Kayangan Lake in Coron Islands, Palawan, Philippines: Cooking on a Banka

If you ever have the chance to visit Coron Islands, you'll most probably end up in one of the area's most popular tourist spots: Kayangan Lake.

After spending days diving and having boring food (the island resort which we were staying at didn't provide breakfast nor lunch and seeing it was a self sufficient island resort on its own, the food was mediocre at a price); our dive instructor Mike (personally hired by the resort for us) decided it was high time we get some wholesome home cook food on a boat.


Mike, the most awesome dive instructor.
In fact, in my history of diving, he was one of the two best dive instructors I've ever had. I based this judgement on dive experience, helpfulness, friendliness, generosity and knowledge.
Is it a wonder that both of them were of extreme humble origins and possessed incredible modesty?

So he befriended the assistant boatman/dive guide and have him borrowed some basic cooking utensils from his village across the island and then dropped us off at the main island of Coron to do some shopping at the wet market.


A local water village across the island.



After withdrawing some money from town, we proceeded to make our way out to do a couple of dives. Coral diving, which was something different to the many wreck dives we've been having the past couple of days.

Upon surfacing, the boatman brought us to the harbor where we were to trek on our own to Kayangan Lake itself, leaving them to prepare for the meal.






No edit whatsoever on all the photos. Water here was clean as heck.




See how the water color changes in the photos as we got to the shallower part of water. It was emerald, then turquoise blue, and then completely baby blue.

The trek up to Kayangan Lake was a steep one, I regretted not wearing better shoes and instead sticking to my rental booties which was quite painful when stepped on sharp rocks.

And here's the famous view taken FROM the trek on the way to the Kayangan Lake. lol. It's not the lake itself, but the view of the sea from a higher pov.




It was, still, rather breathtaking.


I used Portrait with Scenery mode on my Casio ZR700 for the shot. It would have been a better shot if I were to use flash, but I was getting used to using the many functions of the camera. I tried to take this shot with my iPhone but it was a complete fail, what with the background being too bright and forefront too dark.

With the Portrait with Scenery mode I could have the camera focus on both the near human and the distant scenery. Which has proved to be most useful on my recent trip to Japan. I have used this mode extensively since.



We continued our trek up and then all the way down again towards the fresh water lake on the inland.
When we got to Kayangan Lake, I was instantly pulled in by the immense beauty of the view.









The water was crystal clear, untarnished, a soft cream baby emerald blue and fresh water fish swimming so close and around the rock formation visible from the deck.

The first instinct was to dive in and swim. So I did.










Though soon we were swarmed by mosquitoes. Rainforest, still and fresh water was like a breeding zone for vicious mozzies. We had to hop, skip and jump after surfacing and practically ran back up and down to where our boat waited.

Where our meals waited.
Ah... life.









I also learnt that Mike was not only a great dive instructor, but a great cook. Even given the limited space and utensils to work with.

I've never eaten meal cooked on a banka (crab boat) before, this was definitely a first.





All the photos above were taken with Casio ZR700 with not a single photoshop, straight out of camera and on to the internet. Hence no watermark as well. Most of them were taken with Pop Art mode.