The project in Vanuatu had it’s challenges but it was a wonderful experience. Fiona and I both lost 6kg each and hope to keep it off back in civilization but we don’t hold mush hope with all the new restaurants opening on our island. On our way back we spent a few nights on Tana Island staying in a tree house in a HUGE tree looking out on a very active volcano! This was one of the highlights of all our travels and we would highly recommend it to be added to everyone’s bucket list.

Back in Bohol we are working on the Abatan River project again moving them to commercialization. It’s great to be back and setting up our new lives. We are starting to feel very much at home in the Philippines.. Yes it has it’s challenges but that’s often the charm of the place. Many foreigners living here don’t understand why things here are not done like things at home (1st world countries etc) and keep complaining. Fiona and I have the attitude that it is there country and we must respect the cultural differences and frankly, resisting will just make you miserable. Go with the flow and keep smiling is the answer!

This will be the last blog update for a while as things will start becoming ‘routine’ whatever that means! We will however update if anything interesting happens…..until then. SAFE TRAVELS!

Our work environment is, to say the least idyllic. We are the only ones living on Mystery Island with the locals all living on the main land 600 meters away across the bay. We are visited regularly and provided supplies (rice, canned tuna and local greens mostly) which has been testing my culinary credentials to the limit! Aneityum (the mainland) is where the main villages are with a  population of roughly1600 people. This used to be about 20,000 till the missionaries turned up and brought along for the ride all those wonderful diseases that the island had previously been protected from.

NOTE: The Photos below were taken by James Lauritz a professional photographer who visited the island to do an article on the project.

We have fallen into a bit of a routine (meetings, workshops, swimming, fishing, snorkeling) that is only interrupted when a cruise ship calls and disgorges about 1,500 tourists (read Bogans) which tops up the local economy quite nicely. When the cruise ships are in we have been given security access to go aboard so we can access the internet and of course the restaurant! P&O have been great in this regard and we really appreciate the slice of civilisation every 10 days or so. Not bad living on a deserted island then having a five star hotel turning up on your door step every week or so.

Our routine is also (nicely) interrupted with yachties turning up every now and then and a few independent travellers hopping off the plane and exploring the region. All the solitude has an additional upside. Fiona and I have both lost about 6kg each. Mostly because we are not drinking alcohol but also because we are a tad sick of the boring food and this limits our taste buds crying out…”please sir can I have some more!”

For R & R we do a lot of snorkelling and I head out fishing with the locals (see mandatory pics). As you can imagine the fishing is amazing but using a 100 lb hand line is hardly sporting. Luckily an ABV volunteer was visiting sent us a rod down which I immediately broke on the first fish.

A lovely break in our routine was the arrival of Neil and Ros Thompson who wonderfully accepted our invitation to come and join us for a week. Neil was a great help on some aspects of the project and Ros was a great help finding new ways to cook tuna and rice.

After our week in Port Vila we will have three weeks back on Mystery island then heading over to Tanna (to see the Volcano) before heading back to Australia (to see Nadia) and back to Bohol for another project and seeing how the apartment renovations are progressing.

After a few great days in Sydney staying with old friends, the Digby’s and catching up with Paddy and Helen, and Elaine and the girls from school, we jumped on the train to the airport. Fortunately we had plenty of time as once we got to Wynyard we advised that power to the city train grid had been cut due to a suicide at Petersham.

We were also advised that our flight to Port Vila was being rerouted through Auckland because of a potential cyclone threatening the city. We finally arrived in Port Vila  at 7am totally wiped out. We squeezed in 2 hours of sleep then met with our in country manager, Lou.

After a number of meetings we were really looking forward to some serious sleep then the terrible earthquake in Japan happened and we put on tsunami alert for a 1am arrival.

We were due to fly to Mystery Island today but the flight was cancelled due to lack of plane (still in for repairs). The shipping agent here has kindly arranged for us to travel on Monday by cruise ship!  No more natural disasters please.

The magazine pages above are from Green Living Australia. We were interviewed by the editor while she was visiting Bohol. Nice article and Bohol gets a good rap.

Prior to leaving the Philippines we had made the momentous decision to buy our lovely unit in Bohol and base ourselves there for a few years while we continue our projects with Australian Business Volunteers. So the plan was to sell the car and van while were in Australia.  Selling the land cruiser took about five minutes. A lady from Ingham picked up the car and headed back north just as the dreadful north QLD floods started.

As we all know, the rain did not stop and as soon as we headed down to Brisbane the horrendous flooding followed us. Fortunately we were high and dry sponging off Max in Spring Hill.

On the way back to the Philippines we had a short stopover in Kuala Lumpur and caught up with with an old friend, Estella and met her husband Azza. Got just a small taste of Malaysia and left wanting more. Is there any limitation to the bucket list?

Got back to Bohol with everyone having a bit of a freak out about the Abu Sharif (spelling?) terrorists threatening foreigners with kidnapping. That seems to be settling down now. As soon as we got back we were invited to a wedding. Angad and Fatima met a few months back and decided to tie the knot. Angad was introduced to us through another ABV volunteer we met last year in Bohol.

We’ve been offered a project in Vanuatu which sounds exciting so we’ll be off early March for three months on the remote Mystery Island! Meanwhile we are busy organizing contracts to purchase our unit and builders for the new kitchen, fences and pergolas.

We survived just over a day and a bit at Expo, queuing for 3 to 4 hours to get into a pavilion was path of the course. In hind site choosing Shanghai as an expo excursion was possibly not the most clever decision! Next time Afghanistan maybe would be a better option. at least it won’t be so crowded!

Being on a tour in a foreign country with Philippinos was quite an experience. The group was wonderful and watching them interact with the Chinese was fascinating. Being on a tour had its pluses and minuses. On the plus side it solved the (significant) language barrier but on the negative side we were dragged to third rate restaurants that were very disappointing. After a couple of days Fiona and I decided to go it alone and find our own way around (and our own food) this was the best move as we found some wonderful food and got to see some neighbourhoods that are not on the usual tourism trail. All in all the trip was a great experience and we will definitely head back to China and explore more, especially more of the country side. Our time in China reinforced our decision about the Philippines. The language issue is not an issue in the Philippines and frankly the people in the Philippines are much warmer than the Chinese and much more ‘like minded’ to us.

Our next step is to head down to Brisbane to catch up with Nadia and the family and see what happens next! Stay tuned!

Our project is going well and the draft development plan is with the Governor for his consideration. Next step will be a series of meetings with the Mayors and the Governor to discuss the details then we move to the marketing strategy and hopefully commercialisation before mid November.

We have been taking the opportunity to play tourist on the weekends and have begun to explore Panglao (the island we live on) and have had trips further a field to Danao and Anda beach. Danao’s claim to fame is the ‘adventure park’ set up by the local municipality that boasts zip lines, plunges etc. Fiona and I were encouraged to try the zip line which is a few thousand meters long and ‘enough’ meters above the valley floor to ensure that if you fell you wouldn’t be suing anyone! This venture for the Municipality has been a huge success and has employed numerous people throughout the area.

Anda beach was lovely and quiet but the resort we stayed at was quite dilapidated. This is much the same story across Bohol with little maintenance undertaken after the initial construction. We are not sure about the mind set behind this. On the way back we had the opportunity to see a Cock Fight. Quite a gruesome experience but a national pass time.

The apartment is so new we are actually living in a construction site as the other apartments are still to be completed! We now wake up to the sound of 1000 roosters and angel grinders. While this sounds terrible the development is actually quite beautiful as it is smack bang on a crystal clear river with fishing villages just a stone through away and it is quite rural so aside for the aforementioned noises its lovely. Our unit is two bedroom two bathroom and are selling for A$70,000 if you are interested! After a bit of shopping (linen and kitchen stuff) we are feeling relatively settled.

Without going into detail things with our client are going quite well albeit slowly. The slowness is simply the nature of things in the Philippines and we have to adjust our ‘commercial mind set’ to this volunteer assignment.

As part of our assignment we have to look into the competitive environment so we decided to head to the Loboc River to see the “floating restaurant tour’ which has been the inspiration behind the project we are working on. We arrived at what we thought was the tour ( we later found out it was actually a copy cat operation) and enjoyed a two hour tour and lunch for the princely sum of 350p per person (A$5.00). The trip included a visit to a traditional tribal village up river. Not sure if traditional usually includes giant fibreglass crabs and fire eating! But enjoyable all the same. We later drove back to our hotel via the real Loboc and had a quick look at the substantial infrastructure that has been built to accomodate the growing tourism trade.

Our first few days have been spent getting familiar with our project (Abatan River Tour) and getting our bearings. We have been mostly walking around but when necessary we get a three wheeled motorbike somewhat like a tuk tuk but called a tricycle. We’re also busy trying to find more permanent accommodation. We’re currently in a hotel (run by deaf people!) but need to find a cheaper apartment or house to fit out budget. There are no real estate agencies here so you have to ask everyone you can for recommendations and just walk around looking for “House to Rent” signs.

Our big news of the day is that we bought a motor bike! Brand new, a huge 125cc, made in China, for a grand sum of A$715. It was the same price as renting one for 3mths.  Like most Asian countries road rules don’t really apply so it’s been exciting getting used to driving on the right hand side of the road (mostly), dodging potholes, tricycles and miscellaneous dogs, cats etc.

One highlight of our stay so far was an impromptu invitation to the inauguration of the new Bohol government including the new governor and his cabinet. We arrived on time and not knowing where to go hung around the entrance. Our client was quite late but we didn’t know where to go as downstairs was an elaborately decorated function room with formal table and chairs but a number of people were heading upstairs to the balconies. Every now and then an usher would wander out and ask us to please take our seats at the foreigner dignitary table!

What to do! Upstairs or downstairs? Well in the end we headed in wondering any moment if we would be thrown out as gate crashers! As it turned out we were in the the right place and had a fascinating experience. The politics in the Philippines is an amalgam of American extravaganza and Asian idiosyncrasy.

The speeches made by the newly elected government made Australian politicians look like pre school kids. The speeches were wonderfully motivating and passionate.

I know you are all shouting “well what is the food like?” Well it has been hit and miss. It is certainly cheap. Most meals are 150p about $3.00 and the quality is fine. It is just that Philippino cuisine is a tad bland for our taste buds. You think of tropical Asian islands and you think of hot and spicy. Not so in Bohol.

We have found some stand outs such as Grill Restaurant – Aroma which has been lovely. We are looking forward to getting our own apartment so we can cook our own meals (the wet markets have a great array of produce and we can’t wait!). Everything else in Bohol is equally cheap. Nice accommodation can be had (if you can find it, we are still looking) from 15,000p to 30,000p per month A$380.00 – A$750.00. And most importantly a beer will set you back about 30p 77 cents!

Anyway enough for now! We will report further soon (ish)

Fiona and I have been asked to undertake a project in the Philippines that will take us three months to complete. We will be working with a number of rural communities to assist them develop a tourism business on the Abatan River including a business plan and a marketing strategy.

The island is called Bohol (Abatan River Community) and by all accounts it is a beautiful part of the world. We will be leaving at the end of June and will be back in Australia by October so David will celebrate his 50th overseas. (If you feel inclined you are welcome to pop over and help us celebrate!)

We will be contactable by email but this may be irregular.

Cheers

Fiona & David