In 2011, I took half my English family to my homeland, the Philippines where we spent a week in the favourite tourist destination of Boracay. This is my British husband's travel review:
As we slowly descended into Boracay, the faltering noise of the small propeller plane only added to the romance of this remote, tropical island cut adrift from a dense, jungle-clad peninsula. As we exited the plane I was drawn back to a largely disappearing bygone era I previously could only relate to through pre-wartime films and romantic epics such as ‘Gone with the Wind or ‘Out of Africa’! Suddenly, the often all too protective and aesthetically sterile modern world was stripped away from before my eyes and I was allowed to experience a different part of the world where the sense of adventure had remained intact. Indeed, being halted by authorities on the tarmac and consequentially cut adrift from our fellow passengers in order to allow a taxiing plane pass within meters of us was just the start!
Going through the delightful airport ‘hut’ which passed as a terminal (you know, the sort of old world airport you could tearfully wave goodbye to a loved one as they boarded the plane), we collected our bag from the human (!) ‘luggage carousel’ , and soon found ourselves riding a traditional Filipino tricycle.
The experience was fun to say the least, it filled my senses and was in an odd way cosy in a peculiarly vulnerable kind of way! I felt like I needed to concentrate and developed a strange kind of rapport with the driver, perhaps because I felt there was more to lose if he were to falter! Indeed this was OUR driver, who I would share all these outdoor senses with, including every bump, every breath of wind, every passing pedestrian and vehicle, every puddle or raindrop that caught us out, and ultimately every success in reaching our destination in one piece and more significantly, wiser of the environment that surrounded us. A car, just like a big airport or plane, would have only succeeded in shielding us from these experiences that make travel so interesting. Indeed the subsequent journey on a traditional Filipino outrigger boat to Boracay Island itself, only added to this experience, as did the delightful traditional Filipino house, complete with hammock that awaited us. What also greeted us at what was to be our accommodation for the next 5 nights was a typically warm Filipino welcome from the owners.
Shortly after visiting the beach and with time to rest I reminded myself how this was everything me and my friends from the UK imagined a tropical paradise to be and more, the palm trees overhung the beaches even more effortlessly, the coconuts were bigger, the sea warmer and the breeze was even softer.
Ange I think was definitely reminded how I do indeed herald from temperate climbs – I guess the tropical environment was more familiar to her!
The bad side of Boracay (there wasn’t much of it but yes this is supposed to be travel writing so I can’t just say everything was good!)
The beach was indeed stunning and as white as I think a beach could be, as too was the turquoise sea which seemed so bright and vivid it almost looked unreal, like an edited photograph. Foraging through the sand and able to distinguish the coral fragments as I let the sand slip through my fingers I was reminded of the amazing intricacies of nature to create such beauty, a stark contrast to the all too often bland, brash establishments that dominated large areas of the main beach.
I, like other tourists are all for music, restaurants and entertainment, but Boracay had clearly suffered from a lack of, if any, strictly regulated development that had preserving its natural beauty and heritage as a priority. Further evidence of this portrayed itself in many ways, perhaps the most startling was the difficulty to locate a single restaurant that served Filipino, yes Filipino food! When we did find one and ordered a Filipino dish the waiter’s first reaction was not to promote his country’s dish, no quite the opposite, he actively discouraged me from going through with the order! His exact words were; “Are you sure you want this, its Filipino”.
Indeed this was a pattern that emerged throughout my stay in the Philippines and not just restricted to food – a pattern that revealed a country that (to the foreigner at least anyway) does not appear to celebrate and/or promote its heritage significantly and/or effectively. This was certainly new and nothing like anything I’d experienced in any other country.
All in all a beautiful place though which I thoroughly enjoyed and will surely visit again.
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