A couple of weekends ago I went to Palawan, which is a group of gorgeous islands southwest of Luzon.  It was a spur of the moment sort of thing; a group of med students from Pittsburgh doing research with the NIH (where I work) invited me to come along, and it sounded like fun :)  I met the med students at the Puerto Princesa airport; once we were all there I used my Tagalog to help haggle down the price of a van + driver that we could use for the weekend.  In general the trip was really good for my tagalog speaking/comprehension — maybe I should be traveling more in general. 

Once we got a van and driver, we crowded in for the 2 hour drive to Sabang, which is home to an underground river!  There were a whole lotta people so we hwad to wait a while.  In the meantime we took goofy photos, which i don’t have a copy of at the moment.  The river itself was super cool and amusing — the guide pointed out rock formations that looked like Jesus, a mushroom, corn, an Easter candle, poop…obviously the guides have pretty good imaginations :P

After floating through the cave we stayed the night at Port Barton, a small town of 4000 that only has electricity from 6 PM to 11 PM every day.  When we drove in, you could see families chillin’ on their front porch, some of them in near-darkness.  Though it was already pretty late, some of us went to satiate the traveling muchies with a late dinner, where i hawd some yummy calamari.

In da morning we ate again (yay!) at a resort called Greenview, which had scrumptious corned beef (quickly becoming my new fav Filipino breakfast).  Then we hopped on a boat to do some island hopping!!  We went to two islands: ‘Exotic’ and ‘German’ island.  Since it’s off-season for tourists, there were very few people; it felt like we had rented out the islands for ourselves!  sooooo coool.  And apparently German Island is owned by a congressman in Palawan, but lets people visit the island?  Random.

After island hopping, we rode back to Puerto Princesa and got back early evening.  We found a place to stay for the night (one way to haggle:  have four people talking to the hotel owner simultaneously.  Thankfully he was very gracious about it), then roamed the streets for food, settling for an epic bar/grill type place that had really good sweet and sour lapu-lapu.  

But the night was not without incident:  While walking on a sidewalk that wasn’t well lit, I didn’t see a sewer hole, and my left leg fell in!  Thank goodness it was a really shallow one, but my knee got scraped up a bit.  One of the med students behind me underestimated what I meant by “hole” and basically fell in — she had to go back immediately to wash the poop off :(  The rest of up carried on, ‘cause there was a festival nearby!

At the festival, in true Pinoy fashion, there was a stage for dancing and singing, so we watched the local performers.  Afterwards we wandered around the shops and stumbled upon an even bigger stage with breakdancers.  But by that time it was getting late and people were pretty tired so we headed back.  

The next morning was my flight back to Manila (sadness!)  All in all, it was a really fun but brief vacation; hopefully I’ll be able to go back to Palawan with my family one of these days.

Next up:  Cavite!