West El Nido, Palawan

It was both our birthdays. We opted not to give each other material gifts and instead treat ourselves with an Experience.

El Nido, a municipality in Northern Palawan, had always been a dream for me. I’ve seen it in travel articles and magazines. I’ve heard of it from friends. All of them have described El Nido in different variations of the word “paradise.” However, the travel time and my false perception of it being an expensive place to stay have prevented me from going there. With enough research and tips from friends, I decided that it was finally time for me to go there, using my turning 25 as the perfect excuse.

Oddly, our El Nido Experience started in Manila, the night before we left. We were told that there were very few ATM machines in El Nido and only a number of restaurants accepted credit/debit cards (very true!) so it’s better to bring enough cash to last you the whole trip. The night before our flight was a night of misadventures driving around certain parts of Metro Manila looking for the right ATM machine. My dilapidated ATM card only worked on machines of its own bank, and it turned out that the same bank had shut down all its ATM machines that night. Lesson learned: get off your lazy butt and have your worn-down ATM card replaced!

That night, I honestly thought that incident wasn’t a good sign, like an omen for unfortunate things that could and would happen in our upcoming trip. But what I had learned before from my countless “unfortunate” experiences – something that I keep on forgetting and relearning – is that there is no such thing as absolute signs. Only bumps on the road.

El Nido was indeed a paradise. Any narratives I would write wouldn’t be able to capture how I felt about this place. Instead, I’ll do it through photos and a poem.

It rained hard that morning
But we sang a little song, danced a little sun dance
The rain rain went away
So everyone came out to play

In El Nido

Where waters are clear
Enough to see what’s underneath
With soft and fine sands
Happy feet buried inches deep

Where there are more trees than buildings
Stars brighter than light posts
Where limestones are queens
And heroes are the men in boats

In El Nido

Where we travellers dream of a never-ending vacation
while some of its people struggle, survive but eventually thrive
In a place they call home is the place we call paradise

Thank you, El Nido!