It is a windy and cloudy overcast day as we sail into the anchoring point off of Boracay island. It’s our kind of beach day – but we are betting lots of people will be disappointed in the weather here today. We’ve heard this is a beach resort, with the best beach – White Beach – filled with resorts and restaurants and shopping. Does not sound like our kind of place. As a matter of fact, we are seriously thinking about not getting off today. It’s a tender ride, it’s a “resort” town, why not stay aboard?
In the end, boredom gets the better of us and we decide to head ashore. The tender ride was easy, although they were having issues with the wind apparently, our ride wasn’t bad at all, and only took 10 minutes (as opposed to the 20 or 30 the cruise director said it would take). Once ashore, there was a little folklore show…
…which was nice, but made it incredibly hard to hear the tricycle and multicab people and their offers. The tricycle guy tries to hit us up, but we actually end up in a multicab (which is a motor scooter with a 6 person pickup on the back) for 20 php each (which is like 42 cents – crazy!). We are in the cab with 3 local girls who are going to sell/pick/do something with vegetables and a French couple who Ed gets to chatting with. Off we go, out of the jetty area and into the hurdy gurdy little streets of Boracay – this is nothing like what we expected!
Crazy streets, dirt some places, pavement others. Houses and businesses jammed together crowding out the street – this is more like Vietnam than any resort town we’ve been in! Wild. The driver says he’s taking us to the mall – we’re like – ok – where ever you say! we’re clueless. On the way, he wants to talk all about the ship – how many people, what type of people, how many Chinese (they are obviously a problem!), where are we going, where have we been. Then he wants to know about America, where we live, who lives there, are there alot of electric vehicles. It’s a long drive – seriously long for 43 cents! – and he asks questions the whole way, which is seriously cute! So, I’m talking to him the whole way, Ed is talking to the French – who spent the last 2 weeks in India and thought Singapore was heaven (oh well, what can we say?).
We finally get to the “the mall” and the driver points us in the direciton of the beach. This isn’t like any mall we’ve ever seen. It is more like the street stalls in Vietnam or Cambodia!
There are souvenir places interspersed with street food looking restaurants. We wind our way through the mall, in the direction of the water and are rewarded with a great beach – stretching for miles in both directions. Again, way more 3rd world higgly piggly than resort. Tons of different areas where you can rent beach chairs, loungers and umbrellas. People hawking boat rides (thanks, have already paid for a big one!), food, souvenir hawkers, really fun.
We wander along the beach for a bit, just sort of exploring and getting our bearings. This side of the island is where the “resorts” are – and the shopping and eating. There are 3 different areas on the beach, called Stations. Station 2 (where we were dropped off) is the central hub for all the activity, Station 3 is a little less busy and Station 1 is least busy of all. We decide to head up to Station 3 just to get the lay of the land – and also because from there we can head back to the main road and try to cross the island to look at the other beach – Bulabog.
It is a bit quieter up at Station 3, not as many restaurants and shops, but still enough commerce areas to make it lively. Back out on the main drag, there is a little less traffic up here, and the shops are mostly local shops – some touristy places, but no real restaurants or things like that. We are at the point where we want to sit down for some coffee or water, but there really isn’t anything here on the main road.
So we head in the direction of Bulabog and actually find a cute little place called the English Bakery. We order a coffee and water and sit and relax a bit by the lagoon out back.
After our refreshments, we head down the road to Bulabog, which is the water sports beach.
It is the windward side of the island, and you can definitely see why it’s the water sports area! Wow – those winds! And the number of kite and wind surfers! 100s. Easily. We’re suprised there aren’t more accidents with the number of people out there.
We hang out there for a while, then walk down the beach a bit, watching all the activity. It is still early, so there isn’t really much open here yet. All the food places won’t open for a while, and there isn’t really anything else over here (but the wind) to hold our attention, so we head back across the island to White Beach, passing local shanties on the way.
Again, not at all what we expected. Celebrity had tours going to resort spa for a day (with full use of the pool and beach loungers) for $65 US and if you added a BBQ lunch you were up to $100 US. So we were expecting Ixtapa or Cancun or something. Not this fun little quirky island with tons of different places, food and atmosphere. And you know us and beaches – not us! But the more we saw, the more we really liked the unusualness of this place.
So, back to White Beach we go, through the mall (which turns out to be called D’Mall – and there is a sort of outdoor mall area that we had missed with stores and lots of restaurants, etc.) and onto the beach again. Now we are looking for food though. There are 2 more local type restaurants that have squid reasonably priced, which is what Ed is after. Then there are more expensive options in D’Mall area (including a Greek restaurant Ed had read about that got good reviews – but boy was it on the pricey side). So we wander and peruse menus, and then decide it is time for a beer. So we end up at The Hobbit. It’s a great looking restaurant, all bamboo and thatched roof, with a cool bar and great open air breezes!
We sit at the bar and have a beer (San Miguel!) while watching the procession of people walking through D’Mall (mostly all Chinese it seems). It’s a great people watching place, and I love the name. And as it turns out, it has meaning besides just the books/films. Everyone here, except the bartender, are little people! We didn’t really notice until the bartender went to get us our beer and you can see the contrast between him and one of the servers. How wild is that?
Fun. So, thirst quenched, we head off to get squid. We finally decide to try the more “local” looking place – only to find out they have 
no squid. Darn! Back to the drawing board. Menus, menus everywhere and no squid in sight (well at least none we are will to pay the price for – that’s for certain!). So you know what? We’re back to the Hobbit. Why not? The beer is good, the bartender friendly, they’ve got a big menu…and the kitchen is right there behind glass so we can watch our food being prepared. We’re there!
And it ends up being quite an enjoyable lunch. We are bad and get the garlic bread (which are called garlic logs, so we think we are getting something more than bread, but turns out not). We try to order the fried fisherman’s platter, but they are out of that (we are batting a thousand here folks!), so we end up with the fried calamari which is fantastic – and so artistic the way they plate it. Watching the chef, he really is proud of his work, and he fusses over every dish that comes out. Nice!
There is a singer that comes on, so we even get great music while we eat. We work through a couple more San Miguels, but Ed had wanted a local beer that wasn’t cold yet. When we go to order another beer, the bartender pulls the local beer Ed wanted out of the ice – he had put it there just for Ed. How nice!
Done with food and beverage, we hang out for a while listening to the music, then make our way back out to the main drag looking for a multicab or tricycle to go back to the jetty port. It takes us a little while to figure out the system – get on the correct side of the road, find a taxi “stand” sign. But eventually we find a tricycle to take us back for 100 php or a little more than $2US. Well worth it – it’s crazy trafficky here and the roads are narrow and hilly. No way we’d try to walk it – not worth even considering for the price of the transportation here. Plus it is just way more fun riding around and watching all the craziness from the side of a tricycle!
We get stuck in a traffic jam near the port with construction, but even still we make it back with plenty of time to spare. And plenty of Phillipine Pesos too. Bummer. But, heck, we’ll just tip Maria, our wonderful barista bar server, with what we have left over. We’d have given her US anyway, and this way she can have her own money without having to exchange it.
Tender ride goes off without a hitch, and we’re back onboard in no time. Great day – we are so happy we decided to go outside. We would have been sorely disappointed if we had missed this.
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