Escape from the Philippines — Part 1 The Best Laid Plans
In March 1942 General Douglas MacArthur made his escape from the Philippines on board a fleet of US Navy PT boats. 78 years later it was my turn to follow in his steps, except this time it wasn’t the Japanese I was fleeing but some weird virus that at that time was mainly used as a punch line for a joke.
First off, let me set the scene, by this point I’d spend a week in the Philippines, exploring the bi-polar city of Manila and the adorable port town of Puerto Princesa, where I hopped a bus up to the resort town of El Nido. Framed for its fantastic beaches, luxurious hotels and stunning island hopping tours, I’d booked myself a week in a typical BNB, starting on Tuesday 10th March 2020.
My first impressions of El Nido weren’t exactly fantastic, the town was pretty much overrun with tourists; there was construction work everywhere and stray dogs which knew exactly how to give rabies afraid tourists a real fright. This story isn’t about the town though, by this point though, as you’re all well aware by now, the world was starting to change fast…
The president of the Philippines, a man who makes Donald Trump look like a big furry teddy bear had announced that due to the increase of COVID cases in Metro Manila, he was putting the entire city of lockdown for two weeks! This at first didn’t bother me, I had no desire to go back to Manila and my route through the Philippines was scheduled to take me through Cebu and then over to Singapore. Even as the rest of the world was starting to shut its borders, including my adopted country of Spain, I was happily heading off island hopping.
To be honest with you reader, at the time I saw no reason to worry, the island of Palawan did not have a single COVID case and life for locals and tourists alike, seemed to be carrying on like normal. That was until the fateful day of Saturday 14th March. After spending an entire day island hopping, I arranged to have dinner with a friend I had met on my travels. We headed off to the cheapest restaurant in town, and that is when he dropped the news on me.
“They’re putting the entire island on lockdown.” — He seemed to have an amused look about himself while delivery this news.
“What? How do you know that?”
“My host told me.”
“When?”
“Sunday.”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“Yes, I do also have access to a calendar.”
At first, I didn’t believe him, I quickly whipped my phone out and did a quick Google search, not know the Filipino for ‘El Nido lockdown’ I didn’t receive any positive results. I had a boat booked to Coron for the following Wednesday and in my naivety still expected it to go ahead.
I still doubted my friend’s news as we stepped out of the restaurant into the usually bustling street. I tried to gauge from my fellow travellers if this news was in fact real, I don’t know what I was expecting to see, people whaling in the street on being told they’d have to spend an extra month in paradise.
As we made our way down the street and knowing my friend had a penchant for piratical jokes, I decided to get a firm answer and headed over to the local police station. Looking inside I saw an entire family in tears and realised what my friend was telling me was true. I asked the police officer for conformation and the conversation went a little bit like this…
“So, is it true they’re putting the entire island on lockdown?”
“Yes sir.”
“How long do we have to leave?”
He looked at his watch.
“Four hours.”
“Four hours!”
“Yes, El Nido goes into lockdown midnight tonight.”
“Any buses?”
“They’re all full.”
“Planes.”
“Full.”
“So…” The news took a moment to dawn on me. “So, we’re stuck here then.”
“Yes sir.”
“For how long?”
“A month.”
Looking back, that was wishful thinking.
I turned to my friend, looking down the busy tourist street, it then slowly dawned on me, the reason most people seemed so happy and content was that they didn’t know! I smiled back to the policeman.
“So, what are we meant to do then?”
“Grab a beer and head to the beach…”
Yes, that was pretty good advice and would probably work for me, a digital nomad who could work from anywhere, but what about everyone else, the families and holidaymakers who were only here for a week or two. I couldn’t believe that they’d want to strand all these tourists here for an entire month.
It seemed there was no way out, all the buses down to Puerto Princessa were full and with Manila also on lockdown, all domestic flights in and out of Manila were also cancelled. El Nido has its own little boutique airport, but a quick search online found they were all sold out as well. I then got a notification on my phone telling me my boat to Coron was cancelled as well.
In the space of three hours, everything had changed, El Nido is paradise alright, but looking around, I didn’t think I would be able to last a month here. Unwilling to give up we headed to the nearest travel agency, but by this point, the news had spread and the line was queuing out the door and around the street. A local WhatsApp group had been set up and gossip was rife, it seemed apart from swimming, there really was no way off this island.
Me and my friend shared a glance and decided the best way to deal with this would be the age old solution of alcohol. It was Saturday night after all. So we headed to the nearest convenience store and brought the cheapest bottle of Filipino vodka we could fine. At the time I wasn’t particularly worried, I figured something would come up, if I had to stay on El Nido for an entire month it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I figured this pandemic would just pass and wasn’t even planning on heading back to Spain. In fact, I was hell-bent on trying to continue my travels in the Philippines, I know that seems ridiculous now, but Cebu was still open and so were the chocolate hills, so I figured as long as I could get off El Nido, I could make my way over to Cebu and then catch my flight back to Singapore on the 1st of April.
It seemed though April fools had come early to not just me, but the entire world.
