Messages from (the) Seoul: Philippines

First update in a long time: I spent 3 weeks in the Philippines which was fantastic, it was a really nice escape. The temperature in Seoul during August is too hot for me, it's incredibly humid so it was great to miss most of that! I went with some fellow English teachers and we crammed some amount of stuff into the trip. Lot's of island hopping, snorkling, hiking and chilling on beaches.
We went to Palawan first of all and we decided to hire motorbikes for a couple of days and drive down a 300km coastal route to the main town puerto princesa. The trip was an absolute disaster within 10 minutes of getting the bikes, we managed to lose James who was on a motorbike for the first time. He had taken a wrong turn and while we stopped to find him he overtook us and sped on ahead thinking he was behind us! We weren't too worried to start with but we only made it 60km before getting caught in a proper monsoon deluge. We had to take shelter at which point I realised that I had James's wallet and phone - he had nothing on him! We were delayed for over an hour and with no missed calls we were fearing the worst. We got to an internet cafe hoping he'd left a message but nothing. We had left a friend (Stephen) in El Nido where we had set off - we told him to get to the police station and find out what was going on if they had heard anything. Later around 10 o'clock James came online we were so relieved he was okay.

He had an epic trip, he'd had a minor crash and gone to the hospital in the first town (the same one we sat using the internet in and then stayed then night in), the nurse had given him some money when he told her his story (We tried to track her down and re-imburse her late that evening, we ended up leaving money with a friend of hers - I hope she managed to get it!!). The money got him some petrol, but around 200kms it was getting dark and he ran out of petrol! He ended up getting some petrol some how but he had another minor crash and with the light now really bad he convinced a local to drive his bike for him and take him to Sabang. Our original meeting point - of course we were miles behind and worried sick. So he arrived in Sabang and went round every guesthouse looking for us! He managed to blag some internet time at a very posh resort - I think the cuts from the two crashes probably helped his case. So we got in contact and arranged to meet him in Sabang early morning, we would leave at the crack of dawn and meet up with him - which we did.

We had great fun the next morning, absolutely flooring the bikes flat out we made great time. When we arrived James was in great spirits, He'd been given a room and breakfast for the night. The whole time we were in Palawan we found the hospitality of the Filipinos was amazing. The last week we stayed in Borocay a very touristy island - more of a resort type place, it was completely different. Way more commercial, I enjoyed Borocay but it was not as special as Palawan.