I spent most of the morning really quite drained as I got up and found some food to eat: I went to the market and got some fruit, to a backery and got some cakes and to a stall and got a burger (quite wanted some nuts, but the burger was cheaper, quite wanted a bacon sandwich but they were out of bacon).

List of foods consumed this morning:

• 4 bananas
• 1 mango
• 7 cookies
• 3 slices of cake
• 2 cupcakes
• 2 large donuts
• 1 burger

Total cost: about 1.75 pounds

I then had lunch with Nathan (chap from my dorm) on the beach in a restaurant:

• Noodle vegetable soup with an egg
• 1 drink

Total cost: about 1.75 pounds.

I felt pretty rubbish from eating quite so much delicious food, and not having eaten the day before, so I napped for an hour and had a shower. Then I felt much better. So much better that after the huge downpour I walked the trek to the airport (just over 1 hour up hill in 30 degrees, with my 13kg pack on my back), which saved me almost as much as the cost of all my day’s food so far 😛 I’m sure I looked pretty stupid walking all the way into the private airport dripping with sweat in my scruffy trekking gear as everyone else came in in their air conditioned vans all dressed up in their fassionable holiday clothes. I did get a number of questions and looks of humour from the security as I explained that yes I had walked from town.

Plane was 2.5 hours late, but in the end after landing I got out and walked around to terminal 3 arrivals where I met one Ms Amy Darters! 😀 We then travelled to the hostel I had booked, we tried to get to the railway station, taking a P7 jeepney, then walking through some very busy and rubbish littered markets to find that the station was closed. We then just grabbed an uber to the hostel.

After briefly sorting all of our things out, we decided to go to china town to see what new year activities were happening. We watched some dragon costume dancing stuff, ate lots of interesting foods that we’d never had before (some interesting dumpling noodle soup stuff, some omelet oniony ball things in different sauces (really rather tasty), come duck stuff and a pie type thing that was entirely made from really hard jelly stuff with very little to no flavour… We then watched the firework display, unfortunately because we were right underneath between high rise buildings, we couldn’t see all that much. But it was fun non the less. An enjoyable night.

My phone then ran out of battery, so we didn’t know how to get back and couldn’t remember where our hostel was, so we tried to buy a new cable to charge it up from Amy’s reserve battery thing, but the reserve battery thing had died. We also tried to find anywhere that had WiFi so we could use Amy’s phone, but nowhere was available. We did manage to get a taxi and after much umming and arrring we did arrive back at our hostel mainly by the fact that we recognised a few places. Then we went off to our dorms and to sleep.

El Nido, what can I say? It’s the coolest place I’ve been so far. It’s apparently the second most expensive place in the Philippines after Manlia, but if you have a keen eye you can find some pretty cheap accommodation (admittedly only a couple of places, and they aren’t the most pleasant of places) and cheap food (tip, look for where the locals eat).

But the whole town is in on the same 4 island hopping tours (A,B,C and D) all for the same price wherever you go. There are loads of diving shops too, but I’m saving my scuba for later in my stay in the Philippines. The locals are all really friendly, no one is pushy, it’s quite the boho town for people wanting to escape from Manila for somewhere more relaxed and beautiful.

It’s developing at quite a rate, and I expect that in 10 years that it’ll be almost all concrete tourist buildings for a couple of rows from the beach and the locals will be pushed even further out of time, the other beaches in the area will also get the same treatment. I’m sure even Napcan Beach will soon be populated with tourists at this peak time of year when the road to it is completely converted to concrete. But the beauty of nature that engulfs this is really breathtaking and if you stop and take a look around almost anywhere you will be quite taken back. The tours that go round really make the most of the incredible landscape.