We had 17 days to spend in The Philippines this clearly was not enough time and we were a little fed up with ending up in all the tourist traps.
So with little time, we decided to organize a Workaway in Busuanga Bay, Palawan. And from there do day trips in the area.
This is our story of Jungle Survival…..
LIVING IN A JUNGLE
After living it up in Indonesia for 4 weeks – you know…. Nice hotels, sightseeing, snorkeling, learning to dive, and just generally being waited on hand and foot, literally. You can’t beat a good foot massage at the end of the day.
I arranged for us to go on a Workaway in the Philippines. We were ready to get down with the locals and put our skills to good use. Have a break from being professional tourists for a couple of weeks.
So, off we headed for Busuanga Bay, Palawan a few miles from Coron. We had a video called our host Andy on Whatsapp before we left Nusa Penida. To discuss what work he wanted to do whilst we were there. Nick was gonna be busy with the usual pumps and, pipework Nicks fave!! Me – it looked like I was gonna be putting my feet up/ supervising!! Andy also explained how basic the Jungle house would be, water from a well, minimal electricity, and open-air living but all was good because Nick and I ARE EXPERT CAMPERS and I’ve always said if I ever was to be stranded on an Island Nick would be my first choice to be stranded with – sorry Tom Hardy. With all this information we were ready to go.
THE EPIC JOURNEY
So, next time I look on Google maps and say “Oh look, Nick, look how close everywhere is” I’m going to give myself a slap!!!
We left Nusa Penida on a fast boat to Bali. Once we had arrived we had 7hrs to kill in Kuta it was either –
- Doss in the airport until our flight at 11.30 pm,
- Traipse the streets of The Australian Benidorm, Kuta
- Book a room for £9 for the night which meant we could dump our bags so we could explore/traipse the streets of Kuta backpackless and have a couple of hours of sleep before our flight.
Yes, we went with no 3. With the edition of ending up in an Irish bar eating Chicken Pie and Chips and drinking cider – HAPPY
We made our way to the airport at 8.30 for our flight at 11.30.
Once we landed in Manila we had to race for our connecting flight to Coron, racing around the airport and looking for our terminal. Only to be eventually told we needed to be at Terminal 2 a 10 min taxi ride away…. This airport was massive!! Jumped in the taxi and it cost us 3000php. Once I had got my head around terminal whiplash and gathered my wits, I had worked it out to be £45 for a 10 min ride! But we made it and we were off to Coron
THIS IS WHERE THE FUN BEGINS…..!
Andy had contacted us the day before saying it would be a good idea for us to go shopping for food before we headed to his little bit of paradise …. Which we stupidly agreed to.
Our flight landed in Coron at 7 am. We were knackered. The last thing we wanted to do was food shopping!! Anybody who knows me knows I absolutely HATE shopping with a passion. Clothes shopping, YUK. Christmas shopping, YUK. Food shopping, double YUK. This was going to be a nightmare. And it was……
A Q taxi was arranged by Andy to pick us up from the airport, to first take us into town to buy fresh meat, vegetables, bread some essentials like rice, pasta, coconut milk, and water if we didn’t want to drink from the well. Enough food for about 10 days. So off we trudged around the market and supermarket (this was NO Tesco Superstore) in the blazing heat. Oh, and we made sure we bought coffee and cakes to take with us. Then off we went in the taxi with all our shopping bags to meet the boat that was going to take us to paradise….
We arrived at the water’s edge waiting for our boat which turned out to be Andy’s elderly neighbor Cezar and his very narrow and well-used Bankha boat…. For half an hour we traveled through the mangroves to Busuanga Bay it was amazing we felt like we were on an adventure and slowly our spirits lifted….. life was good once again.
THE JUNGLE HOUSE
Well, first things first we needed to put our fresh meat into the fridge it had been out in the heat for a good couple of hours. No problem we can put it into Andy’s fridge/freezer in his kitchen at Sunset House.COOL
But what he failed to mention was Sunset House was on the other side of the mountain. A trek at least 140m up through the jungle and 140m back down the other side through more dense jungle to his fridge…. So our shopping then sat in the Jungle Kitchen for another couple of hours whilst he showed us around our side of the island. FUMING
But, it’s OK we had a lovely Jungle House constructed of Bamboo with a nice outdoor living and bedroom area along with a bathroom. Like I said no running water just pouring a saucepan of water from a barrel over ourselves to shower. We did enjoy it. It was back to basics.
A kitchen over the river, a basic gas hob, and very limited cooking equipment but I’m sure I’ve mentioned before Nick and I are expert campers. I managed to create a restaurant-worthy Squash, Coconut, and Chilli Risotto and lots of toast.
As for electricity, we were given about 3 Makita batteries to charge our phones & tablet over the week.
Thankfully we had internet Nick had an Esim…. Phew …. Lifesaver. Handmaids Tale and British Bake Off got some stick.
All we had to do was settle in and enjoy.
As an arrival treat Andy invited us over to Sunset House, Mel cooked us an amazing curry and introduced us to Calamanci Juice which we drank throughout our time in Coron.
After a good night’s sleep, we were ready to Rock and Roll it took us all of 20 mins to explore where we were staying. We soon realized there was NOTHING to do. Nowhere to go. We were given the impression on our initial video call that there were lots to do and see from this area. Well, there is but you need a bloody boat to get there which Andy didn’t have. Sorry, as Nick keeps reminding me he did have a boat a Yacht moored on the other side. But you needed a boat to get to the Yacht which Andy had but no engine. WHAT????
It’s Ok we had work to while away the days…. 2 or 3 days of work for Nick.
Me – Mel needed some mosquito nets sewing so I sat and did that for a couple of days.
By the 5th day, Nick and I were so fed up and hungry a combination of things
- It went dark at 6 pm we had no lights other than our phone torches. So, Handmaid’s Tale it was.
- We would be woken in the morning from 5 am by the boats going out to sea with their racer boy engines and it was full daylight so no going back to sleep.
- We were only having 2 slices of toast in the morning with Jam along with a little bit of fruit which ran out after day 3!!
- Mel and Andy would appear after midday and bring lunch by which time Nick and I had lost the will to live. It was at this time Andy wanted to start work. In the midday sun, hot and very humid.
By day 5 we realized we couldn’t take anymore. We had come to the Philippines and it looked like we weren’t going to experience anything of the Filipino culture if we stayed on this island.
THE GREAT ESCAPE
For us, this was not easy because we don’t like letting anyone down, and having to tell Andy we were leaving wasn’t easy. But there was no way we were going to last another 2wks. The boredom was unbearable.
On Thursday we told Andy we were sorry, but we had to go back to the mainland and we would leave on Monday. He seemed to take it OK.
The next morning it was clear he was not happy with us there were no messages in the morning, which was very unusual. We would receive a lengthy message every morning. So, no work to be done and we didn’t have any food left. We were so hungry. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. The chairs were not comfy. We sat on the harbor wall looking over to the hotel resort on the other side dreaming of luxury wishing we had a boat.
And that was it NO MORE…. We had to leave! We made our way over the mountain to Sunset House and arranged to leave the next day, Saturday. Nick arranged with Cezar to pick us up in his boat to take us to the taxi on the other side of the mangroves.
Saturday morning was so exciting freedom was a hair breath away….. just a boat ride and a taxi into town. Cezar arrived and we were then informed it would cost us more than agreed!!! I was not happy but what else could we do? It was just “get us outta here”
The sense of relief as we traveled through the mangroves was immense… I’m not an emotional person but both Nick and I had tears in our eyes. The feeling was amazing knowing we were going back to civilization…
