Puerto Galera

Our room. there is an arrow pointing to it, its up on the hill side

View from the room

After an 2 hour bus ride from Manila to Basuanga we caught a ferry over to Sabang Beach in Puerto Galera which took about an hour. Sabang beach itself is certainly no Koh Rok but we are not here for the beach so it didnt matter to much. There is a lot of sea weed on the beach and the smell reminded me of the beaches in the UK which I quiet like. Luckily for us getting off the boat with our heavy bags was easy as two guys came on and carried them for us. I was quite happy for them to do this, i'd much rather pay someone to carry my bag than do it myself. We told the guys that we wanted to go to South Sea Divers as I had spoken with the owner the night before and he said he would be able to find us accomodation. However when we got there the place he usually goes to could only give us a room for one night as it was the start of Holy Week (Easter, its a Christian country). This sounded a bit of hassle as the room was a right trek away and we wanted to get settled somewhere and not have to move a day later. Billy went off to see if he could find anything better and about 10mins later he came back and said he had found a really nice room up on the hill side with an amazing view of the bay and that the room was ours for as long as we wanted it and someone would come and fetch our bags and take them to the room, bonus! Funnily enough it was the same guys who came to take our bags whom had helped us off the boat. I bet they were happy to find out they had to go to the other end of the beach with our bags!

The room we got was really nice and most importantly it had a hot shower! though the walk up to the room was a killer. It is properly up a hill and you have to walk up so many steps, but its good exercise.

It's quite a strange place Sabang, like I said before you dont come here for the beach, not only is there a lot of sea weed on it but it is tiny too, the shore is very close to the resorts. There seems to be a mixture of tourists. There are many dive resorts so obviously many divers, then there are people here on package holidays which is strange as its not a place I'd have picked to spend my 2 weeks vacation and then there are the single males here for the Flipino girls. Apparently with Manila, Puerto Galera is one of the country's prositution hotspots. That does make it sound like a grim place but its not that bad though there are quiet a few old, fat western men with a young Filipino girl on their arm, eewww!!

I cant say we can really get a true reflexion on what the Philippines is like in this town as it is a holiday town. There are many bars, restaurants and souvenir shops but its still a nice place to be. It is very convenient as everything that we may need is to hand.