5 down, 7102 to go!

Puerto Galera was great! Me and Jo H headed off straight after school with a colleague called Mike Helmsley in his car and Heidi and Phil went in theirs. It took forevvver to get to Batangas where we had to catch our boat.

Bangka boat

I thought we were catching the public boat with the rest of the public. But Heidi had booked us a private bangka boat to take us straight to the hotel's own getty. It was fantastic having just the five of us on the boat at night drinking some beers. We all sat on one side to enjoy the moonlight view over Mindoro as we approached. (well....we were avoiding the view as we passed the giant Shell oil plant on the other side!)

Mike

Heidi and Phil

Jo H

It was so nice to get out of the city for the weekend, and I can tick another island off my list

Island of Mindoro

Islands in the Philippines I have visited

1. Luzon (well I do live there)



2. Cebu



3. Panay



4. Boracay



5. Mindoro
   

Only 7102 to go!

El Galleon resort was lovely we got a 20% discount for being teachers from Manila and another 5% for paying in cash. We had nice pool view rooms.

Beach at Puerta Galera

We went on two dives on Saturday. I was a bit nervous on the first one as it was first since my Padi Open Water Course. The second one was amazing. We visited 3 underwater wrecks and at the first wreck we were surrounded by a school of overly friendly batfish. They swam all around us in circles, right up to our faces and through our arms and legs. When it came to moving on they swam with us for about 50m to the next wreck. It was amazing!

Picture of batfish

Dive sites around PG

The Point bar at the hotel is where we started off after dinner in the evenings. Its actually the bar where Heidi and Phil celebrated their engagement before Christmas. There is a big bell in the bar and if you ring it you have to buy everyone a shot!

We headed into Sebang trying to see the rugby but the satelite wasn't working so we hit a few bars then ended up in a wierd karoke place. Sebang is one of the seediest places I have been in the Philippines. It is a lovely place but filled with western white guys with really young Filipino girls/hookers all over them. There are loads of "discos" that are curtained off where the local girls strip to music and aren't even paid by the clubs! They want to find a western guy so badly to take them away they will literally strip for free to try and pull one! But it was a good night with loads of craic!