Panglao Travelogue

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From Loboc we continued to Alona Beach on the island of Panglao. We got to Alona Beach from the town of Tagbilaran. The town is not such a nice place, but you can do some shopping there since there are plenty of pharmacies, money changers, supermarkets and even a MacDonalds. Panglao island does not have many of these facilities.

The jeepneys or busses to Panglao are to be found in a backroad courtyard which functions as a makeshift busstation. The busses looked especially rough and we were still amazed that these things could actually hold 30-40 people and drive at the same time. We opted for a jeepney.

Panglao is attached to the "mainland" Bohol by a bridge, but I did not even notice crossing this bridge. I guess it must be a really short one? This is a very low key little beach community where we got some excellent value accommodation at a new German place. The beds and coverings were nice and clean and soft, somewhat of a luxury after spending in weeks in real budget accomodation. We even got a mosquito net with no holes in it, and get this - a fridge with beer! And they didn't even charge rediculous prices like they do for most in-room minibars. I wish I could remember the name of this place ...

The beach is quite nice and the snorkelling is good – the seabed drops down at a short distance from the beach and there are a lot of fish around that area. There are a few dive shops that can take you out to some good diving spots, but we were all out of cash to do so.

Alona Beach is another place where you can get away from it all and there are very few hawkers on the beach, just a few dive resorts, sea side restaurants and shops under the palm trees. Some people recommended this place as being better than Boracay because its much quieter. For sure its much quieter, but if it is better than Boracay or not depends on your personal taste.

I didnt shoot any pictures on Panglao island, but you can see some in this nice gallery .

From Panglao we continued back to Cebu where we unfortunately had to stay another night at Elicon House - not that nice of a place but good enough for staying a night if you are in the city. While Cebu probably has a few things worth seeing, city life was not really what we were after so we purchased our plain tickets to Puerto Princessa in the supermarket next to the hotel. Supercat ferries has a daily schedule for the Tagbilaran - Cebu or Cebu - Tagbilaran route and you can book tickets online.

One thing that continues to amaze me in South East Asia is the ease at which things are organised. Everywhere you go people seem to go out of their way to serve you. Us westerners will think of a hundred reasons not allow the sale of plain tickets in a supermarket, while Asians realise the more services you offer, the more money your business will make. Capitalism at its best?

In hindsight we would have been better off catching the boat from Cebu to Palawan , but the vast distance over the somewhat notorious Sulu Sea scared us away. Later, we did take such a long boat trip (Coron – Manilla) and realised its actually not that bad. I let myself be convinced by an expat living in the Philippines who said he never set foot on a boat for a trip longer than three hours, which is plain stupid. A lot of the long distance WGA Superferries are in perfect condition.

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