Philippine Travel Notes

Never miss this walking trek for if you do, you’ll miss more than half the fun on the island. It starts at the pavilion where they give you a map of the island. The route to take has markings on what to see or expect, though I can assure you there are other things you’ll encounter that are not in the map! Then you proceed to back of the building under some fairly young trees, or they probably don’t grow that big. There is signage that says “walking trek starts here” and you’ll notice there are poles the size of ‘arnis sticks’ painted yellow and red. What are they for? Well, we were told, just for about anything you wanted to do with it while walking the path around the island, except whack your companions or other human beings hahaha! You can walk this circular trek path in any direction, but in our case, we thought doing it clockwise would be better for us. And we think it was! Ah, Eric, one of the resort’s crews was on hand to gave us tips and instructions on how to best enjoy the le

Shifting white sandbar. Let’s do this first as this is one of the things that Sumilon prides itself to having. This area is the northwestern corner of the island just a few meters from the western dock. And yes its beautiful and quite a different place to be. The waves and the current keeps pushing the white sand in this area depending on the season, so that at times there is more white sandy beach to the northern side nearer the cottages and sometimes there are more to the western side towards the dock. No you won’t actually get to see or feel that anything is shifting (unless probably if you used a time-lapse camera for a day or two) but you’ll just be surprised on return that the sand is not anymore the same shape, whether low tide or high. This place is such a photo-op thing it makes the ‘real’ and ‘permanent’ white beach area of Sumilon wanting hehe. Swimming pools. I better make that plural! There is actually just one swimming pool near the pavilion. Its big enough and infinity p

Meals are included in what you pay for. They had better be as all that there is on Sumilon are as described in the previous blog entry. There are no humans other than the resort’s crews, therefore there are no sari-sari stores or anything like that if you were expecting it to be like Apo Island. On an overnight stay, you have the choice if you want the meals as “lunch, dinner and breakfast” or “dinner, breakfast and lunch”. We chose the former as we intended to be in Dumaguete lunchtime of Christmas Day. Hey Ms Barat Tilyo (you know who you are), don’t start getting clever again and dream of doing a “lunch, dinner and lunch” combination at Sumilon! No can do cuz we tried haggling for that! Thanks to your real wise ideas, really hehehe! Now, if you were dreaming of bringing the whole Carbon, Taboan and Pasil markets with you to save on food expenses, drop it! A cookout can probably be arranged somewhere at the beach but it won’t make the rates any less! Mind you, Sumilon also has a day-

Alright, we were on the island, yes Sumilon and don’t expect me to do a blow-by-blow account of what we did there, okay?! Let me instead describe to you the island/resort as experienced – which after all might actually become a blow-by-blow account of our stay hehe! Impressive that we were fetched by the golf cart from the western dock, as at that time and circumstances, it would have been a ‘death march’ to reception area. You will realize later in this story though, I have happily walked around the island, and that is probably 4 or 5 times that distance from wharf to reception area. And I did not a bit complain! Because there was no incident that irritated me and I was on a full stomach? Probably! Anyway… Reception That is the ‘front desk’ right? Oh yes, and it is just a table at a big big kiosk they call pavilion that is also the restaurant, games, bar and mini-shop areas. The place is open on all sides and breezy any time of day. Ah, the reception table has a view to everything in

Finally! We were on the boat and there was no stopping nor turning back, we were on our way to the island, yey! Ah you can call the previous story a drama or a saga hehe. But to me, it was part of the exciting ‘adventure’ going to this island resort. Oh yes, in case you have not known yet, Sumilon Bluewater Island Resort is the island. Conversely, the whole island is the resort. So its not something as if you can just whistle to a boatman and ask him to take you there, okay?! The resort, yes the island, is supposed to be especially exclusive to its paying patrons, be they staying for nights or just for a day tour. It had better be, since its expensive hehe! So going there is via ‘their own’ boat that is already covered by whatever rate you paid for. The boat, oh yes the boat! Drop whatever picture it was you concocted after reading my previous post. Why? Because we were on to our ‘Christmas Paradise’ hehe! This was no ordinary boat ride, I must insist. First in the ‘order of ceremonies

Waiting for it… Oh yes, the wind! It felt nice and breezy as we rested at the lobby but looking at the waters, the same winds were heaping rather big waves that hammered the concrete wharf and the otherwise calm beach that it sounded like I was in Siargao again. There was no storm nor anything like it in the offing as we checked that out before coming over. I saw one of the crews looking at the waves and far out to the island. Then he shook his head a bit. He did not say anything and just returned to their office/quarters beside the kitchen building. Doods was around so I asked if anything was wrong. He replied that all was fine except that the waves were too big than usual that the boat might have a hard time docking at the wharf. Feigning thrill, I exclaimed “exciting” to see how companion would react as the atmosphere went suddenly silent hehe. The minutes crept into almost an hour and as we became restless, we finally got sight of the boat sailing its way from the island towards us

Easy reservations! Searching the web, we realized Sumilon is owned by the same company that does Maribago Bluewaters in Mactan. Their contact numbers are available on the web and phone directories with choices of where you want to call – Makati, Mactan the resort itself on the island of Sumilon. But calling Mactan was easiest in our case. How did the call go? Well, they told us to try calling the resort itself by giving us a number that we already had. Hmm, a fine example where sales and marketing do not have a seamless fit with operations hehe. Ah well, that is very common to many outfits in the world, right? Anyway, after some 4 or 5 attempts, we got through the erratic connection to the island. Booked! For Christmas! Yey! On the way We opted for an early morning Ceres bus ride from Cebu’s south bus terminal. And as if keeping with the “luxury” of our destination, we took no less the air-conditioned bus on its way to Dumaguete haha! Yeah, as if I/we were not used to roaming the south