In Taiwan, I looked for the cheapest flight ticket to do visa run and the Philippines came out. I left my bike and most of my luggage in Taiwan and boarded the plane. (Visa run means visa renewal after going to another country and re-entering the country)
I arrived at an island called Puerto Princesa. It was my first time in the Philippines, so I was excited to learn new things.
The city was very crowded. It has been a while since I’ve felt this chaotic.
I booked a cave tour with a travel agency, and once I got out of the city, the nature scenery was truly amazing.
We needed to take a boat like this to go to the island having the cave, but there were a lot of tourists so we had to wait for a while.
While I was waiting, I took a walk around the area and the town looked quite peaceful and there were simple resorts in front of the sea.
Our turns came and we boarded to the boat. Thanks to the stands on both sides of the boat, the boat didn’t shake much.
Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, selected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was better than expected. Personal audio was distributed, and there was also in Korean. It explained very well about the cave so I enjoyed listening to the audio at the beginning. But later explanation was more like “this shape looks like some animal or fruit”. So I took off my earphones and looked around. Several tour boats kept passing by, but everyone was quiet with listening to earphones, so I was able to enjoy the silence of the cave.
There were many monkeys in the bathroom near cave, and the guide warned everyone to be careful with their bags.
We went back to the busy city after finishing the tour. It was time to go back to Taiwan, but I felt this was too short trip to get to know the Philippines.
While searching for a surfing spot, I came across an island called Siargao and I decided to go there since people call Siargao as the surfing capital of the Philippines. There was no direct flight, so I had to stopover in Manila overnight.
I went into a Starbucks in Manila, and there was a security guard. When I saw other people leaving their laptops on the table when going to the bathroom, it seemed safe, so I also left my laptop behind when going to the bathroom. It was a morning flight, so I woke up around 3 a.m. and took a taxi to the airport.
After arriving at Siargao Airport, I took a van for about an hour. As soon as I arrived the town, I really loved it. Puerto Princesa and Manila were very crowded and traffic was so busy, but this place had a rural atmosphere. Most people rode scooters, so there was no traffic jam.
Above all, the stores were all pretty and cute. Also, seeing many people riding around with surfboards on their scooters made me feel that this was truly the surfing capital of the Philippines.
A local girl living in Manila who I met at the hostel told me that Siargao women freely wear clothes that Manila women hesitate to wear. In fact, I thought Siargao was the coolest(hipster?hippest?) place I’ve ever been in Asia. Not only the women but also the local men looked cool as well. I think surfing is what sets people free. In fact, when I went to a surfing spot, there were far more local surfers than foreign tourist surfers.
(For me, Siargao was the coolest Asian town, but for others, it may be just another tourist destination. It just all depends on how people feel.)
One challenging about Siargao was frequent heavy showers nearly every day.
After coming to Siargao, I was able to enjoy a variety of Filipino cuisines. The picture above is Filipino barbecue and it was really delicious.
It was a food called Sinigang, which had a sour taste and was mixed with various vegetables and meat. Thai traditional food Tomyum, also tastes sour, but Philippine sinigang had a different sour from Tomyum. I really enjoyed eating Sinigang.
This food was called Sisig, and it was a Filipino dish made with finely chopped pork head, ears, cheeks, and jowls and seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar. I was hungry after surfing, so I ate this food with fresh fruit juice right in front of the surfing beach. It came out sizzling on the iron plate and was really delicious.
It was a soup called Bulalo that I had at downtown, and it contained beef, corn, cabbage and pepper. There was a huge pot in front of the store, and the soup was refreshing and delicious because they boild beef bones all day long.
I ordered it thinking it was beef meat, but it turned out to be full of intestines. I don’t like intestines very much that this didn’t suit my taste, so I just ate the soup and vegetables.
Philippine money. Since the Philippines is located in Southeast Asia, I thought travel prices would be cheap. But I felt it was only slightly cheaper than Taiwan? (Taiwan’s basic salary is U$1,000 month, Philippines’ basic salary is $300) Of course, it was a bit more expensive because I was mainly in a tourist area. There were cheap foods on the streets that some local can get, but the prices of industrial products are similar to those in other countries, so I thought it would be a burden for some local people.
I heard that Cloud 9 was a famous place for surfing, so I stayed in a hostel dormitory room nearby. Cloud Nine was only about 3km(1.8mi) away from the city center, so it was easy to get there by a tuk-tuk taxi (Three wheel scooter taxi)
However, the hostel was in the forest, so I had to walk a long way to get to Cloud Nine. When I arrived at Cloud Nine, the waves were quite bad. According to locals who rent surfboards, February was not surfing season. I was very disappointed because I came here for surfing. Anyway, since I was here, I rented a surfboard and rode the choppy waves. Surfboard rental price was 200 pesos (U$3.5) per hour.
It was nice that most of the hostel guests were young Filipinos, but what was disappointing was that no one surfed. Everyone just went to the mountains or rivers to spend the day together.
I wanted to stay in a hostel with surfers, so I moved to Mad Monkey, the most famous hostel in this area. Mad Monkey was known as a party hostel, so there were mainly foreigners. But still here were not many surfers either. Anyway, I made a friend with my roommates and we ate together and went out at night as well.
Mad Monkey were very close to Cloud Nine, so it was an easy walk, but the problem was that the waves were really bad. The locals who rent surfboards said that the waves were good at Secret Beach. So I took a tuk-tuk, but the driver ended up going to the wrong place. Secret Beach, enjoyed as a picnic spot, and Secret Beach, enjoyed as a surfing spot, were different places.
After going back to the main road and going far for a while, I arrived at Surfing Secret Beach and had to walk through the forest for about 10 minutes. I wondered if there was really a surfing spot here, but when I got to the end of the road, I found a place that was completely different from Cloud Nine.
The color of the water was really pretty and the waves were gentle, so it looked good for longboard. Amazingly, there were waves here every day!! In Australia, time to time I couldn’t surf due to too choppy waves, but here surfing waves were 100% guaranteed every single day.
I went to a beginner’s spot that a local told me about and was riding waves. Then one of surfing instructor who was teaching someone else explained in detail what was wrong with my surfing posture. He also pushed my surfboard from behind, and I thought that my surfing skills would improve if I learned from this instructor. When I asked the price, I was told it was 1,000 pesos (U$17.5), including surfboard rental, motorcycle pickup and drop, and lecture fee. In Australia, a group lesson costs U$26 and a private lesson costs U$80. I thought it was much cheaper than that, so I decided to take the lesson.
It took 30 minutes to ride a motorcycle from Cloud Nine to Secret Beach. For breakfast, I usually ate sandwiches from a place right next. When I was in Australia I was so exhausted after just one hour of surfing that I only surfed 2-3 times a week. But this time, I surfed with an instructor named Bogskie for over 2 hours every day for a week.
Since I had an instructor, I was able to immediately understand why I had not been able to catch the waves properly. When paddling, my upper body was too low, I kept spreading my legs, and I had a habit of looking down when I stood up. Once I got all of these things right, I was able to ride the waves with ease.
I also learned how to identify rideable waves, where to stay to ride the wave, and how to return to the wave safely. I think I rode more waves in one week with Instructor Bogskie than I had waves alone in Australia in one year.
There was a little shop right in front of beach, so I always ate boiled eggs before surfing. After surfing, I drank a fresh coconut and bought another boiled egg to fill the energy. The color of the water was so beautiful that I was amazed every time I surfed.
For me, who learned surfing in Australia, what was difficult about surfing in the Philippines was that there was coral on the bottom. In Australia, it was okay to fall with whatever position since only sand was on the bottom, but in the Philippines, I must fall safely on my back. No matter how careful I was, the coral kept scratching my hands, feet, and body so I later bought long thicker pants. I wished I had wetsuit although local people wore very lightly.
A Filipino friend who shared the same room gave me 130 SPF sunscreen. 130 was a number I have never seen before. Even after applying this and Zinc, a sunscreen for surfers, the sun was so strong that my face stung.
Before going downtown, I saw a cafe called Tom&Toms and it looked good for video editing, so I went in, but the air conditioning was so weak that it was too hot to stay later.
Afterwards, I found the only cafe that had air conditioning called Lunares, and it was located in the city center, so it was good.
After several days of surfing in the morning, working at a cafe in the afternoon, and going to a party with my hostel friends at night, I thought this was the life of a digital nomad. However, because I had limited energy, I eventually stopped going to parties at night. I only repeated of surfing, working at cafe, and sleeping.
There were a lot of street dogs in Siargao, and they always sit next to and looked at the people for food in restaurants. This was the most famous street restaurant in the town, but I didn’t know why it was famous. Many locals and foreigners ate here. There were several types of food on silver metal container. People pointed out what they want and the staff put it on the plate.
People paid for the amount of each food they choose. However, the payment method was strange. People paid after they’ve finished eating, but the problem was that you had to tell them what they ate. But this was complicated, so everyone took pictures before eating, showed the pictures for pay at the end. At first, I didn’t know about this so I had problem to pay.
Foreigners put a lot of different things on the plate, and just by looking at it, I thought it would cost over U$10. I simply put two or three things in general. The price of the above food was U$3 (170 pesos). This was the best place to eat cheaply in the city. At many tourist restaurants, it goes easily over U$8 to U$10.
Although many foreigners stayed at Mad Monkey, there was still no surfer atmosphere. Most of them would just tour the surrounding area or just try surfing one time and leave after three or four days. Later I heard that many surfers stay at a place called Sinag hostel, so I moved my accommodation here. It wasn’t that far from Mad Monkey.
There was dinner together once a week, so it had the best atmosphere of all the hostels I’ve stayed. Also, everyone stayed more than for a week or two and most of the guests were surfers. Above all, they had a schedule to go to a surfing spot together every morning.
But a problem arose. My body was weak from surfing every day, so when my period started, I started catching a cold. On the morning when I was not feeling well, I wanted to cancel the surfing lesson, but I felt sorry because the instructor who did not take reservations for other students because of me would not have any income for that day. After finishing the lesson at that day, I told I can’t have lesson anymore. When I actually calculated it, I realized that I had spent over U$150 in lesson, so I couldn’t proceed further anyway.
After moving to this guesthouse, I was sick nearly for a week that I couldn’t make friends or go surfing sadly.
A few days before returning to Taiwan, I was feeling better. So I rented a scooter for a few days and went surfing at Secret Beach.
I heard there was Paradise Beach next to Secret Beach, but I had never been there. So, I went there since I had my own scooter, but it wasn’t great because there were too many surfers.
Above all, there were many beginners learning with the instructor. I didn’t like to ride the wave with beginners like me. So I went back to my favorite Secret Beach.
After finishing surfing, I saw a restaurant on the the middle of way back. So I stopped to have lunch. It was nice to be able to move around freely because I had my own scooter.
The view from the restaurant.
There was a local who took video for money, so I paid him to film me for an hour, but I got only this one picture I could use. I was disappointed, but he said sorry and he wouldn’t charge the money. Anyway, since he was in the water for over an hour because of me, I just said him to take the money. Well, I was not a professional surfer anyway, and I didn’t get the waves well that day, so I didn’t miss out much thing. Last week, I had already asked my instructor to take GoPro video, and he had taken some good video of me surfing, so that was enough.
A few days before leaving, I received a message from a Filipino cyclist on Instagram. She was a female bike traveler named Xzar Lim, who said she was in Siargao at the time.
It turned out that she was a famous content creator and traveler in the Philippines. The videos on her YouTube channel were way higher level than my videos. She said she originally worked at a video production company before. The laptop in the photo above looked good, and she said she received it through collaboration with ASUS.
She had a lot of different gadgets. She said she received some of them through collaboration with companies.
Most of all, she surprised me by saying that she traveled alone in the Philippines by bicycle. I left my bicycle in Taiwan because I thought the Philippines would be dangerous to cycle as solo female, but surprisingly, I found out that there are many people who travel around the Philippines by bicycle.
On the last day before leaving, I went surfing with Xzar Lim and ended up meeting my surfing instructor, Bogskie. He asked if we would join as they were about to take a boat to the island for surfing. It sounded good that we decided to go as well. There were about 6 surfers on our boat.
There were always a lot of surfers at Secret Beach and I had to wait my turn to take the wave. So, it was nice to go out on a boat like this since there were only us that we didn’t need to wait long to take the wave. For the first time, I learned that if you want to surf in a place without many people surrounding, you have to get out on a boat.
There was a place where the waves were quite strong, and I fell down there and the surfboard hit my nose so badly that I ended up with a nosebleed for the first time in my life. My nose wasn’t broken, but I suffered a bit of a headache afterwards. I wanted to surf a little more, but it was disappointing that everyone was in the mood to stop and go back. Afterwards, I took a picture with Bogskie and said goodbye.
When I went to see the sunset with Xzar Lim, I met the local who was sorry for not being able to take a good video of me surfing the day before. And yeah we became like a friend and laughed about yesterday thing and then took the picture together.
I enjoyed my last day in the Philippines with my local friend who was my bicycle friend. Bicycle travelers are the always my best friend!
On the morning of my departure, I went to have breakfast near my hostel and happened to meet another Filipino cyclist, so I was happy to take a picture with him.
On the way to the airport by van from the hostel, the road was busy with locals going surfing in the morning. I thought I would miss this for a while.
The road to the airport was a jungle that the scenery looked peaceful and nice.
Airport in Siargao
Originally, I only planned to come here for a week, but since I was surfing, I ended up completing my 30-day Philippine visa. It was my first taste of a surfing holiday and I really enjoyed it. Probably I would try surfing holiday time to time once I settle down.
=========
❤️Thank you for reading my travel journey.
Keeping up with blogging in two languages has been quite difficult and challenging while traveling.
However, I’m glad that I haven’t given up since 2011 and could continue sharing my experiences with you.
If you’d like, you can contribute to help keep this blog running.
* PayPal Support – https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=LWA66NWP9DD5N¤cy_code=EUR
(If the link doesn’t work, please use this https://paypal.me/universewith )
* Wise Support – https://wise.com/pay/me/hyojinj19
* Australia Bank Account Support – Westpac, BSB : 733-083, Account : 691-852, xxxxxx Jeong
Thank you for your support!❤️
Philippines Siargao surfing vlog video
Trying Ballot, Philippines street egg
