Don't drink the water

Our 4 Gallon water container

One of the first questions I normally have when I arrive in a new place is: "Can I drink the tap water?"

My bible, The Lonely Planet, normally answers this question for me.  And in Manila, the answer is 'No'.  But in restaurants it's very common to be served glasses of water with your meal.  These glasses of water will have ice in them, as will most other drinks you order.  Being a skeptical foreigner, I am usually wary of having ice in drinks, drinking water which isn't in a bottle and so on.  But I'd read that 'Service water' (the water served in restaurants and bars) with ice was perfectly safe to drink.

Where does this water come from, if not from taps?

The answer is that there are numerous water filling stations dotted around the city, where they purify water making it safe to drink.  At these stations, they fill up 4 Gallon (roughly 18L) water containers and deliver them to residences, restaurants, bars, retail outlets, office blocks etc. around the city.

When we first arrived, I wasn't aware of this system.  We would go to 7-eleven or Rustans and buy 6 litre containers of water for about 90 pesos a pop, which would last us 2-3 days.

I started noticing a small man pushing a trolley loaded with 4 Gallon containers of water up and down the street outside of our first apartment block.  I had also noticed a big blue container under the sink in our apartment.  I put 2 and 2 together and asked the concierge in our block whether we could get water delivered.  It turned out we could, if we had a container for the water (which we did).  And it would cost us 40 pesos.  That's less than half the price we'd been paying, for 3 times the amount of water!  And it meant that I didn't have to lug these 6 litre water bottles around in the midday sun.

So that's what we've been doing since.  It's great - you take the empty container to the lobby on the day you need water, and by that evening you've had a refill.  It's great value.  And we're not having to throw away as much plastic as we were when using the 6 litre bottles.

Ice, by the way - I'm not sure where it comes from, but I'm sure it's a similar system.  I often see trucks driving 'tube ice' around the city, and then men pushing / carrying loads of big bags of ice to their destination.

A taxi ride from Ortigas to Makati, Metro Manila

It's easy to forget, when you have started to become accustomed to a place, what makes it different from other places.  Everyday things like pavements, roads, the vehicles on the roads, the weather, the air conditions, the shops...  it was my intention when I started this blog, that I would highlight some of the things that are different in Manila compared to our lives in the UK.  I remember conversations with friends and colleagues before I left the UK, where I stated my intention of keeping a blog, in which I expressed my concerns that I'd probably be able to write interesting things for the first few weeks and then it would all just become normal.  What's actually happened is that it has become a bit of a travelogue.

One of the reasons for this is that I often forget to take my camera out and about with me in my daily life.  I've had some interesting as well as weird and wonderful experiences whilst getting out and about... but I have rarely captured photos / videos of them.  And just writing about them wouldn't give enough of a feel for the situation.  Another reason is that we have travelled to some fantastic places since we've been here, and it's fun to write about them!

One of my blog readers, a big Arsenal fan (but we won't hold that against him), sent me an email today with some kind words of encouragement, along with some suggestions for things he'd like to read about on our blog.  Spurred on by this, I took a video of part of my cab journey on my way back from a meeting in Ortigas to Makati.

Short video looking out towards the front of the taxi (EDSA)

Short video looking out from the side window of the taxi (EDSA)

These are 2 short videos, taken in fairly light Friday mid-afternoon traffic.  The bounciness is only in part a result of my shaky camera hands; it's more to do with the conditions of the road and maybe the driving (although the taxi driver I had today was a very good one).

The second video might appear a bit boring - mostly just a wall - but this is just what it's like.  Further up, the wall is painted with a special paint which is able to filter out nitrogen oxides from the air to try to limit the pollution in the city.  But also in this second video you see a great shot of a Jeepney - these are vehicles left over from the American time here, and they have been converted into sort of buses.  There was a program on recently in the UK - Toughest Place to be a bus driver - where a London bus driver came to Manila to see what it's like driving a jeepney.

In both you may be able to hear some music.  This was one of the few taxis where they don't have the radio stuck on a soft rock station!

Beautiful Bohol

My posts tend to be so long, but then I tend to have a lot to say about the places we've been.  I don't tend to get much feedback about the blog, so I don't know if this is a problem or not!  If you have any feedback (posts are too long / too short / boring / interesting / missing important info / you'd like to hear about other stuff), then please let me know.

Onto Bohol... the 13 May 2013 was declared a 'Special Non-Working Day' by the Filipino Premier in light of the fact that it was election day.  Since it was a Monday, and a lot of the public holidays here are mid-week, we thought we should make the most of the long weekend and go away somewhere.  On the Sunday we arrived back from Puerto Galera, we started checking flights and found remarkably good valued flights to Bohol.  It was somewhere we had wanted to visit, so we went ahead and booked them.

Once again, come Saturday, we had to be up at the sparrow's proverbial to head out to the airport.  This time I think I was just as grumpy as Mr H (I need to give a balanced view here!).  We arrived into utter chaos (a slight exaggeration - probably because of said grumpiness) with no clear queue for our flight and people everywhere.  I joined what I thought was the queue only to be told, in no uncertain terms, that the end of the queue was another 25m behind us.  So we joined that.  At this point there was about an hour left before our flight was due to leave.  The queue was not moving very fast at all.  We were near the front at about the scheduled time of departure.  Still, we all got checked in, and boarded the plane with only a 15 minute delay.

The delay was due to system migration - the day before we flew, Zest Air had joined forces with Air Asia (or were taken over, I'm not sure of the technicalities).

Tagbilaran airport is teeny.  But that meant we were out the other side very quickly.  We met a driver, Ramon, who took us to our hotel on Panglao island.  He was full of information about the island and a really pleasant chap.  The drive took about 25 minutes along lovely quiet island roads.

Our hotel - Panglao Regents Park - was great.  It looked just as it does in the pictures, which was encouraging.  And they let us check in at 10am!  So we checked in and headed round the corner to Arts Cafe for breakfast.

At Arts Cafe, there was a distinct 'travellers' feel, the first time I had experienced this in the Philippines.  If you've been elsewhere in South East Asia, on the backpacker trail, you'll know what I mean.  We had a smashing breakfast of muesli, yogurt and freshfruit (for me) and bangus (smoked milkfish) with scrambled egg (for mr H).  It was delicious.  So delicious that we went back there for breakfast on the following 2 mornings.  Sitting outside, with the wind gently rustling in the coconut trees nearby... it was perfect.

We wandered down to Alona beach, about 7 minutes away if you walk, later in the day.  We'd taken our snorkelling gear with us because we planned on doing a boat trip.  It wasn't difficult to find someone offering a boat trip, so we agreed our price (1400 Pesos) and headed out to find the boat.  The water off Alona Beach is turquoise and crystal clear.  The beach is sandy and pleasant, but it couldn't be described as quiet.  There are resorts, restaurants and bars all the way up the beach.

The boat trip took us to Balicasag island (about 40 minutes away) where we hopped into a much smaller boat (a further 400 Pesos - 100 each for the conservation fee and 200 for the boat and boatman).  Typical Brits, we spent some time debating whether or not to spend the extra 400 Pesos.  It was the best extra 400 Pesos we'd ever spent.  When we jumped off the boat into the water, it was like being in an aquarium.  I have never seen so many brightly coloured fish in one place (even in an aquarium) before.  I don't think I can fully describe it.  But it was just amazing to see Clown Fish and Angel Fish and fish which looked like zebras or luminous purple fish etc.  Balicasag is on a reef, and we were right at the edge of the reef.  It was an odd feeling as the ocean floor just dropped away beneath us.  Even though we were buoyant in the water, it still somehow felt as though you might drop over the edge.  Mr H was lucky enough to glimpse a turtle swimming into the depths.  I was too busy counting how many Clown Fish I could see.

From there we headed to Virgin Island.  It's uninhabited, and from a distance looks like a tropical paradise.  It was lovely to be able to walk along the sand spit with the crystal clear waters lapping up on either side of us.  It was low tide when we headed out there so we had to take it easy on the boat.  But this meant we got to see even more marine life - starfish in all sorts of colours and even the odd jellyfish.  I'd never seen jellyfish so big.  I was so relieved I hadn't seen any of those whilst snorkelling.

Maybe I do write too much... I was going to write about Bohol in one post, but I feel that Day 2 might require a separate post!

It all ends up in the sea: Malaysia Part III

It's been a while, but I should finish off our Malaysia trip...

It's amazing how useful some people's blogs are.  When planning our journey from the Cameron Highlands to Pangkor Island, the Lonely Planet didn't quite cut it.  The Lonely Planet is structured in such a way that it details 'Getting there and away' as a point-to-point, and if you're not starting or finishing at one of those points, you need to work a little harder to plan your route.  Which isn't really a problem, but there are easier ways.  A bit of googling for 'Cameron Highlands to Lumut' (Lumut is where the boats to Pangkor island leave from) turns up full-blown accounts of exactly how to get there, which buses to take, which points you should expect to feel motion sickness etc.

So we figured out that we would need to get a bus from Tanah Rata to Ipoh and then another bus from Ipoh to Lumut.  There are 2 bus stations in Ipoh, so be sure to mention your final destination when booking your bus tickets, to ensure that you get dropped off at the correct station.  The journey from Tanah Rata to Ipoh is again in the fantastic, comfortable, VIP coaches.  It took about 2.5 hours and wasn't quite as windy as I had imagined after reading the aforementioned blog post.

What the Lonely Planet does include is information about any available transport system including, in Malaysia, "long distance taxis".  Taxi ranks for these vehicles are generally found in, or near bus stations and theoretically have a list of all their fares displayed clearly.  I say 'theoretically' because in some places this IS the case and in others it's NOT.  In Tanah Rata they do display this information, in Ipoh they do not.

The reason I mention this... well, when we got to Ipoh, there wasn't a bus leaving to Lumut for at least an hour.  And by that time it would have been cutting it fine to get our boat transfer to Pangkor.  On the short walk from the 'big' bus station to the local bus station, we passed a row of about 3 cream-coloured taxis accompanied by their drivers gossiping in the shade of a big tree.  I had spied a couple of other travellers on the bus who I'd overheard mention Lumut.  A plan started forming in my head... let's go and find them, and all of 4 of us jump in a taxi to Lumut.

It turned out to be a good plan.  It cost probably 2-3 times (120 Ringgit for 4 of us) what the bus would have cost us (still really cheap though), but we made it there with plenty of time to spare before the boat.  And the 2 gentlemen we shared the taxi with were thoroughly entertaining and interesting.  They turned out to be a Swiss father and son, who were away in South East Asia for 3-4 months.  The son had recently given up his job as a teacher to pursue directions in music therapy for disenchanted youths.  I was surprised that there were disenchanted youths in Switzerland, but he assured me that it's like pretty much every other country in the world really.  I did manage to pay some attention in between spotting signs for Tesco and almost jumping out the taxi with excitement!

From Lumut we boarded our boat across to Pangkor Island Beach Resort.  I noticed quite a lot of plastic debris in the water, but I didn't really think much of it.  However, when we arrived at our resort, checked into our room and went for a walk along the beach, we noticed that it was strewn with plastic, rubber & styrofoam.  In all sorts of forms - drinking straws, bottles, rope, flip flops etc.  Our first thought was 'what messy people stay at this resort', but there was really too much rubbish there for it just to be from the guests. Our next thought was 'why is this lovely resort not clearing up the beach?'.  But they were.  There was just so much crap washed up from the sea at high tide.  It was really saddening to see such obvious pollution.  I always ask for straws when I order fizzy drinks, but it's really made me think twice about doing that.  How much rubbish must be in the seas?  And what damage is it doing?  So sad.

Other than that, the resort was pleasant.  It was busy, but then it was school holidays.  We lay around, reading, having the odd drink and generally just chilling out.  It was a good end to our trip to Malaysia.

Is it possible to find quiet in the Philippines?

This past weekend Simon and I ventured back to Puerto Galera on Mindoro, an island to the south of Luzon (the island Manila is on).  We first visited Puerto Galera in our second month here - at the start of February 2013.  Whilst there we'd taken a walk up behind Sabang town and had ended up in the Coco Beach resort. It was a bewitching place - huts made out of bamboo and reeds scattered up the coconut-tree laden hillside, with a tremendous bit of beach and sea out to the front of it.  The friends we were with at the time had previously stayed at Coco Beach and had nothing bad to say about the place.

View of another room, from the balcony of our room

View of the beach from our room

We wanted to try to make the most of 'summer' (March - May) here in the Philippines, so we decided to give Coco Beach a try.  As well as looking like a lovely place to stay, they also provide a transfer from Manila to the resort via a minibus and boat which makes it an attractive option - no need to figure out the public transport system (even though we had done it before).

A slight downside was that we needed to be at The Diamond Hotel in Malate (about 15 minutes to the North West of where we live) for 6:35am.  This meant leaving at 6am to make sure we made it in time (allowing for finding a taxi and any traffic).  That meant a 5:30am start.  A 5:30am start on a weekend isn't good for anyone, but it really isn't good for Mr H.  He is grumpy personified when he has to get up so early.  But, the transfer left on time and there was space enough in the minibus to catch up on some sleep.

By 10:15am we had arrived at the resort and were sipping on a glass of freshly extracted buko (young coconut) juice, staring out over the crystal clear, blue waters of the sea in front of the resort.  Another big plus was that our room was ready for us so we could check straight in.

There is limited electricity (there were numerous power cuts during the evening we were there), no hot water, no phones in the room and a string on the balcony that you pull for room service.  This string is connected to a bell on a nearby house where your 'service family' lives.  Your service family looks after your room (does the laundry, cleaning, gardening etc.), and they look after you during your stay.  Anything you need, you just pull the string and they'll be there shortly to help.  It's a wonderful, efficient system which provides lodging and an income to local families.  And on top of that our family was so lovely and friendly (not that we needed them very much - we only called on them once to hang our hammock on our balcony for us).

After an early lunch (Eliza's surprise salad & coconut chicken) we hired a boat to take us to Long Beach (500 pesos for a return trip) and then another one to take us to 2 snorkelling sites - one near some mangroves and another with some giant clam shells (300 pesos per person for this boat).  I have never seen so many fish in my life.  The boatmen throw bread into the water and hundreds of fish appear to eat the bread.  I don't know whether this is a good idea or not, but it does mean you get to see a lot of fish!  We didn't quite manage to see the clam shells - I think they are easier to spot if you scuba dive.  At that point we both started getting a bit itchy so got out of the water and back onto the boat.  The sun had gone away at this point, so the water wasn't the brilliant-swimming-pool-blue that it had been, but it's still such a treat to be able to enjoy these experiences so easily from Manila.

Swimming-pool blue water

We made it back to Coco Beach in time for Happy Hour (4-5pm).  We headed up to the 'Silent Pool' where they had a bar and promptly ordered a cocktail each.  The barman didn't hold back on the alcohol so it seemed like a good idea to get another one.  Lying by the pool, drinking cocktails as the sun goes down... what a life.

You're probably wondering what any of this has to do with the title of this post.

Oh yes, dinner.  We opted to join the 'Clambake' party on the beach.  Tables set out on the beach, with the waves gently lapping onto the sand.  Except you couldn't really enjoy that because they had a live band over dinner.  And not just a live band, but an extremely loud live band.  Doing lousy covers.  And then there was the 'entertainment'.  The Coco Kids and Coco mamas.  There were about 5 dance performances from these groups.  And then the limbo with a twist - as you limbo under the bamboo you have to try and catch a shot of tequila in your mouth.  Not very glamorous.

But what really got to me was the fact that the music carried on... and on... you could hear it from our room until after midnight.  It wasn't really what I was expecting when I arrived at this beautiful resort.  I would much rather have listened to the sea and to the sounds of the forest rather than some sub-standard cover band.

View out to the balcony, with the hammock

Would I go back to Coco Beach or recommend it to my friends?  I probably would, but probably not on a Saturday night (party night).  I'd also say that you should be prepared for a hot night's sleep - there are fans in the room, but if you use your mosquito net, the fan doesn't really reach you.  The cold shower wasn't really a problem at all - in fact the water was never really cold.  The breakfast buffet has a great choice, but the omelettes that the resort raves about are pretty average, and very greasy.  The bread is good though, as is the fruit.