4. A proper traveller’s review …..?

I’ve noticed that my ‘travel blog’ is perhaps not the most useful as a blog - it’s essentially me either waffling about what I’ve done or ranting about stuff that I am displeased with! I’ve noticed this because when I’m doing my research on a place, I often read other travel blogs to find recommendations on travel, local tips, places to eat and stay etc. These are seemingly produced by people who’s ‘job’ (or maybe that should be existence) is to travel the world, collecting and sharing information.

I’ve decided that I should do a much more ‘useful’ blog and so I shall now give a full review of the place I’m staying in ….

Accommodation: Neptune Dive Resort

Location: Moalboal, Philippines (Cebu Island). Down a little rutted road pathway that is not for vehicular and only for pedestrians, so has scooters tearing up and down it at regular intervals.

Getting there: seems to include a slightly terrifying taxi ride, not dissimilar to a roller coaster. My taxi chose to follow an ‘off road’ destination to the final ‘carpark’ and then he and I had to walk through someone dusty desert, someone’s front garden, through a little shady town and then down a back alley only to realise we’d arrived at the ‘back’ … (which is a relief as I was beginning to think I was either walking merrily into a tourist kidnapping scenario or was about to be murdered by the kind taxi man who was carrying my massive and heavy bag!). Anyway, we arrived and I felt obliged to hand over a massive tip (I didn’t have any remotely smaller notes) after our adventure!

Arrival: Everything was closed up in the dive shop but someone in the restaurant upstairs seemed to know to expect me, handed me over a key and shooed me in the general direction of my room, which was clean and lovely and waiting for me!

Comfort: The bed is a little on the hard side but quite comfortable. There are a range of pillows, which I’ve prodded and checked and found one that is suitable (soft but well filled - the ultimate pillow aim, for me, is to have a feathery soft, well filled pillow that doesn’t sink down to nothing but isn’t so hard that you wake up with a headache. A bit like in the Care Bears where they just scooped some extra cloud around them and sleep in amongst that).

Bathroom: Yes, there is one (this useful blog writing is easy!). It has a sink, toilet and shower, which has a curtain and actual little shower cubicle. The water pressure is so dreadful it’s almost like standing under someone lightly dribbling on you but the water is warm. There are signs up saying the whole village is having problems with water supply and pressure at the moment and that this has been the case for ‘4 days’ and they are doing their best to ensure water is running! The signs have been up since I arrived, so it must be at least 10 days now …. And I think most people stay 3-4 days here on their travels so it’s safe to assume these signs could have been up for some time as a permanent ‘solution’ to explaining away the water pressure! There are free toiletries in the shower to use - one marked as face wash, which is maybe shower gel. The other marked as ‘conditioner’, which it definitely isn’t. It’s perhaps better described as scented dish soap. They are in two squeeze bottles which are attached to the wall by brackets, which are themselves duck-taped to the wall. Reassuring.

Location: The dive resort fronts onto a little access to the sea (there aren’t really beaches here - it’s most rocky coastline and the shore). The rooms are set back behind the dive shop - not much natural light gets into them but that does keep them cool. We seem to back onto a tiny farm / local space, which is mostly filled with a zillion roosters and a lady who likes cleaning and brushing quite early every morning.

Sleep: Affected more by jet lag than anything else initially. However, it’s usually quiet - aside from the bar opposite that has some thumpy music and sometimes some karaoke but it’s quite distant in sound. The rowdy drunks have chosen to have the odd evening of singing their own entertainment-  mostly over and over again the same line from the proclaimers ‘I would walk 500 miles’. I’m fairly sure they were British rowdy drunks because they sang it with a Scottish accent which was not native. Classic Brits abroad. The Filipinos seems to get up quite early - presumably because the zillion roosters that live everywhere have started crowing them awake by 5am. They then like to start cleaning, shouting to each other or coughing, hawking and spitting as part of their morning routine.

Security: the room has an excellent solid door, with a double set of locks (useful review point I think!). It seems to keep out unwanted humans but the little critters still find their way in. A number of mosquitoes who I spend some time flapping at and attempted to splat, a little spider - who I was willing to share the bathroom with if it kept out my way but then it chose to live on the toilet seat so I had to dispose of it, and at one point a sort of jumpy black grasshopper type thing which I managed to remove by bravely throwing a towel over, bundling up and then throwing (towel and all) out of the door. My least favourite room guest was a bloody massive cockroach in the bathroom. He arrived one evening and stayed, fortunately near the ceiling. Perhaps the worst thing was that he was gone by the morning and I had to do a full flappy check of the bathroom and inspection of the toilet seat, shower curtains and towels each time I used them again after that as I was convinced the roach was secreted away in thee somewhere just waiting to leap out and attack!

Facilities: A kettle but no fridge. Tiny ridiculous tea cups provided. I’ve brought my own travel cup, tea bags and have sourced milk options (little UHT cartons and powdered). I would advise doing the same!

Wildlife: aside from the aforementioned insect wildlife, the whole village (maybe even country) is absolutely overrun with dogs. I think some are owned - some as pets and some quite loosely as ones who stay nearby a certain place - but most are strays. They are all, without exception, placid, mostly asleep and either friendly or just entirely unaware that there are human around them as they are asleep! The people don’t seem to mind the dogs and, I thought, they seemed to live in harmony but one of the instructors told me that he briefly adopted a puppy but just before it was 2yrs old, it was poisoned and died. Apparently, in a bid to keep the numbers of strays low, the locals sometimes put out random heaps of poisoned food, which kills off a number of dogs and controls the population!

Risks?: you take your life into your own hands when walking or riding trikes near the roads but otherwise all seems well! Various ‘taxi’ drivers will offer you a lift whenever you walk past them, many of these are scooter drivers who will let you hop on the back. I always say ‘no thank you’. Even when I was negotiating my trip the falls, I was initially offered a bike:

Nice Filipino man: you want taxi to falls?

Me: yes please…

NFM: you ok to go on bike?

Me: oh, no thank you. On a trike please.

NFM: no bike? Why not?

Me: too scared. Looks terrifying, trike taxi please

NFM: no bike? What are you scared of?

Me: dying?

And so I got a trike taxi!

The people are really friendly and all kind (so far!). Some of the unregistered ‘dodgy’ dive and snorkel shops should be avoided - any of those not properly affiliated or with authentic credentials. The locals will rent you a mask and snorkel - and even take you out to ‘guide’ you but this is far riskier than you’d imagine; a young Asian girl was drowned last month while she was snorkelling with a guide. The guides tend to push snorkelers down towards turtles or wildlife so they can get closer (the ones who can’t swim can’t get themselves down there!) but unfortunately the girl wasn’t warned, her partner was busily taking photos of the turtle they were being pushed down to see and she was help down & drowned before anyone realised. An absolute tragedy - and reminder or how much respect you should always have for the sea, even in shallow waters. There have been the odd diving accidents too but all three incidents from the past two years were all people not following the rules and doing things they shouldn’t (free diving without a buddy and too deep, free diving straight after scuba diving and someone refusing to follow medical advice after surfacing too quickly). Why would you follow rules? They’re there to keep you safe. Surely everyone loves rules?

The diving: Great fun! Mostly easy conditions, water warm enough to just wear rash vest and leggings and lots of pretty things to see. You get ready at the dive shop, the staff carry all your kit to the boat so all you do is trot down there and paddle put to it with your own fins and mask. After the diving, once the boat is ‘parked’ back by the beach, we retire to the seating bit, drink tea and then go out again an hour later. In the interim, the local kids who play in the sea most of the day use the boat as their climbing frame and have an excellent time climbing up and jumping off it!

Final dive today was back to the island that I liked (although didn’t see any more salps this time!). I did however enjoy watching the fishermen - they are not allowed to drag fish with nets but can use a line. They are fishing for massive tuna (I didn’t see any one catch anything though). I did watch their fishing techniques; some take the classic approach sitting on their boat with their line in the water; others seems to prefer the method where they hang half their body over the side of the boat while wearing a snorkel and mask and apparently watch for the fish and dangle their lines tantalisingly to tempts the fishes in!

I’ve had a final morning of diving today, lunch with a couple of the divers I’ve dived with a few times this week (Stefan, a Swede, who’s daughter is doing her open water course and who is 13!, and Martin. A Dutch instructor) and then this afternoon is sorting my stuff & hanging out everything to dry to be packed for tomorrow!