Palawan

Well my trip to Palawan went not entirely as I'd hoped, but it was still one of the most beautiful places in Philippines I've been. Starting with some bad things that happened: starting on the tour I got a bad stomachache that lasted for 3 days, luckily I had medicine that helped. I think I got some water on my camera and now the display is broken. It still seems to take pictures but I'm not sure if they are saving, or if they are any good because I don't have a viewfinder. The same day I spilled some water on my iPod. I dried it out the rest of the trip and it is fine now, but I only have a few pictures. 

The good: the islands are amazingly beautiful, the water clear and really warm, the weather good, the people were interesting, friendly and lots of fun. We slept in outdoor huts every night, and had lots of fish for dinner. One night in particular the crew bought a live pig from the local village, they took it on the boat for the day and killed it in the afternoon, then roasted it over a fire for dinner that night. It was strange to be eating an animal that I saw alive just a few hours ago, but I guess I'll never have pork that fresh again.

One of the first islands we went to for snorkeling. Some islands we did cliff jumping as well.

Really beautiful skies the whole time. Not sure ill find a more beautiful tropical place anytime soon.

Those 3 pictures were all from the first day before I got water on the iPod, waiting on a friend to forward me some of his pics.

In Coron I had one night and I went out with the other tour guests. This bar had a bunch of WWII items on the wall including this propeller, an artillery shell, and what I thought was most cool: a leather jacket from a pilot. Oh also we did snorkeling at a few Japanese WWII ship wrecks. They were pretty decomposed and full of coral from being there for 70 years. They were destroyed by America and on one I could see some twisted metal from what I assume is where the boat was hit, or cracked in half on the way down.

I'm now off to Manila for one night before heading to Singapore! Coron has the most low-tech airport I've been to thus far. The workers manually opened my bags to search for dangerous items. No wifi, no scanners. It's because Coron has random brownouts almost every day.

I wore a long sleeve rash shirt most of the trip, for sun protection and to protect from jellyfish(there was lots of essentially invisible stinging jellies, it's like hitting a thorn, it hurts for a few minutes but goes away quick). As you can see I now have a "glove tan".

Oh also, I would have messaged earlier, but I thought the tour ended on June 5, when it actually ended June 6. Luckily I didn't miss any flights or anything, and I just missed out on more diving in Coron.