Day 8. Whale Sharks and Sardines

Whale Sharks 

We met the driver at 4:30am to go to Oslob to see whale sharks. We arrived at 6:10am and there was already a line. At the safety briefing, they said no sun screen, so we did not apply sun screen. We got our ticket and the number showed that there were more than 200 people ahead of us. 

We ended up waiting for three hours before our number was called. The waiting area has only minimum facility: there were chairs, a bathroom with no hand washing place, and a rinse area. There were lots of street vendors, so we bought some food to eat. 

When our number was called, we went to an area to put on a life vest, then went on a paddle boat. There were about 10 people on each boat and the boatman paddle for about five minutes to an area where the whale sharks were. There were like 6 or 10 whale sharks around. Each was surrounded by tourists. There were staff on kayaks feeding the whale sharks so that they swim around on a path near the tourists. 

The time we spent in the water watching the sharks was about 15 minutes. The sharks were huge and amazing. Claire took some amazing videos with her GoPro. You can rent GoPro from the local place, the boatman will hold on to the camera and take photos/videos of you. There were many people posing in front of the whale sharks. Since they had their backs on the sharks and not looking, some people ended up bumped into the sharks, even though the rule is no touching. The sharks were very gentle though and just slowly moved away. Only once I saw some thrashing. Claire was closer to that area and told me that it was two whale sharks bumped into each other, and the smaller one quickly ran away.

Lunch

After the whale shark watching, we were really tired from all the waiting and crowd. So we decided not to visit Sumilon sandbar or any of the waterfalls. We just wanted to watch sardines and go back to the hotel.

Our driver Danny drove us back to Moalboal. I told him that I would pay for his lunch. He parked next to a restaurant named Chuna's Bar-b-Haus Grill Corner. This restaurant turned out to be the worst. The food they served was inedible. I ordered sizzling shrimp, which came out with a raw egg on the plate. I think the egg was supposed to be cooked by the sizzling hot plate, but the plate was not hot, so it was just a pure raw egg. Claire ordered fried rice. The rice was stale, dried up, and hard. I complained, Danny talked to the waitress and they re-cooked the dishes. They stir-fried my shrimp with the raw egg, so I got scrambled egg with shrimp. They added some water to soften the rice and re-fried the rice for Claire. 

There was a tour shop next to the restaurant and quoted me 1100 pesos for a guide to sardines with fins rental. I knew they were overcharging because the hotel could arrange it for 1000 including motorbike transportation. I walked to another place got a quote of 800. Danny then told me that he got free parking from the first tour shop, and that he would get them to lower the price to 800. 

Sardines

The tour guide took us to see sardines. It was very impressive to see so many sardines. Imagine a school building size of a cloud made all of sardines. The guide took many videos for us.

The guide then took us to see turtles. We saw one and we swam very close to it. Some tourists started touching the turtle, several people including our guide had to tell them no touching all the time. Here is a screenshot of a video that our guide took of me floating on top of a turtle.

Back to hotel

After the tour, we went back to our hotel and did some snorkeling from the hotel beach. We saw clown fish, one sea urchin, blue star fish, and many knobbly sea stars. The knobbly sea stars are huge starfish at the size of a frying pan. It was very relaxing to snorkel and play without the crowd or tour guides. 

We returned to our room afterwards. One of the hotel owner's dog liked to rest near our room, so Claire played with her a bit. We ordered some drinks from the bar and enjoyed in the room. I liked the apple-flavored beer, it's a sweet beer. We also had dinner delivered to the room.

Tips

I don't trust Filipino drivers's selection of restaurants any more. Both in Bohol and here, we did not enjoy the food from the restaurants selected by the drivers. I trust Google maps more. 

You can totally snorkel to see the sardines by yourself without a guide. I am a weak swimmer so a guide was needed for reassurance. The tour shops would lie and say that fees and guides were mandatory, just ignore them. 

In hindsight, I would choose to do whale sharks and sardines in Bohol instead of Oslob and Moalboal if I were to plan the trip again. This is for two reasons.

• The hotels and restaurants at Bohol were better
• The drive from Bohol hotel to whale sharks is only one hour so you don't need to wake up so early