If anybody's been wondering why I have not updated here for so long, it's because I had been writing this piece - a 6000 word monstrosity about our 4 day trip to Coron last July. That and procrastination, mostly. I'll be splitting this into four parts and I'll post the articles before adding pictures because the pictures are at home and unprocessed. So if you're not seeing any pictures when you're expecting one, come back after a few days. That said, on with the show!
Coron is a cozy little town. Far from what you'd imagine as a tourist destination. After settling down in our inn, the Coron Eco Lodge, and watching an HBO movie about Richard Gere firing a lot of people, we went outside and tried to find food. Apparently traveling from Manila doesn't make you very hungry, but seeing Richard Gere flirt like a 17 year old does.
Naturally, we ended up eating at the biggest, most tourist trap-looking restaurant that sold 250 peso fish and rice meals. The blue marlin steak tasted fresh from the sea, though that wasn't so much of a surprise. The coke that I drunk tasted the same way, and THAT was the surprise.
Not content with just wandering around for a few minutes, we went around town some more. (Coron being a small town, wandering around is a lot easier than it sounds.) Surprisingly, in my fifteen minutes of strolling I found three barber shops and four salons, which led me to think that apart from beef seafoods and pearls, Coron's next biggest exports are stylish 90s-era haircuts.
At around four in the afternoon, we proceeded with the town tour. The tour van was reserved just for me and Anna because the guys we arrived with on the plane earlier opted to gun for the island tour on the same day as their flight. It didn't sound like a great idea, since we later learned the Island Tour normally takes an entire day.
To be honest, most of the town was unimpressive in that it's a normal town which might as well have been your childhood neighborhood. We visited a souvenir shop and a casuy factory for pasalubongs. It's kinda hard to get motivated in buying souvenirs when the only thing you've seen so far is the town plaza, so I didn't buy anything (also I have an inborn genetic precondition known as "kuripot"). We also visited a new promenade facing the Coron Bay, and I thought it was only so-so. There was also a new zipline attraction that operated for the first time, attached to two metal strut towers rising from the bay's waters. It's a cool idea as long as nothing goes wrong. I later heard that somebody did get stuck in the middle.
Owing to Anna's busted knee and because I suffered a sudden attack of "katamaran", we opted out of climbing Mt. Tapyas to view the sunset, which was being blocked by ominous rainclouds just waiting to pounce. And since it was only the two of us, we just instructed the tour guides to head for the hotsprings instead. The driver insisted on maybe just passing through the entrance of Mt Tapyas so we can at least know what it looks like, and then offered to take our picture at the entrance so we could pretend that we climbed it. I just said in the most polite and friendly way possible that we really didn't give a shit. The driver took it as cue and went on to the hot springs part.
This was actually my first time to enter a hot spring. I've gone to pansol multiple times but I always end up entering a resort with a do-it-yourself heated pool where the water is primarily warmed up by the sariling sikap method of drinking lots of alcohol-based refreshments. The spring's water was a bit salty, and a bit sulfuric. Apart from the issues of moss, the water was very clean - not to mention hot (durr). And since most people who take the town tour climb Mt. Tapyas before heading for the springs, we got there before the place got crowded. It was very relaxing. I now know what makes the Japanese go apeshit about dipping their bodies in hot water. I thought that maybe Lobsters didn't really suffer when they get cooked. Maybe their last minutes are spent contemplating how awesome it would be if there'd be Piña Colada offered to go with
the hot bath.
But that's just me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment