Dos Palmas, baby

I just came back from Dos Palmas, home to an array of things you will lose yourself to - a magnificent mangrove beach, a plethora of Rico Yan references, and souvenir items that declare, “God created women and pearl as well.” And as with so many of these trips, the story starts out with the airport, where we arrived after using up enough batteries on digital cameras to run a small village.

The Palawan airport, we would later learn, is a place for contemplation, a respite clearly designed to take your thoughts off of stress, or take them off altogether.

The Palawan airport battle cry against stress reads,

Try and relax the soothing massage
Of blind masseurs,
While waiting your trip!
It is for rajuvination, it releases stress

But the point is, airport. The place is supported by a fee travelers pay, money they use to tend to the cobwebs by the seats and - and this is what I really like about that airport - the guy who walks over the roof, holes on the ceiling and all.

From there, we took a bus ride and basked in the glory of Palawan, complete with a very enthusiastic tour guide. “The specialty food around these parts is... well, there’s really no specialty,” she began, and it dawned on me that it was going to be a long haul. “Notice how clean the place is. Palawan was voted cleanest city in 1994, 1995...”

About an hour and an MP3 session later, we arrived at the ferry dock, a small place with a thing for bathroom use. The comfort room sign reads,

TAKE-A
CR - P5.00
SHOWER - P20.00

After having taken a CR, and then staring at the sign for a good few minutes, I got left behind by the ferry I was supposed to be on, and the rains began to really have at it. I got on another one, and there was another guide, replete and bursting with tourist information. “That is the bat island,” she began. “It’s called that way because there are lots of bats.”

“MP3 player, now!” said my feeble, tourist-information-overloaded brain.

“You can’t see it because of the rains but that’s the Starfish Island,” she continued. “It’s called that way because...”

They were looking for me after the ferry finally docked on Dos Palmas, partly because the rains were really heavy by then, but mostly because I got left behind my designated ferry ride while I was in awe of the CR sign. So after the people from the office realized I wasn’t lost, just signage-inspired, we got to the business of checking out the beach.

The island is called Arreceffi - it’s a sweet little patch of sand and mangroves, and the beach makes some of the others I’ve seen look like a backyard picnic spot, and that’s while there’s vicious amounts of rain. There’s a range of things to do - we kayaked, played an array of beach sports, and watched the fire dancers play with, erm, fire, but we made sure we didn’t break any of their rules including - and this was on the tour reminders - not entering the restaurant topless.

On day 2, there were team building activities, physically grueling challenges that we journ majors refer to as “painful.” Excruciatingly painful, the kind that leaves you wondering later if oxen have been partying on your back - there was a four-way tug-of-war, a log race, and a range of other superb activities, and they warned us not to do “direct assaults on the marshals.”

We spent two nights in Dos Palmas, and there had been bottomless booze and countless cameras, concepts that are dangerous by themselves but taken together become monstrous entities. Want proof?

Update: It's amazing how many photos were taken BEFORE the vacation began.