6 days Palawan On Motorcycle

It was my first visit to Philippines. Philippines has more than 7000 islands (OMG! 7000++!!!), the famous ones among Malaysian are Cebu and Boracay. I found Palawan from many Europeans blogs and decided to begin our first Philippines adventure at this island.

After reading many blogs to plan for the trip, what we originally wanted was to engage a sidecar tour at Puerto Princesa do a loop up north and return. The vendor wasn't prompt in response and the price quoted was space (sky) high. It wasn't our first sidecar tour ( check out our sidecar tour in Morocco), also not our first big bike tour ( we rented Harley Davidson Softtail Heritage in Japan), his price was obviously telling us to not consider his tour. We ended up with a 'go with the flow' plan to just hire scooter to explore around the towns.

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Day 1

Puerto Princesa - Nagtabon beach

The tricycle driver who sent us to lunch brought us to a motorcycle rental shop owned by his friend. The shop is just located right infront of the Puerto Princesa airport, which there are few car and bike rental shops running too.

We picked up a 110cc Honda Beat and rode out of town to catch the sunset at Nagtabon beach, located 30km away. It was during this ride of nice winding mountain road with rarely any cars when we decided we should go for a two wheels adventure for the rest of our trip.

Day 2

Puerto Princesa - Sabang Beach - Underground River Tour

Next day we joined the Underground River Tour with local tour agent which transport us using a van for a 4 hours return journey. After this tour, we are determined to rent the bikes for the rest of our days as we could not stand seeing the driver having all the fun of driving the corners and we as passengers were bored to death!

We headed back to the bike rental shop, chose 2 Yamaha Aerox 155 (150cc) scooters, apparently the biggest cc bikes they have and managed to negotiate a good deal for 4 days (Approximately RM50 per day per bike). The vendor was very accommodating and the bikes were quite new in condition (One was actually brand new). When we were about to leave, it started rain heavily. We did the checks on horn, tyre, signal lights under the rain and it was quite fun!

Heavy rain while checking the rented bikes

Day 3

Puerto Princesa - Roxas - Tay Tay - El Nido

I started off without great confidence as my mind was disturbed by the recent drop on Dieng. Dieng's ride was just 2 days 1 night but this would be 4 days. I was extremely alert and careful at the beginning, my speed maintained around 60 to 70km per hour and that wasn't ideal for our schedule. We had a total of 280km waiting for us and Google estimated at least 5 hours of riding excluding breaks.

I slowly picked up the speed as I rode, the scenery along the way, the curves & corners, the minimal traffic made the whole riding experience very relaxing. My fear reduced and finally could truly enjoy the journey and cornering with minimum of 90km/hour. It was AWESOME!

2nd pitstop Roxas was a beach town. The entrance officer was so kind to let us in for photoshoot without collecting fee. After this, it would be mountains, rice field, trees all the way.

Final pitstop at Tay Tay for lunch break

On the final stretch of 60km to destination El Nido, a sudden pain stroked my chest. I was hit by small stones few times along the way but this felt very different. Quickly stopped by the road and found a bee sticking to my chest. OMG! A bee sting! The bee fell off the ground while I unbutton my jacket, the pain was so sharp and lasting, I could not get off my bike but to pressing my chest during pain.

My buddy came back with a shock thinking I met an accident and broke my chest bones or had a heart attack. After few minutes when I finally could tell him it was a bee sting and he burst our laughing. He said I acted like a severe injured person and scared him to hell!

Gosh I wasn't acting at all it was really hurting! he helped me got off my bike and sat down by the road. He pulled the sting out from my skin and applied tiger balm ( the only cream we had......). After a short break, we continued our ride (of course Im still in pain....) and arrived El Nido around 3pm, on track! Well done~

What an adventure! Record set, a bee sting!

Day 4

Island hoping Tour A at El Nido

We engaged the famous local island hoping tour A to enjoy the beach, sand, sun, crystal clear sea, fishes and corals.

Day 5

El Nido - San Vicente

We were suppose to stay another day in El Nido but our plan was affected by Typhoon Tisoy. The typhoon wasn't hitting Palawan however it would still bring strong wind and rain. Having experienced typhoon once in Taiwan (check out my Taiwan solo ride), I know how damaging it can be, so we changed our plan to ride back half way and stayed a night at San Vicente.

San Vicente is 80km away from El Nido, a laid back beach town with huge potential of tourist growth. The infrastructure wasn't well developed yet, road entering to the area was about few km of offroads, putting my skills and guts to test! some area around the town was still unpaved, not to mentioned the road out of town......

Tyre sinked into the sand....not easy to ride

The long white beach is just at the bottom of Bato Ni Nining

Day 6

San Vicente - Tay Tay - Roxas - Puerto Princesa

We had a beachfront resort all to ourselves and we could hear the strong wind and waves from the beach caused by typhoon throughout the whole night.

It was drizzling coupled with strong wind in the morning during our departure. As the rain stop, we quickly jumped on the bike and rode out towards our destination.

The sky was very cloudy, we were very lucky to experience just drizzle along the way coupled with some strong wind at few places, fighting with the wind to hold still our steering and balance the bike was quite adventurous but we survived!

Typhoon Tisoy

Love this cute design rain coat which can cover all the way from the front of a bike till the pillion passenger. The transparent part allow space for front light and two holes on both side allow the side mirrors to go through. Such a brilliant design~

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Philippines is one of the most westernized nations in SEA. Palawan is a safe island to ride, majority of the locals can speak English so language is not a barrier to us. The food is acceptable, fusion with western style like Pizza, spagetti, burgers etc (they were once colonized by Spain and US). We felt easy to travel around and enjoy very much their relaxing culture.

That's it! Another South East Asia country checked off our list! 6 days 5 night 700km Palawan on two wheels accomplished! Will definitely return to ride another island~