To a lot of people, one of the highlights of a visit to Bohol province would be the Loboc River Cruise. Along the river bank near the bridge, there is a row of companies providing cruises along the Loboc River. Most of the time, the cruise would come with a buffet lunch or dinner whichever the case may be. I wasn’t keen on spending a lot of money for the lunch cruise and asked if there is a cruise that doesn’t offer any buffet. As it turns out, there really is such a thing, but it would be on a much smaller boat and thusly, more expensive, too bad.
So I took the river cruise which came with the buffet lunch, actually it wasn’t even lunch yet but it was close enough so I would call it a brunch. I had to cross over another boat to get to our boat. The boat is simply two canoes fitted with a plaform where around 40 people can have lunch on. There is a roof on the platform to protect the people from the searing summer heat. There is also a fence to prevent people from falling into the river. There were quite a bit tourists on the boat and also a few foreign visitors. The buffet table was on the middle of the boat and the staff was just finishing loading the last of the food onto the boat.
When the boat started, there was mayhem since everyone wanted to get some food, I took my time until there were not too many people there before taking some for myself. The food was typical Filipino food with some grilled seafood. It wasn’t really anything special either. Got myself a plateful of food and started eating. At the same time, there was a man with a guitar on the boat and he was entertaining us while we were eating. I guess it is a welcome break from all the eating everybody else was doing. I was seated with a Korean family but they weren’t very friendly.
Considering that it was a buffet, I guess the ride was worth it. It wasn’t really a really buffet where you can eat until you can’t eat anymore, since the boat returns to the dock very quickly once we reached the end of the river. I guess they had to be practical since they will be able to get more passengers that way. Waiting for the passengers to finish eating will cost them a lot.
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