That Short Stay in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan

Hello everyone!

I honestly got pressured by my new onboarded users. Since they're content creators, they're used to churning content daily. On the other hand, I tend to procrastinate until it takes two weeks of no posting. It's good that they come along because I now have a different motivation to post. Even with them around, I still have difficulty being consistent with my posting. That's what I am now working on with myself, which is funny because I have been working on this since I started blogging. Let's see if I'll be successful this time.

After my Coron series, it's time to move on to the next destination. Although I promised in my teaser video for this Puerto Princesa and El Nido escapade that I'll share next the Puerto Princesa Underground River, I decided to have this post instead because I might not be able to share these photos if I'll have the underground river first. I'll also try to follow the chronological order of posts in my series from now on.

Since it's difficult to get around Palawan without a tour agency, we decided to book at the same agency we had in Coron: Calamian Islands Travel and Tours. It's honestly one of the best tour agencies in Palawan. One reason is that they accommodated our request to have a seafront hotel in El Nido. While they're based in Coron, they have expanded to El Nido in recent years. For context, this was when both islands were just recently opened after the pandemic and most of the beachfront hotels were fully booked. People were having their revenge travels and they wanted to see the beach so much, I guess.

Armed with all the documents needed for tourist travel and lessons from our previous travels during the pandemic, we boarded at around 2:00 PM at Mactan-Cebu International Airport Terminal 2. It was during the time when they allowed domestic travel in the international terminal while the renovation of Terminal 1 was ongoing.

Boarding at the airport is an experience in itself. I wish I could say the same for NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport). Ironically, the best and the worst airports are found in the Philippines. MCIA has been awarded as the best airport in the Asia-Pacific region in the "Under 5 million Passengers Category" just this year while NAIA has been plagued by controversies ranging from theft by airport personnel to offloaded passengers due to miscommunication between airlines and ground staff.

I can attest to the difference in experience between these two airports. Manila Airport is just too chaotic for me. We had difficulty in finding the boarding gates after being cleared at the baggage counters. While in Cebu Airport, it's just seamless movement. I guess I'm going tangent here, but I just want to share my own experience between the two airports. Anyway, we didn't have any problems with our documents even with all the restrictions and health requirements.

It was my first time in Puerto Princesa City and even on the main island of Palawan because Coron is a separate island with its airport in Busuanga. I honestly didn't know what to expect except that underground river which I have been dreaming of visiting since I learned about it in elementary. We arrived at around 5:30 PM because I think our flight was delayed by one hour. Other than that, it was a smooth flight.

Puerto Princesa International Airport is the main gateway to the province of Palawan. I just learned that the airport has so much history, especially during World War II. I won't be including the airport's history here, so you'll have to research it on your own.

We were picked up by the van that the tour agency provided for us and since the airport is just near to the city, we immediately arrived at the hotel. We didn't choose the hotel. The tour agency booked it for us because we would just be staying there for a night. The itinerary would be to stay in Puerto Princesa for the night, go to the underground river in the morning the next day, and then proceed to El Nido in the afternoon. It was a decent place to stay though.

We went to the Baywalk near the port to have dinner. It was a vibrant scene, but we didn't explore much. We had dinner at one of the restaurants which I'll be sharing in a separate post. For some reason, all of us were hungry and tired so we didn't bother to roam around. We decided to go back immediately to the hotel after dinner.

Since most of the people on this tour were coming from Manila and their flight was later at night, we decided to take a dip at the hotel's swimming pool while waiting for them. You can consider me as a joiner of this group since I only knew two of them and the rest I met for the first time.

I didn't want to swim at the pool at first because I thought the water was cold and I would rather curate posts in Hive while watching them having fun. I was enticed that I finally gave in. I thought it was also a good way to socialize since I met most of them for the first time. It was a short dip though because the cut-off of the swimming time was 9:00 PM. I enjoyed it though, more than I thought I would.

I guess that's all for this post. I'll share the underground river or the dinner at the Baywalk next, whichever comes first.

Kim Ybañez

_{Welcome to Kim's small corner in Hive. He is a chemical engineer by profession, but a blogger by passion. He is a wanderlust and an adventure seeker. Join his quests as he visits remote destinations, climbs mountains, tries new and exotic dishes, and explores his country (The Philippines). He's also a trying-hard photographer so stay tuned as he shares his photos and his thought process while creating them.}

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