Hellobee

This is the kids’ fifth time in El Nido and Mr. Bee and I have been here even more than that, but it feels very different now that we’re living here instead of just visiting. Mr. Bee’s parents think that it’s way too difficult for us to stay an extended period of time, especially with two young children, but we’re up to the challenge! Charlie and Olive are pretty adaptable and they’ll become little nature lovers here. I’m an adventure seeker that loves change, so this is right up my alley. Life in El Nido is pretty much the opposite of what our life was like in Brooklyn, so I thought I’d share some of the ways parenting has already changed for us.

In front of our new house with Taro-chan, a 6-month yorkie pup. 

1) There is no mail service. When I tell my friends that there is no mail service, they ask, “Not even Amazon?” Nope no mail at all! Electricity wasn’t even available 24 hours a day on the island until this year, credit cards aren’t accepted anywhere, and the town just got its first atm this past week. Even though El Nido is a bustling tourist town, it’s pretty remote and we have to drive 6 hours to the island capital or take a flight to Manila to buy many basics. We remind the kids that once certain things we’ve brought with us run out, we’re not going to be able to buy anymore so they have to ration them and not waste them. I don’t think they really get this yet, but they will soon!

2) There is no trash service. Bottles can be recycled in town, but there is no trash service so everyone burns it. In Brooklyn I was used to recycling everything, from composting to textiles. We even had our own composting bin with worms in our little apartment. The kids are very familiar with every aspect of composting, so we’re excited to start a composting bin here. Not having trash service though has made us very conscious of not creating waste, and it’s something we’ve been talking about with the kids daily. We try to reduce, reuse, recycle, and not create waste as much as we can.

3) We’re going to reduce our consumption of meat. Mr. Bee and I are huge meat eaters, but we’d been wanting to reduce our meat consumption for some time, mainly for health reasons. We especially wanted to completely eliminate eating pork, but the kids love bacon (because it’s so delicious!). Now that we’re surrounded by livestock (Mr. Bee’s parents have 2 pigs), it’s much harder for me to eat meat. We’re definitely going to be eating way more vegetables and much less meat while we’re here.

The wet market that’s open every Wednesday and Saturday. They sell fruit, veggies, meat, seafood, and small livestock.

4) We’re really going to be in touch with nature. When we’ve visited in the past, we’ve always stayed in the nice beachfront cottages meant for guests. But now that we’re living here, our house is on the more undeveloped side of the property where there are many more critters. Our first night here we found a baby frog in the kitchen, two lizards in the kids’ room (they’re sharing a room), thousands of bugs (particularly ants), and some sort of animal that’s been scampering on our roof every day. I’m not particularly squeamish about bugs, though I am a bit of a germ freak, so I am on a bug killing mission. It doesn’t really seem to bother the kids though.

5) They can never pet any animals. The kids are used to petting dogs on the street all the time in Brooklyn, but there are no vets here and many stray dogs, so they know that they’re not to pet any dogs other than our own. If they were to get rabies, we would have to fly to Manila to get treatment.

6) They have to protect themselves from the sun. It’s winter half the year in New York, but it’s hot, humid, tropical weather year-round here. The kids are pretty fair so we take sun protection seriously. We slather them up with sunblock before they go out and reapply it frequently throughout the day. They also wear hats and when the sun is at its highest between the hours of 10-2, we try not to be out and use uv umbrellas when we are. Still it’s hard to get the kids to care about sun protection as much as we do!

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Life here will definitely be an adjustment for us all. We don’t have many modern conveniences we’re used to, like a washer, dishwasher, vacuum, etc. It’s a much simpler life here, but a less stressful one too. I’m really looking forward to it!