1404st travel talk

CITY LIVING

TRAVEL TALK

It Really Is More Fun In The Philippines Nyima Pratten Photos by Kelly Jiao and Nyima Pratten

The Philippines, an idyllic, tropical holiday destination that most expats in the city are familiar with thanks to its warm, sunny climate, favourable Pesos to Yuan rate and ease of travel from Shanghai directly to Manila.

Upon arrival in Manila, most tourists opt for the famed and beautiful beaches of Boracay and El Nido. However, Talk slipped off to the equally, if not more, beautiful secluded beaches in Batangas and Mindoro.

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ocated about a 3 hour drive away from Manila International Airport was our first stop, Anilao in Batangas; a popular diving location for local tourists. We stayed at the Eagle Point Resort (Web: www.eaglepointresort.com.ph), which offers spacious rooms, for divers and non-divers, with breath taking views looking out over the pristinely clear sea. The resort has a family friendly pool, commandeering two levels with a water slide connecting them, along with on-site diving instructors and diving or snorkelling equipment; a destination appropriate for all the family. You can enjoy a relaxed dinner at the hotel whilst taking in the breathtaking colours of the sun setting on the vast expanse of ocean and the dancing silhouettes of fishing boats returning to harbour. The resort also owns a private, white sandy beach on Maricaban Island; a 20-minute boat ride from the resort itself. Guests are able to take a specially prepared picnic to the island and spend a day on the exclusive Sepoc Beach. As half of our party were certified divers, and the other half not exactly water babies, the group was offered the choice of staying at the private beach to view sea creatures and coral from the surface of the water in the comfort of a life vest, or taking the boat out once again to visit a variety of dive sites located in the nearby water. The plentiful and diverse dive sites, with different depths and strength of the current, make the area suitable for all types of divers, from the novice to the more advanced.

It was extraordinary how close you can get to the marine life whilst snorkelling off Sepoc Beach. As the area is so secluded, the colourful fish have no hesitation about swimming right into you and, due to the shallow waters, you always seem to be within arms’ reach of the seabed and life on the seabed. If you venture far enough away from land, you can swim over massive craters in the coral reefs, giving you the heart stopping

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sensation that you are about to go over the edge of a crevasse, even though you continue to safely bob up and down on the surface of the water.

As a group, we had all been lucky enough to dive at some of the most famous dive sites in the world, however, we all agreed that these dives were particularly spectacular thanks to the fantastic visibility and the vibrancy of colours from the abundance and variety of bright, tropical fish, an extensive array of otherworldly looking coral reefs that stretched as far as the eye could see and unspoiled water containing more aquatic colours than is possible to list.

After spending a few days in Batangas, we took a two-hour banca (a motorised boat, common in the Philippines) ride across the crystal clear, blue sea to our next destination, Puerto Galera, Mindoro. As soon as you step off the banca onto the shore of White Beach, the most popular of Puerto Galera’s 32 beaches, you realise that this part of Puerto Galera is much more geared towards foreign tourists with lots of international foods being sold up and down the beach front, ladies offering cheap massages on beach towels and an abundance of tattoo parlours filled with gap year students. It is definitely the place to party, which is lucky as we were in the area to attend the annual Malasimbo Music And Arts Festival.

We stayed at the Marco Vincent Dive Resort (www.marcovincent. com), set back a Scuba diving in Batangas little from White Beach in a quieter location, although it does boast a bar in the middle of the strip. The rooms are spread across five floors with a Grecian style swimming pool situated in the middle of the building. The resort offers good value for money dive packages, including trips to the Verde Island Passage, which has been described by America’s Smithsonian Institute as the centre of the world’s marine biodiversity with more than 300 species of coral and underwater rock canyons and is home to more than half of the world’s known shore fish.

We hopped in a jeepny (a popular means of public transport in the Philippines) and took a trip over to a beach area called the Sandbar; a beautiful long stretch of white sand jutting out into the ocean with water on either side. We took a small two-seater, motorised banca out to do some more snorkelling. We were

Jeepney at the Sandbar

The view from Eagle Point Resort

Feeding bread to the fish from the outrigger of a banca

Local children playing at White Beach, Puerto Galera

Malasimbo Music & Arts Festival

Sepoc Beach, Maricaban Island

Magyan handicrafts

surprised when the helmsman killed the engine, handed us some snorkelling masks and asked us if we wanted to get in the water. We were envisioning some sort of Open Water scenario, where we were going to be left behind by the boat, but in actual fact, we were told to hold on to the outriggers before he started the engine again. It is an ingenious way of covering a lot of ground whilst taking in the spectacular underwater scenery. After periods of flying through the water at high speeds, the boat would come to a stop at bustling underwater ecosystems and we were handed fistfuls of bread to feed the fish. The bold aquatic creatures literally took the food right from our hands and swam all around us. Viewing this unspoilt area of the ocean was a humbling experience. This trip would also be suitable for older children, potentially inspiring them to learn more about environmental awareness and marine preservation.

We were in town to experience the fourth annual Malasimbo Music And Arts Festival set in the spectacular setting of Mount Malasimbo’s foothills in Puerto Galera. Surrounded by nature, the

rugged landscape of the mountain perfectly lends itself to the festival’s grass-terraced amphitheatre carved from the earth and is the perfect setting for a psychedelic dance party; Glastonbury, eat your heart out. As the sun goes down, the party heats up with artistic light installations brightening up the expanse. World-class performers, which this year included Jose Gonzalez, took to the stage dipping between jazz, funk and soul acts along with local and indigenous talent. The festival’s ethos is one of preserving the local culture and environment, and in this vein, every year the festival organisers work with the Department of Environment & Natural Resources and the Department of Tourism to protect and preserve the natural environment through supporting reforestation initiatives and includes Filipino tribal culture and ethnic arts into the festival. Seven Magyan tribes, who make up part of the Filipino indigenous community, were invited to build a life sized, tribal village in order to showcase their lifestyle, handicrafts, language and music. This is an extremely interesting, anthropological experience for visitors and a committed effort by the local government to educate the public about Mindoro’s indigenous people and culture. The festival was very relaxed and, due to its slight inaccessibility from the nearest airport, surprisingly full of Europeans. However, after bumping into the festival founder; a Frenchman who is based in Puerto Galera and the event’s biggest enthusiast, this became less surprising. So laid back was the festival that the artists were left free to share the love and mingle with the masses after their performances. There was no pretentiousness, just a shared passion for music and the arts.

The Philippines could easily be a holiday just about lounging on the beach and diving or snorkelling in the clear waters but, if you scratch the surface, there is even more to discover in the way of arts, culture and local history. Go forth and explore.

Malasimbo Music And Arts Festival is an annual three-day festival in Puerto Galera. For more information visit www.malasimbofestival.com April14 TalkMagazine

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