Reminiscing Paradise: Our Way to Coron

A vacation is like love - anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia.  ~Author Unknown

We booked our flight as early as October of 2010. Many things happened in between—some backed out while another got pregnant and was not allowed by her doctor to fly. But come January of this year, 10 of us flew to one of the paradises in the Philippines: Coron, Palawan. 

One of the islands near Coron, taken from the plane window.

Me and six others took a small Cebu Pacific plane while the other three were on Zest Air which arrived two hours earlier. Upon arrival, the first thing I noticed was the airport’s conveyer belt—or should I say platform since it was made of wood and not moving at all. The staff threw the baggage on it like garbage bags and left us to fight with the other passengers for the right to get their bags first.

Baggage grabbed and sunglasses on, we got out of the airport to the forest of vans waiting for tourists. We immediately spotted the van—arranged by Coron Galeri—that will take us to our inn.

Our flight was 2 hours late!

Kuya Bong, our driver, was once a Manileño until he fell in love with his wife who lived in Coron. He claimed that once we drink water from the island, we would never want to leave again. The 25-minute drive to the town proper was filled with camera clicks and planning of activities for the rest of the day.




Our Accomodation

Seadive Resort faces the sea and the lounge also serves as a dock for boats so its very convenient for tourists planning to go island hopping during their stay.

Seadive Resort is an inn/diving shop facing the ocean. We reserved rooms at the last minute so we only got 1 airconditioned room with 1 bathroom and 2 open rooms with a common restroom. I was in one of the open rooms with only one fan to keep the mosquitoes away from us at night. 

 

The room was made of nipa roof and the floor, wooden planks with gaps in between so we had to put away our coins (in case it fell to the sea). At night, there were no mosquitoes at all and the breeze was cool. The only downside to this room was the noise the oxygen tank refilling station beside us created. It was epic and, if not for Bon Jovi’s voice on loop, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

The airconditioned room has the same nipa feel but its floor was concrete since it was on the second floor. Since there were 10 of us and only three room, we asked for extra mattresses so some of us could sleep on the floor.

Our rooms were probably not on a five-star level—probably not even 3-star—but for P800/night for the open rooms and P1,200/night for the airconditioned, it was worth it. Since there are three of us in the open room, I only paid P800 for three nights.

The food in Seadive was not the best but the ambiance of the lounge facing the sea and the mountains was worth it. I could sit there for hours, leech on the free Wi-Fi, and drink their unlimited coffee or tea.

• Looking Around Town: Coron City Tour

• Coron's Waterworld: Coron Island Hopping Part 1

• Beauty and Ruins: Coron Island Hopping Part 2

Be a Mad Hatter to Survive!

There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter. - Mad Hatter

Blogging is not a stranger to me, but it was never really a friend. I’ve tried to do it but, more often than not, it turns into a public diary then, eventually, ends up as a dump for hormonal frustrations. I’m not sure if this one will be different but I intend to try. 

I’ve read a blogging guide somewhere that says: to have a good blog, I must have a specific topic. It should be a “blog about something” not a “blog about me.” I have a lot of interests but only a few that I can be articulate about. 

Travel is definitely not one of them. 

I find that describing a landscape Tolkien-style very hard—if not impossible—even though I have been writing for a living. I tend to use cliché words like beautiful, scenic, serene, and the likes.

But this year started with me traveling to one of the best places in the Philippines. This is followed by a couple more beach adventures and finally a family vacation in Beijing, China. My friends are encouraging me to create a blog for all my adventures and my photos can help me if I run out of cliché words.

So I thought, why not? I have also created a photography blog which ultimately failed. Why not just dump some of my photos into entries about the place where I took them?

Hence, this blog.

Another interest of mine is writing—a given since I am a graduate of Creative Writing.

For our undergrad thesis, I wrote a 70+ page novella set in a fantasy world called Asandia. The story is crappy; the fantasy world crappier. Ever since I started writing ideas for this novella, I have been haunted by my inability to create a believable and consistent image of my world. Until now, I buy books about pre-colonial Philippines, fantasy how-to’s, and mythologies that will help me fill my world with different cultures.

Recently, I’ve been obsessing over my world building again. This is brought about by my boredness at work and the after-effects of finishing Dragon Age: Origins for the nth time. 

Once, I also created a world building blog and you also know how that ended. This time, however, an epic e-book will be helping me build the foundations of Etharion (yes, I renamed it).

I also plan to take pictures of sceneries, places, and—if I’m brave enough—people that will populate my world. 

Hence, this blog.

I wonder what this blog will be like. From what I said above, this will look like Alice’s journal from her travels to Wonderland—a mixture of reality and fantasy. 

But that is how I am. 

Mixing real life with make-belief; always looking at the clouds for a chance to get a peek at the world behind them; always wondering if I’ll end up in a different dimension if I go through an alley; always dressing up comfortably in case of a zombie apocalypse.