Puerto Princesa City

After 10 minutes of snoozing my alarm, Hope eventually woke me up! I was in such a deep sleep that it was just not waking me.

7 am – I think I was still drunk- but we had a tour booked for Honda Bay and the pickup time was booked for 7.30 am. We both felt horrendous!!

Hope even more so - she started being sick soon after waking up and made the decision that she was not going to come. She didn't think she could hack the boats, and to be honest, I don’t blame her, she was in a bad way (bless her!). She was very disappointed though of course!
The previous night we thought we would have a ‘couple’ of drinks in Sheebang hostel – but with Hope and I, we all know what a couple means. We were on such a high when we arrived back from the prison, and were welcomed to happy hour 2 for 1 cocktails – we just couldn’t say no! We took full advantage of the 2 for 1 Kamikaze cocktail (vodka, triple sec and lime juice) and had a few before happy hour was over. Then we had some food (starving of course), and continued our drinking. Bearing in mind this was 6 pm and we had already had 3 cocktails each – we ended up drinking until 11 pm at the bar, and going to Tiki Bar (a big club) at 11.30 ish until around 2 am (not that I can remember when we got home lol). We met a couple of Americans who lived here now – and they were sharing with us some places to visit – with Port Barton being a secret heaven that the locals visit – not touristy at all, so we planned that as our next visit.
Tiki bar was good (I think?!) from what we remember. We have no idea when we left, or what time we went to bed – but we managed to set our alarms – so we can’t have been too bad…right? We remember it being a good night though for sure!

Anyway back to the morning…I was probably still drunk (in fact I was definitely still drunk), but decided to go as we had already booked the tour and we would have had to pay if none of us turned up! I was picked up, and taken in a squashed minivan to the snorkel hire where we got our shoes and snorkels (for 300 pisos hire – quite expensive for here?!), then taken to the boat port with my group. Everyone was lovely! I spent a lot of the day morning talking to a Catalan couple (they were sure to emphasis they were NOT SPANISH!), and much of the afternoon with a lovely Filipino girl called Therese, from Manila.

The fresh air did really help, and I sobered up more as we were on the boat from the port to our first stop; Starfish island! It was beautiful there!!!! It has its name for a reason. It is literally an island filled with starfishes! The water was crystal clear. The bottom did not look deep at all – when it in fact was – showing just how clear the water was!! You could go farther and deeper from the shore to see many more colourful fishes and reefs, it was so beautiful and the perfect hangover cure!

It was getting frustrating watching people pick them up and take the starfish out of the water just for photos though!!! Why can't they just watch them in their natural environment?!

The snorkelling on the first stop was great! We saw so many fish, all different shapes, colours and sizes. We spent the majority of the day here as this was where Jen (the tour guide) did our lunch.

Lunch was fish, vegetables, rice and meat (for those who eat meat). I do love fish but when a man put a whole fish with its long fin directly on to my place (which also touched the watermelon!!!) - I was very overwhelmed (particularly when so hungover).

Our next destination was Luli island. This was lovely, but probably my least favourite of the three. Many people got some minced bread from the shop for the colourful fishes so that they will swarm over.
I jumped off the diving board – it was so much fun! However Therese didn’t manage to record it – frustrating!! haha
Further along the beach were many signs pointing to danger beyond of jellyfishes and stonefishes.

Our final destination was Cowrie Island – my favourite !!
This was my favourite island of the three! It was so beautiful - full of coconut trees and palm trees, with the most gorgeous turquoise coloured waters. Although it was quite popular - there was nowhere near as many tourists as you would see in other countries that had beautiful islands (and they would not be as beautiful as here!). I really enjoyed just sitting on the beach with Therese and looking at the view of the cute little island. I just wish we had longer there.

After this, we went back to the snorkel shop to return our things, and I was dropped off back at the hostel.

Hope and I chilled for a bit, then got some food at the restaurant. I had the most beautiful local food – Vegetable Adobo. It is actually a Filipino dish of chicken or pork stewed in vinegar, garlic, soy sauce, bay leaves and peppercorns – but I asked for it with vegetables. It was that good that we both had it the day after!!

We chilled and planned on having an early night - we didn't want a repeat of the way we felt when we woke up in the morning!

We went to sleep early - but were woken up by the rude RUDE rude VERY RUDE lads the other side of our hostel room (it was like a 6 bed one side and an 8 bed the other side). They came back drunk at 3.30 am, but instead of being drunk and a bit loud - THEY WERE PLAYING THE GUITAR FULL VOLUME!!! And showering,
And shouting. And being so so rude! Hope went and asked them to be quiet (and if they were quiet from that point then I would let them off for just being drunk and unaware of how loud they were being) BUT THEY CONTINUED! Hope was awake until half 5!!!! They were so so ignorant!!! ARGHHHH HOSTEL LIFE IS HARD !!!Read more