A Bohol Christmas
>> Friday, January 14, 2011
Not a lot of people travel to the Philippines. I'm not sure if it's because it's less accessible than places like Thailand. It is made up of a lot of islands (around 7100) which makes traveling within the country more difficult. Maybe it's because people think it's a dangerous place. If you listen to the media or read government travel advisories that certainly might be the case. However, like most places, incidents are rare and typically isolated to a particular area. The Philippines originally came onto my radar as a travel destination when I saw stunning photos of the underwater life in dive magazines about 10 years ago. I knew I would go someday.
My flight arrived around 11:30 pm in Manila and my onward flight to Cebu didn't leave until the following morning at about 6 am. I hopped in a taxi to head to a nearby hostel for a few hours sleep. I was fortunate to meet a local who directed me to where to get one without being ripped off. Like many big international cities, Manila is a 24 hour place. People were everywhere. Cars and tricycles (motorbike taxis) were everywhere. Numerous times when the taxi was stopped at a light young children of 5 or 6 years old approached the taxi with their hands out, some making eating motions or rubbing their tummies. They would bang on the window. Perhaps some of these children were hungry, but perhaps they were simply forced into roaming the streets at midnight to beg. I had some of my Filipino students warn me that this was very common. As hard as it was to do, I ignored them.
After a few hours sleep it was back to the airport to catch my short flight to the city of Cebu where I would catch a ferry to Tagbilaran in Bohol. From there I caught my first tricycle to get to Alona Beach on Panglao Island. It's a cheaper option than a car taxi and the road isn't good anyway so there's not really much of a speed advantage. Unfortunately, I ended up with a driver who, although seeming to understand where I wanted to go before I got in, ended up stopping several times to ask if people knew where Peter's House or Genesis Divers was. It seemed to take ages to get there and I pulled my Lonely Planet out several times to try to match up the map with the very few landmarks there were since there are no names on the roads. In reality it didn't take that long to get there, it probably just seemed to since the journey from Guam-Manila-Cebu-Tagbilaran-Alona Beach was a long one with very few hours sleep.
After arriving at Alona Beach it was a short walk to Genesis Divers. The accommodation is above the dive shop in simple rooms built of traditional materials. The shared bathrooms are the cleanest I have ever seen. It's on a beautiful stretch of beach. Who could ask for more? After putting my bag in my room I sat down to order some lunch and got talking with one of the dive instructors. He suggested I go diving that afternoon. So after lunch the two of us hopped into the boat for a short ride to a nearby site. All the images I had in my mind from the photos were right in front of me - ornate ghost pipefish, banded pipefish, moray eels, tons of nudibranchs (colourful sea slugs), and best of all, 2 frog fish. I'd only ever seen frog fish once before (in the Maldives) so I was ecstatic. Diving in the Philippines is all about the small stuff, the hard to find stuff, not the big can't-miss-it stuff. We had a long, leisurely dive of 80 minutes. The days that followed brought more great diving, including to Balicasag Island where I saw tons of turtles, a school of squid, lots of leaf scorpionfish and plenty more nudibranchs along with all the usual suspects.
Alona Beach was also where I spent Christmas, and I couldn't have picked a better place. I am starting to get used to Christmas without snow. Alona Beach is quite a popular tourist destination for Filipinos and is one of the well known places for overseas visitors. Consequently it has quite a few restaurants, bars and places to stay. Fortunately it does not have any big hotels so it has a low key, friendly vibe. On Christmas Eve, Genesis Divers had their staff Christmas party and everyone staying at Peter's or their other hotel were invited. Free food and drink was a recipe for a great night. The staff spent the entire day preparing for the party. Decorations were put up, a tree decorated, a gift table set up, stereo equipment set up, food was laid out and even a disco ball hung up on the beach! Just as the party was about to start the skies opened up and torrential rain came down. What took a whole day to set up had to be frantically saved from the rain. It made for a cozier beginning to the night as we had to eat huddled together under the sheltered porch but fortunately the rain didn't last long and we were able to return to the beach. After a fantastic meal, the staff and families were given gifts and their year end bonus by the owners. Then it was time for the entertainment. It was all provided by the staff and it was a riot. The highlight was the beauty pageant put on by the divemasters and boat crew. After getting to know these guys over several days it was hilarious to see them strut their stuff in bikinis and evening gowns. Similar to Thailand, the Philippines (despite being very Catholic) has a very accepting view of gay males and 'ladyboys' are an important part of society. When the party started to wind down one of the crew got a guitar out and the boys took turns singing songs. Most were popular English songs, a few were Filipino. Amazingly, they all had great voices. Just when common sense would say it was time to go to bed, a couple of the guys asked me if I wanted to go dancing. I looked at my watch, saw it was 2:45 am and decided why not. So we headed to a club. Although there are a fair amount of non-Filipino tourists at Alona Beach, none of them happened to be at this club. When I looked around I was the only white person in the place. I was also the tallest person there! After a very sweaty night of dancing, the boys walked me home at 6 am, just in time to catch an hour of sleep before getting up to go diving.
Christmas Day featured a party at the resort next door. A bunch of us bought tickets to go which included the meal and a show featuring traditional Filipino dancing. The food was nowhere near as good as we had at the Genesis party and the service was awful because most of the staff were performing in the show rather than serving the guests. However, the dancing was fabulous. The grand finale was a fireworks show which was a little too close for comfort but simply beautiful.
Bohol has two big tourist attractions that draw visitors. One is the Chocolate Hills, about 50 square km of cone-shaped hills which turn brown in the dry season and look sort of like Hershey Kisses. The other is the tarsier. I wasn't too keen on spending the amount of money being asked for a tour to the Chocolate Hills. If I could have split the cost, then alright, but everyone else had either already gone or was busy doing their open water course and couldn't spare a whole day. But I was really keen on seeing the tarsier, one of the world's smallest primates and undoubtedly one of the oddest looking. A couple of the guys were also interested and could spare an afternoon to make the trip. So we arranged for a taxi to the tarsier sanctuary. I had met up with a CouchSurfer from Manila at Genesis Divers and she was kind enough to do the negotiating for us. However, not surprisingly, the morning of the day we were to go, the taxi driver called to say he could not get a car, only a van, and it would cost us more. The angel that she is, Onjay managed to sort it all out even though she had already left for the airport! Our driver arrived in a car and charged us exactly what we had agreed the day before.
Unfortunately, due to their cute appearance, Philippine tarsiers have been kept as pets and displayed in cages for tourists. They have also suffered a loss of habitat and there is concern about their numbers. The possession and display of tarsiers was banned a couple years ago in Bohol but apparently you can still see them in cages on the roadside. The handling and noise is so disturbing to these tiny nocturnal creatures that they only live for a few months and sometimes even commit suicide in captivity. The sanctuary aims to protect both the tarsier and their habitat. It is 167 hectares of forested land where the tarsiers can freely roam. The visitor centre serves to educate and for a fee a guide will take a few people at a time out to observe the tarsiers. The protocol is quite strict so as to not disturb the animals. Small groups, no talking, no camera flash. We were lucky to spot a couple tarsiers. Since the tarsiers roam freely you never know if any will be in the vicinity of the visitor centre. About the size of a human fist, they are so ugly they're cute.




