A Postcard From Palawan Island, Philippines

Purple yam + cheese ice cream? Green mussels? Chicken intestines on a skewer? Anyone?

We loved how walkable, drinkable and hot as Frank’s Hot Sauce El Nido was. "El Nido" means "The Nest" and is a nod to the edible nests constructed out of more than simple sweat equity. The swiftlets found in this region’s frogmouth caves and limestone cliffs build nests using their own saliva. They zipped by at dawn and dusk, like skinny bats, keeping my binoculars on steady swivel—much like the dashing Palawan sunbird below.

In El Nido, not-so-broke backpackers jam into the shade of arty cafes serving the millennial staple of avo toast and foamy coconut milk lattes. Slim and silver sixties couples as brown as coffee beans nurse similar fancy coffees alongside the gap year gang. Aussies and well-tatted French couples fill out the throngs that move fluidly within the frenetic pace, dodging potholes, beach dogs packs, cats with cropped tails, trikes and random broken rebar poking out of…everything. After one near miss we wondered, did we have up-to-date tetanus shots?

The heat was like a sedative—there was not a shiver to be had. No bugs either! Superstitious Kim always hushed me when I began to remark on this. I had to spell out b-u-g-s to prevent them from listening I guess.

Remarkably, there was no Celine Dion. As we know, her heart goes on. And on. And on, everywhere around the world from Cairo to China’s Yangtze River. Instead, she had been replaced by Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers”, The Cranberries “Zombie”, the BeeGees, Spandau Ballet and Shania.

Just before sunset, once everyone has had their cat and dog nap, it’s a slo-mo happy hour parade and 2-for-1 watermelon and basil cocktails and slushy mango margs. In El Nido, every whim and craving is accommodated. On the main drag we made note of Ukrainian, Turkish, Greek, Japanese and vegan restaurants. There was a snout-to-tail resto (Lechon & Co.) offering off-the-spit pork and crackling with pickled papaya salad and at the other extreme, a beak-to-butt vendor (not advertised so blatantly, but that was precisely what it was). In the market, neon green (tahong) mussels and giant prawns whiffed of the briny sea they were just pulled from.

We had swooned over the sweet charcoal smoke the night before and fancied something light—just a few skewers of meat and a bottle of wine. When we examined the grill closer Kim asked, “What is that, squid?” The skewers were an artful thread of some kind of meat.

The man wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his arm and replaced his trucker hat with a laugh, “isaw.”

“What?”

He smiled wide and pointed to his healthy gut and made a zigzag motion. “Isaw. Intestines.”

Kim took a hard pass and opted for other chicken parts (namely, the breast and a Mother Clucker Sriracha burg at Fowl Mouth just a few doors away.

We had already covered wide cultural grounds in El Nido with spicy shawarma cones at Suavi’s, roasted pumpkin, gorgonzola and basil wood-fired pizza; banh mi, Greek salad with capers from Cafe Athena, briny and plump green mussels at the night market, and knife-shaved noodles with green curry and fried garlic, snappy green beans and woodsy mushrooms from Viet-Thai fusion menu at The Food Truck. A glazed adobo jackfruit sando with a fried egg and pina pico de gallo and a schmear of cashew mayo from the very hippie-dippy Leway Leway made my TOPS list.

Both of us agreed that the ube (purple yam) and cheese ice cream rivalled the curious green peppercorn ice cream we had in Madagascar—and we’re not even ice cream people by nature! As a potato chip evangelist, I wasn’t surprised that the shelves were dominated by pork rinds. Still, my coveted best chip award went to the Calbee Honey and Butter chips (though they are a Japanese brand). Thin as a hostel wall they were like salty, buttery shortbread wisps. Ideal with even the most lukewarm San Miguel lager.

Our happy hour coverage was equally extensive: Watermelon and basil mojitos were on our repeat list. Kim had a brain freeze over the unnaturally coloured frozen lime margs at Cloud Sky Bar. There were pleasing gin and gingers at Kalma (and a perfect second floor balcony view of the madness on the street below. Caipirinhas at the oh-so-trendy Sava and slushy mango daiquiris at La Salange rounded out a very happy week.

Most nights we grabbed takeaway to enjoy our transfixing balcony view of Bacuit Bay, clusters of timeworn bangkas (traditional double-outrigger boats) and the Chia pet-like limestone mountains that pushed out of the South China Sea.

Our stay at El Nido Beach Hotel was far from glamorous beyond the view. Four days after we had celebrated booking every leg of our 34 days in Philippines and Vietnam we received an email from Airbnb stating that there had been an unfortunate overlap and the room we had booked was already booked. It was back to the drawing board and even though it was early December, the pickings for the end of February were already slim.

Frazzled, we opted for the beachfront property because it had unobstructed views and was right.on.the.beach. However, it was what we deemed, “drabby chic.” It served its purpose but came with a rat sighting, an ant colony in the shower and backbreaking wooden chairs that weighed more than all the furniture in our house.

Five Filipino peculiarities noted during our time in El Nido:

Well, this is peculiar isn’t it? A random abandoned amusement park ride?

1. It’s completely acceptable to go to breakfast wearing your pajamas. Ideally, they should be a matching silk two-piece number. There’s no shame in this and this was commonplace—among adults! When we had looked at reviews on Tripadvisor and Facebook trip posts, I had laughed at hotel guests queued up at the buffet breakfast in pajamas. It’s a true story, not staged! Kim did not permit me to take photos.

2. Filipinos have a great affection for chicken intestines (on a skewer or dried and flavoured). One of my dear co-workers, Chachie, sent Kim and I a welcome swag bag via Grab (like Uber) to our hotel in Manila (she had pink eye and a flu brewing, so felt it best not to meet us for a beer at the beginning of our trip). She thoughtfully introduced us to all the best bits of the Philippines with her curated snacks which included (drum roll) salt and vinegar chicken intestines.

   

   Kim kindly let me enjoy the fried guts all on my own and opted for the chocolate-dipped mango and Calamansi (a Philippines lime hybrid) white chocolate bars instead.

3. In the local grocery stores, we found an unbelievable number of corned, canned items. We’ve all heard of (and had) corned beef in a can but corned tuna? Who knew that could be corned? And what the heck is Bingo Beef Loaf?

   

4. The Hypermart grocery store chain is appropriately named. It’s like entering a nightclub at 9 a.m. The music is CRANKED and the security guards and employees sing and dance their shifts away! Maybe you’ve seen the Filipino inmates from Cebu that gained fame with their incredible J-Lo-esque dance routines (most notably, to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”). There’s a 20-minute documentary about the genesis of the dancing prisoners here. But you can watch it after you finish reading this! Anyway, at Hypermart we couldn’t even hear each other in the aisles, the music was that loud! I couldn’t properly concentrate on the corned items!

5. Trikes. We’ve had rides on a lot of modes of transport around the world—camels, mules, rickshaws, tuk tuks…but the Filipino trike is a genius conversion. It’s basically a covered motorcycle and sidecar with a small rack on the back that just fit our two small roller bags). We did see four people (plus the driver) sharing a trike but these vehicles are designed with Filipinos in mind—not North American girth. I felt like I was back on the Scrambler at the fall fair, wedged into my seat with every turn, legs falling mostly asleep by the time the ride was over.

This is just a small taste of El Nido, of course. We loved the fever of it all, especially the nightly night markets with all the shiny, silvery fish on display (even unicorn fish!), swirling some and polite rallying cry, “Ma’am, sir? Dinner?”

Even the El Nido post office was a very intimate and fun visit, once we found the doorway with a 8’x11’ piece of paper indicating COME IN POST OFFICE in marker. My parents actually received their postcard a few days ago so it worked! The office was smaller than a Queen bed and looked like the kind of place that mail went to die.

I’ll push on to Palawan’s dreamy Nacpan Beach next week but thanks for tagging along with us in El Nido! From the wonders of purple yam + cheese ice cream to trike rides and the Bee Gees, it was an awesome first big bite out of the isle. Have you been? What did you love?

Still here? Thanks for sticking around to the very end! You were afraid you’d miss something good, right? Now you can watch the dancing inmates video. Here’s another dance-a-thon clip!