So the holiday began leaving little old sleepy Adelaide airport to Manila in the heart of the Philippians. It was a 7-8 hour flight there, but on the positive side it means we got like ridiculous amounts of free food and drink with Qantas.

Once we landed, We jumped out of the airport (8pm ish) and grabbed a yellow taxi from out font the airport, this actually ended up being the cheapest taxi we had the whole time in Manila, I expected it to be an insane cost but it wasn’t.  So i would suggest using them if you get a chance, however non of the taxi’s seems to know where we wanted to go. For dinner we didnt want to venture too far so we jumped outside and grabbed some trusty Mcdonalds… or the Filipino version of Mcdonalds, fried chicken and rice.

Next morning we got a taxi, which in this case looked like a guys dads normal car and he drove us to the Hard to find ITI Airport hanger, i ended up needing to instruct the guy where to go, and then get out in the chaos of Filipino roads (I will grab a video of this when we go back you wont believe it).

ITI were very professional even if they had cancelled our direct flight due to airport maintenance, the plane was nice and clean as well and just a little turboprop plane, only a 1hr flight to the islands of palawan. You land to a sing and dance and a cow, waving hello etc.

You get directed to a waiting area where they had some amazing local sticky rice and home made ice tea.

Then came the downside of the whole El Nido trip, the drive to Taytay (the airport that was closed). It was a 2 hour mad dash in a mini bus along a half concrete and half dust road, doing in excess if 140kph and dodging people, goats, cows etc. Parts of the road just have an arrow and your side of the highway stops and you veer into the oncoming lane. I have a pic below its crap but i was hanging on for dear life, that sign infront is tellign us to veer into the oncoming lane were doing about 80kph right there :P.

The roads were made of concrete, and were being set by workers manually. I couldn’t believe it, it would take years for the roads to be finished. It also appeared random on where the roads were being set. You would think it would be near a major town or a small village. It was in the remotest parts of El Nido Island. It was also hard to believe that people on motorbikes were driving side by side with cars, at times there was no visibility on the dirt roads in the car so imagine what it would be like for them!

Once we arrived in taytay, we passed a checkpoint and a truck full of army guys with AK-47s. Apparently its voting time for mayor and its common practice to have the other running candidates shot to help you win the election :S. But we had a Elnido security guy with us the whole time to we were safe. Once we got to Tay Tay port we hopped on a boat for a 1hr boat ride.

Finally were at Apulit Island Resort.

To be honest we didn’t do much that night we were fairly exhausted, I think we ate some food and just slept.

I did setup a timelapse that night, the flashlights you see are actually the security keeping a lookout for Pirates etc, so your pretty secure, there is a snipers nest up on the treeline as well just to protect you should anything shoudl happen, but apparently it hasnt been used in anger yet.