After a warm welcome in Manila of Carlos friend living there from Almeria we decide to fly to the island Palawan. .. An exotic island quite undeveloped and with amazing nature. We arrive in Puerto Princessa with nice conial vibes. Philippnes was first conialized by Spain for 300 hundred years which you still can notice in many senses. People look a little bit like Asian Latins, they love “fiestas”, they can do impressive hip moments , they all have Spanish names, local language has a lot of Spanish words and they are in general very musical and love to have fun.
Felt emidealtly kind of home here, everyone you meet is super friendly and the best thing is they speak good English! Even the old people because after the Spanish vanished, Japaneise took over a short while and after that it belonged to America until the liberation 1945. It’s really interesting and nice to see the influence of the history mixed with the local culture.
First day we rented a longtail boat at Honda bay that took us out on a real paradise island think we payed a bit more than 15 euros for a big boat with a driver and rent of snorkel and fins. It was truly an abandon island with white coral sand and quite much fish to admire under surface. But suddenly big dark clouds showed up and the sky just opened! Hungry, freazing and wet we try to keep warm with help from life jackets and a woman selling the most delicious sweet rice cookies ever saved us from the worst hunger while we witnessed a quite impressive thunderstorm.
Dark clouds in paradise...
In the night rather exhausted we decided to meet up with a girl we contacted through cotchsurfing in the bar Katabom. A very nice place with live music and the girl Nives was amazing. Also meet a Swedish bloke kind of got stucked there for 2 years also just supposed to “travelling through”. Our plan was to the day after go to the city Sabang where you can see the 7 wonders of the world underwater caves hat reach a network 4.5 km inside the mountain.
But our night out got quite wet and I ended up meeting a philipino hindu monk. He had joined Hari Krishna communtie in the 80’s when they arrived to the island and started an ashram here. So we had very interesting conversation about yoga philosophy in a rockbar over a glass of dark rom at 1 oclock haha who would have guessed??
The day after we meet up with Nives again and she told us about a prison that is nearby Puerto Princesa. It is a prison without bars, the prisoners live there with there familys, they have a hospital,they grow herbs and heal with herbal medicine, they grow all food they need by themselves, they have a primary school, a basketball team, a beauty competition… They are like there own community and the place is out of this world beautiful surrounded by rice fields and mountains.
When we arrived they put up an amazing dance show to backstreet boys I mean this guys are supposed to be badass criminals that has murder on their record and then backsteet boys…Really? It is so surrealistic and strange and I can’t get a grip on it. It looks like a paradise and the whole place breath harmony… But still it is a prison… They cant go outside, well the children and women can but the prisoners no.. Still I can’t imagine there is one more prison like this in the whole wide world. Maybe we are gonna stay there and live there for a longer while. Voluntarily going to jail! Carlos want to make a documentary and I want to learn about herbal medicine from mama Cellie, Nives boyfriends mother that has lived in the prison for around 30 years! She is amazing, a real fighter and made of only leatherskin, bones and mucles would tip she doesn’t weight more than 40 kg! She is worth a whole blogpost by herself! It’s nothing she can’t do!
Oh almost forgot we went and saw cockfighting also, Nives boyfriend bread and compete with his chickens… For me it was a quite awful experience watching this poor animal fight until they die… Mamma mia a bit of a chock. But it is not my country and it’s not my culture I just came I saw and I went!
Tomorrow we are heading to the seven wonders of the world!
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