BY: RACHELLE M. NESSIA
Not a single soul was in sight when the two men drove their motorbikes into what appeared to be an empty beach. Turning off their engines, they sat back and took in the view. Their feet luxuriated in its powdery sand, a rippling swathe of crystal blue ocean gently kissing a shoreline that stretched in a lazy curve. Clumps of greenery grew wildly at the fringes while coconut trees gently swayed at a distance. The entire scenery was bathed in the golden glow of the setting sun, highlighting the raw, untouched beauty of a paradise that was either forgotten or simply frozen in time.
The beach was somewhere in the fishing village of Marcilla in the town of Coron, Busuanga island, Philippines, and one of the two men was Philipp Dukatz, a German tourist in the midst of his one-year trek across Southeast Asia. He has already been to numerous beaches in his trip across the region, but the beauty of that lonely beach in Marcilla was one that took his breath away. “There was literally nothing there…no houses, no people, no boats,” he said. “This is a true adventure which I like to remember.”
An hour earlier, the beach was just a marked spot on a hand drawn map from a motorbike rent shop in Coron for Philipp and his friend, Dolf, a tourist from Belgium. They picked up the map after hearing of a beautiful, remote beach hardly visited by tourists.
What they first thought was a ten-minute drive turned out to be a “one-hour odyssey” of rough roads and sketchy, steep paths. “At one point, we thought we were lost and considered turning around because we hadn’t seen another person for a while and we were running out of gas,” said Philipp.
Although the trip did not look promising at that point, the two tourists were determined to seek out this mysteriously secluded beach they heard of. They were eventually rewarded for their efforts. “As we set foot on the beach, it was like we had just discovered paradise,” said Philipp. “Walking along an endless, powdery pristine beach, having it all for yourself with no one else around is something you hardly find in Asia anymore.”
The German traveler has discovered ‘untouched’ gems of the Philippines. He stayed for three months in the country, during which he visited roughly 20 places, a feat that even most locals could not claim. He surfed, dove, swam, jumped off cliffs, trekked, climbed a volcano, and drove a motorbike along the shoreline. He did it all in a country he described as having it all.
ESCapology
Philipp was in the midst of his one-year expedition when he arrived in the Philippines. His journey brought him to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma. But at the end, it was in the archipelagic country of the Philippines, its people and the rugged landscape, that Philipp lost his heart to.
In January 2013, Philipp, then a 34-year old marketing and advertising professional from a small German town called Oelde, quit his job to embark on a one-year trip across Southeast Asia. Germany, he said, is a stark contrast to the Philippines. “We don’t have many natural attractions such as pristine beaches, volcanoes, or rain forests. Everything here is way more developed, plus it’s rather cold and the weather often rainy.” His trip was triggered by the need to take a break from the routine and daily treadmill of the corporate world. “I just wanted to break free for a while, enjoy my freedom, the freedom to do and to not do whatever I wanted and to see something new again,” he said.
Philipp’s goal was to be thorough in his Asian adventure: take ground transport as often as possible and to travel as the locals do. Low and slow were exactly how he made his way around the Philippines. He rode roughshod on top of jeepneys with the wind in his face in Mountain Province, folded his tall frame inside overloaded tricycles with almost no leg space, took the eight-hour bus trip to Baguio, rode in bancas with local fishermen to Sambawan Island, and rented motorbikes to cruise around Siquijor.
He extensively blogged about his every adventure, and even his misadventures, like how he twisted his ankle after climbing Mt. Bulusan. He peppered his posts in his blog - called ESCapology - with a slew of striking photos, the images sometimes pensive, sometimes whimsical.
But it would be several months after he left the Philippines that Filipino netizens would come to know Philipp and his love for the country.
Social media star
When Ryan Buaron, 33, received a message from Philipp over Facebook, he was skeptical at first. “Dear Tourism Paradise Philippines-Team,” Philipp’s message read. “My name is Philipp.. having traveled all of Southeast Asia last year, I can say that I had the best time in the Philippines and that it was my favorite country after all.”
Ryan, a Filipino marketing professional based in Malaysia, curates content for Tourism Paradise Philippines, a social media site promoting traveling in the Philippines with a current following of more than 300,000. “I was a bit skeptical. I review everything that’s posted on the site and I exercise a tight control over the content. But when I reviewed his blog posts, I thought it offers a great, fresher perspective of the country,” said Ryan.
On July 1, 2014, Philipp’s letter was posted on their Facebook page. Along with it was a photo of a grinning, shirtless Philipp, tall at 6’4” and ripped with washboard abs, his dark blonde locks wet and disheveled. He stood akimbo at the bow of a banca, the turquoise waters of El Nido shimmering like a thousand jewels behind him.
“I chose the picture because it’s a powerful image to encourage travelers: a good-looking man, with spectacular Philippine lagoon as a backdrop. Is it safe to travel in the Philippines? The photo alone would tell a hesitant foreigner that yes, it is,” said Ryan.
The post quickly went viral overnight. It has since been shared more than 51,000 times and, according to Ryan, reached an audience of 3.5 million people online. Generating more than 7,000 likes, it is also their page’s most liked post to date. “Filipinos love validation from an outsider and therefore perceived unbiased,” Ryan explained. “We Filipinos know that we don’t have a perfect country but things like this do remind us of the good things in ourselves and it feels good.”
For Philipp, it’s a surreal experience. Now that he’s back in Germany and transitioning into a new job in the corporate world, he admits that he doesn’t know what to make of his new found popularity for now. “Being a bit far away from it all, I’m not even sure about that popularity or if I can even comprehend it properly,” he said. “It’s a great feeling, though, to know that a lot of people have seen my work and got to like it.”
The day Philipp’s letter went viral on Facebook was his 35th birthday. He called it “the best birthday present” and spent a big part of the day replying to emails and comments, numbering to almost 700, that people left on his blog. Click to continue reading