Manila Again

We left Puerto Galera on Easter Monday morning along with many other people. The boat was rammed and double over its allowed capacity of 40 people. The boat took about 1 hour and 40 mins and was very uncomfortable. Once off the boat we got straight on the connecting bus to Manila that took about 2 hours and took us straight to the hotel we were going to stay at which is really nice.

We got showered and had a wonder round the mall and popped on the Internet. I wasn't feeling to good so I went back to have a lie down and ended up in bed for the rest of the evening watching National Geographic and Robot Wars lol.

Today we had a right mare. We had to get visa extensions as ours run out on 19th April and our flight to Malaysia isn't until 24th May. After finally finding an ATM which worked to get cash to pay for the extension we got a taxi to the Immigration office. It was total chaos inside and not even organised chaos. It was a biggish room with rows of plastic seats in the middle and all around the outside was booths. So we went to this counter to ask where we needed to go and got told window whatever, so went to that window and got told to go to another window. At that window we were told to go to another window to get a form. Got to that window and there was a que. Got the form, filled it in, asked which window we needed, got directed to another window, handed in the forms, they got signed and stamped. Then had to go to another window to pay, then from that window had to go to another window and were told we had to return 3 hours later to pick up our passports with the updated visas! and that wasn't the end of it.

The National Museum was close by so we walked there through the old Spanish Fort. There are only the Fort's original walls remaining and inside a couple of old buildings but the rest has been rebuilt. To begin with it looked quite nice with some lovely looking buildings but then as we walked in further we started walking through some slums which were a little unnerving as there we no other tourists around. We kept getting harassed by the rickshaw drivers and one followed us all the way down this street saying stuff to our backs. We finally made it out to find the museum is closed until tomorrow due to renovations! The choices then was go to a huge shopping mall or go to the Chinese cemetery which is supposed to be quite impressive. Chinese Cemetery it was. I flagged a taxi and we got in. It didn't seem very far away on the map, maybe 6 km and the roads to it seemed to be straight highways but we had been going for ages all along these back streets. I started to get a bit concerned as we obviously wasn't going the right way or so it seemed. We got the map out and tried to find the street names we were passing but couldn't see them. Eventually we found a street name which was near the Cemetery and 45mins after we left the Immigration office we arrived. The driver obviously took us the longest way round possible but we couldn't just get out and get another taxi as he took us through some very dodgy areas for example, some of the shops had big steel bars across the front where customers had to shop and pay through! that's not a good sign and i didn't see any other taxis. Anyway, we got there and we were in a strange place. It was obviously the cemetery but not what we expected. Apparently the Cemetery is for wealthy Chinese people who have tombs and Mausoleums built. The first few we saw were very impressive and enormous. We hadn't got far and some guy who looked like a security guard and had a hand gun tucked in to his trousers pulled up on his motorbike beside us. He asked us what we were doing, which I thought strange as this place was in the Lonely Planet so surely tourists come here!! We said we were just having a look round and he asked if we knew someone deceased there. Obviously we said no and he was kinda like "oh" and advised us to be careful and went to ride off. Before he did i asked why should we be careful. He then said that further on down the road was a few streets which were quite dangerous and it was possible we could be "hold up". Hmm!! on that note we turned straight back round and walked out of the cemetery. It really wasn't going well. We had a little bit of a walk to the main road so we could catch a taxi and that was scary. I really didn't fancied getting robbed at gun point! We got to the main road and managed to get in to a taxi and got it to take us back to the Immigration office. This time it took 15mins! We had a drink and something to eat and then it was time to get our passports back.

Immigration round 2! We got inside and it was manic. The room was absolutely chocka with people. We fought our way to the counter and asked which window we needed. Unfortunately many other people needed that window too and there was a massive que. but due to the sitting in the middle of the room it was impossible to que in a straight line and so ques for 3 windows were merged together in this huge mass off people. After half an hour of standing in what seemed immense heat they turned on the ceiling fans which relieved the heat a bit and then a seat became available so i sat down. It was really frustrating as there was no one at the window, the que was not moving at all. After about 40mins we heard someone say that the guy who signs the papers had gone missing and they were trying to locate him!! Finally someone turned up at the window and the que started to move. Unfortunately for some people there passports were still not ready and had to rejoin the back of the que after finally getting to the front. We were really hoping ours were ready. When Billy got to the counter we were lucky and ours were the very last 2 passports in the pile so we were able to get out of there and not rejoin the que! though this still took us 1hour 15mins.

Next stop HSBC bank. We needed to go to the HSBC as we read that we could draw out 20,000 Pesos instead of the usual 5000. We needed more as apparently there are not ATM's in Donsol where we are heading next. Once we got our cash we walked a short way to the travel agent to book our over night bus ticket to Legaspi where we will then have to catch another bus to Donsol. The walk there though was not nice. I'd kinda had enough of Manila for today and we got hassled so much. It's the only city that we have been to where we feel so unsafe. We walked past this one bank and there were so many armed security guards all with different types of heavy duty guns, from rifles to shotguns and M16 machine guns! Scary and this was a similar theme as we walked to the travel shop. We were also hassled by many homeless people and at one point were surrounded by homeless kids who would not leave us alone. I had no small change otherwise i would have given some money to them but i only had large denomination notes as just been to the cash point. I felt really bad walking around with this much money in my pocket and not giving anything but i couldn't and i wasn't about to try and get change for a note as i didn't want anyone to see me getting my purse out of my pocket. Eventually Billy had to shout NO to these kids to get them to leave us alone. Again a bit further on a homeless guy grabbed my hand to ask for money. Again i had to say no but i was really starting to freak out. I wasn't feeling safe at all. We got to the travel place and booked our tickets and walked back to the hotel which was quite close. I will be glad to leave here. I really don't like this city much.

Billy's Birthday

At the disco with a couple of vodka and redbulls :-)

The dance floor at the disco

Me with a glass of lovely red wine, I did manage not to spill any on my white outfit :-)

Billy enjoying a birthday beer with Sky

Me with the fire poi.

Billy blowing out his birthday candle

The meal.

What a nice place to be to spend your birthday. We woke up and the sun was shining, it was lovely and warm and the sea looked nice and calm. We went to the restaurant next to the dive shop for our usual mango shake and cup of tea before going to the dive shop to gear up. The first dive we did was really nice, very mellow and saw some beautiful stuff, unfortunately we had forgotten the camera, which was typical as I'd spotted a couple of amazing Nudibranch! After the dive we went and had breakfast at a place across the way where they do really good baguettes. Then sat in the dive shop before going on a 2nd dive. Again this was very nice and mellow. I had gone back up to the room in between dives to get the camera but unfortunately we didn't spot anything amazing though still saw some nice stuff. After the 2nd dive we chilled in the dive shop for a bit and then went back to room. For his birthday the dive shop were putting on a BBQ for Billy. I had arranged a cake which Billy was not aware of. So we headed back to the dive shop about 6:15 and got ourselves a drink. I brought a couple of bottles of red wine including one which was one of our favorite brands at home, I was quiet looking forward to cracking the bottle open I can tell you :-). The BBQ was great, Sky's wife made a gorgeous Filipino curry, rice, bbq'd aubergine, chicken satay and salad. Also for a starter we had "Sloppy Joe's" which apparently is an American dish (Sky is from Texas). It consists of a piece of bread, or in our case it was a bread roll cut in two and on top was a kind of bolognaise/chili and a slice of cheese. It was very nice indeed. After the bbq I brought the cake out to Billy much to his surprise and everyone sang happy birthday and he blew out his candle. The cake was really nice. The people at the bakery did such a good job, the cake was beautifully decorated and tasted divine. I got a vanilla and strawberry cake as I figured it was a safe flavour for everyone and I knew Billy liked this too.

After we were suitably stuffed and had a couple of glasses of red down us I did my fire poi. I hadn't wanted to wait much longer as I was starting to feel a little tipsy and I hadn't done fire poi for over 2 years and was feeling a tad nervous. I had brought a bottle of kerosene earlier in the day which would do me for a few goes which was a good job as I was a little rusty on the 1st go. No one really noticed though but I did have a huge audience. I did the poi on the beach outside the dive shop and to the right is a bar and the left a restaurant plus loads of people appeared on the beach. I decided not to notice and carried on what I was doing which after the first go i was ok. My heart was going like the clappers though lol :-) I did the poi a couple of more times to use up the kerosene and then relaxed to get drunk. We stayed for a few more drinks and then me and Billy headed to the new disco which had only opened the day before. The usual "discos" in Sabang are just go go bars, there is no dance floor but this was an actual disco. It was really good fun too. It was very funny to watch the local Filipino guys strutting their stuff like they owned the place and the music wasn't too bad. The guy who was serving our drinks was called Raymond, which we thought a bit unusual for a Filipino. He was such a nice guy though, he was only 17 and quite sweet. Whenever we needed a drink we would shout "RAYMOND" lol :-) As it was a disco it was quite expensive to drink so I found the cheap option which was vodka and red bull! We must have had about 4 each and was pretty steaming by the end of the night. We staggered back to the room and it was a right mission getting up the hill. At one point i fell over into the hedge at the side of the steps. It was quite funny as because it was slopped i fell downwards and my shoes got left on the path whilst i lay half in the hedge half on the grass. Billy was ahead of me and he shouted down to see if i was ok, I shouted back up to him that I had fallen over and he shouted back he had too lol! luckily we had no grass stains on our white clothes phew!

Needless to say the next day we didn't dive and spent the day recovering from a stonking hangover!! It was worth it though. Billy did seem to have a very good birthday.

Diving

Billy after his first birthday dive

The Singaporean couple we were diving with who were lovely

The boat man

Amil our dive guide looked very chilled

The Dive Shop

Diving Sabang

A Frog Fish

A Scorpion Fish, you really don't wanna touch that!

A Pipe Fish. From the same family as sea horses

One of the wrecks in Sabang bay

A White Tip Reef Shark sleeping in a cave at Sharks Cave

A beautiful Nudibranch

Nudibranch

The diving in Puerto Galera is really good. It was rare that we had less than 15m of visibility and there was so much colour under the water. Many variety's of soft coral and feather stars, every rock or bolder was covered in colour. There was many different fish and nudibranch which i love. There are nudibranch here we have never seen before and i generally spent most of the dive search the ground and rocks for new specimens. All the dive sites were extremely local too. Sometimes we would get on the boat to gear up immediately and then drop in after about 1 minute. The longest boat journey was about 5 minutes!! The best dive we did was called Sabang Wrecks. Three boats had been sunken purposely for diving. 2 were wooden boats so quite deteriorated and 1 was a steel ship. We did the dive twice and on the 2nd dive we had amazing visibility. As soon as we dropped in to the water we could see the boat underneath us and from the sea bottom we could see the other wreck too. One the steel ship there lives a Frog Fish. Billy had not seen one before and this particular one was a big one too, though very ugly. Unfortunately Billy's ear started to play up again so for a precaution we stopped diving to give his ear a rest before heading to Coron to dive the WWII wrecks.

We also managed to add another tick to the list. We saw a Sea Horse! It was a pigmy sea horse though which was absolutely tiny, and it was exactly the same colour as the soft coral it was living on. Our dive guide must have the most amazing eye sight to be able to find such a small thing.

Whale shark

Manta ray - Ticked

Dolphins (whilst diving)

Hammerhead shark

Octopus - Ticked

Sea horse - Ticked

Sea dragon

Mandarin fish

Bora Bora (Sun fish)