Dive-Monster Rhoody

Hayahay is a very famous Open Air Restaurant in Dumaguete. The variety of food reaches from fresh sea-food to different local dishes and good Pizza. They have three -. If you wanna use them, better give them a call and make a reservation. The baked Talaba (Oyster) for 120 Peso is a must-try. The beer-prices are around 30 peso and the food has a good value for the price. Pizza is in the range 180 - 260 Peso. All fish and seafood is fresh and you can choose your crabs and lobster from the tank.

Hayahay is also well known for good life music. Wednesday is the day where all Dumaguete Rastafari go to listen to some bands including the local heroes ENCHI. Thursday is acoustic night with Allen who also plays some sets on friday in exchange with a band where i forgot the name. It is the day for smooth jazzy pop. Saturday are some louder tunes around when there is the Rock night.

One thing I recognized at the last visit is that Hayahay seems to charge a kind of foreigner or longnose tax of 4 %. I mentioned it to the waitress and asked what it is and she said government tax. As there are NO 4% government tax in the Philippines I asked again. She blushed (what is very rare in  the PI) and walked away. Another waiter came and said I don’t have to pay it !?! Also funny that the day before I was visiting Hayahay and had 3 beer at the bar and paid 90 peso. There was no government or long-nose tax on that. It is also not mentioned anywhere in the menu that there is a government tax ox service charge. … Or it is just a price-rise for foreigners ??? 

 It is not about the 4 %, I just don’t like if guys who eat and drink a lot, get charged extra on top of it. Maybe we should also occupy 2 big tables with 8 people and drink 2 Red Horse grande in 5 hours, but order a bucket of ice each 15 minutes.  

Still a great Hang-Out, I will follow up with Sande the manager why, what and when this 4% are charged and when not…

 cheers

Rhoody

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Back from Angeles City into real life I received a txt from a friend who stays here for a couple of month to write his first novel. He was a student of mine back at Asia Divers in Puerto Galera and I met him on www.Dumagueteinfo.com accidently. He asked me to meet for a “coming-home” drink at Hayahay. Hey, no problem, quick shower, on the bike and off Rhoody goes. At Hayahay we met Mike Feeney who has a small Diveshop at the Boulevard. He told me that he may have an Apo Island Trip coming friday and we decided to join.

We met at 8:00 at Mikes Adventure-Diveshop to sign in the paperwork. and jumped into Mikes Easy-ride with 3 girls who wanna go to Apo for snorkling. Mike asked me If I have a problem to take 2 more divers as they called him with short notice. He ensured me that they are all good so no problem with me. We met in Dauin where his boat is. After the tanks and the were on the boat we started our 40 minute boatridt to Apo. We had a nice mixed group, a swedish, french, philippino, british, german mix ensured thatthere was a lot to talk about.

The first divesite was Chapel-Point, a shallow corall plateau goes into a wall on 8 meters and drops down to 40+ meters. The wall is coverd with softcorals and sponges. Along the wall are some small caves and overhangs. In one of those we found a blue ribbon eel, 2 clown frogfish and some good-sized scorpionfish. When the wall ends it is time to multilevel up to reach the area of Katipanan where you see beautifull softcoral gardens as far the visibility allows. The snorklers were already on the boat, so we left the water after 58 minutes.

We spend our surface interval on the Island, where 20 “lovely” T-shirt ladies welcomed us to show us their souvenirs. There is a lovely little resort on the Island where we went for lunch. As Apo Island is very small and the main-income of the people there is fishing it was a bit sureprising that the resort was out of stock for all fish-dishes on the menu…  

While we divers wanted to go for the second dive the snorklers enjoied to hang around and moved very slowly. The swedish guys started already with SanMiguel Light, so we had to force them a bit to go back to the banka.

The second dive started at Rock Point east. The stunning corals at the entry area  are only at a depth of 3 meters and goes over into a steep slope to the right. After 10 minutes into the dive a gentle current picks up to bring you around the corner to Rock Piont west. While drifting along the slope you feel like in a aquarium. Millions of colorful reef-fish just surrounding you with their nose in the current.  After passing the corner the current stops and you finally make your safety stop in the soft-coral gardens around the mooring bouje of Rock-Point west. After 65 minutes we were back on the boat. A bit cold as we had no sun.

The trip back was a bit rough and nothing and nobody stood dry on the boat. Back at Dauin into the easy-ride and 25 minutes to the dive-shop where we finally got some food and cold drinks. Diving with the smaller dive-shops here is different as you will miss some convinience of the big resorts but it also has more charme. I can highly recommend Mikes Adventure-diveshop for this unforgetable trip.

cheers

Rhoody

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Finally I made it back home to Dumaguete. The last days in Angeles City were full of work with The Dane creating a 2008 concept for our partnership with www.DumagueteInfo.com and work on this and some other pages. We could not finish all work in time that I have to reschedule my flight back home to Dumaguete a couple of days. The episode and expierience with the Cebu Pacific call-center and customer-service is a story for itself and I will write another story about that amzing expierience.

Tom and me are known that we love good food and Kim is a fantastic cook with the size of his portions it would be no problem to feed half Dumaguete with the leftovers of one cooking session. After our dinner we hung around lazy on the sofa to watch some episodes of “Hells Kitchen”.

On my last night in Angeles City we decided at 11 pm to go out for a “good bye” drink…. I can tell you not the wisest decision of my life. We met some friends and the guy decided to do their very best to make me missing my pick up at 9 am next morning. At 8 am I finally run out of a pub to jump in a trike heading home to Kims house and threw all my stuff into my suitcase. The driver was already waiting to bring me to the domestic Airport in Manila. His only comment after a brief good morning was : Are you sure they will allow you on board of the aircraft?

And yes they did !!!  

After 34 hours without sleep, a couple of beer and 2 packs of cigarettes my feet touched Negros ground around 3:30 pm in the afternoon. After all it was a fantastic pleasure and business trip but I am happy to survive it and being back in Dumaguete for some diving.

cheers

Rhoody

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… from a long night out we all needed a recovery day and a late breakfast. The day was almost over when Kim and me started to work a bit on the computer. This blog is one of the results by the way. As it took quite some time to upload everything and try yo get the right settings done I ended up deadly tired falling asleep at 4 in the morning in front of the notebook.

Our dinner  next evening was at C’ Italian  Restaurant. IMHO the absolute best Restaurant in the Philippines. Chef Chris is an absolute magician. As we were invited we followed the host and had a great fondue. I personally am not the biggest fondue fan but at the end it was again a great meal. It was a kind of business dinner, but with in very relaxed atmosphere. Leaving C’ Italian we decided to have some beer in town but this night I went home a little bit earlier.

New Years eve had arrived and the whole crowd got out for dinner to Swiss Chalet. A nice place with “Meat”-food, good sized delicious portions. I personally like the Salami-Cheese appetizer platter very much, but I guess one of the reasons is that I am from Dumaguete where you just don’t have this kind of cheese and Salami available. My Cordon Bleu with Swiss Cheese with very good and after paying we went down to 2 different Clubs before hitting Roadhouse at 11:pm.

New Years Eve in Angeles (and I guess in most City’s of the Philippines) means lasing people throwing firecrackers after you, so we were in the Club until 4 in the morning. Being known as one of the best Bars in Angeles City it the time was flying and the party a blast. You can’t compare the nightlife of Dumaguete or other Cities with Angeles. It is not only the GoGo scene, AC is sizzling when the night comes until the sun rises. Talking about sunrise… my memories were a bit foggy at that time so we went back home and had a long sleep to wake up just in time for a shower and New Years dinner at Fortune, a Chinese Restaurant. It was a great dinner again, the only disturbing thing was our neighbor table with 10 or so shouting Koreans. A kind of disgusting, why does nobody throw Fire-crackers after them…

Cheers for now

Rhoody

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Dumaguete, is the capital of the province Negros Oriental, in the central Visayas. You can get to Dumaguete either with a 60 minutes flight from Manila or by bus and ferry from Cebu. Most of the Dumaguete dive-sides, hotels and dive center are 15 kilometer south of the City in the beautiful little town of Dauin.
Diving in the Philippines don’t has to hide from any “big” destination in the world of diving. It is a paradise for macro-lovers and many professional underwater- photographers are coming to Dumaguete. The diveresorts around Dauin are also the starting-point for full daytrips to the well knows surrounding islands like Apo Island, Sumilon Island or Siquijor Island. Some dive-operators are also offering Island-hoping to the more remote Islands of Bohol and Malapasqua. The dark volcanic sand is home to a enormous variety of critters. The 15 divesites around Dauin can be reached within 15 Minutes with a speedboat. Some of them are accessible even as a shore-dive.
Most operators are offering up to four dives daily and additional Night dives and Mandarin fish-dives. All divespots in this area are protected areas, so called „Marine-Sanctuaries“ A line of buoys around this sanctuaries that no boat and fishermen enters this area. That also means the the diveboat ankers outside and the diver has to swim inside the sanctuary after the water entry and has to return to the boat at the end of the dive. Depending on the time of the year, the moon and the tides you can get into some currents from time to time. The well trained guides usually change their diveplans if that happens and drift with the group all the way to the other side of the sanctuaries. The diveboat will follow the group and picks it up on the other side of the sanctuary.