Sabang (Puerto Galera) 1/15/2013 - 1/16/2013

We took a red eye flight from Bangkok to the Philippines, arriving at Clark International Airport, and made it through customs by 2 am (the airport is about a 2 hour bus ride north of Manila).  Our original plan was to sit and wait it out at the airport until their were actual buses headed toward Manila and then make connections to get us to Sabang opposed to staying in Manila.  To our surprise, there was no need to wait around and we went with the flow of things that went as so:  loaded a Jeepney that took us to a bus going to Manila, that bus dropped us off under an overpass and pointed us toward another bus headed to Batangas, in Batangas we had to buy "ferry" tickets to cross the water, the ferry ended up having to drop us off a few kilometers away from Sabang thanks to being in a small boat and encountering bad weather, then finally we took a tri/ moto-taxi into town.  Roughly 12 hours after leaving Bangkok we arrived in Sabang around 10 am.

A few things to mention at this point about our travels in the Philippines.  First, the Jeepney is a national symbol here and is the cheap, local way to travel around town.  They're basically open air jeeps that can hold a lot of people.  They originated as Filipinos converted left over WWII jeeps and turned them into public transport.  

Second, sometimes a "ferry" is nothing more than a boat with outriggers/ stabilizers, or known to locals as an outrigger banka. 

In our case, we got to a point in our hour long boat ride where the swells and choppiness of the water definitely gave us a scare, especially since the waves broke one of the outriggers.  We were planning our escape route and plan of action while we waited to tip over.  Of course, it was just an over-reaction as we don't navigate the waters everyday like the captain and crew, but it was quite the adrenaline rush.

Third, the other popular mode of transportation is the tri/ moto-taxi, either a bicycle taxi or a motorcycle taxi.  This is the other cheap option for getting around town.  Some are smaller than others, but it's safe to say our butts barely fit together on one seat ;-).  And Matt usually has to bend his head down or it'd be through the roof.  Not built for big Americans, but it works.

Sabang is a small town, outside of Puerto Galera, known for diving, and we thought our time would be better spent here than in Manila.  However, once we were there we never had a good "feeling" about going out diving with any of the places.  Perhaps it was the over crowded dive boats or lack of perfect conditions.  We also never felt too enthused about Sabang in general.  We mostly saw fat, white, old men walking around with their young Filippino girls or in search of them.  It's quite common for older white men to come to the Philippines in search of a young Filippino girlfriend.  But, the white men do need to have money in order to make this dream happen.  The wi-fi passwords at a sports bar we went to for internet was " no money no honey".  How appropriate.  Of course there are exceptions to every rule; take our neighbor "Australia Jim", he was a skinny, 78 year old white guy and he wasn't afraid to get down (all the way to the ground) and dance at the bar (amazing talent).  

But yes, he had been married for four days to his Filippino wife, who was in her 30's, and he was at the bar solo with us for Happy Hour (where he says he goes everyday at 4pm).  Regardless, we decided to move on after two nights.    

Our next journey was to take a 4 hour ferry over to Boracay, fortunately it was an actual, legit ferry.  The sea wasn't so smooth and Matt was still feeling anxious from the last boat crossing, but everything was fine.  We had two things in mind for Boracay: a better/ prettier place to relax than Sabang, and we needed to extend our visas.