We’re sitting in an airport.
Again.
This is the 7th time we have been to an airport in the Philippines, as we had to catch four internal flights, along with three ferries, three smaller boat rides and four bus journeys that could have been road trips in their own right. The total time spent travelling or waiting for travel was over 80 hours (the unnecessary and enforced waits are so infuriating – never get a Eulen Joy van). That’s over three full days and nights and our whole trip was only 11 days in the country. Plus I spent two days laid out with food poisoning. This might partially explain my mixed feelings about the country.
Things go wrong while you’re travelling. Evidently in our case, where we haven’t had a smooth ride for longer than a few days so far, it has happened more than usual, but it generally doesn’t matter. You have an accident, it’s not a problem, these things happen every day. You have to wait for a late ferry and it’s just more time with your book. Someone tries to rip you off a touch and it’s no big deal, just smile and remember it’s a lot less to you than it is to them. It’s when all of these things happen together, and a mixture of bad luck, not-so-great circumstance, naivety and more bad luck taints your memory of a place, sometimes irreversibly. Surely most of you have been on a holiday (or at least a day trip) and vowed never to return. But was that the place’s fault or just a particular set of circumstances?
From Bohol to El Nido one of our flights was cancelled in the afternoon and so we had to sleep on the airport floor in between being shunted from pillar to post without a satisfactory answer in sight. We got a rearranged flight in the morning but my head was swimming with negative thoughts, and the rational part of me was slowly being eroded away through lack of sleep and being perpetually uncomfortable. Once we arrived in Puerto Princesa we looked for a van to El Nido and were told one was leaving right away: “just pay here and go and get in”. When we were seated we realised that it wouldn’t be departing immediately as the driver walked off for a cuppa. After a while we asked why we hadn’t moved and were told it was going in fifteen minutes. So we waited. This charade continued: “Let’s go” I would shout; “fifteen minutes” would inevitably be the reply. It was clear they couldn’t leave as there were not enough people in the van, so why not just tell us? Two other passengers had been waiting for two and a half hours before we even got there and hadn’t been told anything.
We eventually told the driver that we were going to get our money back, but he took our receipt on the premise of us leaving right away. Literally all I wanted at this point was a bit of transparency and honesty. Not to be locked in a sweaty, stationary van touching elbows with strangers, whilst gazing at the airport we had arrived at over an hour ago. Without a receipt to get our money back. Amy luckily took a picture of the receipt before they retrieved it from us and so they started to use every trick in the book. They said we were going, drove 300m, then stopped inexplicably. Our driver suddenly couldn’t speak English. When we hit the road again we only made it to a petrol station where it took a full 15 minutes to fill the tank, and then to top it all off we turned back the way we came to pick more people up from the airport. Over two hours after we arrived we finally left for El Nido. I was ready to start WW3 if I could just…keep…m..my….eyes….open….
The two days after that were spent predominantly in bed with food poisoning and my hatred for the Philippines was complete and absolute. Amy’s birthday saw her go for lunch by herself while I lay there thinking (a) how terrible I felt about letting her down and (b) how much I hate my stomach. The saving grace was that on both evenings I hobbled down to the end of the garden (only ten metres or so from a toilet) and we had one of the greatest views that I could possibly imagine.
El Nido town has been built around a cove that is offered shelter by an offshore giant of an island called Cadlao. It’s distinctive shape is dominated by a limestone cliff, which watches over the bay like a solemn and stoic protector. We would sit and watch the sun drop between the two headlands, turning paradise islands with impossible geometry into intricate layers of shadows covering the whole spectrum of blue. The colours against the relief of this land, this final frontier, were extraordinary. This was why we had come. Not just because we couldn’t be bothered to change our plans! Over the next two days our fortunes improved and my blood pressure returned to normal.
This short trip had far more than its fair share of ups and downs but I really believe that it’s the positives that we will carry with us. Negative experiences become anecdotes or get filed away unknowingly so we don’t make the same mistakes again. But the good stuff, some of which has been really very good in the Philippines, will be memories we revisit often in our future. Memories of the Paradise Island, Mystical Tarsier and the Secret Lagoon will far outlast the cancelled plane, some rude locals and having to wait a long time for pretty much everything. At least I hope they do!
Whoever said the best part of travelling is the journey definitely wasn’t a Filipino. However, I think in the fullness of time, and once the trauma has subsided slightly, I will look back on Kalanggaman and smile. Actually that was never in doubt. But I may also reminisce fondly about the Loboc river and tell everyone with any sense they should visit El Nido as soon as they can. If you ask me in a few weeks I just might say “The Philippines has won me over”.
folly tales 
Glad you are better.👍
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