El Nido
I arrived in Puerto Princesa and got a minibus straight up to El Nido which took 6 hours (including stops for lunch at a cafe and taking photos of a view). There are a load of companies that run minibuses and they go pretty much all day, all costing 500PHP. If you read about it online, it says the ride is really bumpy and uncomfortable but that is not the case anymore... there is a decent road nearly all the way.
I was traveling solo and everyone else on the minibus was couples. It would definitely be a great place to take a girl but if you're in Manila and want somewhere to unwind and let down your guard for a bit but can only go alone, don't let that put you off.
It's not a place to go to get girls (they are mostly quite ugly anyway) but I wasn't expecting it to be and wasn't trying although I did accidentally get laid on my last night there with the hottest girl I saw on the whole island.
There are no ATMs so get cash at the airport in Puerto Princesa. There are lots of sites to see, tours to go on etc but I just rented a motorbike and drove aimlessly through the jungle for a couple of days and it's such a beautiful area that you can't really go wrong wherever you go. Plenty of great beaches that won't have even one other person on them that you'll stumble across. There is also only electricity for certain hours during the day.
The people here are all really friendly and aren't trying to sell you something, scam you or rob you. They also don't seem to really notice or care that you're foreign and don't seem to really realise that there is a world beyond Palawan which is makes it feel quite nice. It's very safe and I left my wallet and phone on the beach whilst going for a swim a few times and they were fine. There is also a much higher concentration of white people here than anywhere else I've seen in the Philippines, mainly mid 20s hippies.
There are some nice bars along the beach with live music and beers cost about 60php.
My "hotel" cost 700php/night and most were that price or slightly more. The building had only been half built and didn't have an upstairs, only the frame, I was the only person staying there, the people that worked there all slept on the floor in the corridor at night, I found a lizard under my bed one night and the toilet didn't flush but that all seemed quite normal there.
I've probably missed out a lot of things so if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask!
Some photos I took from just randomly riding round. If I'd purposefully gone to some specific places, you can probably find some even more beautiful places but as you can see, you can't really go wrong wherever you go:
Property for lease... my hotel was not much better!
Girls
I was there for three nights and as I said, wasn't expecting to or trying to get any girls but I did on my last night. I was going to go to bed then when I was returning my motorbike, I got into conversation with a hairdresser in the next door shop who said I should come out to the bars with her and her friends that evening. I turn up and it's basically a double date: me and the hairdresser girl and a ladyboy and his boyfriend.
I'm there chilling with them for an hour or two but my girl is really grumpy and can't really speak English so I'm basically only talking to the ladyboy, who is getting more and more confident and flirty whilst I'm getting more and more uncomfortable. The woman who runs my hotel is friends with them and comes and joins us. After asking me all these questions about the meaning of love and suchlike, the ladyboy tells me his job is a masseuse and that he'll give me a massage for free, and that he'll come over to my room "before I go to sleep" that night so it's just us two. At that point, I've really had enough so "go to the toilet" and never return. I don't want to go home though and the only place still open is a prostitute bar so I go there and have a couple of drinks and chat to the hookers for an hour or so.
That bar then closes so I walk outside and some Filipino kid comes up to me like "heeeey, the-dream". I don't recognise him but he's a tricycle driver and apparently we met the previous night. He tells me its his friend's 24th birthday and that I should come celebrate with them. I hop in his male friend's tricycle and it's me, the 2 filipino guys, a fat girl and the birthday girl, who is the most beautiful girl I'd seen so far in the jungle. We go to an empty 24 hour bar and by this point, the fat girl is passed out the tricycle. The kid who invited me along passes out on the table and none of us can wake him up. Meanwhile, me and the beauty are sneaking in little kisses when nobody is looking. The guy who's tricycle it is says he's going home so I walk the beauty down to the beach and we make out a bit, then go back to mine and fuck all night and morning. The woman who runs the hotel (who had also been ringing me all night after I ditched her, the ladyboy and co) walks in on us, presumably to make me check out cos it was midday, then walks straight back out and doesn't bother me all day so I stay until 4pm, which was quite funny.
Creep pic:
![[Image: fPIDFA.jpg]](http://imageshack.com/a/img904/498/fPIDFA.jpg)