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| Palawan Cherry Blossoms |
First time to travel to Palawan, I boarded PAL, got 91 miles going and another 91 miles going back to Manila. As the Plane is touching down on the run way of Puerto Pricesa Airport, the plane speaker broadcasted a reminder that Palawan is a clean city and littering is strictly prohibited and those who violates will be penalized :P. I hope all of the Philippines are like this...behaving like Singapore... Strict :P
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| The Tower of Puerto Princesa Airport |
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| PAL |
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| Philippine Airlines |
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| Peace Sign and PAL |
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| Welcome to Puerto Princesa ^^ |
Arrived in Puerto Princesa Airport, after going out from the airport terminal, I was greeted by pink flowers blooming on trees. The local resident called it the Palawan Cherry Tree, in the local language it is called Balayong. It was March, that is also the spring season of Japan, when the Sakura begins to Bloom added to that according to the local people the blooms of the Balayong stays on the tree for a week only then they fell in the ground, so you can compare it with the Japanese Sakura ^^. On this Month the people of Puerto Princesa held the Balayong Festival, in honor of the Palawan Cherry Tree.
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| Balayong "Palawan Cherry Blossoms" |
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| Palawan Cherry Blossoms |
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| Palawan Cherry Blossoms |
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| Palawan Cherry Blossoms |
On our Trip to Palawan we are just in time to witness one
festival called the Balayong Festival. The streets are closed for
parade.
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| Balayong Festival |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
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| Street Parade |
Food :P Something Exotic
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| Tamilok |
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| Tamilok |
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| KINABUCHS Grill and Bar |
I ate TAMILOK (Shipworm),,, a kind of mollusks, but looks like an earthworm, the taste was oyster like, so it suit my taste buds but due to its appearance I ate it with closed eyes. The Tamilok is the termite of the sea it can digest woods. They are mostly found on Mangrove forest.
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| Mangrove Fruit |
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| Mangrove Fruit |
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| A clear view Y^^, |
On this trip I learned to prevent the clouding of the snorkel mask, you can use the sap of the Mangrove Fruit as an anti clouding agent, just rub the sap on the inner side of the mask and if you go snorkeling then remove the mask it will not accumulate vapors.
(From my Camiguin travel I learned from my French female friend that you can also use toothpaste as an anti clouding agent, just do not forget to rinse it or else :P)
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| Growing Mangroves |
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| Mangrove |
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| Bamboo and Mangrove |
Our guided tour includes the Island hoping
Snorkeling was done on the Honda Bay ( Hunda Bay) there are many coral reefs. Different types of corals can be seen and fishes too, you can bring bread then feed the fish.
The boat we rode on are boats of fishermen. Some of them once participated in
illegal fishing.
They used home made bombs to blast the sea.
This action destroyed the corals and killed many fishes.
Now they changed job, they are now on to ecotourism.
We stayed on a guest house, one room 4 guys all of us office mates, then on the other room another office mate with his girlfriend. How lucky the other room because they were greeted by a Tokay gecko (Tuko in Filipino).
On this Palawan stay , we enjoyed nature very much, there is also an interesting road we traveled on, because of the hilly terrain, The car we rode on felt like a roller coaster, going Up and going Down.
We went to the Crocodile farm where you can view a large skeleton of a salt water crocodile, this was killed because it ate a man :(.
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| Dinosaur? |
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| Basking in the sun |
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| Baby Crocs |
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| my Baby :P |
Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm, here prisoners are roaming freely, doing farm work and other stuffs like normal people do outside, except all of them wear bright orange suits. You can buy souvenirs which the prisoners themselves made. They are selling crocodile figures, I ask how they made it, they said it made from melted plastic cups. They melted the plastic cups and molded it to a crocodile shapes. So they are reusing the plastic junks from fastfood.
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| Crocodile Souvenier |
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| Palawan Crocodile |
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| Pasalubong ^^ |
The Palawan Under Ground River.
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| Palawan Underground River |
The Palawan Underground River became one of the new 7th wonders of nature.Proudly, I voted fo it ^^, including the other winners from Asia ^^. From Sabang Beach we ride a bangka (boat) going to the underground river. Get off from the Bangka then walked on a trail leading to the mount of the cave. On the trail you can be greeted by a Bayawak (Monitor Lizard) a big lizard with fork blue tongue. Some monkeys too will say hello, but be cautious because those monkeys are not shy to grab plastic bags. They steal for food :( according to one of the people there.
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| Boat from Sabang |
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| dorobo saru :P |
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| bayawak |
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| PPUR |
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| PPUR |
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| PPUR |
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| PPUR |
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| PPUR |
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| PPUR |
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| PPUR |
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| HORSE@ppur |
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| flower |
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| bats of PPUR |
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| ppur |
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| ppur |
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| ppur |
The guided tour includes a trip around the town we had a stop over on the town. We were taken to the The Immaculate Conception Cathedral and a nearby park with a monument about WWII.
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| The Immaculate Conception Cathedral |
One downfall of going to Palawan is that if you are a blood donor, you need to wait 1 year as quarantine period. You can not donate blood :( because Palawan is known source of Malaria disease from mosquito bites.
Other stuffs and stop over...
I saw red banana on Palawan but it was not my first time to see
one^^, I was able to take some pictures of it together with different
types of bananas.
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| Red Banana |
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| bananas |
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| banana |
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| banana |
On this Palawan trip I just stayed on Puerto Princessa. In the future I would like to see, Coron, El Nido and
Calauit Island, these are one of the good places too in Palawan. Coron and El Nido are famous for beach while Calauit is famous safari animals like giraffes ans zebra roaming freely on the island.
