Holidays at Grand Mags: Happy Happy Joy Joy

I've got a secret. It's so good I can't keep it, but I worry that by letting it go, I might destroy it. With apologies to John Fante, it's as though a delicate white bird has floated through my window. It means me no harm - innocent, sweet bird – but rather than wait for it to leave, I can't help but snatch at it and hammer it across the page.

We have found somewhere that is as close to a perfect holiday location as I can imagine and if you choose to go anywhere else on your next holiday, you will be passing up the opportunity to make your life considerably better.

It's wrong to say that it's not developed – there's a McDonalds and even a mall – but there certainly aren't many white folk about. To be honest, the centre of the towns aren't all that great and you'd be hard pushed to find anything better than an average meal either.

And yet... And yet, I implore you: the next time you are planning a holiday, save up and come to the Philippines. When you get here, don't even leave the airport in Manila, but get straight on a plane to Dumaguete (“Doo-ma-Getty”) and start what will surely be one of the best holidays of your weird little life.

It may sound faintly racist, but Negros Oriental – the eastern part of the island of Negros and Dumaguete's father province – is utterly jam-packed with the kind of attractions that would warrant a holiday of their own.

And the fact that Dumaguete itself is a bit of a dump? No problem, stay in one of the seaside resorts further down the coast. Worried about the lack of Whitey? Brilliant! And, as it's the Philippines, virtually everyone speaks at least conversational English anyway. Worried about the lack of fine-dining? You'll at least be compensated with some of the best mangos in the world. You'll also quickly realise that life here is so perfect, you can almost forget about food.

Photo: Wee Mo

Having checked into our beach-front accommodation, we barely had a chance to wolf down some breakfast before heading to the nearby Atlantis resort (no, nothing to do with that one) where we were introduced to our photographer/dive instructor and hurried onto a boat. We were heading to Apo, a volcanic island an hour from the coast. It's famous for simply rising out of the sea following a massive eruption 300 years ago, and now for being one of the world's best dive sites. Looking back from our catamaran, Negros looked something like Monkey Island – and the people habiting it are even less aware of how great the place is they call “home.”

Wee Mo and I are continuing to work on a plan which will result in us getting our PADI Open Water licences without having to pay, but as we only had a day on Apo, we were more than happy to be offered the Introduction to Diving course gratis.

Some childishly-simple instruction and a back-roll later and we were in one of the planet's richest, most diverse underwater landscapes. Alas, as amateur divers, we weren't allowed to take a camera down, so my utterly inadequate words will have to suffice, but darling, it really is better, down where it's wetter, under the sea. You know when someone inanely suggests that sci-fi set designers must smoke a load of drugs? It's bullshit – they probably just had a paddle around underwater.

Our time swimming past brain-like coral, dancing enenema and flirtatious clown fish evaporated so fast we demanded a recount (although I was a little relieved as I blitzed through my oxygen far faster than anyone else). After this doctored hour passed, we took lunch on the beach at Apo and listened to our dive instructor tell us about the fantastically complicated world of underwater photography.

In truth, we farted away more time than we should have on that wonderful little place, and it was pouring by the time we got to Balanan Lake. Still, even through the deluge, there was enough of the pretty green lake on show to let us see it'd be a grand day out in its own right.

The next day we were wrenched from bed at 5:30 and on the road by 6:00, heading north to the largely unremarkable town of Bais. Unremarkable on land, perhaps, but we were there for another aquatic adventure. Over an hour on a boat later and we were bobbing around on the still, glassy ocean waiting with no-one else around, beginning to lose hope.

My stupid, graceless vocabulary can't really capture what happened next. Thankfully our cameras could because flying-fish took to the air and for three hours “the grey rain-curtain of this world rolled back”, and we witnessed something altogether more marvellous:

Photo: Wee Mo

In our time out on the Tanon strait, we must have seen over 300 spinner dolphins, and that night, when we closed our eyes we could see them flying through the air and water, bidding us a merry “good day!”
Fellow mammals left behind, it was time for lunch, but rather than head back to land, our guide had arranged lunch at the Manuyod sandbar. We weren't hungry in the slightest (in fact, I don't remember once being hungry in the Philippines) but disembarked with everyone else anyway. There are currently four of these stilted bungalows jutting out from a 7km stretch of white sand that's only visible at low tide.

Photo: Wee Mo

And it was here that The Fear rose up on me, because no one in charge of these stunning guesthouses has the slightest idea what to do with them: they don't know how to market them, decorate them, maintain them, or protect them. Instead, they asked us for ideas, as though with our high-falutin' foreigness, we might be able to give them the answers. We sat talking, all the time thinking: “My god, my god they don't even know what they've got here... All this perfection.”

It's hard not to worry about what might happen with such naivety: these stilted huts are actually owned by the local government. The right/wrong kind of private investment will make mince-meat out of the entire province.

I think everyone should go to Negros Oriental, I really do. It makes Thailand look like a crass cartoon, a mockery of the term “idyllic.” The diving and dolphin-watching were two activities of dozens you can do within a few hours drive on one half of this one wee island. Hell, two hours further to the north you can trek to the top of an active volcano.

But at the same time, I don't want anyone to go. I want it to stay just as it was for us: unaware of its brilliance, flawless as a memory. I feel genuinely queasy at the thought of an accountant seeing its potential and driving in a construction squad to rip the place up. We saw hundreds of dolphins that morning – would that be possible if it was turned into another Boracay? Another Koh Samui? Eesh.

Still, my advice – and I'm only telling you this because I like you – is to go to the Philippines ahead of anywhere else in Asia. Just go soon – and don't tell anyone else about it.

Next: Magic People, Voodoo People