08:32 Last weekend we took a trip to Tagbilaran city – the biggest and indisputably the most ugly city in Bohol. But as you can’t get a lot of staff from smaller cities or villages you have to go there few times in a month. This is also the only city in Bohol where you can acquire a visa!
What started out as a one day and maybe one night trip ended out to be one of the craziest 3 day weekends since getting here – a lot of spontaneity and unknown caused many great adventures and made some new friends.
Getting your stuff done in Tagbilaran takes a huge lot of time – what could be done with few hours in Europe, takes twice or triple the time here.
Even the easiest task of printing our travel cards took me a lot of minutes explaining them what and how I need – but still they did all all completely wrong from professional point of view. They don’t know absolutely nothing about color palettes (RGB, CMYK) and what is bleed (Google: Bleed is a printing term that is used to describe a document which has images or elements that touch the edge of the page, extending beyond the trim edge and leaving no white margin).
So they made jpg’s from my perfect .pdf files, without bleed and printed them – It didn’t look too bad, but still done completely wrong. I’ll be receiving our cards next week, I’m sure they’ll be good enough for us.
Another weird story was, when Anni tried to buy mini speaker for his laptop. They hardly understood her (it seems to me that they even speak better english in small villages) and instead of trying to sell you the goods, they send us to another store, because they just didn’t bother to help you.
What a great customer service – But that’s the Phillipines style and you just have to get used to it – No point of getting mad, angry or nervous.
After all the wasted time in Tagbilaran we moved on to Panglao island. Panglao Island is very touristy and a bit more expensive, but you can still find bargain deals there. I myself didn’t care for the island too much, but still had fun, met great people and maybe drank a little bit too much of local and extremely cheap liquor.
For our first night we crashed at Bohol Coco Farm – what a lovely and peaceful place between jungle. A lots of hammocks and places to just have some alone time.
And the bungalows are just great – they are well ventilated, small but cousy – even though for some of us it was even cold at night (I guess we’re already used to hot weather, so something like 24 degree Celsius seems cold).
The prices are also good, 350 peso per night for person. For all of you party people, the Coco farm is pretty far from Alona beach and all the big party sites, so this might not be for you. Great night sleep and we moved on – with now a plan to stay for second night as well.
Next day beside enjoying yet another paradise beach, we were looking for a place to stay at night. Our road led us to Alona Hammocks – really awesome place in the center of Alona and not too far from beach and nightlife.
This 2 story and compact place felt so out of town and was a different kind of experience.
What concerns sleeping in hammock, it is not too comfortable, I could only sleep for few hours. But I guess you could get used to that.
If you prefer mattress, they can also provide you that, if hammock seems too extreme – I think you have to try everything at least once in a life, so we gave it a change.
Sleeping there costs 250 peso with breakfast – so really backpacker friendly. Thank you guys for making our stay there worth remembering. Hopefully our feedback was also heard and the boat trip in future will be better organized!
Next week we did lot of kayaking and snorkeling – Superb trips through the cost at midday (yes, we got little bit sunburn) and of course great workout.
Snorkeling we saw Nemo in real life – now we know where he lives 🙂 Watch out for sharp corals and I would suggest using some shoes.
As I got few of my toes, nothing too bad though. Look more from Anda Adventures Facebook page.
Yesterday I stepped onto rusty nail and now I’m pretty much stuck to bed for few days – I can walk, but in snail speed only. At least I got medical attention and it is already getting better. Don’t want to stop on this for too long, as the spirits are still high and there is nothing to whine about 🙂
