Dahican Beach

This is Dahican Beach. It's a long stretch of white sand beach found in Mati City, Davao Oriental. It's also quite known as a surfing spot. To get here, we went through Davao City, took a bus at the Overland Terminal bound for Mati and then took a tricycle for Dahican Beach. Tip: I learned from my boss who's a Davao local that taking a van to Mati is much quicker and more convenient since the bus makes frequent stops to load and unload passengers.

It was low season and obviously not surfing season. I'd say the beach looked pretty much deserted but I honestly didn't mind. I mean, we practically had the beach to ourselves!

My friend and I stayed at Botona Beach Resort and I must say... it was horrible and quite expensive too. We paid PhP1800 for a double room that barely looked like anything in the photos. The room was obviously old and not very well-taken care of that I was not surprised to find a cockroach on top of my backpack the next morning. The only things I was thankful for were the clean-smelling sheets and the working air-conditioner because at least I was able to sleep well. Oh, did I say anything about horrible customer service? To be honest, I'm thankful we didn't have to stay more than one night there since there wasn't much to do and the resort was just terrible. Eventually, I learned from a habal-habal driver that Botona is a very old resort and that we should have opted for newer resorts.

Anyway, enough of that resort because Dahican Beach is actually wonderful and since it's facing the Pacific Ocean, I was able to see the sunrise. 

From Dahican to the Mati bus terminal, we just took the habal-habal (motorcycle) since no tricycles were passing by the road. It's my first motorcycle ride as I'm actually afraid of taking motorcycles since my younger brother had an accident before. Thankfully, though, there's a 40kph speed limit in Mati so it wasn't scary (even without a helmet on).

Yep, motorcycles/habal-habal is a common mode of transport in Davao.

Now, if you find yourself in Davao with time to kill, I think Dahican is a good place to visit. Even more so if you like surfing or if you just want a quiet place to relax.