For a bit of a taste of life in Palawan, below is an excerpt from a message home during my travels about the Underground River and for those who know me, yet another adventure in my continuing fascination with the wild and wonderful world of strange foods…

“…The big attraction here at Sabang is the ‘Underground River’ and I did the trip there today which was pretty amazing. You enter the river through the mouth of a cave, travelling in small boats with six or eight people in them, along with a guide and a strong spotlight (attached to a car battery…). The river itself is 8 kms long, flowing through this beautiful cave system filled with fabulous rock formations, stalagmites and stalactites, and although we only travelled 1.5 kms it was pretty cool…. pitch black, at times narrow, and at other times within massive caves where the top of the cave must have been ten stories high… we had to wear plastic helmets while in the boat, possibly to protect ourselves from hitting our heads on some of the low outcroppings of rock, but even more useful to provide a little protection in the parts of the cave where there is a continual light, cold rain that falls… of course it is not really rain, but rather water that has penetrated through the forest and root systems of the trees on the mountain above… well, that’s where about 90% of it comes from… the other 10% is actually falling guano… that’s the polite way of saying that is literally raining bat shit… so particularly in those parts of the caves, when looking up in jaw-dropping awe at the fabulous formations above, it’s a good idea to keep your mouth shut!

While on the gross theme, after the cave trip, and while having lunch back here at a small beach restaurant with a group of mostly older Philippina women – all quite funny and giggling most of the day – I took advantage of the opportunity to buy a bowl of ‘tamilok’ from an older woman trying to sell her small supply… sadly for her I was the only one that took her up on her offer… when all the women around the table saw me buying the bowl they started howling in laughter, yet as it turns out, not one of them had ever tried this delicacy, and even worse, not one of them would even have a taste as I offered the bowl around to each of them…

I had heard about tamilok from the lovely old guide who had taken me on a boat trip through the mangrove forest the day before, and he had said that not only did they taste good, but they were good for you (and an aphrodisiac!), and that local people had been collecting and eating them for a long time…

So what is tamilok? Well, they are actually these large, fat, slimy, white worms that live in the wood of the mangrove trees… apparently they poke themselves out a little in the morning, and the locals can then grab them and pull the whole worm out of the tree… I ate four or five of them, and most were about 6 to 8 inches long (very filling!!), and while I had been told that they tasted like oysters, I think that’s a bit of a stretch… they are served with a little vinegar sauce with some sugar mixed in which helps a little bit, but really, they just taste like big, fat, slimy worms!!