Philippines 🇵🇭 - Day 23, 24, 25, 26 & 27 - Siquijor 1/3

The next 3 posts will be about Siquijor. I stayed there 13 nights in total, but split it to avoid having one massive 13 days post, and this way because I stayed in 3 different places.

The first hostel I stayed at was Mad Monkey. For those who don't know, Mad Monkey is a party hostel chain in South-East Asia and Australia. They really put an emphasis on the party aspect of hostelling, and try their best to get you to have fun during your stay.

I'd never stayed in a party hostel before, because it's not particularly my style. However, I decided to give it a try here because the hostel had only opened 1 month prior, so the atmosphere wasn't too crazy yet. The staff were trying very hard to get people to the bar though.

The first evening I went to the hostel bar to get some food, but ended up staying the whole evening, encouraged to a karaoke by the party staff.

The next day I went to the beach and watched the sunset. I must say, the sunsets in the Philippines are some of the nicest I've seen.

The next day, one of the hostel bar staff and I had planned to do some activities around the island on his day off. We were joined by 2 other people who were living close to the hostel.

We started at a 400 year-old enchanted Balete tree, with a little fish pond in front. It's one of those fish ponds where the fish eat the dead skin off your feet.

It's a very strange sensation, it tingles a lot at the start but then as you get used to it, it becomes more of a massage.

We also had coconut to drink and eat. They're not like the ones we can usually find in Europe, it's fresh from the island. The taste is much softer and sweeter.

Next we went to a church and convent dating from the Spanish colonisation. You can very much see the European style, not like the filipino style.

The church feels very different however. First of all, it's much more colourful than most European churches, and there was music playing inside, ahead of the Sinology festival, a Filipino celebration of faith.

Next up were some waterfalls—there are a lot of waterfalls in the Philippines, or at least in the Visayas. These waterfalls usually have a swing and a place to jump into the water.

These were the Cambugahay Falls, very popular in Siquijor, the whole thing definitely felt like a tourist attraction. Some other falls I went to later on had a much nicer vibe, mostly with the people.

It was still a lot of fun.

On our way back we stopped at a little restaurant, we were all starving after the falls.

We each had a combo meal and shared a platter of Lechon Kawali.

We then made our way back to the hostel, and I was strongly encouraged to try Balut.

Balut is a traditional Filipino food consisting of a partially developed duck embryo that is boiled and eaten from the shell. It's as gross as it sounds, I was not able to go through with it and eat the whole thing...!

The next day, I went to find a place to do my laundry.

In the Philippines, laundromats aren't very common. Instead, you just drop off whatever you want washed, and pick it up clean and folded the next day—and it's not any more expensive than European laundromats, cheaper even!

On the last morning, I checked out in time, but stayed in the hostel bar until I could check into the next place.