'Twas my first trip to the Philippines and it did not disappoint. Combination of my love for marine biology (I haven't done anything related to marine life for quite a while and this trip reawakened all my love for it), the chance to swim with whale sharks, and the specific need for a beach getaway (because don't get me wrong I love city/winter holidays but sometimes you just need to see a whole load of blue sky and blue sea).
Day 1
We took a 3.5h flight to Cebu, followed by a van ride to Moalboal which took just under 3h (left the Cebu airport at 6pm, reached slightly before 9pm). Along the way, we stopped at Jollibee's for dinner. It was my first time trying their food and basically I like their hot dogs and peach & mango pies (actually everything with mango from the Philippines is just awesome) but the burger had weird cheese and wasn't very nice. Aunty A had gotten the burger and made a face after her first bite, but I think Mei didn't mind the strangeness as much so she ended up finishing it.
Anyway, we reached Eve's Kiosk, settled into our beds and I killed all the daddy-long-legs in the toilet (later Donny told us to keep them alive to eat the mosquitos, but Uncle P had got us mosquito coils anyway, and I don't like having to bathe in a bathroom filled with spiders). We had 3 beds in our room, 2 singles and 1 double. The 2 singles were positioned parallel to each other on opposite sides of the room, so when Mei chose the one nearer the further wall, I was going to take the other. That was till I looked up and saw this humungous daddy-long-legs casually lying in its web above me. Since the idea of that spider suddenly deciding to descend on me in the middle of the night is not so welcome, I ended up taking the double bed. Anyway, thankfully it remained in the exact same position throughout the entire trip and didn't bother us. A hermit crab wandered into the corridor and pinched Uncle P when he picked it up, and he later let it loose in the garden.
Here's a bit about the place where we're staying, according to Pastor Ivan:
A while ago a man named Nelson figured out how to dive on his own. Then he set up a little shelter with some diving gear underneath some trees and waited for tourists interested in being taken out for dives. Later on he got properly certified and expanded in what's now known as Nelson's Scuba Diving Shop. Eve is his sister and her kiosk is right beside it. Eve's Kiosk is also the only locally run lodging in the area (the other places are run by Koreans, Chinese, etc). It's quite nice that the whole thing is within the family.
It's a quiet place, outside which children play basketball in the evenings, and a satay stall that sells parts like livers and hearts opens in the afternoon. It's a smallish (20+ rooms) but the locals are very sweet and friendly and take our meal orders with a smile every time. And the bacon is very nice.
It's a quiet place, outside which children play basketball in the evenings, and a satay stall that sells parts like livers and hearts opens in the afternoon. It's a smallish (20+ rooms) but the locals are very sweet and friendly and take our meal orders with a smile every time. And the bacon is very nice.
Day 2
After breakfast, we headed over to Nelson's Diving Shop to rent snorkelling gear and for the divers to change into their wetsuits.
The boat left at 9am, and I was really excited because it would be my first time snorkelling in the sea in about 10 years. (The last time I was either 7 or 8 I think.) It would also be my first time snorkelling in the open sea, because we stayed by reefs very near shore last time Dad took Dan & I snorkelling, seeing as we were so young at the time. It was also Mei's first time snorkelling ever, and Aunty A's first time diving.
The boat left at 9am, and I was really excited because it would be my first time snorkelling in the sea in about 10 years. (The last time I was either 7 or 8 I think.) It would also be my first time snorkelling in the open sea, because we stayed by reefs very near shore last time Dad took Dan & I snorkelling, seeing as we were so young at the time. It was also Mei's first time snorkelling ever, and Aunty A's first time diving.
During our first round snorkelling, Uncle P dived a couple metres below us to look out for interesting creatures to point out to us. Other than the usual sea cucumbers and starfish, he picked up things like nudibranchs and hydroids for us. We also spotted a lion fish! Jake, our local snorkelling guide, saw a black-and-white-striped sea snake and caught it just behind its head to bring up to us, which was really cool (the last time I saw a wild sea snake was on a fishing trip with Dad when I was 5). He had some nerve catching it like that though, considering how poisonous sea snakes are. It quickly swam off after he released it.
Mei'd gotten me a waterproof case for the phone for use in this trip. It did the job of keeping my phone dry. Unfortunately, it wouldn't detect my touch underwater, so I could only take photos above water. My first day attempts at underwater shots turned out quite rubbish because I couldn't take shots when I wanted to, then I couldn't turn my camera off, so as I swam it took a bunch of photos like these.
We went back to the boat after about 25min for the divers to rest.
So I found out that after diving, you have to rest and let all the nitrogen get out of your blood after a dive, because nitrogen (from the tanks) in the blood creates small bubbles which don't give you a problem deep down, but as you get nearer the surface, they expand and can block the blood vessels. The length of time you stay under depends on how deep you go (the deeper the less time). You also can't stay under too long if you're over-exerting yourself or if it's cold (because bubbles will expand more nearer the surface if it's colder when deeper).
After hanging around the boat (literally) for the rest time to pass, the divers went back down and Mei & I snorkeled again. There weren't as many interesting things to see the second time round though.
We returned to Eve's Kiosk for lunch where I had fish & chips, which was really yummy because the fish was grouper and the chips were real cut potatoes, not the processed things.
In the afternoon, Aunty A rested while the rest of us went back out. The divers went down for a pretty long time this third time. And we got to see loads of creatures while snorkeling. We saw 2 turtles (yay!) and there was a small boxfish and various angelfish and clownfish and a pretty huge blue and yellow box-like fish about 30cm long (huge for a snorkeling sort of depth), which seemed to be stuck in some coral at first, but later slowly bumbled along. While following one of the turtles, I accidentally swam into a school of pink jellyfish. I hadn't noticed them because I was focusing on the turtle (lesson learnt to pay attention to existing surroundings) but then I realised there was a whole lot of them around and got stung a few times while trying to swim around them. It all felt like a far less scary version of Finding Nemo. (Seriously, how do these pink jellyfish randomly materialise out of nowhere?) The stings weren't very painful though, just like ant bites. Jellyfish genuinely do look too similar to plastic bags underwater, and now I really understand why turtles and dolphins accidentally eat loads of plastic bags, thinking they are jellyfish.
We headed back in the evening, had about an hour to bathe and relax before heading out to a restaurant called Chili for a dinner of pizza. Uncle P and Donny had excitedly told us beforehand that they served the best pizza in the world. I thought it was nice but I don't know if it was the best, but then again I'm not quite the food connoisseur anyway. But there we had our first mango shakes, instantly fell in love, and would proceed to have mango shakes every day for the rest of the trip.
It got dark by about 7pm. After dinner, we had a short walk around the area before heading back. On the way we stumbled upon a place called Naomi's book club and bottle museum. Within the premises there stood hundreds of bottles...all of which looked nearly identical. Quite possibly Naomi simply saves the bottle every time she has a drink.
Day 3
We headed to Pescador island, where we saw loads of colourful fish and a turtle in our first snorkel.
The waters later got too choppy for snorkeling during the second round of diving so Mei and I hung around round the boat's ladder and ropes in the sea while the huge waves splashed us around. It was sort of like bobbing around in those lazy rivers in Wild Wild Wet/Adventure Cove, with far more exciting waves swinging us around. Every now and then, we'd get an extra large splash of saltwater on our faces.
We had lunch at Eve's Kiosk and I tried some kinilaw, which is made of raw tuna, but gets a bit boring in flavour after a while because everything is drowned in the same sauce.
After lunch, we headed to another diving site (I think it was called Pasai). I went snorkeling alone with the guide while Mei stayed on the boat. We got to spot another turtle which swam up to about 5m below the surface. Jake spotted an eel hiding in one of the corals and used a stick to poke around in the hole, so the eel dashed out and into another coral. I also saw loads of pipefish and razorfish and what looked like gobies (but I wasn't too sure what they are).
After lunch, we headed to another diving site (I think it was called Pasai). I went snorkeling alone with the guide while Mei stayed on the boat. We got to spot another turtle which swam up to about 5m below the surface. Jake spotted an eel hiding in one of the corals and used a stick to poke around in the hole, so the eel dashed out and into another coral. I also saw loads of pipefish and razorfish and what looked like gobies (but I wasn't too sure what they are).
PS. Google mandarin gobies. Aren't they beautiful? The ones I saw were brown and white though, not nearly as pretty.
Uncle P tried to let me try assisted diving for a very short while at the end of his dive, but we couldn't swim very deep because I was too buoyant and kept floating back up. He said I'd probably need a weight, and it's easy for divers to go down because their tanks are heavy at the beginning of a dive.
In the evening, the divers went for an evening/night dive, and we couldn't join them because it's dangerous to snorkel at night, so we just relaxed at the hotel with more mango shake (best thing ever!) and fries.
In the evening, the divers went for an evening/night dive, and we couldn't join them because it's dangerous to snorkel at night, so we just relaxed at the hotel with more mango shake (best thing ever!) and fries.
We had dinner at a place called Hot Stuff, and I had calamari adobo which turned out to be very salty.
Day 4
This time, we headed to the North side of Pescador island. I went snorkeling alone while Mei stayed on the boat to digest breakfast. There were plenty of colourful fish. Then they transferred us around the island, where we swam to shore and climbed up a terribly steep, rocky flight of steps to get to the island (and got stung by a jellyfish twice in the process, this time it had a sharp shooting electric pain which hurt quite a bit for a while, and I realised how terribly hard random single jellyfish are to spot and avoid). The various walls on the island were full of vandalism, so we added our names in various places alongside others who had dated theirs in the 1980s. I hope ours lasts.
Then we went to a second dive site called Talesai (not sure if I spelt it correctly). Here, we got to see whirlpools of sardines. It was an amazing experience to be totally surrounded by giant schools of small fish. Every time one swam nearer them, the schools would swim in 2 different directions while the fish nearer the middle would scramble around, wondering where to swim left or right, which was quite amusing.
We went back to Eve's kiosk for lunch, then went out snorkelling again, this time really near the kiosk, to see more sardines. This being the third day of snorkelling, I decided I was feeling more confident about things so I tried diving deeper (about 3-4m), sometimes to swim into sardine schools, sometimes to check out random interesting fish at closer proximity, like emperor angelfish, and sometimes to look for shells. There was a beautiful juvenile emperor angelfish, with its vivid blue, black and white patterns, swimming around the area. I spotted one small white shell in a sandier area and secretly took it home, feeling quite proud of myself for spotting it haha. (And now I have a shell I free dived on my own to get!)
There were more sardine schools and this time one little fish got lost from his school so I chased the poor little guy around for a while and got to touch him quite a few times.
Pastor Ivan tried to let me do assisted diving nearing the end of his dive but I couldn't get the regulator in my mouth the first few times I free dived down to him (you're supposed to breathe out when you put it in, before breathing in, and I didn't know that so I didn't know how to get the regulator in without letting water enter my mouth, so I kept resurfacing after a few attempts). When he came up and told me I was supposed to breathe out first and I put the regulator on at the surface, we were by then too buoyant to get back down. (One day I'll learn how to dive.)
It drizzled in the evening as I sat in the lobby to use the free wifi and enjoyed the wind and an Agatha Christie book. It was so lovely and peaceful, minusing those pesky giant mosquitos. Dinner was eaten at Little Corner Restaurant, which had fish and squids lying about at the entrance, and after dinner we played cards and laughed at the incredibly happy apples that were on the cards.
Photos from a combination of Mei's camera, my camera and my iPhone.
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