Wednesday, January 5, 2011 Bohol Island

I got up at the asscrack of dawn 5am once again (I think I'm still jet-lagged... it makes sense considering there is a SIXTEEN hour time difference between here and Pacific Time).  I took a cab to the docks, and paid for a $10 ticket to the neighboring very round island of Bohol.  The ferry was indoor seating with AC and it only took 2 hours.  Luckily, it was tourist central when I got off the ferry, meaning there were travel agencies all competing with the exact same tours, which is exactly what I wanted.  I was only a solo traveler, so I didn't really feel like paying $50 for my own car, so I luckily met this Filipino-American couple who shared a van cab with me.  We beelined through the small little capital, Tagbilaran, through the green tropical forests and rice paddies of the island, to the tourist attraction, Chocolate Hills, which is a series of perfectly round green hills which look like a green eggcrate mattress.  Unfortunately it was a downpour and really foggy, so the pictures were subpar.  Luckily, at the bottom, they had a fake background of the Chocolate Hills, where they'd take your picture for a small fee.  Next stop was a mini adventure park.  Because why wouldn't I, I decided to pay the $7 and go ziplining over the Loboc River, which was awesome!  You basically are strapped into a harness hanging from a cable across the canyon, and they just let you go and you go flying headfirst to the other side, hundreds of feet up.  So fun!  Next stop was Loboc River, for Filipino lunch buffet (YES YES YES) of watermelon, banana, cucumber (you have no idea how good vegetables taste at this point), pork fat adobo, okra string beans, fried chicken, soup, pancit, and coconut gelatin.  It was served on a big covered boat, which was pretty funny.  They putted upstream to some dinky waterfalls, as we were serenaded by a guy singing "La Bamba", Righteous Brothers, and Elvis.  There was a touristy stop with some live Filipino village performers, who were dressed in yellow and did the bamboo stick-banging dance, pretty cool.  It was mostly Filipino tourists, some Westerners here and there.  That's one thing I really like about the Philippines, is it's largely void of Westerners.  Tons of Koreans (randomly), but despite the American military and corporate presence, not too many Westerners.  Of course I've seen plenty of the quintessential old bald white guy (with money) walking around with with the young Filipina girl (waiting for her US passport application to be processed), but what's new.  But there are hardly any tourists, which is so nice for an traveller like me, because it makes the place feel way more natural and unspoilt (despite the fact that it's been colonized by 3 different powers for 4 centuries now), compared to, say, the western side of the South China Sea, which has become nothing but: "$4 Massage (+1)/Full Moon Party/Ride an elephant/$1 Pad Thai/Phuket island boat picture/Sex with anything you want".  After that we stopped at a little touristy animal stand, which I felt bad for stopping at because they are responsible for killing off endgangered species like the tarsier, but I managed to escape without paying them.  They, had a bunch of tarsierswhich are cute tiny alien-monkey things with HUGE red bug eyes and the coolest little hands.  I took some pictures of that before moving on to the "Largest python in the world" at 30 feet.  Wow... enormous!  And apparently it eats a live hog once a month.  Bad ass.  After that we stopped at Spanish Catholic Church (yawn) and then the site of the Blood Compact; where the Spaniard Legazpi and a local chieftain Sikatuna drank each other's blood in forming a treaty of respect.  Sikatuna was apparently the only Filipino who wasn't hostile to the Spaniards (considering what the Spaniards did to brown people throughout history, all the other Filipino chiefs had the right idea).  In fact, Chief Lapu Lapu of Cebu was responsible for killing Magellan on his trip [partway] around the world.