Flight at dawn
Carrying on from our late night wait, we managed to check-in to the flight to Palawan at 2:30am. It wasn’t much better in the departure lounge to be honest, sleep was still hard to come by. We had to wait here for a couple of hours, and even when we were boarding, we waited a while. The queues are always mental and slow moving, so we prefer to let them go down first. We got on the last shuttle bus to the plane, and were sat like muppets for 40 minutes. Apparently, we were waiting for an ‘agent’ to arrive, but they never came. The flight time to Palawan had come and gone, so I was beginning to think they’d leave without us. He eventually started driving and we got to the plane before it took off, thankfully.
The flight to Palawan was only an hour, but a well-needed nap made it all the quicker. After arriving at around 7am, we got off the plane, got our luggage, and left the airport. We stayed in the centre of Puerto Princesa at one of many ‘pension houses’. This just means guesthouse or homestay. It was an hour’s walk to get there, and even this early in the morning the Sun was blazing. We were hoping very hard that we’d be able to check-in early, but that wasn’t the case. So, we had to leave our luggage there and come back at around 2pm. For now, we had to stumble around like zombies, wasting time.
Time wasting
For breakfast, we went to the famous Jollibee, a staple of the Filipino diet, they’re everywhere. The food was not out of this world, but it would have to do. Cornsilog, corned beef with rice and an egg. Afterwards, we went to walk around the centre a bit, but came upon a pretty large shopping centre. As is custom, we walked around the shops for a time looking for some pud and to waste time. We had a few funny and random encounters with some Filipina college students. Every so often we’d bump into them again, and we’d all laugh. Eventually, they interviewed us on our view of the Philippines, I don’t know if it was real or not. They managed to point us to an ice cream shop, and then we departed.
Mat and I enjoyed our ice cream, then had a blistering walk back to the hostel. It still wasn’t 2pm, but as we were waiting, we booked a ride up to El Nido with them. As a result, and a few laughs, they let us check-in slightly early, I was so thankful. So we were taken to our room, we settled in, and went to sleep at 2:30pm! I woke up for a few hours at 10pm and then back to sleep until tomorrow. Doesn’t help when there isn’t much natural light in the room. It really throws your sleeping pattern off.
