Siquijor Vacation (Old Story)

A while back, I took my first trip deep into the Visayan Islands here in the Philippines. I took the trip with Kaiti and boy did we get some serious vacationing in. We visited three different islands: Bohol, Siquijor, and Negros.

We left from Manila by plane for Tagbilaran, Bohol first. We only were going to be there for one day so we tried to get in as much sightseeing as we could. We were able to travel inland for an hour and a half to catch sight of one of the Philippines bigger bragging points, the Chocolate Hills. The hills are half interesting and half unremarkable. Kaiti and I were both unsure why the Philippines hoists the hills so high as a sight-to-see, there's are other interesting things around that aren't so far away. After the hills we traveled back by open-air bus just in time to get dinner at the Bohol Bee Farm.

Sweating and Eating Fish Chips

The bee farm is one of the more impressive places I've eaten at here in the Philippines. The food is all grown on the on-site farm and the food was all delightful, although a premium was paid. Kaiti and I were on the losing end of a bad trike driver who was actively trying to dance away with more than his fair share for the trip there and back. The price started at PHP400 (for comparison, one plane ticket to Bohol was PHP1000), I knew this price was wildly inflated but we needed the driver to take us back to the city after dinner, the price dropped to 300 after a short haggle session. During the dinner we learned the typical trike fare to the restaurant is around 25PHP, after learning this I was determined to make renegotiate the price. We walked away from the trike driver only paying PHP200, neither party involved was happy.

Roosters In Bags On The Boat, They're Alive

We left the next morning for Siquijor but had to take a detour through Dumaguete first. We went by boat and enjoyed a 2 hour boat trip, had some lunch, and loaded onto our next boat. We made it to Siquijor by around 2pm, after leaving Bohol at 8:30am.

Waiting For Our Boat To Siquijor

Our Sea Chariot, Leak Included

The Island of Siquijor is beautiful. Just stepping off the boat it was striking how blue the water is here. All the beaches surrounding the island are white so the shallow water truly pops, especially so at the port.

We were greeted by our PCV friend Ginna who lives on Siquijor. She was able to help us get a decent price for the tricycle going to our home-stay on the other side of the island. We were dropped off at Lorna's At The End Of The World and settled into our spartan room overlooking azure water. Lorna's is a house that butts up directly to the water, and for only PHP400 a night we were sold before we even got to the island, reserving a room in advance. The building was a two story house-repurposed-home-stay, The second story looked rickety but the rooms were nice and comfortable. There was even a deck on top of the building itself but the homemade steps leading to the top creaked too much and had more "give" than I liked, we stayed away.

Lorna's was a place of curiosities. It had the beautiful scenery in spades but the cast and crew of the places was what really made it unique. First, there was Lorna and her husband Herb. Lorna was a very pretty 30-something Filipina and Herb a older (60ish) Englishman with advanced degrees in Psychology, including a PHD from UCSF. Both were very friendly, Herb was mainly interested in building the new addition next to the current house, Lorna helped out and kept an eye on the house in general. Lorna had at least one daughter in the house and Herb had one as well that was older, in her twenties. There was also Herb's cousin who had some back-related injury that caused him to walk around hunched over at the waist, leaning forward to a steep degree. There was also the old woman (perhaps Lorna's mother) who couldn't speak words but could make vocal sounds, and possibly not hear, but did seem aware enough to help us out a few times in our stay. The mother would often talk to us but it was difficult to understand her, we relied on her hand gestures mainly to understand. Finally there were several animals at Lorna's. There was the goofy big dog that would try to bowl us over every time one of us got near enough. There was also a pack of cats, mainly kittens, that would get everywhere and one of them had a bad case of diarrhea, pooping loudly and without warning, spraying whatever was behind it. All these fun people and animals were what greeted us at Lorna's.

Our time spent on the island included the following in this order:

Resting

Walking along the beautiful white-sanded beach

Eating a whole chicken with our hands

Dining at a great local restaurant (JJ's burger was the best I had at this point in my stay in the Philippines)

Briefly seeing a big waterfall

Resting

Caving

Taking a rickety boat from Lorna's out for a little paddling and promptly sinking

Pushing the boat back in-land

Stepping on sea-urchins

Snorkeling

Resting

Dining at an extra-fancy resort with Ginna

Resting

Moved Around A Lot

Strange Sand Creations

Physical Humor, Quick Thinking

The island of Siquijor is beautiful. The whole place is so small and packs so much to see in such a small area. There is fresh fish caught everyday and brought to the shore and sold along the roadside. I feel like I made a major mistake by not buying any of the fish there. I assumed it was expensive but in hindsight realize, it would have almost been free food and the experience of eating such fine fish that fresh would be worth the price. There is even REAL milk on Siquijor. Way over in a distant Barangay Kaiti and I found the milk producer and were able to buy a liter of frozen milk to enjoy at Lorna's. The milk was exquisite after already going a year without real milk. UHP milk does not stack up to fresh milk.

I should talk about the caving experience since it was something else. Kaiti and I had to travel far up into the island to get to a tiny village that mainly deals in one thing: the Cantabon Cave tour. The people were typically friendly and they had quite the cave to brag about. This caving experience was intense. I'm used to caving in tight and dry areas, but this one went the wet route. Almost immediately, we were walking in an underground river after we got into the cave. The tour guides we had seemed to have an important meeting, and found we could keep up, so they moved the tour along as fast as they really could. It was about thirty minutes of quick paced walking, wading, ducking, hitting my head, ducking some more, and capering over slippery-edged gaps. We had to make a special effort to get over a pool of water that looked awfully deep. Being to difficult to explain via text, just rest assured it was a difficult task to cross over the top of this pool once, and then again from the other direction. Thirty minutes of water-hiking-caving brought us to the end where we enjoyed the sight of rock formations for about 2 seconds before our guides started us back to the opening. So far, this caving experience ranks as my favorite in the ~3 I've enjoyed.

The day we left Siquijor we were able to meet another PCV that lives on the island, Dan, and enjoyed some local pizza and NBA playoffs while waiting for our ferry to arrive. We finally loaded up onto our ship and set course back to Dumaguete on Negros.

We only had a single day in Dumaguete but thankfully we got there early enough to enjoy our time there. Going along with the theme of great places in the Visayas, Dumaguete was a big hit in my opinion. It has great restaurants, cafes with good coffee, sidewalks(!), and a large enough population of foreigners that Kaiti and I hardly noticed any “Hey, Joe!” or stares aimed at us. We stayed at the PCV-famous Harold's Mansion, a grand and uniquely well run dorm/hotel. Our time spent in Dumaguete was short but jam-packed, I would love to go back and enjoy it some more.

The Escalade Of Trikes

If you ever get the chance to visit the Philippines, make some time for Bohol, Siquijor, or Dumaguete, if not all three if you can. Delightful people in beautiful places. They also have the best tricycles.