Boracay Food Hunt

There’s more to Boracay than meets the eye. Amidst its seemingly endless stretch of immaculate white sand beaches and bustling scenes lie a food adventure that even the most discerning foodie would take on as a challenge.

Boracay is home to the famous calamasi muffins and dampa—a marketplace of fresh seafood cooked any way you like. Aside from these delicacies, let’s hunt down other cuisines in the island that will surely whet every visitor’s appetite.

Boracay Street Food

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Let’s kickstart this list with Boracay’s very own street foods. Here is where every bite gives you a true taste of the island’s culture. By the late afternoon, the white shore is filled with street food vendors with their “food trucks” selling corn-on-the-cob, balut, different kinds of barbeques, and the famous chori (from chorizo) and longga (from longanisa, the local version of sausage) burgers.

Take a bite of grilled chorizo meat placed on a bun and slathered with sweet and spicy sauce — no veggies or cheese. It’s a great introduction to your food adventure on the island!

Fruit Shakes

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A trip to Boracay won’t be complete without a sampling of its famous fruit shakes. Jonah’s Fruitshake is the most popular among the bunch. A tall order of in-season fruits is enough to quench your thirst after your tanning session on the beach.

The place is also a favorite hangout for local and foreign tourists so do be patient while waiting for your turn to order.

Steak

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If you’re craving for sumptuous steaks in the island, head over to the eastern side (Bulabog Beach area) and you’ll find 7th Note Cafe, a quaint restaurant that offers the best ones in the island. The steak though, is just the tip of the iceberg, as they also offer vegetarian and gluten-free dishes (the only one in the island) for health-conscious visitors.

Home-cooked Filipino Food

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If you’re not too adventurous when it comes to food and you just want to stick to what your palette knows, there are a number of Filipino restaurants in the island. If you want good old home-cooked meals, head over to PauPatri in Station 2. Big servings and rustic ambiance make this wood-polished restaurant great for families or groups.

Don’t expect beachfront view at PauPatri though, as it is located away from the main road and the shore. The calm ambience, however, more than makes up for it.

Cook your Own Food

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Going to Boracay’s wet market is an adventure itself. Talipapa Bukid is in Station 3. Choose from the cheapest and freshest produce in the market, bring it to your hotel, and cook it yourself. Boracay Mini Mart is just a few meters away from Talipapa Bukid, so if there’s an ingredient on your list that you can’t find in the wet market, check this place out.

This list is just a glimpse of the food adventure that awaits you at Boracay. Whatever you’re craving is, you can definitely find it here. Come to the island and experience it yourself!

Treat Your Heart to a Vacation, It Needs One

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Feeling burned out and fried at work? Take some vacation days and turn off the stress.

Working hard and not having fun may prove fatal, according to decade-long studies. The researchers proved that people who take regular vacations are generally healthier than people who don’t. They also have lesser risks of getting a heart attack and they tend to have lower stress levels which can lead to depression. This applies for both men and women.

Vacation is your heart’s medication
A research study in the 1940’s called Framingham Heart Study1 questioned about 750 women with no heart disease and monitored their lifestyle for about 20 years to analyze their risk factors for heart attacks. After two decades, they found out that the least frequent vacationers (one vacation in six years) have 50% higher risks of having a heart attack than the most frequent vacationers (two vacations a year). And the difference was higher among stay-at-home moms.

Another study entitled Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial2 verifies that it is also applicable to men. The nine-year study kept records of the health of 12,000 middle aged men who have high risks for heart diseases and asked them the frequency of their vacations in a year. The results showed that men who took at least one vacation a year are 30% less likely to die from chronic heart ailments compared to men who don’t take their time offs.

Both the studies concluded that vacations do a lot of good for the heart and overall health. They figured that this is because it helps reduce stress – one of the biggest heart disease contributors. Having a vacation also increases your physical activities and improves your socialization skills which are also very good for health and well-being.

The beach is where your heart should be
What better place to take that vacation than the beach? Getting the sea air into your system can do a lot of good for you. According to a research3 in the University of California, the sea air contains tons of free electrons that neutralize free radicals in our brain and body. It is full of negative ions that help our body absorb oxygen better. It also balances the serotonin level in our body making us more alert, energized, yet calm and relaxed.

Recharging equals refueling for work
A recent study by C. Fritz and S. Sonnentag4 proved that taking a holiday really boosts energy reserves, giving you renewed fuel to get back to work. In the research, respondents claimed that their self-reported job performance is “slightly higher after a vacation.” This means that productivity in the workplace does not depend on the long hours you’ve worked, but on a refreshed and energized mind.

So this means that after the well-deserved holiday, people feel recharged and return to their work with a happy heart and a more productive spirit.

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