Oadby and Wigston

On Wednesday August 23rd, we travelled from Port Barton to El Nido at 1 pm. We had a frustrating morning – and felt pretty annoyed!!!!
We woke up and packed, and then I went for breakfast whilst Hope finished off as I was starving (shock) and had some pancakes. The man at the accommodation told us that motorbikes to the waterfalls are only 500 pisos for both of us so we arranged to go. The weather wasn’t great but we were under trees anyway so it didn’t matter. The journey was about half hour there, and we spent about 60-90 minutes at the waterfall. It wasn’t an amazing waterfall, but it was pretty and it was nice to visit before leaving Port Barton. The water was absolutely freezing!!!!
However, at the end of the trip, the men charged us 500 pisos for the room (as agreed) but then said that the motorbikes were 500 EACH which was absolutely ridiculous! But because we were leaving to go and get our bus, we paid it without querying it (which I am very annoyed at us for and we should never have paid that! Even 500 was us being ripped off!!). To make matters worse, they told us the bus was 500 each, and then we overheard him accepting 400 off someone else. By this point I was fuming so I went and asked for our 200 change as we were not being ripped off. I wish I had asked for the motorbike money back as well!! They obviously do not get many tourists at this time of year, so they must have just thought that they would claim as much money off us as possible.
On the bright side, when you do the conversion to pounds, it really is not a lot of money (500 is £7.50 roughly) but it is more just the principle (or principal? I get them mixed up haha) of it.
Anyway, the bus to El Nido was about 4 hours long. The strangest thing happened on the way. A boy asked me where I’m from, and when I replied with Leicester, it turns out that he is from Oadby… lived 5 minutes from my old house…went to the same schools as me… and is one year above me. It was so strange. Out of all the places – the Philippines is dead at this time of year AND Port Barton barely has any other tourists, yet I bumped into someone from home!! It was crazy!
Anyway, we had a great couple of days in El Nido. So we arrived there at 5 pm ish, went to a big supermarket to buy some more toiletries, and got a tricycle up to the hostel: Outpost, with Jacob. It was a long way up the hill but Jacob was trying to insist that we walked (he didn’t want to pay – lovely boy…very very tight. He tried bartering for 10 piso peanuts on the stop on the way to El Nido …that’s 15 pence!!). The hostel only had 4 bed dorms which were a little more expensive than expected (850 pisos a night – approximately £12.50 which is a lot for one night) but we didn’t mind paying it (Jacob took a long time to decide). The hostel was excellent though (bar the wifi which was something we desperately needed to book our next flight!)
Unfortunately, I had the most banging headache and felt so dizzy (Hope said I was not making any sense with what I was saying… I just could not get my words out!) so I went for a ‘lie down’ which of course ended up being a few hours long. Sadly we missed out on the beer pong tournament (I’m sure Hope wasn’t too upset about that, haha). The hostel was so lively and full of young people (mainly English as well) so although I felt so dizzy, I tried my hardest to have a few drinks as I didn’t wanna miss out. We drank at the hostel until 10, and then went out with some English girls we met to Tikki bar as the hostel bar licensing was only until 10. The bar was good and we were having a good time….until I tried to do a shot to get drunk and make myself feel better…it just didn’t go down well. I was sick…. A lot ! My body just wasn’t handling it that night haha. So we had to go back (I felt really bad but I don’t think Hope minded too much…for once it wasn’t her being sick bless her!). We did get the NICEST FALAFEL WRAP ON THE WAY BACK THOUGH….I’m still dreaming of it now.

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