To Cruise, Perchance to Dream...

What could be nicer than spending Christmas in the warmth of the Philippines rather than freezing in sub zero temperatures in Beijing? If ever there is a no-brainer, this has to be it. And this year your favourite blogger has been to Busuanga island in the Calamian group of islands in the north of Palawan province.

 

The main town on Busuanga is Coron, confusingly located facing Coron Island, which is a mere 15 minutes boat ride away. Just in case you forget where you are, there is a Hollywood style notice on one of the hills proclaiming the place to one and all.

 

 

Busuanga Island is the second largest island in the province after Palawan island itself. It’s located about 310 km southwest of Manila and halfway between the islands of Mindoro and Palawan with the South China Sea located to the west. It’s fast developing as a major tourist destination, with scenic island beaches, wreck diving, river cruising in mangrove-laden forests, kayaking, hiking… well you name it. There are numerous islands surrounding it (with more than 1,000 islands in the Calamianes, actually) with white beaches and clear blue waters - perfect for snorkelling or scuba diving.

 

By all accounts, it’s very much quieter than the more (in)famous Boracay, though down by the port there is a short street in which I counted at least four karaoke / videoke bars – including one that caters specifically for senior citizens. Hmmm… I wonder if I would qualify?

 

 

The place is also being discovered by the Chinese and Arabs. In fact there is a new resort development way out of town owned by a Bahraini conglomerate that caters to the latter with halal food and shisha, among other things. As for the Chinese, well I assume the Oriental Lodging House has them in its sites. (And there was I thinking I’d have a few days away from Mao-morabilia.)

 

 

The highest point on the island is Mt. Tapyas – reachable by a 30-minute trek from the town proper, up a staircase of 100 steps (or more, depending on which web site you read – but unfortunately I don’t have the time this trip to actually find out!). At the top is a spacious viewing platform with a giant cross from which you can get spectacular views.

 

 

Despite its relative remoteness, you can get most of life’s essentials on the island from little shops and stalls dotted all over the place, though not surprisingly prices are somewhat higher than in the main conurbations of the Phils.

 

 

In 1902 Coron became registered as a town, officially having its name changed from Peñon de Coron (ie Crag of Coron) to Coron. In 1947, large scale deep sea fishing was introduced and the town experienced a major increase in population. But it still remains a small, quaint fishing town.

 

But for how much longer? In the past decade, there has been a rapid influx of scuba divers and other tourists, making tourism the major industry player in Coron today. And it’s not hard to see why.

 

In September 1944, a fleet of Japanese ships hiding in the harbour were sunk by the US navy. The Japanese had occupied the manganese mines, hence their presence in the natural harbour. As a result, there are twelve well preserved underwater shipwrecks surrounded with coral reef – truly a scuba paradise. Forbes Traveler Magazine lists Coron as one of the top 10 best scuba sites in the world; and nowadays it is one of the most visited destinations for wreck diving in the Philippines. The dive sites are found as shallow as 10-30 feet and as deep as 120-140 feet. Most are in the range of about 60-80 feet.

 

The waters are crystal clear and usually calm, with almost no current. As well as scuba diving, there are excellent snorkelling opportunities, with underwater visibility extending to 80 feet.

 

If you visit the Helldivers Bar – part of the Sea Dive Resort, you won’t be surprised to discover a whole load of memorabilia taken from the sea bed.

 

 

The best way to explore the islands of Coron Bay is with a bangka, or outrigger boat. They come in all sizes but are basically long and thin and the hull is made of marine plywood and painted with a number of coatings of epoxy paint. Normally each has two outriggers made of bamboo (known locally as katig) which act as very efficient stabilisers, and they are fitted with inboard engines.

 

 

First on every island-hopper’s agenda is the island of Coron - a 15 minute boat ride from the town of Coron itself, where dramatic limestone walls tower up out of the water. A reef protects the entrance to coves. Coron Island is home to 7 lakes but only two can be visited.

 

 

The island is undoubtedly the area's primary eco-tour destination for tourists. It’s the ancestral domain of an indigenous tribe called the Tagbanuas who manage the island in a sustainable way and keep outsiders offshore at night. As you berth at Coron, one of the first things you see is a large notice board proclaiming the rights of the Tagbanuas.

 

We have many sacred sites in our domain such as caves, forest, lakes, beach and the territories of the giant octopus, it reads. We regard our sacred sites with reverence and an innate sense of oneness with it. We keep our thoughts, speech and action pure and virtuous within our sacred sites. We are the caretakers of our environment in maintaining the richness and diversity of biological life for the welfare of present and future generations.

 

Within minutes we are greeted by an ape that is no doubt looking for a bit of freebie food. It sits watching us as we pass on by to the main attraction that a number of others have also come along to see…

 

 

As already mentioned, Coron Island has seven lakes, the most famous of which is the nationally-acclaimed “cleanest lake in the Philippines”, recognized as such for the last 5 consecutive years - the Kayangan Lake.

 

Every visitor has to pay 200 pesos (about £3), payable to the indigenous Tagbanua Foundation, to get there; and then climb a tortuous staircase up over a limestone rise, and down the other side.

 

 

The water is warm and slightly brackish, though it still counts as a freshwater lake, albeit that there must be some underwater connections to the outside sea since the fish are abundant, darting across the coral formations.

 

 

But the fish never get very big and with so many visitors to the lake every day they are not in the slightest bit scared off by human activity.

 

 

Another island, “just around the corner” from Coron Island is Cagbatan, better known as CYC Island; and this is where everyone seems to come for a beach picnic. With its pure white sand and blue waters, it’s not hard to see why.

 

 

This is one of the few islands around here where mangroves (known locally as bakawan) dominate the area. Some of the root formations are amazing even if the tops of these trees are somewhat underwhelming in comparison.

 

 

CYC Island is also used by many dive operators as a training site location, due to its shallow sandy shoreline that only tapers off to the depths ever so slowly.

 

It’s just as you would imagine yourself to be starring in some castaway film or TV series. Now, who is that handsome fellow staring out to shore?

 

 

Wake up! Wake up! Uh oh… could this have been a dream all along? No, dear blog reader. This is the Philippines!

Time for Philippine air companies to pull their socks up?

What is it about some businesses that make them believe all their customers are chronically short of a brain cell or three?

 

I am checking in at the Philippine Airlines counter at Beijing’s Terminal 2 (the old grotty one, not the brand spanking new gem that is T3). On the desk is a notice that advises passengers that due to the introduction of a new deal aimed at giving passengers a better service, they are now required to check in earlier.

 

What? Come again? I get a better service if I check in even earlier? Who thinks up these half baked ideas? And worse, who the hell in management then agrees with them going public?

 

It’s like the Phil’ Air web site. You book your ticket and then finally after what feels like hours you get to the start of the payment process; only to find that your visa card which you can use for just about every other transaction on the internet is not allowed as it wasn’t issued by a South East Asian bank. This, we are told, is better customer service because it protects your security! (As it happens, when I finally get over to the Phil’ Air office in downtown BJ to hand over real cash for a real ticket - well, a real piece of paper anyway - I am quoted a price considerably cheaper than that quoted on their web site, so all’s well in the end I suppose.)

 

Anyway, back to BJ’s T2 where Phil’ Air has been allocated a set of desks as far as possible from the main entrance. Tensions between China and the Philippines are still not resolved as those canny Filipinos don’t really fancy the Chinese laying claim to territory they have regarded as their own for many years. So petty things, like allocating them the worst check in desks, are now par for the course.
 

A bored looking Chinese handling agent is sitting playing with his computer screen. I hand over my passport and the Chinese agent starts bashing away on his keyboard.

And then he sits back and looks puzzled.
And presses a button.
And pokes it again – over and over… until he realises that he has forgotten to put blank tickets into the ticketing machine which is why nothing emanates as a result of his finger stabbing.

 

At last the machine wakes up and a ticket appears. “Here you are Mr Javier … sorry for the delay.”
“Errr - I’m not Mr Javier. Maybe that ticket belongs to another passenger?”

 

Your favourite blogger’s passport is once again inspected, just to make sure that I'm not Javier masquerading under another name. Obviously disappointed to find I am who I say I am, the ticket gets torn in two and the whole process starts from the top once again. Maybe this is the new deal that the above notice is referring to and this is indeed why passengers are advised to check in earlier? Or maybe the canny Capital Airport management puts their not-so-bright employees on the Phil’ Air check in leaving the crème de la crème to look after the better airlines?

 

 

My theory actually begins to gain credibility after we are told when sitting in the cabin waiting for take off that there will be a slight delay as they are “waiting for a piece of paper”. The so-called bit of paper they are waiting for is the official loading sheet without which an aircraft cannot take off. For some inexplicable reason the airport authorities haven’t handed the loading sheet over, so we wait… and wait… until 90 minutes after we should have left someone nonchalantly walks into the aircraft and hands over the offending sheet. Amazingly, though we – the passengers – have not been told what is going on, someone has the bright idea of accessing the Phil Air web site on their smartphone which informs us that departure time has been put back by – yes, you guessed it… 90 minutes!

 

We taxi out onto the apron and wait in the queue for getting onto the runway for take off. But the moment the aircraft in front of us has taken to the skies our captain regrets to inform us that owing to a technical problem with the steering we will have to return from whence we came so that the engineers can check it out.

 

We sit for another 45 minutes while all kinds of weird and wonderful servo noises rise through the body of the aircraft. Packets of peanuts are handed out to the more complaining of the passengers, except that they soon run out, leading to more complaints from the passengers who lost out in the scrimmage. Eventually, with the passengers getting restless, the crew take it upon themselves to start serving out the lunch trays. No sooner has every passenger been served a tepid meal (the auxiliary power had to be switched off for a while, hence the ovens were not running at their correct temperature) than we are told that the fault has finally been put right. But now of course we cannot take off until everything has been cleared up.

 

 

The Phil Air web site informs us that we will take off exactly five hours later than we should have done … and so it turns out to be.

 

Naturally, no sooner are we in the sky than half the planeload wants to visit the loos, so long queues develop along the aisle of this not-so-pristine Airbus A320. I wait till the queue has run its course and then go to inspect the plumbing myself. And wish I hadn’t. A thick brown scum has coagulated over the years under the loo seat, making me wonder if anyone has ever bothered to clean it. As they say, the picture below doesn’t do it justice. But I determine not to avail myself of Phil Air’s plumbing facilities in the future.

 

 

Apart from that, the flight is pretty uneventful. There are only overhead TV screens showing very second rate movies and hardly anyone even bothers to open their headset bags, let alone view the “entertainment”. Eventually, however, we arrive in Manila – 5 hours late – and the captain hopes we had an enjoyable flight and wishes us a good stay. “Mabuhay!” he signs off – literally "long live” – an expression used in welcoming guests and showing hospitality and something I am destined to come across on many occasions over the next few days.

 

Inside the terminal, a girl band plays to us as we wait for our luggage with one of them calling out Christmas greetings to anyone who stops to listen. A nice touch which after our flight makes a welcome change.

 

 

Manila’s traffic is as hectic as ever – a combination of expensive 4x4s, swanky limousines, bog-standard cars, jeepneys (which I blogged about the last time I was in this country), motorbikes and motor-trikes – which are the standard method of transport for shorter journeys. Motor-trikes come in a variety of shapes and sizes – this one is a standard design for the Laguna area (about two hours south of Manila central) into which you can just about squeeze two bottoms in the passenger cart as well as having two passengers riding pillion. The height of it has obviously been developed for slightly shorter Filipinos and your favourite blogger sits with his head jammed to one side wishing desperately that the journey would end, however long or short the journey happens to be.

 

 

The next day it is time to fly to Busuanga island in the Calamianes chain, north of Palawan. We fly from MNL terminal 4 on Zest Air in an MA60 plane which is so designed that you can hardly see a thing out of the windows except for one of the engine housings, unless you look sharply downwards.

 

The MA60 is a turboprop made by China's Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation and was designed to operate in rugged conditions with limited ground support and has short take-off and landing capability. But its safety record is pretty poor, with Indonesia – not renowned for its own air safety track record – actually banning the aircraft from using three of its airports, after one of the planes crashed and killed 25 people in May 2011.

 

In January 2009, an MA60 operated by Zest crashed at Caticlan airport while trying to land. The aircraft caught fire and suffered extensive damage to its wing, landing gear, undercarriage and one engine; and several passengers were injured in that accident. Another Zest MA60 overshot the runway while trying to land at Caticlan in June 2009.

 

 

On this journey we are flying at around 16,000 ft so we can catch glimpses of the myriad islands passing underneath.

 

 

The airport at Busuanga is a tiny air strip stuck out in the middle of nowhere – a good 45 minutes drive from the main town of Coron. But everyone is terribly friendly and is made to feel very welcome. Mabuhay!

 

 

Here there are very few private cars and only a handful of jeepneys, but hundreds of motor-trikes. This variety is much better than the ones to be found in Laguna with a design that lets two people sit in the front, two people in the back and another two pillion passengers. That’s seven people carried by one motorbike engine! A couple of days later I am sitting in one with six adults and two kids. I have no idea how long the engines of these Kawasaki bikes last, but the strain they are under must be phenomenal.

 

 

Like the jeepneys, many of these motor-trikes are personally decorated – some more successfully than others!

 

 

Naturally there are refuelling stops all over the place such as this one… No, that’s not coke. It’s petrol, sold for 30 pesos per bottle.

 

 

On the return journey from Busuanga we are told there is a slight delay following a tropical storm that has passed by within the previous 24 hours. Everything is running late and some passengers who were grounded the previous day are desperately trying to get aboard our flight.

 

We sit it out in the airport until we hear an announcement that departure is expected in about an hour’s time. We continue to sit it out, only for another announcement to be made half an hour later that the flight has now been cancelled. Would all passengers return to the check in desk.

 

I get to the front of the queue where I am asked if I have an onward connection. The implication is clear. Those with onward connections will be given priority for whatever arrangements they can make. I do indeed, I declare (forgetting to point out that my onward connection is actually a bus journey!) And sure enough, a select handful of us “onward connecting passengers” are bumped over to competing Air Phil Express (which flies Bombardier Q400s – previously known as Dash 8s).

 

Another passenger tells us that in the 14 flights she has flown with Zest Air, all 14 have been delayed for one reason or another. So why does she continue to fly with Zest? It turns out she is an intern and Zest are much cheaper than the competition. But she always hopes she will be bumped over to another airline as she has been today.

 

 

Unlike Zest Air’s total lack of service, Air Phil Express offers the option of purchasing a cup of tea – well, that is a cup of warm water and a tea bag. No milk or sugar on board unfortunately. But after such a wait, anything warm and wet is appreciated.

 

We finally get in to Manila – this time landing in Terminal 3 which is pristine and totally unlike the other three terminals in the capital.

 

 

The Philippine Tourism Authority has been in creative mood and around the baggage claim area are a number of advertisements extolling the virtues of the country for tourists.

 

 

Even the loos are pristine – not as gleaming as the ones in Beijing’s Terminal 3, it has to be admitted, but clean all the same. And not a (Chinese) slogan in sight!

 

 

Two days later it’s back to Terminal 2 to take Philippine Airlines back once again to Beijing. It’s the same plane as before; the loos are as disgusting as ever; and the main feature film only has a soundtrack in Chinese as the crew cannot work out how to switch it across to the English channel. But the flight is only a quarter full, we are served copious quantities of drinks and the food isn’t at all bad. We take off 15 minutes earlier than scheduled and arrive in Beijing 12 minutes ahead of schedule.

 

We start the very long taxiing from the runway to the terminal, but after 10 minutes come to a complete halt in the middle of the apron.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, please stay seated, the captain intones over the speakers. It appears there is a fault with the steering and we need to be towed to the gate. Now where have I heard that before? But the tow truck soon arrives and minutes later we are deplaning into Terminal 2.

 

Even if one hasn’t seen all the signs in Chinese, you can still tell we’re back in China. “China Inspection & Quaratine Imformation” a sign reads. Oh yes; I’m back in China alright!