Motorcycles diaries of Bohol

Dear Friends,

Last week Karin and I traveled to Bohol for 4 days to see some extraordinary things. Bohol is an extraordinary island for reasons that soon will become apparent! To give you an idea about the island of Bohol: Bohol is situated south-east of Cebu and with the ferry it is only 1 hour 45 minutes away. Bohol is a rather easy-going island where the influence from the Spanish rule is much more seen then on the island of Cebu. Most of the towns have Spanish names, for example Sevilla, Garcia-Hernandez, Valencia and so on. Another big difference, and probably the reason why the island of Bohol is easy-going, is its economy. Cebu is for its majority focused on the service-economy as well as export and trade while the island of Bohol is still a rather agricultural economy.We arrived in Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, in the late afternoon on Tuesday. When you get of the ferry immediately tricycle drivers try to win you over to take a ride with them to wherever you need to go. It is kinda annoying to be followed by like 10 to 20 people constantly asking you where you are going etc. but I guess its just something you have to except, people are just trying to make a living. We got to our hotel (Hotel La Roca), we spotted the hotel in Karin's lonely planet guide, with one of the tricycles and booked a room for one night. The hotel was pretty decent considering the low price, the rooms were more or less clean and the hotel even had a swimming pool!

On Wednesday we started our first journey. Karin came up with the idea to rent motorcycles, a great idea cause Bohol is just about the size at which motorcycles can quickly get you anywhere. We rented to motorcycles for 3 days (only 1500 pesos each! 25 euro), 2 Honda dual sport 125cc bikes. Not the biggest bikes nor the fastest but still quick dirt motorcycles/bikes with a top speed around 130 km/h (yes we tested that hehe) and definitely to big/heavy to be called a scooter. We got semi-automatic bikes, which was kinda nice since both Karin and I don't have our motor license. Semi-automatic means we still had to shift gears (N- 4) but no glutch was needed.
On our first tour we went along the coast on the south-side of Bohol towards the town of Loboc (40 km away). In Loboc we got the opportunity to do our first tourist-thing. We got on a boat around lunch time and for only 350 pesos we cruised on the Loboc-river with an excellent lunch and some cheesy country music on the background. A really great way to relax and just enjoy the scenery.

After we got back on our bikes we made our way to the chocolate hills (another 40 km). The chocolate hills are one of the top tourist attraction the Philippines has to offer or at least that's what they want the tourists to believe. The chocolate hills are really something quite extraordinary, an unusual geological formation of hills covered with green grass which turns to brown in the dry season, hence the name chocolate hills. Almost all the hills are shaped in a conical and symmetrical way which makes it really a weird sighting. The hills range between 40 meter and 120 meter in height and just popped randomly out of the ground in an area of about 50 square kilometer near a town called Carmen. After our encounter with the chocolate hills we made our way back to Tagbilaran.

On our second motorcycle day we decided to make our way to Anda which is completely on the other side of the island. However before we made our way to Anda we first went to visit the Tarsier (Spookdier) sanctuary. Which was a little more inland. The Philippine Tarsier is another extraordinary feature of the island of Bohol. The Philippine Tarsier is a tiny animal, measuring about 8 to 17 cm in length which makes it pretty hard to spot in the wild. It is an endangered species. The special feature of this smallest primate in the world is it ability to rotate its head almost 180 degrees to each side. This has to do with the fact that it's eyes are fixed in its skull, the eyes of the Philippine Tarsier cannot turn in their sockets.
After a 30 minutes video about the Philippine Tarsier in the main building of the sanctuary, we got to a small enclosed part of the forest with a local guide. We walking around and immediately spotted our first Tarsier! It really amazing to see these, kinda ugly, creatures in its wild habitat. In total we spotted 5 Tarsiers and had plenty of opportunities to take pictures, although flash was not allowed.
After our visit to the sanctuary we made our way back to the coast for a pretty long ride to Anda. While driving the coastal road on several occasions it reminded me of the 101 highway from San Fransisco to Los Angeles. Of course there are some differences, after all Bohol is part of an developing country while California is situated in the biggest and most powerful economy in the world. But both coastal roads have amazing views on the ocean while driving it.After a long day (I think we drove + 100 km) on the bike we finally got to Anda in the late afternoon. Anda seemed really like a sleepy fisherman town with hardly anything going. There are several resorts in the area and we decided to go to the Dapdap resort. A real Philippine resort for karaoke machines on the beach and a restaurant with surprising interpretations for the things we ordered. In fact when we order fried chicken with some fries we got rice and some traditional chicken dish. Nonetheless the resort was a really great get-away place to chill with a nice beach.On our last day (friday) we got up early and made our way back to Tagbilaran. We took to time to stop every once in a while to take some pictures and we had a nice lunch in one of the bigger towns of the island Jagna. Somehow our way back to Tagbilaran felt a lot shorter then our way to Anda so we were quite surprised when we got near Tagbilaran around 13:00. We decided to make a little d-tour on the Pangloa peninsula. This is in fact part of the Bohol island where most tourist come. The bigger resorts and better beaches are on this small peninsula. We wanted to catch the ferry at 16:10 but that ferry decided not to go since there were to few people around so we had to wait for the 17:30 ferry. We got back to Cebu around 19:30. Back to the reality of research.

Time flies when you're having fun

Hello friends,

Time flies when you're having fun is the title of my second blog and indeed its true.
Its been already more then 3 weeks since my first blog and its about time for an update.
I ended my last blog with telling you about some of the issues I had/have with conducting interviews, the host organization (the University of San Carlos) and the happy news that my colleague Karin and I were moving into our new home away from home.


First of all I will tell you a little bit about the progress I have made with regard to my research here in Cebu. In the last couple of weeks the focus has been on conducting interviews for my empirical research. I managed to get in contact and conduct interviews with several governmental departments (Department of Industry and Trade & National Economic Development Authority), semi-governmental organizations (Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology & Cebu Investment Promotion Center) and the local newspaper (Sun Star newspaper Network). It has been really a great feeling to finally gather data. However, the companies are still giving me a hard time, with confidentiality being their key-word in denying me access. Nonetheless I have good hope that at the end of my stay here in Cebu, I will have enough data to write a substantial thesis about the impact of the economic crisis.
On the 9th of march we moved into our new condo. A few day before that I found 'Pete's Condo Ville' on a website and we went straight to the condo ville to ask if there was any free space. The manager from the condo ville was happy to inform us that there were several condo's still open for renting. We decided to sign a 2 months contract and so far it has been great. The condo is close to the University, close to the main road out of Talamban (the barangay in which the condo is situated) which goes directly to the shopping mall Ayala and we even have a swimming pool! The swimming pool is particularly good with Cebu's weather always hovering around 30 to 35 degrees Celsius.

What has been lacking in the last couple of weeks is that we have not seen much outside Cebu. It would be a shame to not take the opportunity to see some of the other beautiful islands around Cebu. Therefore we are planning to make a trip to Bohol next week and other islands like Siargao later on, probably in May. Bohol is only 2 hours away by ferry and it has some amazing creatures (for example the Tarsius which can only be found on Bohol I believe) and sitings (the chocolate hills, also something that can only be found on Bohol). I am really excited to go to Bohol, it seems like a really unique island.


Last week + today (the 4th of march) has been totally about 'holy week', in other words easter. People tend to go and visit family in this 'holy week' and obviously go to church multiple times to celebrate the live and death of Jesus Christ. The Philippines, being a catholic country, functioned only for 10% in the last days, almost everybody is free and all shops and malls were closed down on Thursday and Friday. Strangely enough they were opened again on Saturday and today (sunday) everything is open as well, even though easter is not really over yet.

The upcoming weeks will be a 50-50 mix of work and pleasure hopefully. Both Karin and I will have to see how the gathering of data will go in the upcoming weeks but we just gotta go and see some of the beautiful nature the Philippines has to offer. Another thing on the agenda is finally getting my PADI (open water diving license) and maybe even the advanced PADI if I got the time/money. I really love snorkeling and diving, so far what I have seen of the underwater world is just amazing and the PADI will give me the opportunity to go even further into that world!

Once we get back from Bohol I will update this blog again.
Thanks again for showing interest in my blog.

Take care and have fun!

My very first blog!

My dear People,

Welcome to my very first blog! Some people might be surprised that I started writing a blog, in fact it is quite surprising to me as well! The reason for starting to work on a blog is simple. This blog gives me the opportunity of killing multiple birds with just 1 stone. Because it saves me time to keep all you fine people up to date, I will try to write a little more then I normally would in any average email that I would send to one of you. It's been already more then 1 month since I left the Netherlands. Therefore it will be kinda hard to summarize more then 4 weeks in just 1 blog. Nonetheless I will try to do my best providing you all with some of my adventures here in Cebu (the Philippines).

First I will take you all back to how this internship started for me and what I'm doing here in Cebu. In September 2009 I started the master program International Development Studies (IDS) at the university of Utrecht (Holland). In this master program there is a internship integrated of 4 months. After being in the field gathering data, a master thesis will be produced which will form the 'end assignment' for this master. The list of possibilities was endless, ranging from basically anywhere in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Every internship is linked to a specific topic, again with endless possibilities. During my bachelor (Human Geography) I mostly studied Economic Geography, Development Geography and courses like Globalization and Geography of Network so when I got the list of internships I straight away searched for a internship where at least some of these topics were involved. This led me to my current internship in the Philippines. The topic formulated around this internship was 'the impact of the economic crisis and how to cope with the crisis'. A very broad but interesting topic which I narrowed down during the first 2 periods of my master program to a specific sector, the business process outsourcing sector (namely call centers). The business process outsourcing sector is a very competitive global economic sector mostly situated in developing countries but very much linked to our 'developed' world.

With this being said, I will actually start to write about my adventures in Cebu and some other places. On the 6th of February me and my co-student Karin (doing her internship on micro-savings in Cebu) flew from the Amsterdam (Schiphol) Airport to Hong Kong. A very long flight but a rather good one compared to some flights in the past. We stayed in Hong Kong for 3 days. It is really an amazing city, very much Asian but definitely with some British influence still present in the city today. Because our time was limited we tried to see as much as possible but both jet-lag and weather were against us. Don't get me wrong we did see plenty of things but just not as much as we wanted to. On February 10 we flew to Cebu City & Mactan International Airport which is a direct flight from Hong Kong. We arrived around 15:00 in the afternoon (some delay) and were picked up by our host organization, the University of San Carlos. In the first 4 weeks we stayed at the Golden Valley Hotel, situated just behind the main campus in downtown Cebu City. Downtown is a pretty dirty area with open sewers etc. and he&she bikini bars lol. Golden Vally Hotel formed our base camp for making trips to around Cebu City and in fact the entire island. The first 4 weeks can be divided into 2 parts. The first 2 weeks were basically just about getting to know the city, the island, the way of life and where to eat or not. We made trips to beautiful places like moalboal (west side of Cebu island) and malapascua (small island just above the north tip of Cebu island) but also the Spanish fortress downtown in Cebu City and the big shopping malls of Cebu (Ayala & SM). As transportation we used taxi's in the city and the big regional bus for our trips to moalboal and malapascua. The second part of these 4 weeks were more focus on the internship itself. We switched from taxi transportation to jeepney's. Jeepney's are basically mini-vans which are open on the backside, people hop in and out for 7 or 8 pesos (12 euro cent). These jeepney's ride specific lines and there are tons of them riding around on each route so its really easy to get around in them once you get to know their specific routes. As I said, the second part of the first 4 weeks was more focused on the internship. The biggest problem was that things were going really slow. Something which is common in the developing world I reckon but still somewhat annoying for us Western people. We didn't get our university card, library card or any local supervisor until the fourth week of our stay here which was last week. My local supervisor is assistant professor Frank Largo, he is working for the economics department at the university. The economic department is not situated at the main campus but at the north campus or talamban campus. Via the external affairs department I found out that Frank Largo, at first, was very hesitate to work with me. This is/was because of his experience with foreign students in the past. Last year a guy from the University of Amsterdam studied here doing related research to mine and he left a very bad impression on the local people. This is/was of course putting me in a weird situation where people are reserved to work with you and I can't really do much about it. Basically he wanted me to pay him extra for his service to help me. Something that I thought was really weird and external affairs did not agree with him either. Not really a great way to start working together but nonetheless the way it started for me. I just hope that he will put at least some effort in helping me gathering information on the business process outsourcing sector in Cebu and perhaps he can introduce me to the local/national organizations that work in the sector and the companies. Already he said that it's gonna be very hard to conduct interviews. This is something that I will have to see in the upcoming weeks.

Yesterday we moved from the Golden Vally Hotel to an uptown condo at Pete's Condoville. I found this place online after searching for a while, since both Karin and I wanted to move out of downtown more towards the talamban area (uptown) for easier contact with the economic department of the university. The upcoming weeks will be all about getting people in the companies and organizations to do interviews with me, which will hopefully provide me with the information I need to answer my research questions.


Thanks for showing interest in my very first blog! I will try to update with another story soonish.

Greetings, Peter