TBK Travels- in the Philippines - part two

 

After our beach clean up

My final trip to El Nido was in January 2019. I did not intend it to be my last visit but circumstances made it that way. I met up with Mama Jam at Tandiken cottages on New Years day and he showed me some drunken back packers cavorting naked in the sea. They were still drunk from the night before, and being sick in the sea. It was an awful sight ( having given up alcohol 4 years previously) . We were worried they would choke on their own vomit . The passengers for the boat tours had started to arrive and they looked on in disgust , children and all, filming the event for the social media. Jam showed me the empty bottles on the beach and when I later walked to Cadlao I saw bottles and glasses everywhere. 

By this time the authorities had started to demolish buildings where they had encroached on the beach, illegally, and the whole place looked a mess. The Philippine President was threatening to shut down the town like he had the Island of Boracay and the then Mayor was filmed shouting  and screaming in Cuna hotel which she closed for breaching the regulations.  Strangely she had allowed it to open and operate in breach of the regulations for a year prior to the film appearing in the social media!

The beach was soon full of people waiting to go on the boat tours, clutching their bottles of water ( in spite of the ban on Plastic bottles in Palawan) . I later read that the tour guides were teaching the tourists how to hide their bottles to beat the ban on plastic. It seemed that as usual profit was placed above the environment. This was confirmed by many others following my blog, read by 5000 people in a week ,  about the deterioration of El Nido and the subsequent response from the then Mayor and press coverage - which I have detailed in another blog.  

My special thanks to the hotel staff and OJT who came to join us clean up the beach at Cove

On the positive side,  following my blog , the staff, OJT, and even the pest control contractor and Richelle's son , JP, volunteered to come and clean up the beach at Cove the next day. We had seen local families having a BBQ on the beach next to the hotel on New Year's eve. We found that they had left, food, soiled nappies , glass and plastic bottles and bags, right under the "Do not litter here "sign. In total we collected 20 bags of waste, which had to be bought back to the hotel by Kayak as it was so heavy. The waste was then recycled in the hotel's materials recycling facility.

The team did a great job

On this vacation I was joined by one of my former houseboys in Bahrain who had been injured in a car accident and returned home to Vigan for Treatment, Kuya Vin. He preferred to stay in the room glued to his smart phone while I walked on the beach and swam . However he joined Ran and I for a meal at Amos, which was packed as usual. 

Kuya Vin and Ran eat at Amos

I spent many happy hours blogging in the shade of the bar or outside our Beachfront Loft, and we had several massages and of course lots of fantastic food. I loved watching the fishermen come each morning to sweep the bay for fish and pull in their haul. In the evening I would watch the families come to pick the shellfish off the beach as the tide went out, while Vin stayed in the room and watched TV.

The local fishermen in front of the hotel

Most of all, as I had done since 2013,  I just loved walking from Cove to Lio and back each day. Sometimes I stopped off to eat or have a refreshing drink, buy pasalubong or watch the Cove Volleyball team playing at Lio.

JP and Ran help with the clean up

I left El Nido at the end of January 2019 and intended to return at the end of December. By then two more larger hotels had opened at Lio ( SEDA and Huni) and the reservations centre was in Manila for all the Ayala hotels. I wrote to Ran at the hotel to book as usual but he forwarded it to the impersonal Reservations  Centre who quoted rack rate which by then had gone up again . At 15,000 peso for a beachfront loft ( compared to 5,000 when I first stayed) the accommodation was more expensive than Manila ( and the Bahamas and Maldives for a luxury resort ). Remember they were charging 15,000 peso for a night in a run down hotel with the windows falling out and faulty plumbing!. I queried the rate, three times, with the Reservations  Centre, the hotel, and the former Manager and was told that was it, take it or leave it, so I cancelled the booking.

One of the amazing sunsets at El Nido Cove

Further disappointment was in store at Ursula beach resort, in Sibaltan ,  who wanted paying in cash 4 months prior to my stay .  They then hassled Marz, who kindly agreed to pay for me as she lives in Sibaltan, daily, so I cancelled that booking too. It seems in their greed to get as much money as early as they could the hoteliers of Palawan had forgotten they keys of good customer service which attracted me there back in 2013. 

I managed to get a much cheaper booking for 3 weeks on a farm near Puerto who were most helpful arranging massages,  cookery lessons, and upgrading my room for free. 

So El Nido and Sibaltan, and my support for their schools and my friends there came to a premature end . I stayed in Puerto, Sabang, Port Barton and St Vicente in December and January 2020 and will eventually get someone to buy me a retirement home in one of those locations.

Bye bye beautiful Cove

El Nido has simply priced itself out of the market. They did write later to apologize and offer me a lower rate , but it still was way above what I had secured in Puerto. So that's the end of El Nido, it's crammed noisy polluted streets and annual flooding , fires and polluted beaches. You bought it upon yourself. I still stand by my 1.1.2019 Blog:

"If you came in search of Paradise, El Nido is no longer the place" 

The British Kubayan has left El Nido Cove, one last time, never to return