The island of Bohol is notable for the famed Chocolate Hills landscape, and for the being the natural habitat of the Tarsiers–very tiny monkey-like mammals.  We stayed on a small neighboring island called Panglao on Alona beach.  We didn’t know ahead of time, but this is basically the Phuket of the Philippines.  Stunning white sand beach, but there is not enough of a gap between all of the overpriced beachside hotels, restaurants, and souvenir stalls to actually see them.

We walked around on the beach looking for a driver willing to take us around the island to see the sights,  everyone wanted far too many pesos, so we called Jun, the tricycle driver that picked us up from the pier, and he came and picked us up in a van (which also incidentally contained his wife and son) for super cheap.  He then drove us around all day to see the tarsier conservatory and the Chocolate Hills at sunset.  He even stopped at a small local zoo tthat contained a few pythons, ostriches, civets, and other assorted creatures rarely seen on the islands.

When we got back to the hotel, a group of Koreans were celebrating graduation outside of our room by eating pineapples and jumping off the balcony into the pool.  Pretty funny to watch but we were exhausted so we headed down to the beach to eat some fresh seafood on the sand.

The next day morning we paid $2 US to get entrance to a private beach resort where we could enjoy the white sand beaches without the hundreds of tourists and dozens of people trying to sell us items we didn’t want and massage us.  At the resort, Amanda finally got a buko (coconut) halo-halo on the beach.  This is a whole coconut filled with halo-halo goodness: corn flakes, ice cream, candied jellies, beans, and more coconut.  We swam and enjoyed the beautiful beach for a couple more hours before the rain clouds rolled in.  We were sad to leave, but it was time to take a ferry to out last stop in the Philippines, Cebu.