Beautiful islands and hospitable people in the Philippines

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Happy Friday! Hope you had a great week and have some nice plans for the weekend. We tell you a bit about everyday life on our boat trip in the Philippines, and a bit about the islands we won't be reporting on.

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Philippines - beautiful islands and friendly people

There are an incredible number of islands in the Philippines (over 7000!) and during our boat trip we pass many, many. On most of them people live and sometimes it is crowded between the houses. We aim for islands where there seem to be nice beaches, so we can dock and pitch our tents. We've recently told you about two beautiful islands in the small archipelago of Cuatro islas.... Apid and Digyo.

Mahaba Island

We will soon tell you about a third of the islands, Himokilan, where we had several interesting experiences. The fourth island, Mahaba, will not be reported on as we don't have much to tell you about it.

On some islands there is very little tourism and on Mahaba we were sure we would be completely alone. But then suddenly a Filipino tourist boat with a group of companies from Mindanao in the southern Philippines arrived.

They stayed twenty minutes on the island, had a swim, wanted to take a photo with Peter and asked a few questions about Sweden (for example, they wanted to know if we are Muslims in Sweden, as they themselves belonged to the Muslim minority in the Philippines).

Jao Island

There will also be no report on the island of Jao. Here we went in because on the map it looked like there could be a beach resort. Partly we were a little hungry to take in a hotel for a night, and partly a resort could mean a nice beach. Unfortunately, the resort had been destroyed by a typhoon, so it had to be tents as usual.

Since the high tide would go very high up the beach, we had to camp on a family's property. The lasting memory here was the Filipino woman who welcomed us and let us camp on the plot. Filipinos are often incredibly hospitable, and this woman repeatedly checked that everything was okay. Even when we turned off the headlamp to sleep, she walked by and asked "Everything ok Ma'am?".

Catch of fish

How has the fishing been going? Well, just like that actually. Fishing in the Philippines is not as good as it used to be, probably because of all the trawlers taking the fish. Filipino crew member Aldrin uses his smaller boat, Alleah, to fish occasionally and has caught some fish from time to time.

One dinner we were treated to really good Red grouper, which is a type of sea bass.

Running a business on the move

We work a lot ourselves. Normally, when we do shorter trips, we can minimise the work when we are travelling. Now, when we are away for so long, there is much more than blog posts to be done. There are emails, collaborations, paid assignments, fair preparations, invoices and all sorts of other things that need to be handled.

We also write articles for an external company, and need to keep track of deadlines all the time. To be better connected, we've now got SIM cards from another operator - so we can switch phones depending on which operator has the best coverage where we are.

Best this week

Best thing about this week? It is fantastic to see so many beautiful Philippine islands and to meet the wonderful and hospitable locals. It's also nice to have better internet coverage - yes, it's important for us.

Your turn ... what can you highlight as positive from your week?

The week ahead

We will continue to tell you about islands, places and experiences in the Philippines. There will also be an exciting guest report from an interesting destination in Africa. Don't miss it!

Did you miss the last Happy Friday? Read the Further adventures, challenges and film number 3

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