Finding Freedom and Sailing Off Palawan

For as long as I remember, adjectives were never found to be wanting when it came to describing Asian beach meccas. I had read countless "guides" where people just could not help but recommend every square inch of sand they have found. When I started taking interest in Palawan, the result was no different. "Miles of un-spoilt sands" was heard countless times among other tall phrases. 

photo by Benson Kua

How does one go for an authentic trip in such a place? What about those untold stories from real travelers? In search of the perfect Palawan experience, comes this little story of sailing off the land.

It's easy to aimlessly float away over the lucid corals while you snorkel off the shores of Palawan until you open your eyes and realize that you drifted too far off. Your stark blue and white, close to 100 foot long, Bangka boat that is your home for the next few days is a good way out.

Just as easily you lost bearing, the completely serene waters let you change direction. Take a deep breath and pump your way back to towards where the rest of your companions are peeping into corals bigger than your home furniture (which usually means they are not the lethal variety).

photo by Agustin Rafael Reyes

Being in the middle of nowhere, in a postcard perfect azure that stretches out to the horizon never felt this good. The rule in Palawan is pretty simple: eat, snorkel, laze around. Repeat.

Visiting El Nido- There's more to Philippines than Boracay

For the most people who visits Philippines, they head straight to Boracay. In my personal opinion, while Boracay is all nice, it comes across more as a jazzed up departmental store stocked full of water sports shops and packages. 

Instead, find yourself a van to hitch on and take on and take a ride to El Nido, a charmingly tiny but intensely dense local dive shops skirting the Bacuit Bay in Palawan. This place will give you more than what Boracay can ever hope for. Have patience, though. You'll probably need to dig through; walk and poke your nose for considerable hours to find your own hidden gem. 

photo by Ross Pollack

There's this bangka launching pad where boats set sail to the area's most spectacular islands. El Nido is a particular favorite among backpackers and has this uncanny ability to seem like it just popped out onto the map. You still won't find ATMs and power shuts down come dawn only to return in the afternoon. However, digging for gems does not end here. Most operators will still offer more or less the same itinerary-- some combination of water and crowd. Where did all those personal and authentic stories go? As an alternative, there's this pretty collection of actual trips taken by real travelers to the Philippines, over at mygola that's pretty amazing. Did I mention the smart planner to do all the itinerary building for you in minutes?

I found Tao Philippines to offer something that we all seek -a complete break, even from our digital avatars, -no phone, emails, timeline, and newsfeeds. I can now thank Eddie Brock for being that great bloke who decided people needed break from facebook and dived into the sailing business. He now owns six bangkas  which stow away freedom- seeking travel junkies. What I love the most about these trips is what Eddie says himself, "there in no plan"!

There is usually just one destination on the map, the far off dot of Coron. Between that and your sailing point, all that decides the course and speed are the winds and the currents. If you ever wanted seclusion, this is the place. What adds to the Bohemian air are the flip flops, guitars, and open- air decks. Not to mention the authentic Filipino food onboard. Ever tried tuna adobo and coconut crab curry?

Travel often opens up so many different chapters of humanity. Out here, this hardly known sailing crew in El Nido does much more than just business. The course is managed glancing up the stars by night and the tiny islands that you touch along the way, you just don't touch them physically as a tourist. Portion of the trip's earnings go into making schools and paying for a good education.

Palawan by enggul

When you stop by any of the many dots which make up the archipelago, take a stroll barefoot on the beach which are almost always deserted if you don't count the ghost watching you with watery round eyes. You'll find freedom which is well nigh lost.

WHEN YOU GO:

Give mygola.com a visit to get beyond the tourist traps. The trips featured there are taken by real travelers. Let the planner take care of things like cost, distances, business hours, and the number of days you will have in hand. Tao Philippines runs regular sailing trips off Palawan. 

A Guest Post from (About the Author):

Bodhisattwa Debnath is a travel blogger and editor at mygola.com- the world's largest hand-curated collection of authentic trips by real people which lets you create your own custom travel plans in minutes. You can chat up with him on twitter (@detalking and @mygola).

Custom Trips from the World's Largest Collection of Handmade Travel Ideas

Traveling is such a liberating pursuit. You get to see the places firsthand and the experience, of course, is far better and unique than simply being told by a guidebook.

The trend of travel today reached even more people desiring to get to their dream destinations. But searching for the must-sees and must-dos for a trip, in prints and various websites, is only doing half the job. The challenge comes more from how to put together the searches into one doable travel plan.

Travelers wanting to come up with a feasible travel plan look at an average of 20 different sites between 1-3 months. Surprisingly, some of these sites do not offer you with all the adequate and comprehensive information that you need.

Given a busy work-life schedule, opening and reading these websites and articles into several tabs is quite hectic and impractical. Another question is, while all these information is essentially still available online, all distributed throughout the space, the feeling of an authentic trip is missing.  Think about your favorite traveler and going on the same trip he or she took- adding and subtracting your own needs and priorities. That's when mygola becomes largely useful.

How mygola solves the pain of travel planning

Mygola helps you create completely custom trips on the world's largest collection of beautiful curated itineraries. You can create the first cut of your trip plan in minutes. There is no need to go into different (and otherwise useless) sites because it will do the hard work for you.

Mygola has taken on the challenge to dramatically simplify your travel planning experience by connecting the dots for you. Simply sign up with your email or log in using your facebook or twitter account and you are taken into a simple and meaningful start page.

The first page you see after logging in. Lets you make some quick choices on how to go about exploring the site.

Once in, you can type in the destination you want to create a travel plan for and all relevant information will show up in carefully selected articles from reliable websites, with photo thumbnails to go with them. 

You can specify your search according to theme (Party, Shopping, Adventure, Food & Wine, etc), number of days, and particular places, which you can see in the filters at the top. Once you have told mygola your first level preferences and destinations and hit search, you are presented with meaning results- real trips taken by real travelers- all custom to your needs.

The default search result page. You can apply a number of helpful filters on top arrive at the search results.

By clicking at the photo thumbnails of the specific place shown up in the search result, you will find a more specific itinerary.

The overview section of any itinerary. The text block at the bottom is the introduction to the itinerary. There is a navigation list on the right which shows the number of days and the destinations within those days, and the experience within the day.

You can click the destinations from the navigation list in the right to let you decide whether to include that place as one of your interests; if you'd definitely like to visit them or are they more of a maybe. Or skip them altogether.

The most granular view. This shows the individual points of interest and experiences.  Below are meta-date like address,  telephone, websites, foursquare pages, etc. , and the description of the POI. On the right, there are "definitely" and "maybe" buttons you use to add a POI to your list favorites.

The view of the planner. The cards can be dragged to occupy more of the time, can be moved between days and different times of the day. Vacant positions can be filled by recommendations.

Why you should use mygola

While mygola allows you to pick your interests in specific destinations and have it laid out in an organized daily travel plan, the entire browsing is designed beautifully that feels much like a magazine. 

It enables you to create a custom plan travel while taking care of distances, business hours, and a number of other constraints to ensure that the final itinerary is very feasible.

The website involved the points of view of real travelers and travel experts around the world to gather all information about things that poses extensive problems, particularly on the travel planning stage, and finally came up with a service to fix these. 

It started a travel Q&A 3 years back, which saw much success. In the process, it helped million travelers (including myself) plan their trip to 100+ countries. This experience prompted the mygola team to build this new travel planning service.

Take for example this Day 1 travel plan of my trip to Hong Kong last January which I organized using mygola. 

It lets you see where exactly in the map your destination is found, how many kilometer it will take, and by clicking the place- all the pertinent information you need to know.

One reason for using mygola that worked to my advantage was that I only needed to supply the keywords and all necessary information,options and recommendations were given at hand. Now, those keywords are readily provided by simply clicking on the specific theme and filters. Plus there are travel tips written that you would have not read or found in other websites.

All content offered in the service is curated by real persons, a massive community of travel experts throwing high quality content for other travelers.

Mygola is for all do-it-yourself travelers wanting to get an efficient travel plan by providing an intuitive toolkit. It gives you the best searches there are in the travel world and puts in the necessary information so that you get the perfect balance.

Photo Credits:
mygola team @ mygola (dot) com