El Nido March 13th

Went down to the town beach in the morning to watch the Bangka racing. These are scaled down versions of the fishing outrigger boats with a petrol powered stationary motor, they all seemed to run the same make and model of engine. The heats started at about 9am with lots of loudspeaker announcements filling in the seemingly endless gaps in proceedings. Decided to head for Squido's Cafe for breakfast and to exploit their free WiFi service. Pretty good food and reasonable prices at Squido's and they don't seem to mind how long you sit there over one drink while you use the WiFi.
Headed back to the beach just in time for the finals of the Bangka Races. This is serious business here and the top boats are turned out like high bred racing machines. The pilots seem to be picked for their slight frames as much as anything else, not an ounce of fat on any of them. A blue boat called “Budweiser” won the day with “Budweiser 2” taking out second place. Later in the afternoon I got to see cock fights for the first and last time. The fighting birds are pampered with the best feed and groomed to a high gloss before battle. A razor sharp blade is securely fastened to one leg of each bird then they bring each bird into the cockpit along with a sparring partner to get them sufficiently stirred up before the bout. The actual event is over pretty quickly with the winning bird living to fight another day while the loser is quickly dispatched to a pot of boiling water to ready it for plucking and cooking. At least it doesn't go to waste. In the evening and in the same arena as the cock fights they held the boxing festival. This was a strictly amateur event, 3 x 3 minute rounds and the fighters were equipped with head protection. The bouts were fought with plenty of passion with crowd encouragement for each fighter fueled by the gambling. Many of the fighters had more passion than skill but it was very entertaining all the same.