Philippine Travel Log 7

Beautiful Beaches Not Seen By Me

Bali, Indonesia, the pride and joy of tourist destinations in Indonesia.  Tons of Aussies, a good deal of Dutch, and the rare American--Bali is almost more tourists than locals.  Any one not a tourist has a career selling crap to them.

We stayed in a hip little area called Kuta.  It is right on the beach with massive waves and packed beaches.  There are a lot of surfers from all over the world that come here to ride the waves.  We, however, came to dive underneath them. 

Everyday we would drive by the beautiful beaches at the butt crack of dawn to go to the more remote corners of the island in order to dive the best spots.  The spots that usually have volcanic rock beaches or no beach at all.  Everyday we would claim that later today, when we get back from diving we would go and check out the beach; perhaps see the much balihooed sunset. 

Everyday we would ride back to our hotel beat and exhausted from diving and crash in the room until around seven or eight pm then get up and paint the town.  We never actually stepped a foot on the lovely Bali beach, but we were continually informed by surfers at night what we were missing. 

I hate those smug bastards.

The diving in Bali is fantastic.  We dove a WW II ship wreck called the US Liberty.  It kicked ass and had some incredible visibility.  Once I get back stateside and have the comfort of my Apple computer I will post some underwater pics.  The diving was made slightly less enjoyable by the constant problem of breaking some of the cardinal rules of diving:  Always get lots of sleep before a dive, and Never dive hung over.  If they really expected divers to follow those rules they should stop putting all the best dive sites in party towns.  One of our dive masters could detect the trouble from our blood shot eyes and the smell of alcohol toxins oozing from our pores, so he made a point to instruct us that if you are going to puke under water, just go ahead and puke into your regulator (the mouth piece you breath from) and then clear it by blowing the puke out.  Luckily all divers have a main and a back up regulator.  I informed Chad and Manius that if I felt nauseas I was going to swim up behind them and pull thei back up regulator and puke into it.  The whole dive they would not let me get within arms reach of them.

I hate those selfish bastards.

We only had about five days to spend in Indonesia.  Manius flies back stateside tonight and I leave in a few days.  We are killing the last few days in Manila trying to recuperate from four weeks of wonderful debauchery.  Soon it will back to real life.  Work.  Bills.  Responsibilities.

I hate those responsible bastards.

•   Comments(4)    Posted by killer on 09/05 at 12:14 AM
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Philippine Travel Log 6

Manius Vs. The Sea

Once again, a long time between posts.  This picks up in Sabang on the island of Palawan.

We rode about two hours up the coast to a small town called Sabang.  It is most known for it’s underground river--a giant cave river that you can boat into.  We were taken in to about 3km.  We asked our guide/boat paddler how far the river went, but he just said, “I don’t know.  I have never gone further than 3km.” It was tempting to over power him and forge ahead into unknown territories, but if we got lost, we did not have enough beer to last an extended journey.

Being a cave, it was pitch black and full of bats.  There were a lot of typical cave formations: Stalagmites, Stalactites, Columns, etc., but what was strange was that it was also filled with Swallows; small birds, that will bombard you if they feel you are too close to their nest.  All we had was one big flash light to watch out for a bird attack.  The cave was awesome, but the hike to get there was incredible.  We treked through a monkey filled jungle, over mountainous terrain, along the beach and finally reached the mouth of the cave. 

It took us over two hours to get there.  Unfortunately for Manius, he was having some difficulties with his intestinal fortitude.  At one point he had a serious conundrum:  Take a dump in a mysterious tropical forest, wiping himself with unknown foliage, or strip down and brave the ocean waves to have an aqua dump.  Fearing an attack by rabid monkeys or accidentally shitting on a poisonous snake, he opted to aqua dump. 

Manius stripped down, ran into the ocean and added to the desecration of the delicate coral reef.  It was quite comical to watch him keep bouncing along in the waves; partly due to the rolling tide and partly because he was trying to stay one step ahead of his own excrement. 

We would leave Sabang and take the van back into Puerto Princessa, which is the capital city of Palawan.  We spent a couple of nights there, awaiting our flight back to Manila.  It was mostly spent playing pool and hanging out with some other Westerners that we had met.  We ended up at another Kareoke joint and I sang Nirvana’s “All Apologies”.  For the record, when in a foreign land, “All Apologies” is not really a crowd pleaser.  Especially when an attempt is made to sound like Kurt Cobain.  It was dead silent and I think I set back the US image in this town for years to come.  I don’t feel it is my fault.  The Kareoke operator bears some responsibility to not offer songs like that.

We jumped from Palawan to Manila, spent the night, and then caught an early flight to Jakarta, Indonesia.  The plan was to then catch the quickest flight over to Bali.  More on that next time.

I am finally posting some pics.  I was going to post more, including some of the under water shots, but although I finally found a decent internet connection, it does not have a disk drive and I have already put all those pics on disk.  So, more to come.

This first shot is from Tagatay, the Lake with an island, with a volcano, with an island, with a lake.  We hiked down the mountain for what must have been 7km to reach it.

This is in Boracay, our amazing lush garden bungalow.

Here is a shot of the beach about 100 yards from our bungalow in Boracay.

In Sabang, Palawan, this was our small hut on the beach.

This is the view from our beach side hut in Sabang.

The beach view in Sabang, this is also the forest we hiked through and ten feet to the left is the location of the notorious aqua dump.

The aqua dump drove Manius crazy and he attacked Chad with a coconut.

Our pool bar in Bali.  After just a few of these local beers and we would start an all out wrestling battle in the poot.  Luckily it appeared there was no one else staying at our resort.  This also allows a glimpse at my body art.

•   Comments(9)    Posted by killer on 09/03 at 06:34 PM
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