Asian chocolate

Since Manila was a bit too much of everything we were not interested in for us, we were happy to catch a flight down south after 2 nights. Literally everybody had recommended the island Palawan and especially El Nido to us – which made us not go there. Still a bit shocked from the ridiculously over-touristy southern Thailand (another place everybody said we had to go to), we decided to take our chances on missing out on this in all likeliness very beautiful spot in favour of seeing less people like us. Tourists, that is.

Through an acquaintance from Dubai, we came a cross Bohol: An island 90 minutes by plane south of Manila, famous for its so-called Chocolate Hills. Oh, and some rather illustrious beaches, too.

It did indeed turn out to be quite nice. After landing at what is probably the most basic airport we’d ever seen, we arrived at a beautiful little resort run by an Italian guy who decided to spend his pension here.

After successfully haggling our way to a scooter – a must-have on every island – we spend the next few days doing what there was to be done on Bohol, or more precise, Panglao (the southern part of Bohol). That included a few rather spectacular dives off Balicasag, another one of the 7000+ islands of the Philippines. Cheers to King and the team of Seaquest Dive Center for taking me along, in spite of me being by far the most inexperienced diver of the group. It was raining and rather rough sea – but man was it worth it!

Not only were there tons of fish, there were als quite a lot of people living spread across the islands. They all turned out to be very friendly, and rather genuinely so, we felt.

The Chocolate Hills – a lovely 90-minute scooter drive up north – got their name because apparently, they look like chocolate in dry season when they’re all brown. Wasn’t the case when we were there, but they still managed to look pretty fancy. Just as on Google Images. Hah.

The food was great and the internet slow – yes, we were back in South East Asia. We quite enjoyed our stay in Panglao, but couldn’t help the feeling of not having found just yet what we were looking for: A bit of beach time in a non-touristy setting, given us at least remotely the feeling of Philippine authenticity. I mean, the beaches were nice, the water cristal clear – but it was just resort after resort after bar after bar at every nice spot.

We felt there had to be more. Turned out we were right – stay tuned for the next update!