Malapascua Island

Sunday, May 1

We landed in Manila at about 5am local time. The flight had only been 3 hours with a meal served so we had barely slept. Carl remembered that, on a previous Asia trip, he had a layover in Manila that was the most disorganized international transfer of his life. This time, despite being a transfer from international to domestic, was no different. Manila airport needs to get their act together.

First we sat on the plane at the gate for half an hour. Not sure what this accomplished except then we got off our plane at the same time as a huge flight from Canada so we were all in the chaos together. There were tons of staff dressed in military uniforms directing us around the airport, sometimes in contradictory ways. We stopped at a desk where they checked our COVID vaccine card and gave us a stamp on our old boarding pass (luckily I didn’t lose mine yet!) and then we waited in a line along a staircase where people cut in and out because it wasn’t clear where foreigners vs. Filipinos were supposed to go. When we got to the immigration desk they barely asked any questions and stamped our passport.

Then we were directed outside and had to double back to find the departures terminal again. Through multiple security checks, we made it to our gate where we waited for several hours. We happened to sit right behind two Americans that had just met each other and were talking about how democrats stole the election and were getting away with all kinds of things.

The older guy had a large, lab-looking dog that had ‘service dog’ written on its vest. The man was very proud of this dog, bragging about how the dog could sense if something was wrong and follow commands perfectly. Then the man heard his name called by airline staff and all of a sudden got up to go to the desk. He told his dog to sit and wait. Luckily this new trump-supporting friend was next to him to hold onto the dog because the dog immediately started whining and barking and trying to go after his owner. So much for all that supposed training.

Upon arrival in Cebu around 10am we were exhausted. We walked outside to look for the city bus that goes to the bus station. A woman intercepted us and told us there were no buses. No buses. That seemed entirely unbelievable but we were so tired and we didn’t see the buses or signs for them anywhere. She directed us to a taxi and when we balked at the price, she offered to cut it down. At least the taxi was air conditioned. He took us to the Cebu City bus terminal.

When we got out, there wasn’t a clear entrance and tons of people were yelling at us asking where we wanted to go. Finally one guy said MAYA PORT THIS BUS! And directed us toward a bus that looked like a hybrid school/city bus. Other people yelled at us, but we said ‘this guy yelled at us first’ so we went with him. We each got our own school bus size seat and were able to almost lay down and nap a little.

The bus took 4 hours and was constantly pulling over to let people on or off, not at designated bus stations, but wherever people wanted. It was like a glorified dollar bus that we knew from NYC. Every so often guys would get on to sell food and water and then they’d jump off at the next stop while the bus was still moving. The bus doors never closed so I got a nice breeze and decent views of the city and ocean as we passed by, all the while praying we didn’t ever suddenly turn sharply left.

Finally they let us off on the side of the road and pointed toward another road that said Maya Port was at the end. We thought it’d be right there but it ended up being nearly a mile walk, up and back down a hill, to the port. When we finally reached it we had to pay an environmental fee in a nice looking office.

Then we walked out to a shipping container office to purchase the ferry ticket. A bunch of people were in the office but no action was happening and no one was speaking. Everyone was watching loud videos on their phones (without earphones of course). I pulled my obnoxious American card and said loudly, ‘what’s the deal here?? Can we buy ferry tickets here??’ and a Filipino tourist responded that we had to wait until the top of the hour before they’d sell us tickets. So we waited in the hot box, staring at the staff and other passengers.

Finally at 3pm they had us write down our names and purchase ferry tickets. Then we all walked over to a seemingly random boat (they said look for the one with Juan Maria written on the side). Like a balance beam act we walked onto the boat via a haphazardly placed wooden plank while a nice guy held out his hand to steady me and all my luggage hanging off my back.

After a nice 45 minute boat ride we arrived to Malapascua island. As we disembarked I looked I to the water and could see huge pink spiny starfish hanging out under the clear water, amongst pieces of trash.

Everyone and their 5-year old child were saying ‘hello’ and ‘welcome!’ It confused us because it seemed that only some people were trying to sell us something but the rest were just being friendly, it seemed.

According to google maps we were supposed to go right down one road, left down another and then walk along the beach. Well the ‘roads’ ended up being very narrow alleys with gravel or beach sand roads. We wandered our way to the beach and then walked along until we found Little Mermaid Dive Resort.

Upon check in the woman seemed to have trouble finding our reservation and I nearly cried. I realized how totally exhausted we were from such a trek to get to this remote place. Thankfully she found the reservation and checked us in and we were able to turn the AC on full blast and nap for several hours. When we woke we decided to have dinner at the hotel. The restaurant was on the second floor overlooking the beach and they had cute little white light strings as decoration. We got pork adobo and chicken stir fry and they were ok.

Monday, May 2

We woke up at the buttcrack of dawn to get into the dive boat at 5am. Roland, the manager of the dive center at Little Mermaid and our guide for the day, was nice enough to fit us in last minute to their daily thresher shark dive. This spot in the Philippines has a near guarantee that you’ll see thresher sharks. The sharks spend the night in the deep water, hunting and eating fish. In the morning they come up to a particular rock (the Monad Shoal) where the ‘cleaner fish’ live to get their face and teeth cleaned off, just like you would wipe your mouth with a napkin at the end of a meal!

Technically you need to have advanced certification for this dive because of how deep you need to go to get to the ‘cleaning station’. We were able to do an ‘adventure dive’ which cost more but can count toward our advanced certification later, if we choose to do it. We also had to read a chapter in Roland’s dive book and answer some quiz questions, which ended up being kinda fun for us, since we have been missing our old trivia days.

We got to a seemingly random spot in the ocean and there was only one other dive boat out there with us. We descended slowly and followed Roland over a reef to a steep drop off. We descended a bit more over the drop off and it was crazy to look down and see the ominous dark water below. I had never seen such a deep drop before and I felt a rush of awe and fear wondering what kinds of creatures lurked below. All of a sudden we saw a MASSIVE thresher shark emerge from the depths and swim away from us. We could see it’s big namesake tail swish from side to side as it slowly faded away and out of sight. This instant of time will be one of our favorite memories from the whole trip.

My goggles kept filling with water so I had sunk lower to be able to see the shark without looking down as much. All of a sudden I realized I was REALLY deep. I looked up to Roland who was emphatically giving me two thumbs up meaning, “come up! come up!” We rose higher and again marveled at the dark depths below us and the gigantic, beautiful creature that we had just seen.

We swam back to the reef and found a sandy spot with a little rope to hold on to. We settled in on our knees and we waited. And we watched. Very soon we saw another, medium-sized thresher shark emerge and swim in front of us. Thresher sharks are known to be shy so we tried to keep still and not make sounds with our dive gear. The shark got surprisingly close to us as it swam from our left side to our right. It didn’t seem to mind that we were there.

Roland had told us that there was no guarantee we would see a shark and that there was no other marine life to see on this dive. As we swam back toward the boat we realized he had lowered our expectations so that we would be pleasantly surprised because there were lots of things to see besides just the sharks! We saw a huge sea cucumber and lots of tropical fish like angel fish.

We had about an hour of sitting on the boat (surface interval in dive speak) before going down again for the second dive. On the second dive the visibility wasn’t as good so we couldn’t see as far. We still saw a couple sharks emerge and disappear again. Even though it was harder to see them, the visual of seeing a shark emerge out of a blur and coming straight toward you, with its massive tail slinking back and forth behind it- is pretty awesome!

My fancy underwater camera broke on my first dive in Sint Maarten so, unfortunately, we have no photographic proof of our new thresher BFs. We did meet an Australian guy on our boat who had a go pro so I’m hoping to someday steal photos from him. In the meantime I stole this photo of a thresher shark off the internet:

On the way back to the shore we spotted some dolphins in the distance. Then all of a sudden they were right next to us. I leaned over the front right side of the boat and there were three dolphins (one was HUGE) following us right under the boat. It seemed like they were playing with us! They were so close I could’ve touched the big one’s belly as it rolled over to smile at us (or so it seemed).

After the dive we went behind the hotel and walked along the island alleys to a food market. There were many food stalls and several were advertising breakfast. We realized it was still only 11am! We picked a spot that had some good looking food and sat down, pointing to the dishes that looked good. We got some kind of vermicelli noodle and a pork stew. The pork stew had a coconut/vinegar base and it was the best Filipino food we’d had so far! Then the waitress offered us some Boku, a coconut drink we’d never heard of. It has condensed milk and coconut water with coconut chunks in it. It tasted like bottled tropical paradise and we happily chugged it down.

We went back to the hotel to rest in the AC a bit before emerging again to try to catch the sunset. Malapascua island is tiny and we could’ve walked to the other side in half an hour. Instead we made it past a couple of hotels on the beach before we spotted a happy hour deal and decided to stay there. We got drinks and some pork and crab shumai (like Japanese dumplings) that were tasty.

All of a sudden we realized we might miss the sunset so we decided to cut through the island to head back to the west side. We picked a random ‘street’ and ended up walking right through the middle of a little Filipino village. On either side of the narrow sand alley were huts made of corrugated iron sheets and palm fronds. Kids were playing and adults were busy building fires and preparing dinner. Chickens and dogs and cats were everywhere. It felt like the most authentic Filipino island village you’d ever see.

We made it to the west side just in time to see the sunset. The tide was out so people were tending to their boats as little kids ran around and played in the shallow water.

We headed back inland for dinner to a barbecue place we’d eyed before. We split a bottle of Red Horse beer which is actually strong for a cheap beer (7%). We ordered pork sisig and pork adobo and were not disappointed. Finally the authentic Filipino food we had been hunting for!

That night we were both awake all night because of extremely painful stomach cramps. As exhausted as we already were, we couldn’t sleep and in the morning woke up feeling awful.

Tuesday, May 3

We woke up feeling terrible and wondering if we could pull off the extremely ambitious day ahead of us: diving and getting our bodies back to Cebu City via ferry, bus, and taxi. We took some Imodium and reasoned that diving might help.

At 9am we got in a bigger dive boat this time with more people. It was about an hour ride out to Gato island – a small rocky hill in the middle of the ocean. Our dive guide, G.R.?, gave a short and sweet briefing and we headed out with a woman named Katja (so nice, German, lives in Boracay) who we had met diving the day before. We descended extremely quickly and followed the rock around to the right before coming back again against the current.

On this first dive we immediately saw two reef sharks, each hiding within rock crevices. We also saw a couple colorful nudibranchs (one had a purple butt with yellow spikes coming out!), a huge hermit crab the size of my head, some smaller jellyfish that looked like tea lights, moving sea cucumbers, and tons of beautiful and weird starfish. There were a lot fewer fish than in Thailand but way more ‘things’ (all kinds of creatures!) which were fun to spot. We did see lots of Nemos (clownfish) guarding their eggs in anemones.

On the second dive we went through a tunnel that the Gato island dive spot is known for. It wasn’t deep and it was about 5 feet wide but it was about 30 meters long so we needed flashlights to guide us through. In the tunnel we saw two crabs dancing with each other. Outside again we circled around the reef and we saw a massive octopus hanging out under a rock overhang. We saw a black and white sea snake slither away. Toward the end Carl spotted a big greenish yellow cuttlefish that was hanging out in the reef.

I don’t know why, but underwater we felt so much better. Maybe the pressure on our bodies or the focus on breathing and not dying helped divert attention away from twisting, aching bellies. Once we were back on the surface again we felt awful.

On the ride back I closed my eyes for a bit and when I opened them I started seeing stars. I felt a dark tunnel closing in around me and my hearing was going out. I realized I was about to faint. Carl helped me lie down on the bench and got me some water and I’m so glad I didn’t end up fainting. I stayed lying down for a bit until…

As we drew closer to Malapascua we saw heavy dark clouds overhead. In the distance we could see rain curtains covering the horizon. The waves got choppier and then we were in it and cold rain was coming in on us sideways. Everyone tried to huddle behind the captain and the boat wheel but we couldn’t all fit and Carl and I just had to stand and lean awkwardly as cold rain pelted our legs and left sides. Carl and I began to worry whether the rain would thwart our plans to return to the mainland.

Finally we reached Malapascua and ran into the hotel. I ended up taking a shower in the outdoor shower and the water felt warm in comparison to the rain water falling around me. By the time we got ready, the rain had stopped. We got our stuff together and headed toward the ferry dock, grateful the rain had passed.

We encountered the same ferry situation where we had to wait until the hour to buy tickets. And again, when we got tickets we were told to find a random boat called Juan Juana.

Many ferry boats had been delayed by the storm and they all came into the island at the same time, causing chaos in the port. To top it off, the other passengers on our boat was a high school marching band. We watched them load several sizes of drums, two xylophones, and a couple trumpets onto the boat which they had to do by balancing on the same sketchy wooden planks. The band put their instruments in the middle of the boat and I hoped for them they’d stay dry. The ride got pretty choppy and we ended up getting splashed a bit (instruments were spared).

As we disembarked onto the mainland there were several motorbikes and vans waiting to pick people up. One van said they were going to Cebu City and asked us where we were staying which led us to believe they’d take us to our hotel. They said it was 350 pesos a person ($7) which we thought was a good deal for a better ride than the 250 pesos bus had been.

As we loaded in the driver said that we (me, Carl, and the Frenchman with a suitcase) would need to pay for an extra seat because our bags were taking the space where otherwise a paying passenger could sit. The van wasn’t full and there was no one else on the dock so we said ‘what other passenger??’ and later realized they would do the same maneuver of picking up anyone and everyone from the side of the road. We offered to split the cost with the Frenchman but, of course, he refused saying if he could sit in another seat in the front he could keep his suitcase next to him (this wouldn’t have been possible by the way). We argued for many minutes and threatened to get out before the guy said ‘ok fine’. But then he didn’t have change for our bill anyways and said he’d give it to us later (he didn’t).

The van was faster than the bus but it still picked up people and at one point we were totally full (and felt less bad because we felt we did need to pay for a seat for our stuff). We were surprised how alive the streets were for a Tuesday night, later realizing Eid al-Fitr is a recognized holiday in the Philippines that many people get off from work. It was way too bumpy and cramped to nap so when we showed up to the bus terminal (not our hotel!) we were very grumpy.

Two motorbikes offered to give us a ride the rest of the way to the hostel. Carl got on one and I hopped on the back of another- nearly knocking him down as the heavy weight of my backpack swung around unexpectedly. I tried to tell him it was my backpack that was so heavy, not me, but he didn’t seem to care. We zipped through the city for another 15 minutes. I thought the bikes tires would go flat with the weight but we safely arrived at Mad Monkey Hostel Cebu City and hopped off.

Once again the check in desk didn’t seem to have our reservation and again I felt like crying. Finally she found it and gave us a key to a room on the third floor, adjacent to the courtyard which was shared with the restaurant and bar. I had asked for a quieter room but hadn’t expected this request to be honored and it wasn’t. It was like we were on the dance floor.

We still felt sick but had only eaten a few chips and some Oreos all day so reasoned we should eat something more. We went to the hostel’s restaurant and split a pork sandwich that tasted really good but made our stomachs cramp the moment we took a bite. The Mad Monkey staff are always really nice but very pushy to get you to drink and party. We were long past being affected by peer pressure to play beer pong and I took great pride in telling anyone that asked that we would be going to be before 9pm if we could. We slinked back to our room, shoved earplugs deep into our ears and tried to sleep away the bad feelings.