Puerto, Manila, KK

25.1.2013

Mr. Donut fans 4 life

It's weird how during traveling you can get attached to random places and things. This time when we got back to Puerto Princesa, it felt almost like coming home. We stayed at the same guesthouse as the last time and the staff remembered us and treated us like old friends. We ate breakfast at the same Mister Donut as the last time, and walking on the main street felt weirdly comfortable and cozy. I guess it has something to do with the fact that when you always change the location and most of the people around you are there only for a brief moment, your mind starts to miss some stability and familiarity.

So if you ever end up in Puerto Princesa City, here's a few things I can recommend. First, DLM Pensionne is a fantastic place to sleep, almost like a homestay, the family who runs it is super friendly. Second, Kalui restaurant is one of the best ones I have been to in SE Asia, great and fast service, delicious food, unique atmosphere. And the third thing is all the second hand flea markets. There are so many and the prices are so low. I don't know where all the clothes come from, but there are shirts and skirts and dresses for around one euro, some of them great quality and some crap of course. We spent hours just going through those shops and I wish I had a bottomless backpack, but sadly it's already 14,5 kilos heavy, so probably it's not a good idea to buy any more stuff.

Dodgy karaoke bar in Puerto

From the tranquility of Puerto Princesa we arrived to the busy, dirty, sinful Manila. This time it wasn't as bad as the first time; we arrived earlier, we were not that tired, and we already knew where to sleep our night.  Also we had met Australian Andrew in El Nido and were supposed to meet up with him for dinner and some beers since we were all in Manila, so there was something worth waiting for and a plan what to do. Otherwise we probably would've just stayed at our hostel, being scared of the street life outside haha. Andrew's family is from the Philippines, and we got a ride from his uncle and cousin to a bar area, then spent an extremely random evening singing karaoke, listening to a terrible live band, and in the end got a ride back to the hostel from a Filipino guy who said his mother is a politician so he can get away with anything. He also told us that the police doesn't care if you drive on when the traffic light is red – and just to prove this he was driving through all the red lights with his massive monster truck jeep. Weird Manila experiences, but it was a very nice evening, a good way to end our time in the Philippines. We also saw street kids throwing rocks at each other, it was a small fight between two gangs, all the participants were around 12 years old. Such a tough life they're living. Manila is not a very happy place to live, too much tragedy all around.

Our Manila gang

Jenny waiting for the bus to the Clark Airport

And as I said in the previous post, we were flying to Kota Kinabalu from Clark, and then heading to Indonesia when we would feel like it. Well, we felt like it very soon. We spent two nights in Borneo, and even though it is a huge island with plenty of things to see, do and try, our minds were already in Indonesia so we were super eager to continue our travels as fast as possible. I can confess that at this point, planning would've saved us time and money, and quite a lot of both. Going with the flow is a nice idea but doesn't always work out as well as I would hope it to work. We were almost desperate to get to Bali, it is actually quite funny how sad and annoyed we felt to be stuck in Borneo with no plan about how to continue. We went to a travel agency where a cool, mother-like middle-aged Malaysian woman helped us to find some flights that would make sense. It is ridiculous when thinking about it afterwards; there we sat with our desperate faces, thinking what to do next, being and looking miserable, wondering how much money we would be ready to spend to get to Bali soon. Horrible how our first world problems seem so big at the moment when they appear... “Oh no, poor me, I'm stuck in Borneo, I want to go to Bali, blah blah blah, my life is so hard, the flights are so expensive, what should we do, oh no it's so hard to decide...” That woman at the travel agency must've thought we were world class idiots. She gave us motherly advice like “You can never get everything on your travels, you just have to choose”, “Don't take drugs!” and so on. After maybe one hour of thinking and thinking and thinking a bit more we decided to take the expensive flight to Bali. Hard decisions of life.

Fish from the fresh market in Kota Kinabalu

Us crying over our ringgits that we paid for our flights to Bali

Our room in KK

We are now on our flight from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur, and later flying from KL to Bali. It is the rainy season in Indonesia, will be interesting to see how we will like it. Seems like half of the people we have talked with love Bali and half of the people think it's overrated. In a few days we will have our own opinion about it and I will let you know how it is ;----)