Jeff and Mandy's Adventures Before Dentures: Boracay to Coron Travelling Days

From Boracay, Malay, Aklan

To Coron, Busuanga, Palawan

We had planned to attend the famous Filippino festival Ati-Atihan in Kalibo which is not far from Boracay but due to some misleading information we found out that it actually ended, not started on the 17^th. Sadly we missed it by one day. We were disappointed by this, but we're realizing that things don't always go as planned when travelling. We decided that we would start our journey to Palawan next.

It is quite difficult to get from Island to Island in the Philippines if you are not familiar with the structure. We looked at flights from Caticlan (near Boracay) to anywhere in Palawan but found them to be quite expensive (at least $200 each) and time consuming as you need to fly back to Manila or down to Cebu for a connecting flight. This did not appeal to us.

We decided to just wing it and attempt to create our own journey to Palawan, without paying for the expensive flight. We seemed to be on the right track when we found a good route from Caticlan on a large Ferry to Roxas, Mindoros, which is a little bit closer to our destination.

This cost us P420 (About $12 each) and was an easy 5hrs on a very luxurious bunk looking out the back of the vessel.

In Roxas, we received many stares by everyone we encountered, like we were from another planet (must be our good looks ;)...or our pasty white skin). From Roxas, we had to take a 3.5 hour van ride to San Jose (also in Mindoros, which cost us about $4.55 each, or P150 altogether). We were loaded in the van like sardines in a can, with 16 people + baggage in an 8 person van, but we went through gorgeous winding roads with mountain views.

Arriving in San Jose, we reached a slight setback. No ferry was leaving that night, and we were told by our tricycle driver that it would not leave until 8am the next morning. We were forced to stay the night and asked him to take us to the closest hotel.

We hibernated in our room for that night since there was really nothing to do or see in San Jose. It is not a very common tourist destination (understandable). The town was pretty run down, , mostly consisting of small huts and traffic, making it feel somewhat unsafe and unwelcoming but we found the people to be very friendly. Similar to in Roxas we received many curious stares during our stay.

Concerned about the cleanliness of the room, the noisy tricycles outside our window, no wifi to research the next part of our trip, the constant slamming of doors in our hotel and the paper thin walls, it's safe to say that we were just looking forward to getting on the boat the next morning.

Morning arrived, and we got up bright and early to get to the port. We had little sleep the night before and were just excited to get to paradise. *Plot Twist!* Once again, to our dismay, there was no ferry leaving until tomorrow morning... in fact the ferries only run twice a week. So, we have no choice again but to return to our wonnnnderful hotel. "Psyche, we ain't goin no where" we tell them. We dropped off our bags and looked around for a cleaner, nicer hotel. We found a room close by that was much nicer, so we go to check out of our hotel and they want to charge us for another nights stay since we gave up the key (which was only approximately 15 minutes, like, they didn't even have time to clean our room). Long story short...we were staying another night in the shit hole. On the bright side, at least we had a place to stay.

In proper Jamanda (Jeff and Amanda) fashion, we decided to make the best of the situation.

We whipped out our bottle of vodka and a deck of cards and decided to get our drink on.

This was our entertainment while in San Jose.

Food wise - there were plenty of "snack shacks" and along the broken down streets, but nothing really substantial or dependable. We were grateful for a restaurant across the street from our hotel. The people were really nice,