Boracay Island

Boracay is a very small tropical resort island about 1 hour flight time south east of Manila.

It’s only 8km long and around 1km wide but it has 192 hotels, a superb white sandy beach, all the souvenir shops and restaurants you could wish for and a warm, humid but windy environment.

If only it wasn’t so difficult to get to.

Manila International Airport is a nightmare of an airport to navigate to and within, and nothing like the smoothly efficient KL, Singapore or Bangkok airports. The 3 domestic terminals are a 1/2 hour taxi ride away though horrendous traffic and flights to the same destination might leave from any of them.

Arriving at Manila from Ha Noi was OK (via Guangzhou in China), although we had to fill in embarkation cards (!) when arriving (and also when leaving) and we were wise to have arranged transport in advance to our city hotel so we didn’t have to run the gauntlet of taxi drivers or fight our way, tired, to a domestic terminal.

Manila is mostly a concrete jungle:

The Jeepney is the local mass transport system:

We enjoyed a good evening in the bar of the hotel (see pics below), before setting out, refreshed, to the domestic terminal for the “simple” flight to Boracay.

“Mycon and the High Octaves” in the bar of the Berjaya Makati Hote, Manila:

Where someone had a few drinks:

But “simple” it was not. There is no airport on Boracay Island, the nearest is at Caticlan on a larger nearby island, but Caticlan airport is so small it can only handle small planes with very limited baggage capabilities, way too low for us international travellers.

After a flight from Manila to Kalibo 67km west of Caticlan, which was delayed by 1 1/2 hours, there was then a further 1 1/2 hour bus/taxi ride to Caticlan where there is a small port to catch a native boat across to Boracay. However, there are no cars on Boracay, only motorcycle taxis and a few small taxi vans to take us to our hotel about 4 km away, and while the hotel was on a beach, it has no road access, so we had to lug our baggage 100m along the beach to the hotel.

So although we knew about most of these things when we booked up, our simple 1 hour flight to Boracay still took most of the day and we arrived after dark and very tired.

Once we were there, the hotel was OK but a bit basic, it only had 17 rooms and there was a nice outdoor bar with all day food and drink available and the service was good. Ray chose it for us mainly because accommodation is hard to get in the high season, which this was, but mostly so it was quiet and away from big hotels and noisy parties.

The traffic from Kalibo to Caticlan:

 

Country folk:

Prue on the local native boat ride from Caticlan to Boracay. the final leg of our journey from Ha Noi:

In one of these, and yes the sea was a bit rough for the 15 minute crossing:

The very windy beach on our side of the island where it’s a bit quieter, no big hotels and noisy parties, just kite surfers:

The road access from our hotel:

The beach entrance (in fact the only entrance) to our hotel:

The Boracay wiring system is similar to Vietnam:

But their meter readers have an easy job, no traipsing from house to house, it’s all in one place:

The lane way to our hotel:

7m bamboo poles on a motorbike, jammed across our lane:

Typical Boracay road:

“D’Mall” shopping precinct, mostly small shops with a couple of small supermarkets:

Most but not everything is available on Boracay:

But when you get across to the other side of the island (a 10 minute walk), White Beach is a beautiful place:

Sandy streets and full of beautiful people:

We met with Scott and his mates at their hotel:

Prue having a beach foot massage, something I was continually being offered, but in very different circumstances:

Our first swim:

Cock fighting is the most popular sport in the Philippines and cocks are tethered everywhere out of reach of each other: