The Japanese were kept their cargo ships around the Manila area. When American intelligence found this out, they moved their ships to Coron, a much more remote and protected area of the Philippines. They covered the decks of their ships in with trees to disguise the ships from the American planes above.
However, one day in 1944, an American pilot found it strange that there were a bunch of trees floating in the ocean. He flew closer to the ground and determined they were in fact Japanese ships. That same day, the Americans sunk dozens of ships. About ten of them are shallow enough to be accessible by divers.
Upon arriving in Coron in the mid-afternoon, I practiced some street photography and explored the small Filipino city. Part of my journey involved setting up my scuba diving for the next few days. I had asked the hostel two weeks prior if I needed to pre-book my diving online or if I could just sort it out in Coron. He said the latter, so I figured it would be easy. Well, every single reputable company was fully booked for the next five days. Thanks hostel… I’m not one to put my life in the hands of somebody incompetent 100 feet below the surface while inside a shipwreck, so I wouldn’t try to find another company.
Instead, I knew of a gentleman who had been diving professionally since 1977. For years, he worked in the navy as an underwater engineer. In the 1980s, he worked in the Arabian Gulf (Persian Gulf for those who didn’t work in the Gulf of the Middle East) during the Iran-Iraq War. He used to put a life jacket on and float on a buoy to sleep since the diving vessels would occasionally be bombed in the middle of the night.
Anyway, this was just one of his many interesting stories from his life as a diver. He now provides private dive experiences. His boat is as large as the best companies, but instead of taking out 12-15 divers on the boat, he only takes between 2-5. However, as a solo traveler, it was up to me to find other advanced divers in the same situation I was in. Luckily, I was able to find dive partners at the hostel by attending happy hours.
I will allow the dive videos to speak for themselves. I hit a big milestone this trip, however, which is worth mentioning. I just completed my 50th dive on my second to last dive of the trip. I have now spent 34 hours and 35 minutes underwater since my first dive in Sydney, Australia. My next step will to become a Rescue Diver. Inshallah, that will occur in the coming year.
To break up the diving, during my second full day, I did a boat tour exploring different spots around the Coron area with some people from the hostel. Most notably, we went to Barracuda Lake, which provided both beautiful views of the ocean and an enclosed fresh water lake surrounded by mountains and salt water on the other side. I’m not sure how that geographically happens. We went to a few snorkeling spots, but every time I snorkel, I really just want to be under the water. Maybe I’ll learn how to free dive, so snorkeling can be a bit more fun.
Our last stop was definitely the coolest. What appeared to be a beautiful bay contained a hidden passageway with about 6 inches of clearance between the rock and the water. When you swam through the passageway, you entered a completely different world fully surrounded by cliffs on all sides.
Upon finishing the boat cruise, the sunset was drawing near. I heard the best views of the city were on top of Mount Tapyas, a small mountain standing right behind the town. Another chance to practice my photography.
My final full day was again spent diving. Our first dive at Irako was the only wreck I couldn’t enter. Just the top of the wreck is 100 feet (30m) down, which is the limit of my diving license. The bottom of the wreck is as deep as 48m, far too deep for the equipment and air we were using. Even though we couldn’t enter, the top of the boat was very impressive.
Each night, I had dinner and some drinks with various people I had met during the day. Solo traveling is so rewarding when I have the chance to meet people from all of the world. During the trip, I had extended interactions with people from India, Spain, France, U.K., Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Finland. The conversations usually begin with where everybody has traveled on their trips, but usually turns into interesting discussions about different cultures. I only met one American, and unfortunately, he was pretty racist.
The trip was successful until the day I was supposed to leave. Then, my luck completely turned. Upon arriving at the airport (which may be the size of a football field), there was chaos. People were everywhere, some were yelling, a few crying, and almost everybody looked angry. Apparently, two different companies (out of four operators) had been cancelling flights for the past three days. However, they didn’t communicate with their customers nor post the update online. They were telling people upon arrival. There were three airport workers outside the airport who couldn’t even tell me which flights were cancelled and which were not. They said to check with the airline, which of course was impossible since many people were crowded around the desk and they only had two employees there.
Let me explain the gravity of the situation. I’m on an island that only a few years ago had 50,000 visitors per year. The runway does not have lights, so there are only day flights, which only run from each airline a few times a day. The airport has no ATMs nor currency exchanges, so there’s no way to get money. There are no screens to provide flight information. The carrousel was a wooden slab where the staff would place the bags by hand. The airport now tries to cater to almost 1,000,000 visitors per year but was only built for the 50,000. Disaster.
There was no good reason for the cancellations. They said it was due to maintenance, but that had been going on for days. And if there were serious issues, they could have notified people days in advance. Anyway, they gave me $35 for the inconvenience. That didn’t help. It’s a national holiday in Vietnam, so getting back is both very difficult as flights from Manila were pretty much fully booked and the ones that weren’t were very expensive and didn’t fit with the times I could leave the island. Only one airline hadn’t been cancelling flights, so the line to speak with the one man in the booking office was two hours long. Each person took about twenty minutes because the internet on the whole island is so slow that it’s impossible to access most websites.
After about two hours, involving getting some help from Filipinos close by with data, I found a route that would bring me to another island called Cebu at 7:00am. From there, I would fly to Kuala Lumpur at 1:40pm. My final flight would be at 7:35pm to Saigon. It was the only way to get back in under a day. However, I couldn’t book any of these flights at the airport since I didn’t have enough cash. I went back to the city on the 45-minute bus ride to both try to book the flights and find a hotel. I tried four different places with internet to book the flights. Finally, a receptionist at a hotel I didn’t even stay at (it was fully booked) gave me her hotspot so I could book the flights from my phone. Seven hundred dollars later, I had my flights. I lost all my other flight money because the Filipino airlines don’t have the same passenger rights as say Europe.
It was a very long and frustrating two days. And as luck would have it, one of my students with his family were also at the same airport, but on a different flight. Their flight was delayed, but their second flight was also delayed, so they were able to get back to Saigon. However, all of their bags are now lost. The Philippines don’t really do airports well from my anecdotal observations. The parents could see I very frustrated, since at this point, I didn’t know the solution to my problem yet. My student’s little fourth grade brother came up to me at one point while I was standing in line. He gave me a piece of candy and told me that I probably needed it more than he did. It did put a quick smile on my face.
I am finishing writing this post from the exit row of AirAsia from KL to Saigon. I’ve spent the entire day working a bit when I have internet in the airports, editing photos, editing my diving videos, and writing. I made a last-minute decision to bring my computer in case I had any downtime, I could make my diving videos. That ended up being a great decision.