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withabackpackandcamera · 5 years

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February 22nd, 2020

Day 8: Back To Puerto Princesa I Go

Last night, I had a horrible, horrible sleep. I just didn’t feel well and didn’t sleep well either for a ton of reasons. But I eventually got some rest after tossing and turning for what seemed like the entire night. To make this worse, for whatever reason, the A/C was off and no one turned it back on, making the room super uncomfortable. By the morning, I was feeling a tad better but not good enough to get up for a previously planned hike up Taraw Cliff at the back of El Nido Town. Instead, I continued to rest in bed (it was SO hot and humid in my room) before I eventually got up to get breakfast.

I joined Karen and Mac for breakfast and we hung out at the table for a while before I finally bid them farewell so I could head back into town to buy some postcards before leaving. Once I stepped outside, I noticed just how beautiful the weather was! It was clear and sunny, the type of weather I was hoping for yesterday. Oh well, you can’t have everything when you want it. Anyhow, I left for my postcard-hunting mission. It took a while to find any store that sold postcards but eventually I found some meh ones and bought them before heading back. After checking out and waiting in the hostel lobby for a bit, my van back to Puerto Princesa finally arrived and it was time to get back on the road.

We made some stops to pick others up before we finally started the trip back. Unfortunately, this time around, I didn’t get the front passenger seat and ended up in the window seat in the second row with two others next to me. So the ride back was not nearly as comfortable as the ride there. And I wasn’t feeling 100% and it was pretty cold. I guess it could’ve been worse. But after five hours and some stops here and there, we finally made it back to Puerto Princesa. I got dropped off close to my hotel, Canvas Boutique Hotel, and walked the rest of the way there before checking into my room.

The room was nice with a big comfy bed, a nice clean shower, and a TV. But all I ended up doing was washing up and resting the rest of the evening because I wanted to kick whatever it was that I had and the best way to do that was rest. I woke up briefly later in the evening because I knew I had to eat despite not being too hungry. Also, I had 500 pesos worth of credit to use at the Painted Table, an Asian-Mexican fusion restaurant downstairs attached to the hotel, and I knew I had to use it or it’d go to waste. So I went down before they closed up and found myself to be the only customer there. I took a while to look through the menu before deciding on what I wanted to eat because I just wasn’t that hungry. Ultimately, I decided on the widely-recommended-online Costillas Adobadas Pork Ribs (which was 1 kg of pork ribs marinated in their special dry rub, grilled, and served with onion rings, corn, pico de gallo, and harissa aioli) and a mango smoothie. The ribs were pretty good and they gave me a huge rack of ribs to eat on my own. I definitely couldn’t finish it and I knew it once they brought it out to me. But I finished as much of it as I could before I packed the rest to go. And the mango smoothie was amazing! Delicious! That, on the other hand, I finished on my way up to my room. It was overall a delicious, relatively low effort meal that got me through the night and into the morning.

Once I was back in my room, I killed some time clicking through the different channels on TV before calling it a night. Hopefully I get a restful sleep tonight so that I get some energy back for tomorrow.

5 Things I Learned Today:

1. Palawan/El Nido seems like a couple-y destination given all the couples I’ve been meeting and seeing and observing. Interesting. Makes me miss my significant other...

2. Cars in the Philippines LOVE to blast their A/C ALL TRIP LONG. It gets so freakin’ cold in these cars and it seems that most people are bothered except for the locals. How cold do they need their cars to be?!

3. When a van is not completely packed with people, the driver will sometimes pick up random people needing a ride who are standing roadside. Not sure if there are certain places for pick-up though. In most cases, these people hitching a ride are going somewhere along the route that the van is going on already. I suspect that this occurs and is helpful since people probably don’t have too many options to get from one place to another if it’s pretty far from each other.

4. After sitting in the back today, I can definitely confirm that the front passenger seat is the best seat in the house.

5. Mango smoothies in the Philippines are consistently amazing! And definitely rivals the smoothies in Thailand! I think they may taste SLIGHTLY different but they’re both to die for!

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