Christmas on White Beach

On Christmas morning, Ry surprised me with a couple of Christmas presents that he’d snuck into his backpack!

Unfortunately I hadn’t thought to bring any presents with me as our luggage was so limited, but don’t worry, because he had a whale of a time opening them all as soon as we got home! It’ll feature in our next Instagram post 😉

Ry had also bought some food from Starbucks at the airport before we set off and he held onto the paper bag and fashioned a Christmas tree out of it to bring a bit of festivity to our room!

We’d bought some mangoes from the market the day before and enjoyed our breakfast on the balcony.

One of our (limited) highlights of the holiday was the Christmas Roast Buffet at the Big Apple Dive Resort Restaurant.

We saw the signs for this on our first night and vowed to return on Christmas Day!

We hadn’t had a roast dinner since we’d arrived in Hong Kong, so it was quite a treat! 😀

Though I was a little sad that they’d ran out of gammon by the time that we’d arrived.

#firstworldproblems

As we’d explored pretty much all of Sabang the previous day, our resort owner suggested that we take a tricycle to White Beach.

That is exactly what we did.

A tricycle is basically the smaller, even less glamorous version of a tuk tuk.

We didn’t manage to get a picture of it, but we passed lots of tricycles with around 6 passengers!

There were people sat on top of the carriage, stood behind it, sat with the driver etc.

It looked so dangerous!

Here we are inside our carriage.

It was pretty exciting!

After around 45 minutes, we’d arrived at White Beach!

White Beach is the most popular of Puerto Galera’s 32 beaches. During Summer, many concerts and festivals are held there. Too many tacky tattoo shops, along with souvenir stores and numerous holiday resorts line the beach.

This website informed us that it was the cheap alternative to Borocay – I wish we’d seen this as a sign and stayed away, rather than thinking that we were getting a good deal. It’s not a particularly relaxing beach, as it’s quite busy and there are lots of hawkers trying to sell you jewellery.

Again, it may have just been the overcast skies, but we didn’t feel that the beach warranted the name ‘White Beach,’ as the sand, didn’t look all that white to us.

Nevertheless it felt great to be away from Sabang, haha!

Although it wasn’t the hottest of days, I still wanted a quick dip on Christmas Day…

I was hoping that I’d lure the sun out by wearing my sunglasses, but it didn’t work.

I read online that White Beach is home to one of the best sunsets in the country.

While we didn’t get to see it in all its glory, it was still a good experience.

Before we left our hostel, the owner had promised us that there would be tricycle drivers everywhere despite the fact that it was Christmas Day. However as the sky began to darken and piss it down; we wandered around, trying to find a tricycle, asking locals who pointed us in different directions. After getting drenched in the rain and not knowing where to go, we asked a resort owner who suggested that most tricycle drivers had gone home for Christmas, so she offered to take us back in her car for quite a few times more than it would’ve cost. However we didn’t feel like we had any other choice and she was friendly, so we set off. At least we got home dry and safely 😀

Boxing Day

As Boxing Day was reasonably sunny, we decided to head back to White Beach with a plan to walk over to the secluded Talipanan Beach.

Our first stop was fuel for the day…

Yes, he did manage to finish it.

Ry: “I wish that didn’t enter me.”

I opted for the classic Asian choice i.e. anything with shellfish.

The beach was filled with people relaxing, walking, sunbathing, playing volleyball, riding jet skis and banana boats.

We wanted to go on the CRAZY UFO beach ride, but it was CRAZY EXPENSIVE for just two people and we couldn’t find anyone to go on it with us as there was no queue for each ride. Maybe they just expected customers to be in large groups.

Hopefully we’ll get to ride it one day!

We walked for about an hour and reached Talipanan Beach, passing homes, goats and chickens on the way.

It was actually quite difficult to find.

Luckily a young lad offered to take us there, down a muddy path that you wouldn’t expect to lead onto a beach.

The actual beach is pretty small and average-looking, to be honest.

Again, this may have been due to the overcast skies.

Nevertheless, as it’s quite secluded and not as well known as White Beach, it was much quieter and peaceful.

The restaurants nearby also looked lovely.

The beach was also the back yard to a 5 star resort, so I can definitely see the appeal of staying there for a relaxing beach getaway!

When we returned to Sabang in the evening, we had dinner and decided to check out the nightclubs afterwards.

Unsurprisingly, it turned out all of them were full of pole dancers (mostly unenthusiastic and sporting builders bums) – no, it wasn’t very sexy.

27^th December, 2014

Despite despising it, we stayed in Sabang, because we had already booked our resort for the week and the weather wasn’t looking great, so we figured there wouldn’t be much point. Plus we’d slightly underestimated how much things would cost in the Philippines and didn’t even have enough money to do the tours and neither of us had a credit card. We’ll be sorting that out soon though, as we’ve got a very exciting holiday planned for April!

If you’re interested, the tours included: visiting the tribes of Mindoro Island, beach hopping, a sunset cruise, Tamaraw Falls, crossing a hanging bridge, Jungle River Kayaking and a visit to Taal Volcano (one of the smallest active volcanos in the world!)

Anyway, on our penultimate full day, we had a slow start and eased ourselves in with a fry up. (Who serves one of these without beans?!)

Again we took a tricycle ride over to White Beach to say our final farewell.

We were even treated to a rainbow!

Many masseuses wander around the beach, so I caved in and had a relaxing foot rub for half an hour.

Slightly intrigued by the floating bars out at sea, we took a free boat ride over, aided by a 7 year old who was really enthusiastic about having a job.

There were only a couple of people on it i.e. old white men with young Filipino women.

A slide that dropped into the darkness of the sea graced the second floor, free for you to use, but obviously they had a sign basically stating that the boat held no responsibility for your stupidity.

Goodbye White Beach!

xxx