Bohol, Philippines – 26 April to 7 May, 2007
We caught the mid morning OceanJet ferry from Cebu City to Tagbilaran, Bohol. The trip was about an hour and a half, and was similar to a plane ride with a seating configuration of 2/3/2 in an air conditioned cabin. We departed and arrived pretty much as scheduled, but we were back to our previous mode of operation in arriving without a hotel reservation and hoping for the best. We read about a small hotel on Alona Beach on Panglao Island which is connected to Bohol by bridge and is about 25 km from the pier in Tagbilaran. We phoned the hotel from the pier and they said they had a room for one night only, so we said we were on the way.
It was late afternoon by the time we arrived, so we just had time to do a quick scan of the beach after checking in. Alona Beach is the main tourist destination on Panglao, but the “resorts” are a major stretch to be called a resort. They are mostly small hotels and guest houses, and the public beach in front is only a few meters wide. We had dinner at a nearby restaurant and called it a night to get ready to move yet again the next day.
When we checked into the hotel at Alona Beach, they suggested another place on Doljo Beach on the north side of Panglao as everywhere on Alona Beach was booked because of the May Day holiday and the following few days of “fiesta”. The “resort” on Doljo Beach had space, so their driver picked us up the next morning and shuttled us to our new digs. We were the only ones there that day, and were assigned a nice but very basic and rustic bungalow at the edge of the property looking out onto the beach and water. We liked it so much this would become our home for the next ten days.
The next day we booked a trip to see some of the highlights of Bohol. The two most popular and well known are the Chocolate Hills, and the Tarsiers. The Chocolate Hills are a group of coral based hills spread over a few square miles. During the drier season, which we were at the end of, the vegetation on the hills turns brown, hence the name Chocolate hills. The Tarsier is sometimes referred to as the world’s smallest monkey, but it is not in fact a monkey. They are very small critters with a long tail weighing less than 200 grams, and with big wide eyes. They are an endangered species, and we visited them in a refuge where a few rescued specimens are roaming free in a large enclosed area, more to keep predators out than to keep the Tarsiers in as they could easily escape if so inclined
After our day of discovery around Bohol we were content to hang around the Doljo Beach area and nearby village. We whiled away the time relaxing in the hammocks, trying (hopelessly) to catch up on our journals, cooling off with an occasional swim and snorkeling, and walking into the adjacent village for a brewski or two.
As mentioned earlier, fiesta was being celebrated on Bohol while we are there, and in Bohol fiesta is a month long affair. Each village has their own dates, but the village we were adjacent to celebrated primarily on the 2nd and 3rd of May, with some fiestas both before and after those dates. D met some local children on a beach walk one morning, and they invited her to a dance competition the next evening. We arrived at the local outdoor basketball court where the contest was being held, and were soon met by the girls in their outfits ready for their chance to perform. One of the girls took each of our hands and led us to a bench along the court so we could sit and watch the performance. She sat between us beaming about her new friends, and we seemed to be the center of attraction for most of the children and some of their parents until the competition began.
The next few days were filled with chilling at the hotel overlooking the beach and enjoying the local festivities. The same basketball court that hosted the dance contest was home to a disco a couple of nights, a basketball competition, and a talent show of some kind which consisted of gay performers. We missed most of these except for the discos which we could appreciate from our bungalow, complete with the vibrating base, until four in the morning. One of the traditions of fiesta is visiting friend’s houses for a spread of local food. We were invited to a number of the local homes to eat, but we didn’t want to impose so we passed on the offers. We did have the opportunity to try a couple of the local home made deserts at one of the shops we visited for a beer a few times.
As tourists are only allowed to stay in the country for 21 days without visas and we needed 30, we headed into the provincial capital of Tagbilaran one day to find the local immigration office and get an extension to keep us legal. We walked about 4 kilometers to the nearest bus (Jeepney) stop, and saw the bus pull out just before we arrived. No problem, there were a couple of locals with motorcycles nearby who asked if we wanted a ride for a reasonable sum. This brought back memories of our moto rides in Cambodia and Vietnam, so we said yes on hopped on the backs of their motorcycles, really 125cc scooters.
Once we arrived in town and being sent in the wrong direction by our drivers, we asked at least eight people before we finally found the immigration office. Within a few minutes we had our extensions with much less hassle and waiting than we would have experienced in either Manila or Cebu where we had originally thought about getting them. We then walked around town for a while, and then decided to get a tricycle back to the hotel before dark.
A tricycle is the same small motorcycle/scooter we had ridden in on, only with a kind of sidecar attached. The sidecar has a roof, enclosed front and back, usually a parcel area just outside the back, and a bench seat that is just large enough for two Asian butts. For anyone who hasn’t noticed, we are not Asian, and both our butts would not fit on the seat at the same time. Needless to say it was an interesting and uncomfortable ride back the 25 kilometers to the hotel with at least one cheek hanging outside the tricycle at all times.
The locals thought that this was quite an amusing sight.
On a later day the entire community where our hotel was located lost power for the full day because of required maintenance, so we decided to make a day of it in Tagbilaran again. This time we arrived in the town of Panglao just in time to hop on a bus/Jeepney that was getting ready to leave. Unlike most, there was plenty of room on this one, and we were soon in town. We spent the day wandering, shopping for souvenirs, cooling off in the mall, and finally dinner at a seafood restaurant that was recommended to us. It was after dark when we made our way back to the area where the buses back to Panglao left from, and when we arrived there was a bus almost ready to leave. D squeezed on the last bench seat, and the “best seat on the bus” was reserved for J.
To set the stage, these busses are basically a Jeep with an elongated truck bed attached, which is why they are called Jeepneys. The Jeepney is the standard mode of transportation in most of the Philippines, and you can jump on and off at very cheap prices, usually about fourteen cents a ride. The long truck bed is fitted with bench seats running down each side, and there is a low roof that forces you to bend in half as you enter the bus and take your seat. As the benches on this one were full, J was provided with a backup seat, which consists of a short legged saw horse set in the aisle of the Jeepney. J was the first one on this seat, so he was just behind the cab facing toward it with someone on the back half of the saw horse looking to the rear. By the time the bus left, the entire aisle was full of saw horses with people sitting on them. We chalked this one up to yet another new experience.
Just a couple hundred meters in front of our hotel was a very nice coral reef with a good assortment of fish where we enjoyed snorkeling during our stay. However, the Philippines is noted as an excellent scuba diving destination with Bohol offering a number of good dive sites, so we figured we had to do at least one dive trip while we were there. We scheduled a two dive trip to Balacasag Island with the dive shop that is collocated with our hotel. Balacasag is a small island about a 20 minute boat ride from our hotel beach.
We were the only ones on the trip that day other than the crew of two and the dive master, and the day turned out to be sunny and clear. Our first dive was at a location called Black Forest where there was a very strong current. The plan was to drift along a wall and have the boat pick us up when we surfaced some ways away. This was a good dive but too fast moving for our liking as we really couldn’t slow down to look more closely at any interesting fish or corals. The second dive was at a popular site called Diver’s Heaven, and could be a shore dive from the government run resort on the island. This dive was much more interesting for us as we were able to look at the corals, scorpion fish, crabs, nudibranchs, etc. up close and personal. Both dives lasted an hour each, so we were exhausted by the time we arrived back at the hotel ready for a beer and siesta.
All too soon our time on Bohol came to an end as we still wanted to see the rice terraces north of Manila and it would take at few days to get back to Manila and then travel onward to Banaue. We considered flying back to Manila, but Cebu Pacific was still having trouble with Visa cards issued in the US, so we again booked the 24 hour ferry ride, this time in reverse from Cebu City to Manila.
Next stop Manila.
