Philippines II

..and now to complete the whirlwind account of my hols. After leaving El Nido me and Pete headed west to the capital of Palawan, Puerto Princesa. A fairly pleasant city, Puerto had one overwhelming attraction- KaLui restuarant. The food here was amazing, AND cheap. The first night we had a mix of fish and seafood, including excellant crab spring rolls. The second night I had a whole large crab, and we shared garlic tiger prawns. In between the two nights of seafood we visited the Subterranean River, officially the longest-underground-cavern-in-the-world-apart-from-one-in-Laos-maybe. Also a UNESCO world heritage site. It was very nice, though spoilt slightly by a guide who's sense of humour was so poor, I mean so terribly bad, that I didn't even find his puns funny.



After Puerto we headed to Boracay, the party capital of the Philippines. We had to change planes in Manila, and got to the famous White Beach by about 5pm. The beach was very nice, and we had an excellant New Years Eve meal on the beachfront; huge langoustine prawns and a whole fish grilled with garlic, oishii!! We drank and cheered in the New Year, getting to sleep around 7am. It was after this all-nighter that the illness of death struck me and Pete. The next couple of days were spent sleeping and watching Premiership football, before we headed back to Manila.
After a night in Manila we headed north, just about making it to Banaue before the illness truly got too much. I thus missed out on seeing Sagada, and some of the more picturesque rice terraces at Batad. Such was my ill state, however, than I couldn't even get out of bed at the worst points, and I wasn't even that disappointed. I am now though. Still, all in all we thoroughly enjoyed the good points, and can chalk the bad points up to bad luck (and destroying ourselves with too much drinking and too little sleep early on). C'est la vie.