I ended up booking Seoul Incheon to Manila on NYE because it was the cheapest flight, although in hindsight I kind of wish I would have done NYE in Seoul. In Manila it was mostly just people lighting off bootleg fireworks in the streets, which was entertaining enough I suppose. Normally people don’t really stay in Manila because it’s kind of a dump, and the traffic is awful, but after spending not-backpacker sums of $$ in Japan and S Korea, I felt like I needed to recoup some of my spending by (hopefully) accumulating some nice stacks of Filipino Pesos. The biggest bill is about $20, so for the poker games I’m always carrying around a nice fat stack.
Although I’m going to mostly skip Manila poker stuff, because it was pretty unexciting! I stayed in a high rise condo Airbnb with a big fancy pool, although it was one of those places that makes you wonder how it’s rated 4.8, because it’s not THAT nice. Good communication with host I guess?! It was rainy so I could hardly use the pool, so I spent most of my afternoons wandering around the Mall of Asia, going to coffeeshops, catching up on my photos, getting massages, and really just a whole lot of nothing! But I needed it, my travel schedule was pretty hectic for Japan and South Korea and I can’t sustain breakneck travel speeds like I used to!
looks nicer in the photos
At night I mostly played at a casino called Okada, which was a really nice place to play, and they also had a little tournament series going on. I actually didn’t play in the tournaments, just the cash games at night. The games I played were the equivalent of $1-2 NL or $2-4. They did have some bigger games, but it was too difficult to get so much money out of the ATMs to play in them! Also losing big in the middle of trip would just annoy me too much, so I was happy to play in the smaller games. But they really weren’t exciting! Very tight, very passive, not much gambling going on. But it’s not that difficult to beat tight passive players and I won almost $2,000 to help discount some of my Philippines traveling. A somewhat boring week, but can’t complain!
The lobby of the Pearl Wing, Okada Casino
Next I booked a flight to the far western island of Palawan. I’ve actually been there before, about 10 years ago, and I wasn’t sure if I’d go back this trip, but looking at the weather forecast it seemed to have the best weather in the whole country, so I decided on round 2. The Philippines is experiencing a La Niña year, and looking at weather reports on the facebook group was kind of depressing, just extremely rainy and cloudy for January, which is supposed to be dry season for most of the country. I wanted to chase the sun!
No sun in Port Barton! But no rain either
I took an early flight to the capital city of Puerta Princessa and then had to wait a couple hours to grab a van to the small town of Port Barton, which is known for being a laid back, backpackery type place. No real large resorts or big hotels, lots of family run guesthouses to choose from, which is what I like. The owner of mine was a middle aged guy named Jeno, he just opened the place before covid (as Port Barton has been getting steadily more popular) and was very glad to see tourists coming back! Walking around the village, it was nice that is was a very local place, Filipinos lived here and the tourists were their guests. Little Bangka boats were everywhere, used for mostly for fishing. There were a few beach bars, some with live music in the evenings. I liked this place!
locals using the ropeswing
no place else to go but the beach at sunset
ooh finally some colors actually came out
I met a French couple and the next day we went off to go find the waterfall, which was about an hour hike, although the hike was mostly on the road, so not exactly the prettiest. It was a nice swimming hole and you could swim directly under the falls. Afterwards we walked to a mostly deserted beach where we bought some coconuts from the villagers and relaxed a bit before making the walk back. It was cloudy and I didn’t wear sunscreen though, rookie mistake.
The next day I did the island hopping tour, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We had a group with a bunch of solo travelers in it, two British girls, a Swiss girl, a Belgian guy, a lesbian French couple, a Canadian-Russian couple, and me. It was cloudy again, but the snorkeling sites were really pretty, we found a turtle to swim with, went to a local fishing village, a gorgeous beach, and had a massive fresh cooked lunch on the boat. In the Philippines they always seem to give you awesome lunches on the boat trips! A bunch of fresh fish, chicken adobo, salad, vegetable curry, fresh fruit, and loads of rice of course. Fantastic. At one of the stops I had a dog swim with me to the boat, and then he got on the boat, which was pretty cute. But he looked so sad when we had to put him back in the water to leave!
All of the single people got together that evening for drinks, and dinner, and then more drinks, and then for after hours you have find some reggae bar that’s a bit outside of town, which makes sense for the noise. It’s always fun to have a late night out every once in a while. Port Barton definitely had more a party scene than I was expecting. And compared to Korea and Japan, meeting people is quite a bit easier in the Philippines! Waking up for the 8am bus ride was a bit painful though, I was the last one in the van and they literally shove the door into me like I was a piece of luggage to get the door the close. A very uncomfortable 3.5 hours later we were in the very popular El Nido town.
nope, nobody is drunk in this photo