Trip Ko Lang

Bohol Trip 2009

It all started with PAL offering seat sales; our group checking available dates, promo fares online and eyeing Bohol as our travel destination. We booked 30 Aug to 1 Sept for the reason that 31 Aug was a holiday and gave us an extra day for our trip. Days after, we paid for our airfare in PAL office, emailed and called resorts, texted tour guides and waited patiently for these days to come… Then the budget needs to be in place and so we came up with a summary of our ideal budget for the whole trip in Bohol.

Here’s a quick summary of our Bohol budget  for a group of 5 pax.

Airfare – 2,000php/pax (paid separately)

——————

Hotel/resort – 4,000php/2 nights
Day/land tour – 2,500php
Sea tour – 1,500php
NAIA terminal fee – 1,000php
Tagbilaran terminal fee – 100php
Entrance fees – 870php
Loboc buffet lunch – 1,800php (plus the driver)
Food (5 meals) – 5,000php (free breakfast at the resort)
Other expenses – 2,000php

Total – 18,770php
Per pax – 3,754php – 4,300php

But at the end of our trip, we still had 3k left and managed to take home 600php each.

Here’s our planned itinerary:

Day 1 – 30 Aug 2009

8am to 9am – Depart from Manila to Tagbilaran
9am onwards – Day Tour starts upon arrival – includes blood compact, Baclayon church and museum, biggest python,  Tarsier, Loboc river, hanging bridge, man made forest, butterflies, Chocolate hills, Hinagdanan cave and Bohol bee farm

Actual Itinerary:

9.30am to 11.30am – Visited blood compact, Baclayon church and museum, and Tarsier.

11.30am to 1.00pm – Lunch at Loboc river

1.00pm to 5.00pm – Chocolate hills, butterfly, man made forest, hanging bridge, biggest python and souvenir shop.

Due to time constraint, we missed to visit Hinagdanan cave and Bohol bee farm. For further details of our exciting day tour, please wait for my following travel blogs… If you are interested to avail of our day tour, you may contact Kuya Tatsky at 0910-8112091, he is very accommodating and we got our ‘sulit‘ day tour for only 2,500php with a friendly driver Kuya Roy and riding a comfortable Starex van.

6.00pm to 7.00pm – Travelled to our selected resort Tierra Azul

8.00pm onwards – ‘Paluto’ dinner by the beach, inuman and sleeping time

Day 2 – 31 Aug 2009

5.30am onwards – Start of sea tour – includes dolphin watching, Balicasag island and Virgin island

Afternoon – Free time

Actual Itinerary:

6.30am – Boat ride started; of course we had delays (typical pinoy ), too much time eating our breakfast and getting ourselves ready…

8.00am – In the middle of nowhere, haha, waiting and watching the dolphins… It was fun, they didn’t disappoint us and we saw quite a number of dolphins in action.

9.00am – Arrived in Balicasag Island, known for the snorkelling spot but we didn’t avail of it, but if you are interested they offer snorkelling gears and mini boat ride for extra charges (I think around 150php per pax for the gears and another 100-150php for the mini boat)

9.00am to 10.30am – We walked around the island and stumbled on a pleasant looking and I think the only resort on the island – Balicasag Island Dive Resort. We paid 200php to swim in their pool and beach. Had some of our photos taken in the beautiful island with clean water, and relaxing scenery.

11.00am to 12.30pm – Satisfying lunch on the island

There’s a ‘paluto’ on the island, where you can buy seafoods (fish, squid, shrimps, etc.) and have them cook any style you want – have it fried, with soup, grilled, etc. We bought one big fish, forgot the name, we had it grilled and sinigang; and bought squid and made it calamares. There was a cooking fee of 100php per style. I think our food amounted to almost 1,300php with rice, coke, water and 2 buko. It was delicious and this is the meal we most enjoyed.

12.30pm to 1.30pm – Visited Virgin island, which has the sand bar, and is definitely a very beautiful spot to simply relax, enjoy the island view and take wonderful shots.

1.30pm to 2.30pm – Travelled back to Panglao on a bit rough and scary boat ride due to big, big waves….

For our sea tour, our contact is Mang Viao, another very accommodating person, you can reach him at 0916-4645214 and we got the whole sea tour for only 1,500php.

3.00pm to 5.00pm – Rest time, played cards in our room.

5.00pm onwards – Walked by the beach to take some shots and find a place for our dinner.

Day 3 – 1 Sept 2009

Actual Itinerary:

5.00am – Wake up time; bad morning for all of us, water disruption in our room, I’ll explain on this further in my resort review.

6.00am – Travelled to Tagbilaran airport.

7.30am – Flight back to Manila.

Though the trip was really short, we all had a great time exploring Tagbilaran, Bohol and Panglao Island. Had fun bonding moments, took great snap shots, and will forever remember this adventurous experience in Bohol.

Ziplock

One reliable Ziplock is a must have in any group trip. It’s not for your left over food or travel snack but for all your travel expenses. I learned this idea from a friend and started to adapt it in all my group trips. It was very helpful and made our trip so much easier. All you have to do is bring a Ziplock and put all your money inside it. Like for example, we were 6 in our group, we had each pay 2,000php, and got a total of 12,000php to spend in our entire trip.  Assign someone to be the money keeper and payer. Everything went out smoothly; we were able to pay for our transportation, food, entrance fees and other travel expenses without any hassle in chipping in, counting for change or money getting mixed up. Then at the end of our trip, whatever was left in our ever-reliable Ziplock was divided among us. Guess what, we survived our trip without overspending, in a reasonable budget and even had us take home our extra money. So the next time you’re going to have your group trip, don’t forget to have a Ziplock ready for your travel money.

Travel Money

Beach, Sunset, Viaduct, Burgos Lighthouse, Windmills

Evening of 26 Feb 2009, we decided to take the last trip (9.30pm) of Florida bus going to Pagudpud (fare-550php). After the 12 hours bus ride, we finally reached our destination, Pagudpud, rode a trike (fare-50php) going to Polaris beach resort. Had our breakfast around 9.30am, got to try Ilocos’ style longanisa, yummy! We right away went swimming until lunch time. At 2pm, our trike/tour driver arrived and our north bound tour started (tour-600php-per trike). Actually, there was a long list of places to visit but because we started late afternoon, we just went to 4 places – Kabigan Falls (10php entrance fee + 100php tour guide), Blue Lagoon (20php entrance fee), Viaduct, and Agua de Grande. Most of our time was spent in Kabigan Falls, we had to trekked and crossed small rivers to get to the falls (approx. 20-30 mins.) Swimming is allowed, water is so cold but really clean and refreshing. In Blue Lagoon, Viaduct and Agua de Grande, we just had our photos taken – experiencing breath-taking views, calm, and being one with nature.

We didn’t had enough time that afternoon and so our south-bound trip happened the next day. Because we are on a budget, we decided not to take another tour trike and just commute – should have been a bus/jeepney ride and trike. But luckily, the owner of Polaris hotel volunteered to drive us to Bangui (barrio where the Windmills are located). When we got there, we can walk for 2-kms. if we wanted but we decided to ride a trike (90php per trike-2 way). Again, we had a lot of pictures taken, jumping and running with the wind. Last stop, Burgos Lighthouse, we decided to hire our trikes, agreed in a special price of 400php per trike. We were very thankful for our trike drivers, for agreeing to bring us to Burgos, it was a bit far for a trike ride and they were helpful in taking our pictures and watching over our belongings.