Philippines

Because of Moran and Hadas, my friends from work, I was extra excited to go to the Philippines. They came back so excited from their holidays and I have to say, the Philippines is really worth visiting. It's so beautiful and the people are so nice! It doesn't matter with who we spoke, everyone is always happy to help and it feels like everyone is smiling all the time :-)
Because we only had 2 weeks, we decided to focus on 2-3 places, even though traveling isn't complicated but takes a lot of time and most of the time you will need to take a flight to the next place. So, we started off by taking the first flight to Kalibo straight from Manila, from there it's only a 3 hours’ drive to Buracay, our first location. The best way to

describe Buracay is a little island, with amazing white beaches and lots of options to sail around the island, go island hopping and parasailing. But because we knew that our next destination had even better island hopping, we mostly enjoyed the white beaches and its crazy clean sea water. Anyone that knows me a bit, knows that I like the sea, but many times hesitate to enter because of the creatures in the sea that freak me out. Here in Buracay (even though they have much scarier creatures than in Israel) I literally run into the water. Except from bath water, I have never seen such clean, and transparent water, so much fun to go into the sea then! As a side note, it made Yohan extra happy as he isn't crazy about going to the beach with me, as it normally means that he will spend 100% of the time in the water and me, wanting to be creature free, the entire time on the beach itself. Well you know what they say: "Happy hubby, happy wife!" (my own version on the "Happy wife, happy life!" ;-D ) At our last night in Buracay we were very lucky with the weather, so

we took our chance and found a boat that still had place for a sunset sail trip. I must say, that thanks to Yohan's bargaining skills we probably spent half the money than if I would have traveled alone. It normally starts with that I ask the price, that of course is as much as a house (special blond and blue eyes price), then Yohan ask for a better price, because we find it too expensive, that lowers the price already tremendously and then after they ask where we are from, the price always goes a bit more down, because of the answer “Israel”. For my not Israelis friends: the word "Israel" during bargaining means: I have checked with the locals already what is the real price and please don't think I am a stupid tourist ;-P But don’t worry, of course, even than we paid much more than Philippinos. For everything they have separated local and tourist prices, but well, sometimes you just have to let it go, when a 2-dollar haircut in the local barber is the tourist price, instead of the local 1 dollar price ;-)
After 4 really nice days we continued to the next destination, Puerto

Princesa. Because there isn't a direct flight, we had to fly again through Manila to get to the Island Palawan. As we wanted to spend as much as possible time in El Nido, we decided not to stay longer than a day in Puerto Princess and to continue straight to El Nido, a very good choice as we arrived to beautiful weather. For anyone that never visited El Nido, it's a small, very cute little place with beautiful sunsets and amazing options to go island hopping. There are 4 tours that you can choose: A, B, C or D. As they said that A and C are the nicest ones, we woke up early the next morning to join the A tour. It's hard to describe how much fun and beautiful the islands and lagoons are. It's easier to see it in the video's then in the pictures, but unfortunately I can't place them on the blog, but think about how paradise would look like and then you are very close :-D Crystal clear blue/green water, breath taking secret lagoons, white beaches, palm trees, amazing sea food cooked on the boat and only happy people. What else do you need!? If you ever think of going to the Philippines, you definitely need to visit El Nido!
The next morning, still high from the first trip, we started with tour C, this time with cloudy weather and much higher waves and yes, yes... you won't believe it, but I am starting to get the hang of it and even enjoyed the waves and splashing of the water in our faces this time ;-) In one of the places we visited, the boat stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we needed to swim 50 meters, go through a 5 meter cave and then suddenly you enter a secret beach, so nice and calm with almost no one there. We also did this day a lot of snorkeling, because the area is known for its beautiful corrals and we even saw lots of little Nemo's swimming around. Our tour guide warned us that we might encounter some sharks (he said they are vegetarian....) but luckily we didn't...:) All in all, a perfect second day in El Nido.
Except for island hopping there are many more things to explore in El Nido, so we rented a motorbike and went to the place where you can

zip line down the mountain into the little island in the sea. On the picture, I look pretty happy, because that was after we survived the zip line. But I had a few scary minutes when I realized, hanging in the air, that I won’t make it to the end and got stuck in the air for the last 15 meters and they had to pull themselves and pull me back to the end of the zip line. Pff… not my kind of thing, but Yohan really wanted it and what can I say:” All the things we do in name of love ;-P” After that we went to a waterfall close to El Nido, quite a hike and you need to take a guide as the path isn’t very clear through the jungle, but with a nice refreshing waterfall at the end of a long walk. Then we watched the sunset in the “Twin Beaches” and ended the day with a pizza in Altrove, an Italian restaurant that serves really tasty pizza’s and is so popular that we had to wait 45 min in line before we could get a table. Even though I hate waiting for so long in a line, especially when you’re hungry, the pizza was so worth waiting for! I would say, a perfect way to end our trip in the Philippines. We really, really enjoyed the Philippines! Can’t wait to find out if Indonesia is as amazing :-)