Spontaneous ideas are often the best ones!

People: Just a couple of minutes after arriving the impression: „Wow, HOW friendly are they here!?“ This impression increased more and more over the next weeks. The Filipinos or the friendlies people I have met on my travels so far! One of the reasons why I liked it sooooo much here 🙂 As tourists, you will mainly meet couples/retirees/package tourists, not too many young people and even less backpackers. Still, I always met people and was never alone – probably you form groups easier when there is not that many backpackers 😉

Food: In the Philippines I decided to try and not be a vegetarian anymore and ate quite some fish and chicken dishes (starting slowly 🙂 ). The fish was often veeeery delicious, of course all freshly prepared! There were also quite some vegetarian choices, also western food was not tooo bad. Unfortunately it was not that cheap, more like 5-6 Euro per dish…

Weather: Rain, fog and cold in the North of Luzon, heat and almost always sunshine on the Visayas 🙂

Costs: The Philippines are one of the more expensive countries of SEA. I was lucky in the beginning to not have to pay for anything for 5 days. Also afterwards I often got invited by other tourists – you saw that most of them are not so much on a budget as for example in Thailand 😉 In total, my daily budget amounts to 37 Euro including all the dives, whereas they cost about 360 Euro. Which means without diving, my daily budget would be just under 25 Euro/day.

Accommodation: The price/performance ratio is a bit „different“ here. You have to pay quite something to get an ok room (from around 10 Euro), below that not much is available. Dorms are a bit cheaper, but not always available…

Infrastructure: Busses, planes, lots of ferries and bankas, many many tricycles, some jeepneys – it’s been a while since I have used that many different modes of transportation. Everything always worked out fine, lots of busses and ferries even had wifi. I loved the bankas – fresh wind and a bit of salt water in your face: That, to me is a perfect holiday feeling!!! 🙂

Illnesses: Everything ok, never been sick. After my motorbike accident I had a couple of really big wounds which were very laborious in taking care of (especially since I did not want to give up on swimming and diving) – but it worked somehow!

Safety: I never felt unsafe myself, but we did watch a fight between some locals in the little village of Banaue, which apparently ended in a stabbing with one person dead 😦 I never heard about any violence against tourists though…

Highlight: Malapascua overall and the dive at Coconut Point near Apo Island.

Lowlight: Baguio respectively the weather in the North 😉

Click here for all my pictures of the Philippines: