The Monkey In Me: Apo Island

Apo Island is the one HPR raves about all the time and is one of his favourite place to visit as he has been going there religiously for the past few years. After I "hijacked" his trip to Koh Lipe in March this year, this time round, HPR invited me to join him to Apo Island. A no brainer!!! obviously I was rapted and said YES YES YES!!!

HPR is one of the best travel buddies I have and we get along well together and most important of all, we share the same interest for critters in the underwater world!!

Transfers came to pick us up at 9am and we arrived at Apo Island at 11am. What can I say, the view from our room is just breathtaking and so picturesque. Apo is a very laid back island and the corals are amazing as most of it is still soft and so colourful. Not much varieties of fish compared to Sipadan, although there are no sharks, its got heavy traffic for turtles!!! Actually, I saw my lst eagle ray and spotted a razor rocky fish here on Apo!!!

Turtle - Left = HPR and Right = SC = threegather!!!

I was really naughty and had a few joy rides on the grandpas and grandmas (turtles) myself. The local kids do it all the time, so the turtles are used to it and do not feel threatened or harassed at all.

I felt like a turtle myself riding on them and the turtle felt relaxed and just pulled me/us along so effortlessly as it did not show signs of struggle at all. Whilst it was flapping its arms, I/we were kicking our fins to help us along - just a super special turtle ride and doing it threegather like teamwork.

The weather was extremely warm and humid and I had a hard time sleeping at night as the generator for electricity is turned off at 9pm!!! Yesssss the whole island is in darkness. We were sleeping very early and waking up at the crack of dawn or we would be in bed with our torches on and playing "frustration".

The locals and staff at the Liberty Resort were extremely friendly and I had days where I would be in the restaurant kitchen mucking around making curry puffs, baking bread or scones and watching Edna (head chef) cook their local favourite dish called Adobe Pork!!!

Whilst we were there, Apo had a "Fiesta Day" and my contribution was to cook duck chinese style!!! yesssss 100 years old duck they sent down to the resort from the lighthouse and it was the skinniest smallest duck I have ever seen as everything in OZ is on steroids!!! I also watched them slaughter a 70kg pig for the feast.

Those who ate the duck I cooked, complimented the flavours and taste was good, but it was just tooooo tough as you could not chew it!!!!!

Da 100yr old tough duck

All in the name of fun and participation, it was another new experience for me.... the whole island was in party mode!!! We went into strangers home and ate their food and went eating from house to house!!! We did not feel out of place and felt like we were one of them. Leave it to the islanders, they sure know how to party. Disco music and the live band beating of drums were blasting across from the beach over to the hills to the other side of the island till the wee hours of the morning!!!

Walking my new "pet" lol

Every Wednesday, there is a big market and we took the pumpboat across to Malatapay. Another eye opener day for me as I even got to "walk a pig"!!

As usual, we sampled a lot of local food and cakes and did some light shopping and bought some fresh local fruits.

When we are not in the water, we will be sitting on our balcony and eating rambutans or lonsonges aka langsats in Malaysia and watching the world go by.... so serene and beautifully quiet, we can just sit back, relax and enjoy this piece of paradise!