Encore! Palawan

I will always come back to Palawan. The island beckons, welcomes in a thousand different ways.

It is a joy to fly into Puerto Princesa City on the daily morning Philippine Airlines flight. Soldiers in fatigues mingle with the crowd at the airport, a security concession to the bandit raid a year ago. Other than that, there is no sign or hint of trouble in paradise.

My weekend starts at the Dos Palmas Resort. An extended family of eleven are also braving the nay-sayers and heading towards the resort. On a day as bright and beautiful as this, one does not even think of bandits and pre-dawn raids. Besides, the streets of Manila are probably less safe.

Dos Palmas does not disappoint. After the hour-long boat ride from Sta. Lourdes wharf, Arreceffi Island is a welcoming sight. The waters glisten in the sun, the fish are abundant around the jetty and the flowers in the resort’s gardens are in full riotous bloom. What breath-taking colors!

The blistering mid-day sun makes it perfect to indulge in the resort’s newest offering: a spa. Located in the far end of the row of garden cottages–a duplex with separate facilities for men and women–the Tropical Spa offers facials, massages and different body treatments.

I lose no time and book a full body scrub with papaya and dayap wrap. You start with a drink of cool pandan tea in a darkened room, and you lie on a sarong-draped treatment bed. There is an initial exfoliation with a gruel-like rice mixture, but by the time the gentle-handed attendant was lathering on the papaya-dayap wrap I was fast asleep.

Maximum pampering at the spa (needless to say I signed up for other treatments, luxury at a fraction of what it would cost in a spa in Manila), great food (too much of it unfortunately, as all meals are eat-more-than-you-should buffet-style), gentle lapping waves, snorkeling and diving (I had to have some physical activity)–these are what a de-stressing vacation is all about.

Much as I would have wanted to stay on (and on and on) at Dos Palmas, I headed back to the city in the early morning to make the trip out to the famed St. Paul’s subterranean river, a unesco World Heritage Site. (At P1,200 the tour is a bargain; you get transfers, boat rides, entrance, guides and lunch. The resort, or any hotel or travel agent, can help you with reservations.) It starts with a pick-up at the Sta. Lourdes wharf (or your downtown hotel) and an 80-km., two-and-a-half-hour ride to Sitio Sabang on the other side of the island. Much is said and written about that bus ride. Yes, it is bumpy, but I’ve certainly had worse. Yes, it is hot and dusty, but hey–this is summer in the Philippines.

At Sabang you get into a boat for a short ride to the underground river entrance. You can also take a hike through the mountain trail, a five-kilometer marked trail through lush mountains. (You can also opt to boat there and hike back, something I intend to do next time, legs willing.)

The visitors are coming back now, and there is a short wait for one of the four fiberglass boats that make the trip into the river. Each boat can take ten, plus a boatman-cum-guide. The one who sits in front holds the light, to illuminate the different formations within the cave system as the boatman/guide points out the mushroom, the nativity scene, the melting candle and other mineral oddities.

The boatmen are well-trained and well-versed about the river and the adjoining park; our guide could even have been a stand-up comedian. The 1.5-kilometer stretch of the river that is open to tours (up to half of the 8.2-kilometer river is navigable, but special permission is needed to go beyond the "tourist" distance, and this usually for researchers only) may leave you bitin and wanting more, but this is a definite must among the country’s must-see spots. Here you see Nature as Artist, patiently through hundreds of years carving and sculpting what man may not even dream about.

Fortunately the area has been declared a protected area by two presidential decrees. The total 22,202 hecatres–the Underground River forms the core of what is now known as the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park–is home to 800 plant, 90 bird, 30 mammal, 19 amphibian and 10 reptile species, plus indigenous people groups of the Tagbanua and Batak tribes.

The trip into the river takes about 45 minutes. Back out there is a picnic area where we have lunch of rice, adobo, prawns, crabs, kangkong and bananas. In this area old trees rule, as well as the famous monitor lizards (lots of them) and monkeys (even more of them). The bayawak are fascinating, lumbering creatures, and as long as you respect them they’ll leave you well enough alone. As for the monkeys, they do what monkeys do best I suppose, which is filch food and whatever else they can snatch from the careless visitor.

After lunch we head back to the city. Along the way our guide takes us to Vietville, that curious village of former refugees who have set up restaurants and shops. Do not pass up the chance to taste–and take home–their French bread, baked in wood-fired stone ovens. At P4 a baguette, fresh from the oven, it’s bread heaven‚ crusty (not hard like the wanna-be’s in Manila bakeries, no matter how French they claim to be) on the outside, chewy on the inside. There are also flavored bread, like garlic and stuffed with ham or roast pork. You can also get bread from Vietnamese restaurants in the city, at around P7 per baguette.

We check in at what is the most popular, and newest, hotel in Puerto Princesa, the Legend Hotel. Part of the Legend International chain, the four-storey, 100-room hotel is located in the heart of the city on Malvar Street, five minutes away from everything: the airport, the public market, the provincial capitol, the museum. Aside from being the city’s premier businessman’s hotel, the Legend is also the favorite for parties and functions, conferences and even religious services.

Although Puerto Princesa offers many touristic pleasures like a butterfly garden and a crocodile farm, I opt to check out the city by hopping on a tricycle (P5 per person to anywhere within the downtown area). I went shopping on Lacao Street where the NCCC Department Store is, a one-stop store for literally everything–from living room furniture to hairpins, giant sized cast irons woks to pan de monay–at prices ridiculously low to any Manila shopper.

Hop on a tricycle again and head for the public market for Palawan must-buys: cashew nuts and lamayo fish (you can have spada and a host of other dried fish too, but lamayo is the hands down favorite). I don’t find green honey this time, but that’s reason enough to come back.

And come back to Palawan I certainly will–again and again and again.