Boracay is almost unrecognisable after the lockdown and radical renovation. There were queues of up to two hours in the harbour for registration and boat tickets. Once we arrived on Boracay, we were happy to wait another half an hour in the taxi queue and then spend up to another hour in a traffic jam for the five kilometres to the Bulabog. Today we need just 45 minutes from Caticlan harbour to our accommodation instead of three and a half hours. Boracay is finally free.

At Bulabog we run straight into many friends from Mindoro. It’s still a bit windy. Sebastian goes out for his first ride straight after checking in at Niu Ohana. I take my Edge to the Freestyle Academy for repairs. Thank you very much for the quick and inexpensive replacement of my strut valve! As the kite won’t be ready until the next morning, we immediately head out into a stormy night. (more…)

The second typhoon costs us a whole week. Sunday evening, the Milagrosa finally leaves Iloilo. Everyone is overjoyed. Together with a Cuyo policeman from our last visit, we empty a few Red Horses on deck. He confirms all my prejudices about Cuyo. Up to six police officers have up to six incidents per 24-hour shift. To. To.

The red horses are the fuel for my master’s examination in seaworthiness. During the night, the wind picks up to 35 knots. With it comes the heaviest swell of my five crossings of the notorious Sulu Sea. The stable lateral position becomes very unstable. Sleeping is only possible – and not very much – on my back. I hum Tom Petty on the way down, Joe Cocker on the way up. Breakers up to five metres high fly over the bow and shake the hull of the 40-metre Milagrosa J5. (more…)

Just four hours and a slightly delayed 2Go ferry later, Tablas is finally back to what I love about the Philippines: silence, peace and simple, pure life. My local kiter buddy Cocoy picks me up directly from the harbour in Odiongan and takes me to the nearby Hiland Resort right on the kiteable beach. I wander through the cockfights and night market, watch a basketball match and celebrate the opening of the island’s first Jollibee with the locals.

The small international local kite community from Tablas drops by the next morning. After 25 days of travelling with just one kiteable day, I’m incredibly happy about the mild 17 knots and 50 cm ramps in the bay of Odiongan. The Amihan finally gets going. With a northerly wind, it is fully onshore. If it turns to the north-east, which is typical of the Amihan, it is more stubborn due to the mountains in the hinterland – then it is better to head to the east coast, e.g. to Aglicay Beach Resort. (more…)

The first post-taifun crossing from Puerto Princesa to Cuyo is surprisingly mild. The captain of the “Blessed Sea Journey” is a real sparrow: after seeing his girlfriend shivering in full winter gear, he turns down the air conditioning in the icebox tourist class to such an extent that 17 Filipinos will probably die of heatstroke by the next morning. Mild waves rock us to sleep.

Some magical places make you cry when you leave. Cuyo does this even on arrival. Early the next morning, the landlady of Niki’s guesthouse greets me by name after almost a year. All the children wave. Every second one of them wants to fondle Steffi’s curls and take a photo to prove that her curls are completely unknown in the Philippines. (more…)

As the typhoon is blocking our further route to Coron, we drive three and a half hours south again by minivan. Shortly after Roxas, we change to a trike. It takes us an hour through the mist-shrouded rainforest mountains to the west side of Palawan to the small coastal town of Port Barton. At some point, the trike driver says “Oh oh, the road is in bad condition.”. An euphenism par excellence.

The road ends up being a single 15 cm deep muddy track with deep ruts and large puddles. Our driver rocks them all and gets a big tip. We get into our accommodation right on the beach and walk a few minutes over to the “centre”. Port Barton is the first place on this trip that really feels Filipino. Bankas in the bay, not too many and not too few people. Good cheap restaurants right under the palm trees on the cosy sandy beach slow us down nicely. (more…)

The most intense three months of work in 20 years of web design are 10,000 kilometres behind me. The same goes for the all-encompassing porn soundtrack from the Eching esoteric sauna at Kuwait airport. After a 28-hour journey, even the topics of conversation of the quartet of paragliding terrorists melt into nothingness in the five-hour speedvan from Puerto Princessa to El Nido.

Seven years ago, we were stuck in 40 cm of mud on a jungle track in the mountains on the more than one-day journey in the other direction by jeepney. Today it’s tarmac and dogs sleeping on it. I look out of the window through the heavy rain. Water buffaloes graze in rice paddies. Herons vulture around them in tag teams after startled speculoos. (more…)

I was super sceptical before my last kitespot. You usually only find so many good reports on the web if someone pays a lot for promotion. But kitesuf-mindoro.com on Bislig Beach near Bulalacao really is an absolute kitesurfing paradise. I immediately decide to stay here for my last week.

The accommodation in five-metre-diameter safari tents or bungalows on the beach is a dream under palm trees rustling in the wind. The turquoise 300 metre wide bay at Bislig Beach points exactly towards Amihan and is just big enough for 20 kiters. As the small resort is already geared towards soft tourism and sustainability, as well as the involvement of the local Magayan tribe, it is still not crowded here. (more…)

15 kiters travel from Camp Kitesurf Mindoro to the village by minivan and take a banka to the island of Libagau, an hour off Mindoro. The spray spills refreshingly over the deck from the crisp swell. In front of the island, we pull the banca on foot over some sea urchin nests through the shallows of today’s low tide towards the beach. Starfish RGB shine in the crystal-clear water.

The island of Libagau looks like the ultimate kitesurfing paradise: turquoise water, white beach, blue sky, green trees. The wind blows sideoff at a good 18 to 22 knots over the spot, which is not without danger. At low tide, the water in the choppy bay behind the sandbank in the south-west of the island is very shallow. There are some rocks and sea urchins. There are also a few sharp pieces of coral on the beach. (more…)

The windiest spot in Asia is located in the very north-west of the Philippine main island of Luzon. Pagudpud is a completely different world again. In the 70s, the Markos regime sent many people here to Hawaii to obtain foreign currency. Today, they are a good deal richer than the rest of the Philippines. The houses are solidly built, some of them real castles, and many of them are fronted by really big cars.

I put up in a cheap homestay. Seas of green rice fields stretch from the village to the high mountains in the south. Saud Beach is pretty much the most idyllic tropical beach I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, Amihan is fully covered by the wind from the coastline. (more…)

I had already put Lakawon on my list of spots at home. A rather luxurious resort occupies a small paradise island full of palm trees surrounded by turquoise shallow water. The banka takes me from Sicogon to Estancia, by minivan to Concepción and then two more large bankas two hours over to the next kiteboarding paradise five kilometres north of Negros.

The Philippine Kitesurfing Championships in Airstyle, Hangtime and Race will take place here over the next four days. More than 50 kiters from all over the world will be competing for the throne. The imported beer, which is actually banned, and several bottles of rum are professionally distributed to the rooms by tractor. Howard Hughes from the Philippines throws one funny round of “Who’s afraid of Duterte?” after another. (more…)

A few weeks ago, the good people at Hangin Kite on Boracay suggested that I visit the Philippine Kitesurfing Championship on Sicogon. Thanks to a delay of just eight hours on the ferry from Cuyo back to Antique, the plan worked out. Together with a Spanish instructor and a competitor from Hamburg, I race two and a half hours from Iloilo to Estancia in the Speedvan.

The next afternoon, a banka full of competitors takes me three quarters of an hour over to Sicogon. The venue is the classy Huni Resort. The infinity pool flows directly into the endless white-blue horizon above the spot. Thanks to rooms beyond the €100 mark, we stay at the slightly cheaper Balay Kogon. The path there is currently still so narrow that only motorbikes can get you there over two kilometres. (more…)

Sometimes it seems as if the harder goals are to achieve, the more valuable they become. Cuyo fully belongs in this category. Located just 100 kilometres as the crow flies from my second kitespot Malalison in the Palawan Sea, the journey takes a good 27 hours. Banka to the mainland, trike, six hours by backfish bus without air conditioning through numerous landslides behind San Jose to Iloilo that have not yet been repaired by the last rainy season.

As nobody could reliably say when the ferry to Cuyo would leave, I arrive six hours early as a precaution. It departs almost on time and, thanks to enough paint on 40-year-old steel, arrives in Cuyo in one piece after 14 hours, even through three metres of swell. Compared to the 29 hours of seasickness caused by a storm from two Swedes for the trip from the other side, which actually took eight hours, my ship was the purest speedboat. (more…)

After nine days, I’ve had enough of the overcrowded Chinese mall of Boracay. The magic of the Philippines lies elsewhere. It’s a two-hour bus journey south through the windswept green seas of rice paddies and crops drying by the roadside. In Culasi, I take a banka to the small fishing island of Malalison near the coast of Antique.

The satellite images promised waves in front of and shallow water behind a small sandbank directly in front of my Nipa hut on the beach. The receptionist at my accommodation Casa Preta provided me with good information over the days via Facebook. On arrival, he turned out to be the warm pole of the village community, which is apparently a legal requirement in the Philippines. (more…)

Boracay is hardly recognisable since my last visit seven years ago. The only thing that remains is the density of the buildings and the crowds – although around 25% of all buildings have been declared illegal and demolished. Just three months after reopening, Boracay is still nowhere near its previous booking figures.

When Philippine President Duterte visited Boracay in 2018, he called the island a “cesspool”. He wasn’t far wrong. in 2012, we kitesurfed the Bulabog slalom between floating poo and condoms after every medium downpour. Large parts of the island smelled like dung heaps. With the six-month complete closure and general renovation, at least that is now a thing of the past. (more…)