The boat to San Jose wasn't the most comfortable, it didn't even have seats. It was a big Banka which is probably the most common boat you see in the Philippines. They are basically thin wooden boats, varying in size, with arms on both sides with long bamboo floats attached to stop them tipping over. This one just had a big flat wooden deck upstairs where everyone sat. It was an uncomfortable 7 hours and Pete was not impressed by the plate of rice and a grilled b...

We flew from the tiny airport at Boracay to the tinier airport at Coron and took a minibus into town. Coron is famous for it's wreck diving (there's really nothing else there). During World War 2 a huge fleet of American bombers flew over and destroyed 12 Japanese warships which are now a big attraction for divers. We found a very basic place to stay and then headed to a dive shop we had read good reviews on. Some of the dive centres had some awful reviews so w...

We've grown to dislike certain travellers and we met two of these on the boat back from Camiguin. When they asked where were going next and we told the it was Boracay they said "ooh really, I wouldn't." This really annoys us as we'd like to make our own minds up and would never dream of telling someone that the place they are going to is crap, that's just our view. Anyway it was a long day, we worked out pretty quickly that it's a nightmare to get around here, ...

To say we could see the spectacular volcano ridden Camiguin island from Bohol the boat took a surprisingly long time, after 5 hours we arrived and checked out a few hotels. We managed to find a basic one and our room was next to the black sand beach with the Bangka boats lined up on the shore. Camiguin is a small island and everything is spread out around the many volcanos, so we hired a bike to explore. Our first stop was the sunken cemetery which was washed i...

We were up early and off to the airport, next destination.....the Philippines! A few hours later and we arrived in Manila the capital. We had only heard bad things about Manila so we decided to book a connecting flight south to Cebu. We didn't arrive in Cebu until quite late in the evening so we grabbed a taxi and headed to a hotel. We weren't sure what to expect the Philippines to be like, our taxi journey was an eye opener. It reminded us a lot of India, peop...