Dominy Betts

It was an early morning wake up to head to my first bit of travelling outside Hong Kong since my arrival.

A group of us would be heading to El Nido & Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan in the Philippines for a few days.

So we all headed to the bus stop by campus and got on the unfortunately air-conditioned E22 bus to the airport.

Once we all were finished getting cash out and exchanging it for Pesos we headed for security and make our way to duty free.

Once here we all decided to get some breakfast and my choice was Popeyes’ Fried Chicken which wasn’t that bad considering it was for breakfast, then some of the others got a McDonalds breakfast, then once finished I found a Japanese restaurant selling canned beer so I thought why not it’s a holiday after all?

So after everyone was finished eating we headed to our gate, where some of the group stopped at Starbucks en-route to.

We then got on our plane to Manila which was almost deserted bar a few other families, felt almost private jet like.

So once we arrived in Manila people got some money out, and that’s where my issues this holiday would occur as neither bank card I had brought with me would work throughout the entirety of the Philippines.

But everyone was hungry again so me and a lot of the fellow English contingent decided to have our first ever Wendy’s which was very unimpressive on all accounts. To me it just felt and tasted like a overhyped Wimpy.

But after this we went and got our boarding passes and headed for security again, this time for our domestic flight to Puerto Princesa.

While we waited to board the flight we came across a stall selling fresh smoothies and juices and in this new found 30 degrees temperature we were in we thought that it’d be a good idea.

We eventually did board our plane and unfortunately this was a lot busier than our previous flight however a I had a nice conversation with a local who was sat next to me on the way there though.

A couple hours later we had arrived in Puerto Princesa, the smallest airport I think I’d ever entered and exited.

But the girls decided to get a tuk-tuk to our hostel, however the guys decided we’d walk and take in the culture, and within 5 minutes we’d found a shop stocking beer so me and Jacob thought we’d get a can to deal with the heat.

After walking for around 15 minutes we’d arrived at our hostel so we dropped our bags off, had a shower, got changed and headed out for some dinner.