Philippines
BOHOL
Our first stop was a humid, small island, south of mainland Philippines called ‘Bohol’, lusciously overgrown with plantations and nature. We stayed in little wooden huts in the middle of the jungle which took 20 minutes to walk to along the dirt path from the main road so was peaceful and serene. While in Bohol we visited many tourist attractions such as the tarsier conservation centre (smallest monkey type in the world), the chocolate hills (shown to us by an English couple we made friends with from our ‘NutsHuts’ accommodation), the white sandy Panglao beach, the twin hanging bridge, and some famous waterfalls. We also spent time kayaking down the river in the Philippines jungle, encountering some insects you would never find back home, swimming in the insanely blue waters, chasing hidden waterfall, local dining in Loboc, talking to locals, walking through rice paddies and one of my favourite activities (as a treat on our last night) we took a river boat down the Loboc river to see the glowing fireflies light up the night sky. Between the beauty of the fireflies and the tropical palm trees featured in the starry surroundings- it felt magical and breath-taking! I had never seen swarms of fireflies before. I realised that the natural beauty of fireflies is that they can’t be observed through a camera lens, only through the human eye!
One of our highlights in Bohol was hunting down the cooling and picturesque local hidden waterfall, which we spent a few hours swimming in：
The lifestyle in Bohol seems to be very basic, very resourceful, very simple and very happy. There didn’t seem to be many means of contacting the outside world, many locals could speak English as well as their mother tongue ‘Tagalog’, the Wi-Fi was very limited wherever we went, there was only 1 ATM on the entire island, we never saw any homeless people, nor children playing on phones and the cell phones we did see were Nokia bricks and yet everyone still seemed so happy in this natural, simple way of life. Lots of houses were either basic homes or sheds and most of them were even broken, rundown or dilapidated looking but the Filipino people seem to make the most out of them no matter what. We used many forms of transport around the island- buses, ‘jeepies’, walking, kayaking, boats, tricycles and the most commonly used form of transportation being mopeds. The Philippine restaurants had a very limited selection of vegetarian food however the one dish we’ll never forget was a delicious bowl of vegetables in a ginger, creamy, coconut sauce which only cost us45 pesos (around 70p/ 6 元). We also tried a local favourite fruit called ‘Buka’ which is like a coconut - you drink the juice and then use the skin shaving to eat the slippery white pulp inside. Bohol was a breath of fresh air (quite literally - no pollution, woohoo)!
MANILA
Manila was... interesting to say the least! I loved seeing all the brightly coloured umbrellas filling the streets full of markets selling different trinkets, fruits, foods, accessories etc. However it didn’t feel like one of the safest places I’d experienced. There were also piles of rubbish polluting the river (we didn’t even realise it was a river until we spotted a tiny area absent of plastic and debris). I suppose though, once you get past the initial shock of how different it was from Bohol, I think it is definitely a place worth visiting for no more than 1 or 2 days. Most of the locals seemed to be friendly and we met some young primary school kids playing in the street who taught us some Tagalog and also how to play the ball game we had seen them play. Manila was a very busy city (especially on the sky trains) however we found a quaint little outdoor food court with relaxing live music and delicious curry which we thoroughly enjoyed. We also visited ‘Mall of Asia’ which is the biggest mall in Asia, before relaxing by the promenade to watch the pastel pink sunset on the sea’s horizon. We did, somehow, manage to misread our flight date and turned up to the airport the day before flying but I’m just glad we weren’t a day late. So having another “extra” day in Manila was a nice surprise. We had a lovely time in the Philippines and looked forward to our next adventure in Bali!
