puerto princesa part two

the next day was beach day, woohoo! we went to the gorgeous palawan beach and i finally went swimming. the water was very clear and there were a couple of fish just hanging out there, which i've never experienced before, so that was very cool. also many tiny beach creatures in the sand (see picture left (click to enlarge) this is a sand crab, about 1 cm wide, very quick in hiding, so i'm glad this one didn't) and i followed some just to see what they were up to. i laid in the sun for uhm, 15 minutes maybe (then it became unbearable) and my back turned into one big sunburn of course, but it's all good now. btw, people in the philippines usually don't sunbath. they find whiter skin prettier and they even sell whitening soap! they say people who are dark are considered 'working people' (sooooo france in the 1700s).

below some pictures of the beach:



luckily for me, we went to another beach the next day, but this one was was even better. we went to the island resort dos palmas, a 20 hectare private island, an hour or so away from honda bay. you can take a day trip, because staying at the resort itself is very pricy and in 2001 a couple of people were kidnapped there, so since then they've had a bad rep and making it able to stay at the resort for just a day will allow them to still make some money and show that it's safe to stay there.

on the way there:


the last picture is the resort from a distance

the resort:

arrival place surrounded by some cottages, welcoming committee and fish



it was so much fun. i went kayaking and snorkeling for the first time ever and took a lot of underwater pics, but those are printed old skool style, so i won't be able to post any...but there were some nemo's, a giant clam, pretty coral and some other very colourful fish i don't know the names of :)
i really didn't want to leave...

my dad and jade want to build a house on their property, since they will be moving there when my dad retires next year. the next morning back in puerto we went to an architect to see if he wanted to make a design. they explained to him what they had in mind and he was very excited and also had a couple of ideas. it was really interesting to see how much you need to think about when building a house and there are many things you need to take into consideration when designing it, especially when your house will be located on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
after that we walked around in town and went to the old market, which was quite the experience...


the front of a jeepney, a lady getting on a tricycle and a street view


another view, a guy fixing a watch and a tricycle up close

i love tricycles. it's so amazing how these things manage to work when most of them look like they are just about to fall apart. they are incredibly cheap to get around with (for example, from one side of town to the other is about 20 pesos, 30 euro cent) and you can find one almost anywhere. like jeepneys, they can carry so much around, i saw one with a stack of bottles on top two times as high as the tricycle itself, i was really pissed of i wasn't able to take a pic of that one. also some tricycles pick up multiple passengers (tricycle pooling?) and some even have 6 or 7! the roads you see in the pictures above are pretty good, but this is the main street called rizal avenue. most roads though are very shitty so when you're sitting in a tricycle, you better hold on tight.
and even though when you look at a busy street like this one where not all roads have lines and most traffic lights don't work and you just see one big chaos and wonder how people survive getting through, they do and they give each other space and time and everyone actually drives very chill and not totally agitated like in holland or singapore. so it may look bad, but it's really not.
below some random images of the old market. there was a fire nearby in june and due to a lack of water in fire hydrants in the city, it took a while before the fire was out, so the market also burnt down a little bit.


veggies, rice, red bananas


when i walk around with my camera people keep asking to have their picture taken, very funny since they sometimes get shy when i actually do put up my camera and they start laughing and try to hide :)


exploding fish eye, roasted pig heads and the last one is just in case you ever wondered what a fish looks like on the inside


salted eggs (i'm not a fan) an incredibly disgusting meat chopping board (click to enlarge and see all the old pieces of meat sticking in there) and a meat lady


some stalls and the floor at the fish section, sometimes a little bloody...


two ladies buying fish and a dusty ceiling

that night i made a failed attempt to eat balut, which is a philipino delicasey (see picture right, ah, still so full of courage). jade had told me about it back home (she's from the philippines fyi), and i really wanted to eat something weird so i told her i would do it...that was a really dumb decision...let me just tell you what it is and you'll know why: balut is a boiled egg with a premature chicken or duck embryo inside. what?! yes. she was eating it like it was a freaking hamburger or something, totally normal and my dad actually left the room hahaha. so anyway, my experience:


peel it, poke it and ask yourself why god why


get over the initial disgustment and take a bite, laugh nervously and decide to just take it apart by hand (you actually just see a baby chicken, with feathers and everything, sometimes even the beak)


found the head! licked it too (what, it's not like i ate it ok)


also found the drumstick and at the end wondered if i could put the baby chicken back together...

we left the next morning and drove to narra, a town near the tree farms. more about that next time.
and my passport has arrived back home! so no worries anymore :)