Davin Reporting!
Today we arrived in Puerta Princessa on the Philippine island of Palawan. We’ve been looking forward to this day, because we’ve scheduled a snorkeling tour. Hopefully this will take away some of the sting of missing out on the GBR. It turned out this tour was by van– always a worrisome discovery– fortunately, I managed to find a place with sufficient leg room in the back seat. As I’ve said before, sometimes being tall is a serious hassle!
As we got underway, an interesting aspect of this island became immediately apparent: cars were not the dominant force on the road, instead there were people driving motorcycles with an add-on shell that sort of turned them into a mini-car. The shell is reminiscent of an auto-rickshaw which you might see in India, but not quite the same.
[Kristin Interjection: I noticed later in the day that these strange mini-cars almost all had a woman’s name painted on the front. I imagine it was the name of the vehicle. There were some with masculine names like Hammerhead and Angelo.]
In any case, these motorcycle hybrids seemed to be as numerous as normal motorcycles, and normal motorcycles they were all over the road too! Traffic here was a bit chaotic, to say the least, with you having to basically force yourself into the street. The sounds of horns being sounded was constant, as people tried to get around each other, but no one seemed to take it personally. Apparently it’s just part of driving there, unlike in the developed world where we are reluctant to use the horn except as a last resort.
Congestion in the center of the city was especially bad, with a couple of streets nearly stopped dead. Fortunately, traffic improved as we got closer to the outskirts, and we were able to pick up more speed. The motorcycle hybrids don’t seem to be that fast, since we blasted by a number of them in our van. It’s probably not surprising, considering they are moving a lot more weight than they were originally designed for. Luckily, the drivers understood the need to keep to the right and let faster traffic pass!
One interesting thing I started to realize here in Puerta Princessa, and also in Papua New Guinea, is that our perception of a place is significantly affected by our own experiences. The closer something comes to our point of reference from our everyday lives, the more harshly we judge it. What I mean by that is, when we see a traditional thatched roof hut, we see it as quaint and perhaps even noble somehow. But when we see another hut with a rusty corrugated metal roof, we instead see it as poor and trashy, even though it’s very likely the metal roof actually works better than the thatched roof, and is easier to install.
[Kristin Interjection: This was the first of many countries where we would find that the electrical pole wires were very messy and disorganized. We began taking photos of the messes of wire to make a collection of photos to share with Scott. It is just very different than what we are used to seeing in more developed countries.]
In any case, after a few minutes of driving through the countryside, we arrived at a port where we were loaded on to the boats. Unfortunately, there were around 20 vans of people coming from the ship, and those of us in the later vans had to wait a long time for our boat to come in. Meanwhile, we were harassed by people selling trinkets. I actually felt bad for these people, since it seems like a crappy way to make a living, but I had absolutely no interest in anything they were selling. (These street peddlers are actually quite common in poorer countries, and it was actually nowhere near as bad in Puerta Princessa as it was in some other places.)
Our boat finally arrived and we began our travel out to one of the islands in the bay for our snorkeling experience. Interestingly, the design of boats varies from one location to another. In New Zealand and Australia, you saw a lot of catamarans. In Hawaii and some of the Pacific islands, you saw canoes with an attached outrigger (sort of a semi-catamaran). Here in the Phillippines they have fairly long and slender boats, with two attached outriggers. There’s no obvious reason why, for example, a catamaran would work any better in Australia than somewhere else, so it all seems to be based on cultural history.
On the way out, we passed by some fairly lush islands, and a few scattered mangroves. You could tell the water between some of these islands was extremely shallow, maybe not more than one or two feet deep, because mangroves were growing there. We were supposed to go around the outside of “Snake Island” en route to our destination, but this got vetoed by the some of the passengers in our group who insisted we just head straight there to save time (Kristin and I had no real opinion, so we just kept quiet).
As we approached our destination, I was a little bit concerned. The name of the island was “Isla Pandan”. The swimming area was marked by buoys and at first glance it looked like it only extended out about a hundred feet from shore. It seemed like the snorkeling here might be a disappointment! Regardless, we were here now, so we unloaded our gear on a specified table (there were actually barely enough tables for all of the groups from the ship!) and began the painstaking ritual of applying sunscreen.
I really hate the experience of applying sunscreen. It’s gooey and disgusting feeling and the process seems to take forever. I think it makes it even worse that I have fairly hairy arms and legs, because the stuff just gets caught in the hair and won’t move, requiring even more to be applied to get a full covering! Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil, since otherwise more than 15 minutes in the sun will leave a fair skinned person like me burnt to a crisp. (Oddly, this is a lesson a lot of the people on the ship apparently haven’t learned: you can see a lot of lobsters cooking out by the ship’s pool on a daily basis!)
The water was quite warm, so getting in was not a problem, and the snorkeling turned out to be a lot better than I expected. The swimming area was a lot larger than I initially thought, and we saw some very interesting fish. At first there were a lot of people in the water, but as I expected they all got out after only a few minutes, leaving Kristin and I and only a few others. It seems like most people can’t handle being in the water more than 20 or 30 minutes, whereas I can easily stay in for hours.
Unfortunately, my snorkeling mask didn’t have enough baby shampoo applied, so it kept fogging up and I had to keep dipping it in the water to clear it. We finally got out after 30-40 minutes to apply some more baby shampoo, which completely fixed the problem, and I regretted not doing it sooner (this is a really important tip for snorkeling, the difference it makes is huge!). My only other complaint was that the visibility was a bit limited due to the sand being stirred up, but there’s not much you can do about that.
[Kristin Interjection: One side of my mask was really fogging up too, but I had a decent view out of one side. You can see this in the pictures of myself!]
One exciting moment occurred when I was swimming along at fairly high speed and caught sight of a jellyfish directly in my path! It was one of those clear, translucent types, just sitting there in the water. Unfortunately, I turned back to warn Kristin not to swim into it, and then I couldn’t find it again afterwards for a picture. I didn’t want to spend too much time swimming around looking for it at the risk of getting stung, so we quickly headed for another part of the reef. (Since then I have begun to second guess myself: there is a small possibility that what I saw was only a plastic bag, but I’m pretty certain it was indeed a jellyfish.)
After finishing our snorkeling, we rinsed off in the freshwater showers on the island, dressed and headed back to the ship. There we unloaded our snorkeling gear and headed back out to take the free shuttle to the mall. The mall was an enclosed type, like Parkway Plaza, and a security guard at the entrance was checking the bags of all the locals entering. In an interesting double standard, we were allowed to enter without being checked at all (it’s sort of weird when racial profiling means you’re treated better than the natives).
The mall was probably about the size of Parkway Plaza, or maybe a bit smaller. It actually wasn’t much different than any western mall– even the stores were the same! The only thing that might tip you off to it being in the Phillippines was that there were a lot of Asian people walking around, as well as staffing the stores.
One thing that was kind of weird was that there was a church located in one wing of the mall. There may be some people in the U.S. who consider shopping malls to be sacred buildings, but this takes that to extremes. Here in the Phillippines, you can literally visit the mall without missing your church service! The only other aspect of the mall that was unique, was that there seemed to be a large number of small play-activities for children. So, the mall doubled not only as a church, but also an amusement park!
[Kristin Interjection: They were good quality kids activities too. I’m sure that Scott would love to have a lego “sandbox” at our local mall to send his theoretical future kids to play with!]
After walking around and checking everything out, we purchased a few things from the grocery store, and then visited Payless Shoes so Kristin could buy a better pair of formal shoes.
We rounded everything out by eating some Chinese food from a local restaurant, which was actually quite good (the only obviously “local” locations in the mall are restaurants). It wasn’t exactly like what we’d get back home, but it was pretty close.
[Kristin Interjection: It was interesting to note that there was a huge emphasis on eating chicken. There were at least four different chicken restaurants in this mall, and not really any other options. The “Chinese” place that we ate at was called “Classic Savory”. The menu had a baked chicken on the front. The food we ordered was a quarter “Savory Chicken” with Chinese style sides called “Savory Shanghai Rolls”, and “Long Life Pancit Canton”. The pancit canton was a noodle dish. We also ordered hot and sour soup. The food came with iced tea that tasted horrible. It was unbearably sweet with an overwhelming fake lemon taste. It tasted more like lemonade with a drop of tea. One odd thing was that the silverware was given to us in a cup of hot water! It must have been for sanitation purposes.]
It should be noted that the workers at the mall were mostly young, and all spoke at least passable English. Apparently, in the Phillippines, English is taught in schools, and learning it is considered to be important. As someone who speaks English, you can come here and get around pretty well– there’s no need to be able to speak Filipino at all.
[Kristin Interjection: We walked through a grocery store in the mall and thought it was interesting that all of the signs were in English. So, to find what you want to buy in the store, you must know enough English to read the signs over each aisle. I think it would be weird to live in a country there the signs were not in the official language of the country. Unless we are mistaken and English is an official language of the Philippines. We did not Google it.]
One thing I was left wondering was whether working in the mall holds the same low status here as it does in the U.S.? In the U.S. a mall job is basically considered to be crap, but in a place like the Phillippines, could it actually be a halfway desirable job? It certainly seemed like a step up from the people hawking trinkets on the street. The mall itself was also much nicer than much of the surrounding city.
Next Stop: Manila, Philippines (March 8, 2016)
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