Ultimate Philippines Data Sheet: Manila, Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, GenSan, Butuan
03-25-2013, 12:56 AM
Coron: The last stop in Palawan
After a couple of days in El Nido, we decided to hit up Coron next, so we booked the tickets for the boat, which left at 8AM. Word of advice, book your tickets early, probably best to do it as soon as you arrive in El Nido, because the bigger, better ones fill up fast and you may be stuck with one of the smaller, shittier ones as happened to us. Also, the boat ride is a brutal 7-8 hours and you will get wet, although lunch is served, it is small, so pack some snacks and water.
After the gruelling 8 hour boat ride from El Nido, we arrived in Coron and checked into the Sea Coral hotel, its centrally located downtown and at 1000P/night, slightly overpriced for such a small hotel room, but they had AC, WIFI and hot water so I was okay with that. On the second day there, the grandfather died and they had his wake downstairs in the hotel lobby, the hotel staff asked me if I was okay with staying there or if I wanted to change hotels, well I didn't feel like changing hotels, so I just negotiated 100P off my rate for having to pass by an open cask on my way to my room!
So, the town of Coron is basically a small little shit hole similar to El Nido, I made the mistake of staying right in the town in both places and regret doing so as I didn't get good sleep in either place because I woke up to loud motorbikes, roosters and in Coron, to the sound of banging hammers on the construction site next door. I would recommend staying a couple of kms away from the downtown areas of each place, that's usually where the nicer hotels are anyway and they're easily reached by tricycle for 10P.
We were only there for two full days, the first day we decided to go diving. Coron is world famous for its wreck diving and for 2700P, we dove three awesome Japanese war ships which were sunk by the USA back in 1944, it was spectacular, the best diving I've done so far and the highlight of our stay in Coron.
Innuendo went island hopping and he really enjoyed it, his pics were awesome and he did some nice snorkeling too, I had done island hopping in El Nido so decided to pass. I did however rent a scooter and went on a little adventure, I drove it about 40 kms past the airport down dirt roads through small villages where I suspect that they don't see too many tourists. Honestly, I didn't see anything too spectacular, a few nice view points over looking the water, but nothing even worth taking photos of.
Nightlife: Similar to El Nido, it sucks. They have a couple of KTV bars full of hookers but other than that no real nice night clubs from what I saw. There is one decent place that we went to with good food, karaoke and apparently its the place to be on the weekends, I forget the name but it has the word "grill" in it and is about 2 kms past downtown on the way to the airport, its on the left. This is the place we went to the only night we partied, which is when the worst cock block of my life happened, I wrote about that in the game section: http://www.rooshvforum.network/thread-22074.html
Actually I forgot to mention that we took those two latina girls into a KTV club because they wanted to sing karaoke and they tried to charge the girls 200P each for entry, guys free, of course but we decided to pass.
So after two days in Coron, we hopped on a Skyjet flight directly to Manila. We had a decent time there mainly because of the awesome diving but I didn't like Coron as much as El Nido because the main drag downtown isn't on a beach as it is in El Nido, although some nice beaches are accessible, either by boat or half an hour away by scooter.
Overall, the small towns of El Nido and Coron are very nice places to spend a couple of days each, especially if you're into diving, island hopping, eating seafood and spending time on secluded beautiful beaches. They aren't however very good places to game women, the locals aren't keen on hooking up with random foreigners and the ones out in the clubs are mostly hookers. There wasn't an abundance of back packer foreign chicks getting drunk and partying, I saw more couples there than anything. I would still recommend both places to go but it would be in your best interest to take a girl from somewhere else with you, I tried to in PPC but it didn't work out.
Innuendo and I just spent three days at the famous rice terraces in Banaue, ten hours north of Manila by bus, info on that coming up later.
After a couple of days in El Nido, we decided to hit up Coron next, so we booked the tickets for the boat, which left at 8AM. Word of advice, book your tickets early, probably best to do it as soon as you arrive in El Nido, because the bigger, better ones fill up fast and you may be stuck with one of the smaller, shittier ones as happened to us. Also, the boat ride is a brutal 7-8 hours and you will get wet, although lunch is served, it is small, so pack some snacks and water.
After the gruelling 8 hour boat ride from El Nido, we arrived in Coron and checked into the Sea Coral hotel, its centrally located downtown and at 1000P/night, slightly overpriced for such a small hotel room, but they had AC, WIFI and hot water so I was okay with that. On the second day there, the grandfather died and they had his wake downstairs in the hotel lobby, the hotel staff asked me if I was okay with staying there or if I wanted to change hotels, well I didn't feel like changing hotels, so I just negotiated 100P off my rate for having to pass by an open cask on my way to my room!
So, the town of Coron is basically a small little shit hole similar to El Nido, I made the mistake of staying right in the town in both places and regret doing so as I didn't get good sleep in either place because I woke up to loud motorbikes, roosters and in Coron, to the sound of banging hammers on the construction site next door. I would recommend staying a couple of kms away from the downtown areas of each place, that's usually where the nicer hotels are anyway and they're easily reached by tricycle for 10P.
We were only there for two full days, the first day we decided to go diving. Coron is world famous for its wreck diving and for 2700P, we dove three awesome Japanese war ships which were sunk by the USA back in 1944, it was spectacular, the best diving I've done so far and the highlight of our stay in Coron.
Innuendo went island hopping and he really enjoyed it, his pics were awesome and he did some nice snorkeling too, I had done island hopping in El Nido so decided to pass. I did however rent a scooter and went on a little adventure, I drove it about 40 kms past the airport down dirt roads through small villages where I suspect that they don't see too many tourists. Honestly, I didn't see anything too spectacular, a few nice view points over looking the water, but nothing even worth taking photos of.
Nightlife: Similar to El Nido, it sucks. They have a couple of KTV bars full of hookers but other than that no real nice night clubs from what I saw. There is one decent place that we went to with good food, karaoke and apparently its the place to be on the weekends, I forget the name but it has the word "grill" in it and is about 2 kms past downtown on the way to the airport, its on the left. This is the place we went to the only night we partied, which is when the worst cock block of my life happened, I wrote about that in the game section: http://www.rooshvforum.network/thread-22074.html
Actually I forgot to mention that we took those two latina girls into a KTV club because they wanted to sing karaoke and they tried to charge the girls 200P each for entry, guys free, of course but we decided to pass.
So after two days in Coron, we hopped on a Skyjet flight directly to Manila. We had a decent time there mainly because of the awesome diving but I didn't like Coron as much as El Nido because the main drag downtown isn't on a beach as it is in El Nido, although some nice beaches are accessible, either by boat or half an hour away by scooter.
Overall, the small towns of El Nido and Coron are very nice places to spend a couple of days each, especially if you're into diving, island hopping, eating seafood and spending time on secluded beautiful beaches. They aren't however very good places to game women, the locals aren't keen on hooking up with random foreigners and the ones out in the clubs are mostly hookers. There wasn't an abundance of back packer foreign chicks getting drunk and partying, I saw more couples there than anything. I would still recommend both places to go but it would be in your best interest to take a girl from somewhere else with you, I tried to in PPC but it didn't work out.
Innuendo and I just spent three days at the famous rice terraces in Banaue, ten hours north of Manila by bus, info on that coming up later.