Hazel has been here…

Boracay is a small island in central Philippines in the beautiful province of Malay, Aklan (Western Visayas region). It has been cited as one of the “best beaches” in the world and ranked 9 out of 25 top beaches in the Asia.

In the past years, Boracay is at the last of my list of tourist destinations. I never find it enticing because it was crowded, the beach area that is for swimming is being occupied by the hotels in which they placed beach chairs, there’s a lot of dead seaweeds, and anything and everything that you can think of! Although, I admired the white sand beach and its crystal clear sea water but nah.. still, you are the last.

Until last year of April 2018, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a closure for the restoration of the said tourist spot. It has been found that the level of coliform reached millions when the only acceptable level is about 100 mpn/100 ml for swimming, skin diving, and other recreational activities. As of April 2019, the coliform level has gone down significantly to 8.1 mpn/100ml. Sounds clean to me! 🙂

Working endlessly will eat you up. So, I decided that on my next vacation I’ll be visiting Boracay to see its beauty. I flew out of UAE last August 8, 2019, and reached the Philippines the next day! Yey!

Our starting point was in Naval, Biliran (where I spent most of my 2-week vacation). We started our journey by traveling to Cebu via Roble ship. And from Cebu, we took an airplane going to Caticlan Airport. Well, from there, we took 2 tricycles and 1 motorboat. I think more or less one hour, we arrived at our accommodation which is the Tan’s Guesthouse.

We just rest for a bit and decided to take a stroll on its long white shoreline in the afternoon to experience the #beautiful sunset. Yes, indeed, it was way, way, waaaaaay beautiful!

The beach area was quite crowded in the afternoon maybe because people want to witness the sun setting which should never be missed, though. Nonetheless, it was a good walk. We had our early dinner because for sure, there’ll be lots of people from 7pm onwards. We ate at the Filipino restaurant (forgot the name) and had a small exploration at D’ Mall. The night is beautiful here– Colorful lights glittering in each and every store you pass by.

We never had a chance to a drink at the hotel’s bar which I presumed to be fun, but for some reason, we prefer ice cream over a bottle of beer and “night life”. Speaking of ice cream, there’s this place where people getting crazy about because of its delicious ice cream topped with mango or should I say, sweet mango with ice cream? If you ever heard about Halomango, you got to taste their ice cream. The mango is so sweet plus the ice cream mango is perfect enough to blend with the fruit. Although it is kinda pricey but hey, your taste buds will surely rejoice!

The next day, we went to the beach at 6AM. There were only less people– some were taking a walk, some were swimming and some were taking pictures. The beach was so relaxing plus the big waves that will hit you as it tries to bring you back to the shore. It is the perfect time to enjoy the view and the beach. By 8am, were back to our hotel to fill in our stomach for our breakfast.

When the sun rise up in the sky, it brilliantly shines down the ocean giving a perfect turquoise blue water. How pleasant it is to the eyes and the wonderful feelings it brings to your spine.

Our lunch seemed to be festive! We decided to go to their talipapa and buy seafoods and had it cooked there. You can make it less expensive if you will buy it there and cook it in your hotel (if you have kitchen) the way you wanted it. We ordered shrimp, fish, shellfish (forgot the name) and scallops for our lunch. We walked away with satisfied belly hahha

Later in the afternoon, we visited the X Station. It is a new mall established in the island and located near Station 3. If you are a kind of person who loves instagrammable places, it is the place to be! It houses an indoor pool wherein you can swim for free if you buy or order food from them and of course, a bar, that caters beers, whiskeys and wines. We ordered a pizza and fruit shakes that were soooo delicious (they were being featured also in Biyahe ni Drew). Luckily, there were few people when we went there which is good.

For our last supper here in Bora, we went to a Japanese restuarant called Hama Japanese Cuisine. The foods were flavourful and as much I wouldn’t like to be bias, I like their California Maki. It was so exquisite and was head-over-heels-need-to-buy-and-eat-more! Although, I’ve eaten lots of delicious california maki in other restaurants, but theirs is different.

It was crowdy during dinner, however, we never waited that long enough for our orders to arrived. I recommend this restaurant as a “must try/ must visit” because it is simply the best especially to all the Japanese cuisine lovers out there.

Sadly, we weren’t able to do some water activities which is the main reason why I went here due to big waves during our stay. I guess, I still have a reason to go back here. Well, Boracay is indeed beautiful and truly captivating. I would definitely go back and enjoy the laid back mood that this island can offer.

See you next time, Boracay! Ciao!