100 days in Southeast Asia | Part 6 | Philippines: Bohol & Panglao Island

We took a direct ferry from Larena port in Siquijor Island to Tagbilaran port in Bohol, and already found motorbikes rental more expensive as soon as we arrived there, it was double the price, shocking! ($500pp) 
But anyway, we needed it as we were going to spend most of the time in Panglao Island just south of Bohol and would also ride up to the Chocolate Hills at some stage. 
By the way, watch the short video here if you haven't yet :)

So as soon as we got off the ferry we walked a few hundred meters up the road ignoring all the 700 tuk tuk offers, and trying to negotiate with the motorbike rental guys at the same time.

It took us a little while but we managed to get their price down by a bit. And also renting it next to the ferry, meant we had transport to come back to catch the ferry to next island.   

Royal Paradise is where we stayed for the first night, which was a very pretty place very Filipino style, but tiny rooms. And since I was getting worse from what I got in Siquijor, we decided to go a bit over our budget for a few days so I could recover well.

And what a great place we found! It is actually a retirement village which is pretty funny, haha but I could have not find a better place to recover. Sunshine Village Resort it is called and it is quite new and just great. We paid about $30 back then (September 2017). The staff is the BEST I have ever seen in my life, they treated us SO WELL, I could not believe it. Extremely polite, helpful and carrying.

They have a pretty nice swimming pool there, delicious restaurant, games bar, convenience store, laundry, spa, everything inside of the village. So it wasn’t bad at all to be stuck there sick for a couple of days.

Rooms were spacious, nice, clean and airy, had great wifi and hot shower, plus a balcony with pool view. Winning!

And at the end of our stay there I was feeling nearly 100% - Well, okay I also had to go to the hospital, do exams and take antibiotics as well - but no doubt the bright and spacious room also helped me to recover faster.

The hospital I went is the Holy Name University Medical Centre across the bridge back in Bohol. It was a painful 45min motorbike ride up there, but we did it. By the way, Viv was already better by that time, and I was worse. Haha Of course.

Blood test, X-ray and consultation costed me $20AUD all together. The expensive part was the antibiotic which was about $25AUD ew. I hate antibiotics so much and I never really use them unless I’m almost dead. 
So in this case I decided to and the doctor said because it was at the bacteria stage I should take it. And in 2 days I was basically brand new again. YAASSS

We spent 5 nights in total in the islands, and we visited the place they do Hot Air ballooning. But we didn’t do it because it was when I was still recovering and we just went to see our friends go. It was fun to see it tho, to see the balloon so up close. 

However, I kinda regret going there a little bit, only because of the craaaazy van we took!! Oh gosh, these van drivers in the Philippines are CRAZY! Seriously, I thought we were all going to die in a car accident, because they drive insanely fast and irresponsibly. 

Simply ridiculous in my opinion. It’s like gambling with people’s lives. 

Luckily we arrived safely and I hopped to never have get another van in the Philippines again. 

One another day, when I was already good to go exploring again, we went for a day motorbike trip to check out the Chocolate hills (photo below) which are wonderful, they do look like chocolate!!! haha ;
Tarsier Conservation Area which is totally put on for the tourist and I also regret going there but anyway, no research, this is what happens; Butterfly sanctuary and the Twin hanging bridge (left).

In Panglao, we went to White beach, Alona beach, Hinagdanan Cave and also caught up with those friends one other night for dinner and drinks at a karaoke bar.

Oh! And we had the most amazing burger and açaí bowl on one of the restaurants in Alona, called Shaka! YUMM!!!

Unfortunately, it was time to backtrack...but I guess it was the best and cheapest option.

We wanted to get to Palawan so we decided to go via ferry from Tagbilaran port in Bohol to Cebu Island and catch a plane from Cebu to Puerto Princesa in Palawan.

So we spent a couple of hours in near the ferry, where there’s a Fort and museum to kill some time and after that we took a cab to the airport.

Apparently there is a shuttle bus from the ferry to the airport which they said it was every 20min. However we waited for 40min and didn’t see any… So then we ended up having to cab to the airport otherwise we would’ve missed our flight haha.