to walk back to the hostel to grab my hammock.
In the morning, I walked back to the hostel and was told off by the reception lady as she wanted me to stay for free in the hostel, Filipino’s are too kind. And she’s offered me a free bed again tonight😊. I was told that I can get a jeepney at 6:30am to El Nido for 50/100 pesos, when it would usually cost 600 pesos for a tricycle.
These are the jeepneys and for sure the cheapest way of travelling if you can find the right one.
Also, I found a cool water slide that has free entry before 1pm, so have spent a lot of the day there with James, Anna and Sara.
Here’s James living his best life haha. It was surprisingly empty as it’s almost a 20 minute walk from Mad Monkey’s, which is where everyone stays.
Current plans are to catch a ferry to Coron tomorrow morning from El Nido after riding the jeepney from Nacpan. James and Anna invited me to tag along with them as they’re also travelling to Coron.
Woke up in a hut on the beach, thoroughly took advantage of the 30 minutes of free drinks in Mad Monkeys. It was gender bender night, so guys and girls swapped clothes, was a very funny night…from what I can remember.
Nacpan is a small place and almost all of the crowd is around a hostel called Mad Monkeys, I’d say at least 75% of tourists stay there. My plan was to hammock on the beach but there was a typhoon the day I arrived and most of the Philippines had been hit with extremely heavy downpours, so I opted to get a room in Where2Next as it was only 300 pesos a night, but they went to 250 quite easily. Yesterday the weather cleared up a lot so tonight I’ll hammock. The hostel here also allow you to put up a hammock for a small fee and then you still have access to their showers, drinking water and shelter if you need it, plus the travellers staying here are really friendly, so I could hang out with those guys a lot easier. But for now I’ll hammock on the beach as I’ve showered already and I enjoy saving money for other things, such as a boat tour!
The boat tours look fun, and for what you get are reasonably priced, 1500 pesos (£23), you get taken to 4 or 5 beautiful hidden islands, go snorkeling, and get lunch. However I enjoy finding the cheapest way to do things, so the guys I’ve met in W2N and I have decided to try and find a guy with a boat and offer him some money to take us to some of the islands.
Yesterday I took the opportunity to learn to surf 😁 had been wanting to learn to surf for so long and originally I thought I’d wait until Australia. I met this guy called Kris in W2N, also a keen hammocker, and he had friends at Dohi beach, known to be the surfing place of El Nido. He wanted to go there as he had friends down there who had some information we needed and Kris needed to pay his bar tab, so we headed down on a scooter (the roads were like rivers of mud and we skidded all over the place, at one point drifted 90°) which took about 30 minutes. Once we were there the surfers were all talking about how perfect the long small to medium waves were to learn to surf, so I started talking to them and couldn’t resist but to have my first lesson. It was surprisingly easy as I felt it wasn’t too dissimilar to snowboarding, also my instructor was really good. The hardest part is reading the waves and timing the swim, and I got told off for trying to surf a huge wave because I had to ‘master the small waves first’, which I took onboard right away as the huge wave just swallowed me up and it was an awful attempt to surf it, he even had to check I hadn’t broken the board😅 oops
Didn’t actually ride this board, I had the pink one on the rack, but the lady said to take a photo with this one because usually the smaller the board, the better the rider 🙂 also the little kid in the photo, lil Timmy, is the surf shop owner’s kid, the surf shop owner was also my instructor.
The previous night I’d gone to bed early as I had a flight to catch from Kalibo airport, and zero pre booked plans of getting there besides a little slip of paper given to me from the hostel. I was leaving Harry and Liv as the flight I was catching didn’t allowed checked baggage, but I only have 10kg of hand luggage, so opted for the cheaper flight.
So at about 5am I woke up to catch my flight at 11am, with the intention of avoiding taxi costs by hitchhiking.
After rejecting 4 offers to drive me to the port, a guy on a motorbike offered to drive me for 80 pesos. Originally I was going to hitch hike, but a lift for £3.40 was crazy cheap.
I then boarded the boat by following a Filipino, which turned out to be the right way to board, avoiding additional fees.
Next was the big one, a 3 hour journey from the port to the airport. But, after making good time so far, I was in no rush. As soon as I left the boat a man offered to take me for 1000 pesos, 5 times more than the hostel have even priced it at. I told him to do one and found a bus that looked as if it was ready to leave.
Here was the time to use my fathers sales advice…I asked if I could get on, and the men at the front said it was a pre-book company. He told me a ticket would be 200 pesos, but I said I would pay him 150, he had spare seats and had no intention of waiting for them to be filled anyway. The man was surprised by my response and insisted the bus should be pre booked anyway, and that prebookings cost 200. I gave him the offer of 150 again and he didnt approve, and pointed towards another bus company. I didnt leave and presented him the money. He told me to wait and went onboard the bus to speak to the driver. After a short conversation the man introduced me to the bus driver who happily accepted my offer….and I was on my way. 150 pesos, less than all these other customers who’d actually pre booked there tickets haha.
However, by being so fortunate. I ended up being a little too well off. I got to the airport and as it was so small, your booking must only be 2 hours before the departure or you have to wait outside. I was 5 hours earlier than my departure.
I was able to find a cheap local shop with a Filipino lady cooking dishes for other Filipinos, always the best/cheapest places for food. However, after some eggs, bananas and rice I still had 3 hours to kill. There was a beach about an hours walk away, but as the sun was so bright and the temperate reaching 35°C plus I wsdny keen on walking. I headed in the direction on the beach until I reached a straight road where cars had to be heading in the same direction. I stopped a car and told him where i was going, and at that point it’s impossible to say no, so I hopped in.
At the little beach was a few local children and that was it. So different to Boracay. It was actually peaceful.
Peaceful until the friendly Filipinos want to have a chat anyway. This man with his family swam over and we had a long chat.
Eventually he needed to leave. Which I was grateful for…..until I realised I needed to get back to the airport. I shouted over to him and I asked him how he was travelling. But, like most Filipinos, he had him his brother and his brothers son all on one scooter. I asked anyway.
His brother was driving to scooter and as Filipinos are always so kind he said yes, he ditched his son and brother for 20 minutes as he drove me to the airport.
The flight was on time and arrived at the airport roughly the same time as Harry and Liv.
We met at the airport and got a taxi to our hostel in Cebu.
Harry, I landed in Manila and luckily I’d been able to sort us a place to stay for free using Couchsurfing.
The man was called Tefeet and he was kind enough to meet us at the airport. Together we hopped on a jeepney, which was a new mode of transport for us but definitely the most common for locals, costing only 9 pesos (38p) for any journey.
Tefeet invited us into his home and later he showed us a small outdoor food court with local delicacies. Afterwards, we bought some bottles of beer and watched a sci-fi movie.
Not the most flattering photo but one of the few we had together
Tefeet then told us he was leaving to go on holiday at 7am the next day, but that we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted, and he handed us a key?! We’d only known the guy a couple hours!
11th – 14th July
Boracay
In the morning, Harry and I headed back to the airport to meet Liv and catch our 2pm flight to Caticlan.
From Caticlan we caught a boat over to Boracay.
Boracay is a beautiful island and had recently had it’s famous White Beach thoroughly cleaned, the island was closed for tourists weeks before we arrived!
We stayed at the Mad Monkeys hostel, which is very much a party hostel, giving free shots every hour from about 7pm. The beach area was overcrowded with western businesses like KFC, Starbucks and all those, kind of ruined the atmosphere a bit. Besides this the beach was stunning.
Had a few nights out, the bars had touristy prices but had a good atmosphere. A few lady-boys on the beach made us laugh a few times. And made friends on the beach with some…funny stories.
The first night Harry and I found a hostel called The Little Red Dot, it was a cosy place, often for budget travellers which is perfect as this is where you find all the like minded travellers. It gave free breakfast, which was unlimited bread and spreads (I must of had about 8 slices each morning) and the beds were comfortable. Better still, after an hour of being there we found bed bugs, and so to keep us happy and I presume preventing us telling other guests, our beds were upgraded to private pods.
For travel we bought the Singapore Tourist Pass for 3 days, which is by far the cheapest way tot travel. It cost 30 Singapore dollars which included rental of the card, 10 dollars, and you get this back when you return the card. So in total 20 SGD for 3 days of unlimited public transport, incredible deal.
We met Josh in Singapore quite early from our arrival, as he was there to visit his rich friends, and straight away we hit the common tourist areas of the Country/City. First, the three of us visited The Shoppes nearby Marina Bay Sands. The mall has a river flowing through the centre and is surrounded by luxury brands and extremely overpriced clothes.
After visiting a few shops imagining we were potential customers we hit the streets for some amazing views.
The City is a hotspot for advertising modern technology which was seem indefinitely everyday we walked this area. It was often difficult to get close enough to see what was being demonstrated, but the first day we saw a robotic pavement litter picker/cleaner. The demonstrations often caused pathways to be blocked off as it was crowded by cameras presumably shooting advertisements.
The Red Dot Design Museum gave Josh and I an introduction to the future, and it literally blew our minds. The technology in this place was crazy. It showed three-dimensional prints of polynomial functions, the future of bi-wheeled transport, clothing designs for the next generation integrating nature and providing almost superhuman capabilities, high definition foetal scans and so many crazy inventions.
We also visited the Hawker centre, and after the first time eating there I insisted we went there everyday for lunch! The Hawker centre is known for gathering chefs who have dedicated their lives to perfecting a certain speciality dish. There is food from all over the world and, due to it’s popularity, the food is ridiculously under-priced for the quality. I can’t even remember everything I tried but one lunch I tasted almost every part of a pig including mulitple internal organs, spine meant and even the trotter!
One of the best places we visited was Gardens By The Bay. There was a large building dedicated to exhibiting a variety of plant species. The walk was fascinating, we spent a fair few hours walking around.
I feel we also times the trip well. First, we walked around this building from around mid afternoon, and just before it was getting dark headed to the Supertrees, which is probably the main attraction. It was best to visit these trees as it was getting dark as there were two light shows, the first about 1930 and another around 2130. We watched the first from the floor, below the trees, and timed the second so that we were on the sky walk during the light show. And, if you’re visiting Gardens By The Bay, I would recommend trying to do the same. However, even with a skywalk entrance ticket you need to queue again once inside to receive a time slot from the skywalk. About 2045 is perfect as the queue was long and it took some time to actually get onto the skywalk platform.
A photo from the Skywalk during the lightshow
Despite having the Singapore Tourist Pass (STP), the City is still huge. So what the three of us did was use Grab’s eScooters. These were electric scooters dotted around the city and aren’t expensive to use (and also really fun).
Near the end of our Singapore travels we visited the Bukit Timah nature reserve. This is great as it’s free to enter, but if you can plan it so that there’s an opera event at the Singapore Lyric Opera, I would suggest doing so. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to plan it in advanced, but we visited the park almost an hour after a show finished and it looks like such an amazing place to be able to watch a performance.
A memorable night in Singapore was the night my STP ran out. I had planned to stay at a campsite in East Coast Park, after successfully staying in the West Coast Park the previous night. Once I got off the bus I walked for about 45 minutes in the direction of the park. Or so I thought. I had walked completely the opposite direction, meaning the walk back was now an hour and a half, and with a 12kg backpack I really couldn’t be bothered. Due to my annoyance I decided to just keep walking to try and find a couple trees to place my hammock between. At this point it was 2300, and my STP would run out in 1 hour as it was now the third day of visiting Singapore. With no luck I’d walked for almost an hour unable to find a decent spot, so now at 2355 I was running out of time, and so thought, f*ck it, i’ll get on a random bus. This didn’t quite work out as the moment I got on the bus, 2355, it changed it’s direction and began to head further in the wrong direction.
And at gone midnight, the bus stopped at the bus terminal and demanded all the passengers to get off. I was stuck at a bus terminal with no money, no STP and no where to sleep. I walked to the MRT (Singapore’s train station thing) and was able to sneak behind a couple through the security gate as I pretended to scan my ticket. Annoyingly, the train I had hoped to get had stopped running, and the one train still to come was once again heading in the wrong direction. But as I couldn’t leave without a valid ticket, I had no choice but to get on it as I needed to follow someone back out of the security gate. At the train’s final stop I get off and use the same trick to get through security. The people of Singapore are very friendly, but the few people left on the train were unable to give me a bed/couch to sleep on, however one guy walked me to a 24 hour McDonalds. At McDonalds I sat for about 30 minutes before asking the manager if he wanted me to work, I was desperately bored. He was confused and said no. The trains didn’t run again until 5am, I told him my situation and he said I could sleep in the McDonalds. He then asked if I’d eaten and I said I hadn’t but that I hadn’t any money, and a couple minutes later he handed me a tray of food and told me to make myself comfortable and that I could stay for as long as I needed. The night ended well thanks to this friendly McDonalds manager.
I ate the meal and fell asleep at the table for a few hours before sneaking back onto the MRT to meet back up with Harry so that we could get our flight to Kuala Lumpur.
Bali (This is from 20th June until I left Bali, but I started writing this journal afterward Bali, so this is a throwback)
Arrived in Denpasar, asked a guy sitting on a curb to give me a ride to the hostel where Harry, Emily, Katie, Liv, Josh and Rob were staying and he said he would do it for the price of a grab, which was fair enough.
Arrived in the town of the hostel but of course I didn’t have wifi to load the actual address, so he instead dropped me off in the centre. I walked around until I found a restaurant with wifi and luckily it was only a 20 minute walk.
Met them all in the hostel, said hello, had a quick shower and we all sat and played uno and I learnt how to play the monopoly card game.
Bali The Villa
After a few days of hostelling it was time to move to the villa we’d all been looking forward to! And it was definitely worth the wait.
I had the master bedroom with Harry and Josh, this was our private pool.
We spent days at the rice fields, which you don’t have to for pay by the way, despite people trying to convince you otherwise.
We did also spend so much time in the villa, and why not when you’ve got such an incredible villa and spent so much money on it. We really got into monopoly cards, we played an awful lot and it is a really great game.
Also the roof of the villa had amazing views, so I enjoyed climbing up onto the roof to chill out and get away from it all every now and again.
Katie, Emily and I went to the monkey sanctuary but we were all tired and weren’t that keen going in, so tried to sneak in unsuccessfully and then went back home in the pool.
One day, when everyone was hung over Harry and I went on a moped ride to a temple. We had a slow but well needed walk around the temple which has some amazing sites to see.
After we went to a market used much more by locals and not heard of by many tourists. The market sold genuine designer clothes that’d been left over from when Bali was given clothes and food in aid of the countries disaster. Annoyingly, none of it was sorted which meant lots of time was used trying to find mens clothes my size, and it ended up taking more time than it was worth. So we went out and found some little lady serving Mie Gorengs/Nasi Gorengs, which is basically either rice/noodles with egg and some herbs and sometimes meat. They were always the cheapest meal and Rob and I used their price on a menu to decide whether a restaurant was good value. Here, Harry and I found a nasi goreng for 12,000 Rupiah (60p) and was the cheapest one we ever found.
One of my favourite mornings was when everyone went out the night before and so I got up early while they were all hung over in bed to go on a run. I ran only a little before I found a clay tennis court being groomed by the cleaner. The cleaner was Balinese so I tried to communicate with him over google translate to try and convince him to play a game of tennis with me, but he wasnt keen as his boss wouldn’t like it and you were supposed to pay. As I was leaving a father and daughter came in and the father asked if I wanted to take his place, as he was only there to entertain his daughter. I said yes, and the daughter, Bella, was very good at tennis, beating me every game. I didn’t mind as we had some very good rallies and I left with a smile and a story to tell when I got back to the villa.
But before getting back to the villa I was quite close to the beach, so I decided to run there before heading home. On the beach was a bunch of guys training in Tarung Derajat, which is indonesian martial arts. After watching for a couple minutes, one of the guys asked me to join in, and of course I did. Had a few friendly fights with quite a big guy, he threw me down a couple times and i was able to get him down a couple more. The owner then invited me to his other classes but unfortunately I was leaving before any of the others.
Saying goodbyes 😦
Once everyone had left, Emily and Katie to go home, Rob to head to Thailand and Josh to Singapore, it was only Harry, Liv, Michelle and I left in the villa. Harry and I decided to meet up with Liv and Michelle at a hostel in Ubud (the cheapest hostel in Ubud😆) while they stayed around the area for a night more.
The day it was just Harry and I we decided to do a trek up Mount Batur. We were up at 1am, had a minivan of 3 hours to the base and walked up to a good viewpoint to watch the sunrise at 6:30am. The sunrise was disappointing but the trek itself made the trip anyway.
The temples were gorgeous and the other 3 really wanted to queue up in the 2 hour long line to get ‘the photo’. While they queued I left to do some Balinese praying. In the end, the photos were a work of art and we found the wait worth while.
Behind me in the photo was where you did the Balinese praying, and the two towers in the background is where the famous photos are taken.
The photographer uses a piece of black glass to make a reflection below the towers.
Harry and I left Bali together to head to Singapore. Michelle and Liv stayed a week or so more.
JC'ing 