Malapascua Island Day 3

March 8, 2012
Malapascua Island Day 3 (Philippines)

Thursday morning, Jessie and I woke up and had a nice breakfast at Ging Ging’s. We then proceeded to walk around a good portion of the island. Up until now, we’ve mainly stuck to our little part of the island. It was nice to see more of it and get a glimpse of local life.
What we’ve noticed is that people live very simply here. The main industry on the island is tourism and people don’t have much money. The locals all say they’re related. They live in little shacks made of palm leaves. Some have concrete houses, but it’s not common.

The roads are all made out of dirt (with one exception) and they’re so narrow that a car wouldn’t be able to drive through. We haven’t seen a single car on the island. The main methods of transportation are walking, biking and motor bikes.

Smoking is very popular. We always see the locals smoking. Today at breakfast I saw two young boys probably around 7 years old. Both were smoking. It broke my heart.

Everyone seems very friendly and many of the local young men have made an effort to learn our names. They often come up to us asking our plans for the day and offering to take us out boating, scuba diving or snorkeling. They also helped us carry our heavy bags on the day we arrived. They had offered to carry them for 20pesos each, they then realized just how heavy our suitcases were. Jessie and I felt bad for them, but also very thankful because we were having a difficult time maneuvering them. We tipped them a bit extra for all their hard work.

Today one of our local friends Raymon came up to us and offered to take us out snorkeling for a few hours. After we negotiated a price, we set up a time and he picked us up from our hotel. He actually didn’t come with us, but he introduced us to his cousin Lao who was a very nice young man. Lao is planning on going to university next year to study Marine Engineering. He took us out on his boat with his 11 year old nephew who is apprenticing. They both were excellent tour guides and Lao even came in the water with us and showed us the best places to see fish.

All together, we went to three different locations. The first was a coral area just about a kilometer from our resort. There was lots of coral and different fish. Unfortunately, lots of the coral was dead, so it wasn’t so vibrant, but it was still really beautiful. The next place we went was my favorite. It was on the other side of the island and we were in open water so the waves were much bigger. I was able to spot much more marine life here including a sea snake, squid, many different types of tropical fish and some living coral.

The last area we went to was very cool. It was a shipwreck from WWII. The ship went down in 1942 and belonged to Japan. There wasn’t much of it left, but it was interesting to see the skeleton of the ship and all the marine life that is crawling within it.

We didn’t stay at the shipwreck for long because Jessie and I were both becoming frustrated by little stinging sensations all over our bodies. This reminded me hugely of mini jellyfish I had encountered while scuba diving in Australia. We soon got out of the water and asked Lao what he thought it was. He didn’t think they were jellyfish, but rather algae.

Before long we were arriving back at our hotel. Jessie and I were both hungry and exhausted from our great snorkeling adventure. We said goodbye to our new friends and paid for our trip. Things in the Philippines are so cheap—this trip only cost us $25 total including giving them both a nice tip.

We quickly showered and then planned to go out for lunch. The problem we noticed when getting out of the shower was that we had both been badly burned. This was such a surprise because we both applied sunscreen liberally 3 times through the 3 hour period. It seems our Canadian skin just isn’t used to the strong rays in Southeast Asia yet. We’ve been slathering ourselves with cream and Vaseline since then with the hopes that we won’t peel.

After a nice lunch at Ging Ging’s, we came back to our hotel in a bit of pain from our burns and decided to take a siesta. We woke up just before sunset and watched the sun go down from the beachfront. How beautiful!