The third week we left the North of the Philippines. Our destination: Bohol and its nearby island Panglao. These two bridge-connected islands in the middle of the Philippines have a whole package for every traveller’s needs. Nice beaches, palmy roads, hidden waterfalls, strange mammals, famous chocolate hills and spectacular rivers. Where you can spend the whole day just supping and enjoying the wild nature. Of course, you should be aware of falling coconuts 
Compared to other places in the Philippines, these two islands are still away from many tourists’ radars. However, it’ll change, since the government is building an international airport in plans to attract huge tourist groups from China and Korea.
We spent 5 days there chilling nearby the island’s most scenic beach called Damaluan. The beach looks like from a touristic postcard. The sad thing is that this beauty is surrounded by expensive resorts. These resorts do not only block the way to the water. They also don’t let anyone to even swim in front of their property. Seeing how these western giants are slowly undertaking beautiful beaches of the Philippines makes us angry. Sadly, paid beaches are now becoming a more and more common thing. So while rich white people are freely sunbathing, Filipinos have just one tiny paid entrance to the beach and limited space to swim. Needless to say, since we are on a budget, we were also spending our time with the locals.
The highlight of this stay was the chocolate hills. Just imagine almost 2000 symmetrically shaped brown mounds, scattered up to the horizon and looking like rows of chocolate bars. This is why these hills got such a tasty name. To reach this place, we left our apartment at 3 in the morning since we wanted to get there before the sunrise. This is the lesson we learned during our first trip to Asia. If you wanna see the real beauty, you have to arrive before the sunset. So there only were the two of us: enjoying the awakening nature and gazing to the mystic foggy view which you can only get to see at this time of day. Although the place was really spectacular, the journey was none the less so. Two hours’ night ride through narrow winding palmy roads or jungles. It’s something you have to experience to understand.
These islands somehow felt like our home away from home. We even caught ourselves using Google Maps less and less frequently and this is how we managed to see so many nice roads and lots of hidden places (even found a waterfall hidden from the tourist eye). Of course we were constantly lost somewhere.
And it’s all the time the same course of events that we experience: we get lost, we run out of petrol and the evening comes. But don’t worry – we’re now well used to such kind of adventures Passing through remote paths – here’s the unique experience. We were crossing villages where people shouted ‘hi’ from every single house that we passed… the more remote you go, the more welcome you feel. We seriously doubt there lives a nation somewhere more friendly than the Filipinos
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