November 17th - Day 9

Coron town

Arriving at Coron, we decide to take a walk to the town proper (that is how they commonly name the 'center') instead of the usual tricycle. Coron is quite different from what I have seen in the sense that the road and surroundings leading to town are incredibly dirty and the water stinks. It takes us about 20 minutes to walk to town and we immediately try to find accommodation following our Lonely Planet's suggestions. The seadive resort seems appealing but fully booked for the night :( The place looks great though, just on the peer with a huge terrace and sun deck and thus far the cheapest accommodation we've seen: less than 7 EUR for a double room. We book it for the following 2 nights and continue roaming the town looking for a place to spend the first night.

We finally end up at Krystal's lodge who is reluctant in giving us a discount for the room, even though the lodge seemed to be empty (The Filipinos are not really willing to negotiate... the prices are generally honest and the many times I tried to negotiate a discount I came out empty handed). The path leading to it is dodgy, a weird passage way where you walk next to people's houses finally ends up in one of those National Geographic style of housing. Built on the water, it's a quiet paradise on the otherwise hectic town of Coron.

We check-in and split a room with Tim and April and then decide to take a short nap... at 1 we wake up and head to the SeaDive restaurant where we had some light meal start looking around for things to do... we quickly realize that there are 2 things you can do here: Scuba diving and island hopping. There's no beach nearby and pretty much nothing else to do besides those 2 activities. Island hopping is also very costly here, at least 10 eur just to get a boat plus some 2 or 3 eur fee for each beach you visit. Scuba diving suddenly seems to be more appealing... I won't even discuss the prices.

We start growing a little restless and book our tickets back to Europe, early February... At least that is done! We then walk around town and think how to entertain ourselves during the next 6 days around here and stop at Old House for dinner... somehow we start drinking beer and arrive back home already rather tipsy!

Our roommates Kim and Tim also happened to have opened a bottle of Rum and ask us to help them out... we quickly finish that bottle and I head back out to buy a new one! Needless to say how the rest of the night went...