Boracay

Greetings one and all. After a long, hard slog of a year (13.5 months actually) in Korea, I'm back 'on the road' and so, as you can see, I'm also back in the blogosphere.

This past year, I've only ventured out of Seoul for a 3 days, and that was way back in February when I hopped over to Shanghai for lunar new year. In short: I had a good craic, it was very cold, the city is a nightmare to find your way around, I went up one of the tallest buildings in the world. There you go, blog done.

But back to the present, as things on the travelling front have taken a sharp upturn and now I find myself on the paradise island of Boracay in the Philippines. As you can see from my last post, I've been planning to do this little trip since December last year, so I'm mighty happy to be here.

I arrived here last Sunday 22nd November, after a brief one-night stopover in Manila. I wasn't sure what to expect, as I've heard and read the opinions of many people who think this place is too touristy and overdeveloped. Well, all I can say is, those people must usually take their holidays with Robinson Crusoe if they think this place is too much. The beach is white and beautiful, and almost empty towards either end of it. Admittedly, it gets a little busier in the mid-section, but even there, its nowhere near as crowded as its Thai or even Vietnamese counterparts. The people too, can be compared favourably to their Thai or Vietnamese cousins. They are incredibly laid back and friendly, and always seem happy, even though they are poor as church mice.

Behind the beach runs a strip of restaurants, bars, hotels, dive shops and other services for tourists. Lots of these places are constructed from bamboo, or driftwood perhaps, enabling them to blend effortlessly in with the line of palm trees in front of them. Some hotels and bars, such as the popular Hey Jude, are a little flashier, but there's nothing too garish (yet!). By the way, if you think that a place called Hey Jude would be a great place to unwind with a beer to you favourite Beatles classics... you'd be wrong. House music pumps out all night long.

One very unique thing about the Philippines is the transport. In Manila the streets are thronging with brightly painted Jeepneys, a vehicle that was first built out of the old Jeeps that the Americans left behind when they left. But in Boracay, no cars are allowed so the primary mode of transport is the 'trike'. Trikes are basically motorbikes with a shell built around them to provide seating beside and behind the driver, a bit like tuk tuks but a slightly different shape. Same same but different!

So far I haven't done much, and to be honest I don't really plan to do much either! Thus far, the main part of my day has been taken up with laying on a sun lounger in the 30 degree heat. This is sometimes combined with some light reading, and often interspersed with a bit of swimming in the warm, clear blue sea. After this, it soon gets round to dinner time when I have the difficult task of choosing between freshly caught seafood, or an array of international cuisine. Then of course, its time to hit a bar or five to drink the tasty local fifty pence beers and look at the tasty local birds! How will I cope with two more weeks of this?