Before I tell you about my travel in Boracay, let me take you back to a previous experience I had that involved a cliché tourist destination.
Earlier this February, I was holed up in a so-called “boutique” hostel in Bangkok’s Khao San district trying to finish up a blog entry — with pictures, links and extensive meta-tagging — on a connection that was literally slower than dial-up. My task guaranteed to take at least three times as long as it otherwise would, I decided to fill the gaps between each successful image embed conversing with people on the other side of the planet.
As luck would have it, my dear friend Gina was among those awake and wanting to chat — and what she had to say was not only compelling and interesting, but also extremely relevant to my being in Southeast Asia at that point in time.
“So I have this friend,” she began, “and he, like you, was in the midst of traveling and decided he wanted to find his inner writer/photog. Anyway, I shared the link to your Angkor Wat blog posting on my news feed, and he fucking desecrated it — talking about how the place ‘used to be an archaeological site’ and now that it’s been discovered it’s somehow not worth the trip.” She shared with me a link to the discussion thread in question.
“That’s fucked,” I said. “The presence of millions of other people who are lucky enough to see something spectacular doesn’t make that thing any less spectacular — a secret doesn’t have to be well-kept in order to be well worth knowing.”
Of course, in my head I questioned whether or not I actually believed either of those things. Now, back to talking about Boracay travel.
Boracay Hotels
To most tourists, Boracay's otherworldly beauty goes all but unnoticed.
Although Boracay has garnered acclaim for the quality of the water, sand and surf that comprises it beaches, it didn’t take but five minutes off the boat from the mainland for me to realize how little those factors meant to most of the people around me. As if the veritable city of restaurants, shops and entertainment venues that has popped up along what is still, by all means, a primitive dirt road isn’t bad enough, the otherworldly beauty of this sparkling jewel goes all but unnoticed to patrons of such establishment, whose primary goal is to see and be seen.
Although I directed as much of my attention seaward as I could while walking first north and then south along the beach front, I couldn't help but feel assaulted.
By the time I got to my room at the Two Seasons resort in Boracay’s “Zone 1″ the day of my arrival, I felt partial empathy with such tourists: Not only was I too tired to properly appraise the postcard scenes all around me, but the sun was low enough in the sky that starting a race against it at that point seemed futile.
Although I directed as much of my attention seaward as I could while walking first north and then south along the beach front, I couldn’t help but feel assaulted by the Starbucks flags waving in the wind or the sheer quantities of European twenty-somethings doing their best Kate Moss with neither a photographer nor an adoring public in sight. Everybody was posing; nobody was watching, except for me.
Boracay Flights
If any place in the world disproves the travel snobbery that commercialization cheapens previously undiscovered destinations past the point of enjoyment it's Boracay.
Of course, this is not to say that certain elements of my trip to the Philippines’ most-famous beach weren’t soulless or even soul sucking. Coming from Manila, you must either fly to Kalibo or Caticlan airports, two extremely small airfields located on a larger island adjacent to Boracay. The infrastructure of the latter is so primitive, in fact, that flights cannot depart before sunrise or after sunset. In this way, Boracay travel is kind of difficult.
In any case, your have only slightly more choice when it comes to airlines than you do about where (and when) they land. In addition flag carrier Philippine Airlines and popular low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific, which serve both airports, you can take Air Philippines to Caticlan and Zest Airways to Kalibo. If you really want to be exclusive — or at least, so I was told — you take South East Asian Airways. Founded in 1995 with two aircraft, the self-declared “boutique” airline is actually the second-longest continually-operating carrier in the country’s history (after Philippine Airlines) and exclusively serves high-end leisure destinations.
If you have no set agenda for yourself, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with what Boracay has to offer.
With this in mind, you can imagine my surprise when I hopped on board the Caticlan-bound “SE Air” (see-air) aircraft at Manila’s old domestic airport. A German-built Dornier 328 “turboprop” model, the interior was more weathered even than the company’s out-of-date logo, which was clearly designed using Microsoft Paint–the Windows 95 edition.
The flight attendant was named “Love.” She was wearing a skirt so short her ass was not only showing, it was never even covered. There was no loudspeaker: She shouted at the top of her lungs to read safety announcements and communicate information from the cockpit..
Does a secret have to be well-kept in order to be well-worth knowing?
As an American, I should be grateful that the 45-minute bus ride in the sky included drink and snack service at all, but I can’t get past the sterility of said service. Short skirt flapping in the pressurized wind, Love handed each of us a small bottle of water from a boring, wicker tray, before giving us a choice of “Garlic” or “Salt” for our tiny bags of peanuts, which seemed to contain between seven and nine pieces each — mine had eight mind you, so I’m just extrapolating.
In any case, there was nothing “boutique” about any part of the experience, especially not considering that I had to wait for my gate-checked luggage to be auctioned off alongside the hundreds of pieces others had checked inside the airport terminal, which included a bonus argument with the baggage handler since I naturally didn’t have an official SE Air identification tag on my backpack. They call it “personal service”; I call it over-utilized and inefficient hired help.
I can’t totally knock SE Air, however: Both Love and the pilot were extremely courteous and warmhearted in their demeanor; I did arrive at (and later depart from) my destination intact and alive; the de-boarding process — on account of the plane’s low capacity — was probably the quickest and most painless I’d ever gone through.
Still, I never at any point felt like I was having an exclusive or even desirable experience – and isn’t that usually why choosy people choose the boutique route? My journey on SE Air confirmed what my fateful frolic on Boracay’s beach had suggested: Exclusivity is often at the expense of quality.
Is Boracay Worth It?
If you’re thinking of traveling to Boracay but aren’t sure whether the experience will be singular enough to justify taking the trip there – and after all, from Palawan to Cebu, the Philippine islands are very literally blanketed with world-class beaches — I would suggest you go only if it won’t be a significant financial or logistical burden. If you have no set agenda for yourself, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what you can gain from Boracay travel.
If you tend to discount a beach completely at the sight of umbrellas, corporate logos and building that sit atop permanent foundations — and believe me, I’ve been there — you’ll more than likely be annoyed too much of the time to make the fleeting moments of transcendence you can encounter there worth the hassle. Rather, you might consider heading over to the Philippines’ other world-famous beach island, Palawan, rather than bothering to travel in Boracay.
About The Author
Robert Schrader is the author of 255 posts on Leave Your Daily Hell.
Robert founded Leave Your Daily Hell in 2010 so that other travelers would have an entertaining, reliable source of information, advice and inspiration at their fingertips. Robert has traveled to more than 36 countries since he got his first passport stamp in 2005. Want to travel more often? Subscribe to email updates today!
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