Boracay....Paradise

Finally we arrived in paradise, well deserved we felt after having done all that trekking and train riding and stuff. A week on a beach was exactly what we needed.

Got slightly too enthusiastic about sunlight... lobster is a good look though

We got tattoos... sorry mum

The Bat Cave

One day Rita (the dutch owner of Nuts Huts) who was by the way a health freak told us that we should take a short and pleasant hike up a hill to see a cave with a few bats in it. We thought, wow what a great idea a bit of exercise after breakfast would be wonderful. We were SO wrong. The pleasant hike turned out to be the trek from hell vertically upwards for two hours in boiling hot weather...(I might be exaggerating a tiny bit). We were accompanied by a guide who carried a sword on his back (this bit is no exaggeration) but we were to scared to ask him why, I assume it was to stop killer snakes or something.

Walking up

When we got to the top of what turned out to be a mountain, we continued down a small path to what turned out to be a rather large open cave lit by daylight, with a few bats high up in the ceiling. Julia and I were quite impressed and I was quite relieved that there weren't loads of bats seeing as I think they look like flying rats. The guide tells us to put our bags down and tells us that we should get going, in a moment of confusion we wondered why we would leave our bags at the top of the mountain and how we would get to them when we were at the bottom. Julia and I start walking back towards the entrance of the cave when the guide tells us that we're going the wrong way. He points smilingly at what looks like a small crack in the cave wall, we hesitate. Surely he couldn't mean that we were going through the crack, it didn't look like it was possible to fit through there at all unless you had the physique of a leprechaun (of course).

The first cave and our guide

Bats with their shiny eyes

Through the crack we went anyway and with much scuffling and squeezing we emerged into a pitch black cave, luckily we had our trusty headtorches with us. The cave was extremely humid, the silence broken only by the stories our guide was telling us of Japanese treasure and of course, bats. The cave was full of them, they were squeaking and flying everywhere. If worrying about being hit smack in the face by a bat wasn't enough the guide had found a spider the size of my hand...(but I swear it was bigger really). People who know me well know that I have serious problems with spiders, I have nightmares about them where I wake up literally screaming. So having to face my biggest phobia in a cave, under a mountain, in the dark, with flying bats was the most terrifying experience of my life. Someone asked the guide whether the spider was poisonous, the reply was "Well they are called scorpion spiders but I don't really know...We could try and see" whereupon he proceeds to poke the spider with a stick so that it runs towards us in that creepy eight legged way.

Scorpion Spider

I was all for getting out but the guide keeps walking deeper into the cave. We get to the end and someone asks how deep the cave is. The guide responds "Oh about 600m deep" we're all taken aback but he assures us that we're only going in 50m whilst pointing at yet another crack in the cave wall. Julia has serious clostrophobia issues, but she managed to crawl on her stomach through the crack without having a panic attack. We emerged into another cave, this one was alot smaller and you couldn't really stand upright. Not only were there bats and killer spiders in this one but now also massive beetles that made me think of the scarabs in the film "The Mummy".

Shvetty

The experience was horrible whilst it was happening but afterwards it was awsome. I would never do it again.

Nuts Huts

Nuts Huts is an incredible place run by a dutch couple. It is located in the middle of the Bohol jungle meaning no electricity at night and an insane amount of mosquitos. There were wild goats roaming around the premises and acting as lawnmowers. Hanna became very attached to the baby goat and still feels withdrawl symptoms. The huts we stayed in were on stilts with bamboo ladders leading up to them. Our room had an ant infestation that grew worse and worse every day but the owners simply laughed at us when we told them. There was no running water in the toilets which of course meant no toilet paper could be thrown into the bowl which was impossible to remember. I'm pretty sure we both had to fish it out a couple of times.

Huts

Hanna's lover

Headtorches are a must (and just plain sexy)

Relaxing after trekking up the stairs

In order to reach the reception, bar and restaurant area one had to climb 150 steps, no joke. In order to reach the road there were 300 steps to climb, in 35 degree heat and humidity this becomes really exhausting. After the intense climb there is a kilometre to walk before reaching the main road where there are buses and jeepneys that take you wherever you want to go. Jeepneys are the public transportation used in the Philippines, these are Jeeps that have been elongated to carry more passengers. At one point they managed to squeeze in 33 people! When you see a bus or Jeepney coming you simply wave it down, tell the conducter where you want to go and he makes up a price depending on the distance. When you want to get off you hit a coin against the hand railing which makes a clinging noise and signals the driver to stop. One bus we rode had a sign that lit up every time the driver hit the breaks that read "Pray with us" which was ironic seeing as we were travelling way too fast and wearing no seatbelts.

Jeepney

Local Bus

At the market

Day one we took a local bus to the Chocolate Hills. The origin of these hills is still unknown but in the dry season they look like chocolate drops. Geologists claim that erosion is the cause whereas Philippinos believe the hills were formed after a battle between two giants.


We saw Tarsier monkeys in a Reservation. They are near extinction due to poachers and people keeping them in cages for tourists to look at.

Madagascar anyone..?

This is our dear friend Mr. Puckleberry

The Mekong Delta

Our trip officially ended after the visit to the Cu Chi tunnels, but Groud our lovely leader told us we could come on their trip to the Mekong Delta...for free! She really loved us that's why, not because there were two others who had already paid who didn't want to go so we took their place, ehum, anyway.

Hanna always has trouble staying awake on bus rides

Meltiiiiing

The Mekong river means mother river in Laosasian (the language) and it runs through Tibet, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and India and is the world's 12th longest river.
The Mekong Delta was kinda cool. It was also kinda touristy, we sat on a bus for three hours untill we got to a jetty. From the jetty we got onto a boat...it was a really nice boat untill we were joined by a small woman wearing blue. This woman was our 'local guide' and if you ever meet her (haha as if, but just incase) then do not be fooled by her small sature and kind features. She is a monster who never stops screaming. The first thing she does when we're cruising peacefully down the river is pick up a microphone and start screaming into it. Not even interesting shouts, just stupid stuff that anyone with a crumb of common sense would know, such as; "PEOPLE HANG THEIR WASHING OUT TO DRY" whilst pointing at washing on a boat, or "PEOPLE DECORATE THEIR BOATS WITH FLOWERS" I mean come on, we have eyes we can see the flowers but we thought they ate them...

Blue shirted monster

Coconut milk straight from the nut

She made us get off and took us through a village to visit a rice paper making factory and a candy factory (the candy was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted in my entire life...made totally out of natural resources... yeah!)

Woman making rice paper. She made hundreds per day and worked 8 hours.

These men are making rice krispie treats

Child labour...

After our brief stint in the factories we hopped on the boat to continue up a small canal leading off the river. As we continued upwards the canal got shallower, we learned from our guide that this was due to the fact that China (typically) has built three dams along the Mekong, and so holding all the water back from Vietnam and Laos. This is because China wants to make the Mekong river wider so that they can drive fat ships up and down the river, Laos and Vietnam refuse to agree and so as payback China disallows them water in their own river. Anyway the water was too low for our big boat to move through, so instead we got ferried the rest of the way in small rowing boats by locals wearing huge cone hats. We have never sweated so much in our entire lives, but it was really fun. We shared our boat with our eccentric guide where he told us we looked very diet (meaning skinny) which meant we wouldn't sink the boat.

Mr. Diet himself

The boats took us to a restaurant where we had lunch, we weren't allowed to order it ourselves because the blue shirted monster wanted to do it for us. After lunch there was a special performance by the restaurant owners, they sang and acted out different love scenes, by this time Julia and I had retired to a hammock and proceeded to die of laughter once the singing started. Groud made it worse seeing as she joined in with our hysterics too. Imagine a small fat man singing nasal noises and sounding like a cockrel whilst small fat woman makes nasal noises with attidude. The performance ended with the blue shirted monster telling us we had to pay, at this point Julia and I made a quick exit to the bathroom to avoid being hoodwinked again. Our boat was a short bike ride away from the restaurant, which was confusing as we'd sat in a rowing boat for half an hour then trekked through the jungle to get there.

We ate grilled shrimp, much to Hanna's delight

The loving nasal singers

Exhausted when we got back to the city we decided to do one of the 1000 things you have to do before you die. This was to eat at the Rex Hotel Roof Top Garden. It was nice compared to what we were used to, but looking back on it now a massive spinning crown and plastic elephants perhaps isnt the height of sophistication.



Next stop Philippines!