I arrived in The Philippines with a different attitude to other places. I had actually come here to do a job rather than to just see the sights and this new motive was exactly what I needed at this point in my trip. I have had the most incredible time over the 7 months I have been away but I had realised that I missed having something to work towards, some sort of project. This lead me to look online at workaway.info, a site which allows people to advertise voluntary work around the world. Everything from farm work to childcare was on the site and most opportunities provided free accommodation (and sometimes food) in exchange for your time there. I had decided on The Philippines after seeing that it was one of the cheapest places to fly to from Hong Kong, and because it was nearer Indonesia, where I would be meeting my friend in early August. I searched for opportunities in The Philippines and found one project that stood out. It was an advert for a backpacker who would help set up a bar crawl on a beach called Alona Beach on Panglao Island. The people running the project were two backpackers, Christian and Lizzie, who had settled down in Panglao and it sounded right up my street. I applied while still in Hong Kong, spoke with Lizzie and soon I had booked my flights all the way to Tagbiliran, the nearest airport to Alona.
When I arrived in Tagbiliran on the 11th I found myself a tricycle (a motorbike with a seating area attached to its side) and took the 45 minute journey to the beach, well actually, it was probably less than 45 minutes, my driver had a need for speed. I got to Billabong, a Aussie restaurant where I had planned to meet Christian and Lizzie, and waited nervously for them to arrive. When they did, I realised I had no reason to be nervous, they happily invited me into their house, which was a decent sized, open plan bungalow right next to the restaurant and showed me my room (I had a whole room to myself, with a wardrobe! People who had lived out of a backpack for anything longer than a month with understand why a wardrobe is so exciting.)
I also had a moped which I could use whenever I wanted. That evening we went the short distance down to the beach, which I couldn't fully appreciate as it was already quite dark, and grabbed some dinner and a couple of beers.
The following day we visited the market on our mopeds and I faced the challenge of choosing what food to buy. This was a surprisingly hard activity after months of only eating at restaurants (in the loosest sense of the word) and I realised how much I had forgotten about using a kitchen. I grabbed a few items and then left the market feeling flustered and confused. The rest of the day we spent on the beach, which this time I could fully appriciate with its hanging palm trees, soft white sand and diving boats bobbing on the impossibly turquoise sea.
Alona Beach, as well as it's beauty, is also famous for great diving and many of the tourists come just for that. The whole beach is full of dive shops and so the next day I took the moped to the beach and walked around the shops to see about prices and quality of the stores. I decided upon on centre called Go Scuba, which was run by and very friendly man from Sussex. I booked for two dives the following day for a total of 2,250 pisos, which is about £30, and it was worth every penny! We met early the next morning and got our gear together. There were 7 other people coming out to dive that day, a group of Spanish tourists, a young British couple and a Danish girl. We got on the diving boat and travelled half and hour to a spot called Balicasag Island, one of the top spots for diving in The Philippines.
On our first dive we saw lots of wildlife including clown fish, a large school of jack fish, beautiful coral and sea slugs but the second dive was definitely my favourite.
We oared up near to the coast of the island in a relatively shallow spot and started to see turtles on the surface from our boat. I couldn't wait to get under there and see them up close. This dive site was a drop off area so we moved along the side of a big coral wall, spotting some really strange looking sea slugs, and lots of fish.
However, the best bit was when we started to move back to the boat and into shallower waters because that was where the turtles were. And it wasn't just one turtle, as I had expected, but multiple turtles all over the place. It was amazing to be able to move alongside a turtle as the gracefully pushed themselves through the water. At the end of the dive we found one huge turtle who was up for a bit of a photoshoot so each of us got a picture with this beauty before it was time to surface.
As well as seeing these beautiful creatures I was also happy about the dive as I had managed my longest dive time, which meant that my air consumption was getting a lot better. I arrived back at the beach at around 2pm and sat with Lizzie on the sand for a while before heading home to shower. That evening we designed the flyers for the pub crawl and discussed ideas until the early morning.
Lizzie and I were given the job of going to get the flyers printed at a local 'printing shop' which turned out to be just a room with a printer in it and not much else. Armed with our freshly printed flyers we head down to the beach to start recruiting people for the pub crawl which would be held the next day.On Thursday morning we were slightly panicked because the t-shirts for the pub crawl had not been printed yet and we were cutting it really fine to get them ready in time. Luckily we found somewhere which could do it on the day and gave them our design. We spent the rest of the day recruiting people on the beach and visiting a couple of hostels to advertise there as well. Then it was time for the first ever Alona Pub Crawl. Of course there were hiccups, the tshirts arrived half an hour late, people arrived later than expected, our first bar wasn't actually open when we got there but apart from that we had a really good evening with a nice group of people (and the tshirts looked great!)
We had a relaxed day nursing our hangovers on Friday and had to more Workaways arrive, Sandra and Estoban, a couple who had met travelling and could fire dance! We all went down to the beach again that evening for dinner and drinks and also bumped into the French guys who had come to the pub crawl the night before.
Christian had a good idea for the pub crawl and suggested that we should partner up with businesses along the beach. They could offer anyone in our pub crawl t-shirt a discount in return for us sending our customers thier way. Me and Christian went to speak with different shops and got a few of them to agree to it before I started to get a migrane and had to come home. That evening we all watched some Game Of Thrones (oh, how I had missed that show) and went to bed. On the 19th Lizzie and I went to meet with the owner of one of the main dive centres on the beach, Philippine Fun Divers. He was a friendly man who agreed to partnering with us and offering our customers a discounted price, which was great news! We then took the mopeds into Tagbiliran to buy matresses for the Workaways. We also stopped at the cinema and watched Antman (which was better than I expected) and went to the supermarket, which was pretty daunting as I hadn't been in a supermarket since Australia!
The next day I went to the beach alone and managed to get a few more companies on board with the discounts, including a jet ski hire shop and another resturant. We started using the discounts that we had to advertise to the people on the beach again for the next couple of days.
Thursday came around again and we felt more prepared this time, everything ran pretty smoothly. Even though, due to it being low season here at the moment, the numbers were small we had a fun time meeting new people, playing drinking games and dancing with some Koreans at the 'nightclub' on the beach. When we got back to the house Lizzie, Christian and I stayed up having one of our friendly debates that seem to happen in the early hours of the morning and I didn't actually get to sleep until 6am.
The whole of the next day was used to either sleep, eat delicious nachos from the restaurant next door or watch Game Of Thrones. We finished the most recent series (I know, I am so behind the times) and what a series it was!!
Today is my last day in Panglao and the sun is shining as it has been for my entire time here. Apparently that is extremely lucky as it is supposed to be rainy season here, lets hope my luck continues as I move onto the next destination in this wonderful country, Malapascua Island, where I will hopefully be diving with sharks!! I am planning on squeezing in Malapascua and Palawan Island before catching my flight from Manila to Indonesia, but after being settled and enjoying myself so much in one place for two whole weeks the idea of moving around so quickly is a bit alien. A massive thank you to Lizzie and Christian who have made me feel at home and been great hosts, hopefully see you again soon!
Thanks for reading!
Emma x
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