Puerto Princesa
Of all the major cities we've been to so far, I have to say Puerto Princesa has been one of my favorites. It's hard to top places like El Nido in terms of natural beauty and outdoor activities (which, as it turns out, is our measure of a good vacation), but as far as city activities and sightseeing go, Puerto Princesa was wonderful. At only around 250,000 residents, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the super metropolis' of Shanghai or Hong Kong. Those cities are great and we thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Hong Kong and our regular trips to Shanghai. But they are so Western in terms of restaurants, activities, and people, we may as well have been back in Austin. Other cities in China such as Harbin, Nanjing, and Hangzhou had some great sights to see and are full of rich Chinese history. However, less major cities such as these can be difficult to navigate due to less English around town and fewer English speaking residents. This can make it frustrating at times for foreigners. Puerto Princesa, on the other hand, was a truly authentic Filipino experience, while still being easy to navigate and communicate with the locals. The streets were littered with hundreds of tricycle taxis (motorcycles rigged with passenger cars) that could take you anywhere in town for rarely more than 50 pisos (about a dollar); there was a restaurant at nearly every street corner serving up delicious and authentic Filipino dishes; and, best of all, the people were some of the friendliest we've encountered in our time abroad so far.
Our first night in Puerto Princesa was very short-lived: our plane landed around 7pm and our van left for El Nido the next morning at 8am. However, after our time in north Palawan and the long, uncomfortable van ride back to the provincial capital, we had another two and a half days to check out the city. We were actually pretty exhausted by the time the van pulled into town around 1pm Friday afternoon, so we just caught a trike to our hotel, checked in, ate lunch at the hotel restaurant, and lounged by the pool for the rest of the afternoon. The next morning, we had another trike take us downtown to begin exploring. We did a little walking around and soon found a little booking office for tours. We booked a city tour for that afternoon and a tour of Palawan’s famous “underground river” for the following day. We then did some more walking around and shopping before we found a great little restaurant to have lunch. Pork Adobo is a common Filipino dish that we had become quite fond of at that point, and this place had some of the best I think we had on the whole trip. Adobo is just a type of sauce that is slow cooked with either chicken or pork and served over a bed of rice. It seems like a dish that would be easy to try out in a Crock Pot and, along with Chinese dumplings, is on our list of foods to try making at home for ourselves.
Later that day we took our city tour and the following day took the tour of the underground river. The underground river took up most of the day on Sunday and by the time we got back we really only had time to get dinner and head back to the hotel. The following morning was our flight back to Shanghai so we called it an early night before heading home the next day. The Philippines is one of the last places I imagined us going for our fist major vacation but we had a really amazing time. It will be hard to resist the urge to return for one of our other breaks but there are a ton of other places we still want to visit while living abroad.
We have been back in Kunshan for several weeks now and are well into our spring semester. The spring doesn’t have nearly as many breaks as the fall did so we won’t get to do much traveling again till summer. We will have a four day break in May though and are planning to go see the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors of Xi’an.
Thanks for reading,
Hunter
The highlight of the city tour was definitey the Puerto Princesa Crocodile Preserve. It was a pretty big facility with crocodile's ranging from only a foot or two long, all the way up to over 10 feet. The skeleton and hide pictured above is from the largest crocodile ever captured alive in the Philippines. It was nearly 20 feet long had been the largest in the world until only recently. They kept it alive at the crocodile preserve until it's death in the early 2000s.
The day after the city tour, we took another bus ride to Puerto Princesa's famous Underground River. It was a pretty cool raft ride through a cave.
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We saw this guy on the beach outside of the underground river. He was about four feet long but the guide said he would still grow a lot.
There were also a ton of monkeys all around the beach and jungle. The guide said to be careful with cameras and phones because they are known for stealing them from tourists. She also said not to let them see any plastic bags or containers because they know there is food in them. Apparently they are even known for getting violent with people who don't give up their snacks.
There were hundreds and hundreds of bats all throughout the cave! It's a little hard to tell, but the two pictures below are bats hanging on the ceiling.
The markings on the walls were "breadcrumbs" left by the first people who explored the caves to keep from getting lost. I don't remember the year it was first explored, but it was well over 100 years ago.
