After attending the Les Mills 2nd Quarterly Workshop on Saturday, four of my friends and I boarded the earliest Cebu Pacific flight to Kalibo, Panay Island on Sunday morning. Why would we fly to Panay? That’s a rhetorical question; I think you already know the final destination. From Kalibo, an hour’s van ride took us to Caticlan, gateway to the island of Boracay.

Yes, Boracay. I was there a little over a year ago with my family and spent three glorious days chilling out in celebration of finally finishing my master’s degree. This year I meant to do precisely the same thing in celebration of making a clean break from the past. (Those of you who have been reading this journal regularly can deduce what this “past” is. Ü)

Many things had changed in that one year between my visits to the island. Instead of taking 30 minutes to make a beach landing, our boat ride from Caticlan took us in 15 minutes to Boracay’s jetty port on the side of Boracay nearest Panay. From there, we took a tricycle (the island’s main form of transportation) to get to our rented place behind D’Talipapa, the wet and dry market between Station 2 and 3.

It was a long walk from there to the beachfront, and an even longer walk to Station 2’s D’Mall where we had our lunch, and I met up with one of the friends I had made during the last visit. Trondz Cheng owns the pioneer glitter tattoo stand on Boracay as well as the Ice Monster franchise in D’Mall, and I hadn’t seen him in a while because he had been living on the island for almost six months straight. He was about as close to a native guide as we got (hee hee), but since Boracay is very much commercialized, my friends and I were able to get around without a lot of help.

Boracay, when compared with the nearly unspoilt islands of El Nido, is a big disappointment. The heavy influx of tourists uneducated in environmental conservation ensures that the beach is always littered with human-produced trash every morning. I must confess I was glad I had friends around and I could enjoy being with them instead of bemoaning how much Boracay had deteriorated in the span of one year.

Thinking back on the trip, most of it is a blur composed of a lot of laughing, camwhoring, lazing about on the beach and in the water, drinking milkshakes (and maybe not just milkshakes?), being cheapskates and enjoying chicken butts on a stick at Mang Inasal, splurging on Italian food and junk food alike, and letting it all hang out. We didn’t do anything touristy like go island-hopping or get on a banana boat; we were just happy to be around each other and have no work on our minds.

I felt recharged and energized upon our return to Manila, like I’d left a big load behind on that island. Laughter (and a hefty dose of smiling for the camera) is great medicine for what ails the heart and mind. It was our last hurrah for the summer, and it was a great big emphatic HURRAH! at that. It was Rest & Recreation indeed.

Tags: Boracay, Summer Vacation

After attending the Les Mills 2nd Quarterly Workshop on Saturday, four of my friends and I boarded the earliest Cebu Pacific flight to Kalibo, Panay Island on Sunday morning. Why would we fly to Panay? That’s a rhetorical question; I think you already know the final destination. From Kalibo, an hour’s van ride took us to Caticlan, gateway to the island of Boracay.

Yes, Boracay. I was there a little over a year ago with my family and spent three glorious days chilling out in celebration of finally finishing my master’s degree. This year I meant to do precisely the same thing in celebration of making a clean break from the past. (Those of you who have been reading this journal regularly can deduce what this “past” is. Ü)

Many things had changed in that one year between my visits to the island. Instead of taking 30 minutes to make a beach landing, our boat ride from Caticlan took us in 15 minutes to Boracay’s jetty port on the side of Boracay nearest Panay. From there, we took a tricycle (the island’s main form of transportation) to get to our rented place behind D’Talipapa, the wet and dry market between Station 2 and 3.

It was a long walk from there to the beachfront, and an even longer walk to Station 2’s D’Mall where we had our lunch, and I met up with one of the friends I had made during the last visit. Trondz Cheng owns the pioneer glitter tattoo stand on Boracay as well as the Ice Monster franchise in D’Mall, and I hadn’t seen him in a while because he had been living on the island for almost six months straight. He was about as close to a native guide as we got (hee hee), but since Boracay is very much commercialized, my friends and I were able to get around without a lot of help.

Boracay, when compared with the nearly unspoilt islands of El Nido, is a big disappointment. The heavy influx of tourists uneducated in environmental conservation ensures that the beach is always littered with human-produced trash every morning. I must confess I was glad I had friends around and I could enjoy being with them instead of bemoaning how much Boracay had deteriorated in the span of one year.

Thinking back on the trip, most of it is a blur composed of a lot of laughing, camwhoring, lazing about on the beach and in the water, drinking milkshakes (and maybe not just milkshakes?), being cheapskates and enjoying chicken butts on a stick at Mang Inasal, splurging on Italian food and junk food alike, and letting it all hang out. We didn’t do anything touristy like go island-hopping or get on a banana boat; we were just happy to be around each other and have no work on our minds.

I felt recharged and energized upon our return to Manila, like I’d left a big load behind on that island. Laughter (and a hefty dose of smiling for the camera) is great medicine for what ails the heart and mind. It was our last hurrah for the summer, and it was a great big emphatic HURRAH! at that. It was Rest & Recreation indeed.

Tags: Boracay, Summer Vacation

Practice for the NRW Bollywood final began for us last Saturday, and it was clear from the beginning that Alexis, Vanessa, and I were all going to need a lot of work. Alexis didn’t know the main choreography; Vanessa didn’t make her armlines sharp enough; and I didn’t have enough time. Kenneth, our team leader, broke up with his girlfriend that same night of our first practice, and was distracted and lost.

We seemed to be a team destined to lose badly. By Wednesday evening, we hadn’t completed any new choreography for the beginning and ending of the number. As for music, we hadn’t even decided which tracks to use, much less how to mix them. Thank God Mader Fhe, the Ortigas Group X Coordinator, stepped in and handled the situation. She and two other dance instructors (Arnel and Mong) choreographed our intro and transitions, which enabled us to concentrate on polishing the moves. I decided to handle the music mixing myself using a laptop and some software.

We began practice on Thursday evening at 10pm at the Ortigas branch then left at 12am to have a little something to eat at the i-Stop on the ground floor of the building before heading to my house for some more practice. Then Mama texted me to inform me that Lolo was gone and that she and Papa were going to the hospital. I just felt disconnected, but knew that I was only going to get in the way if I went to the hospital with them. Also, I had the rest of the team to think about. We had already spent so much time and energy (the three instructors were helping us gratis), and I didn’t want to let anyone down. So, practice continued at our house until 4am Friday morning, even without Mader and Arnel around.

With one day left until the competition, we were all physically and mentally worn out. We somehow found it in ourselves to shop for our costumes that evening and drag ourselves back to the gym to practice. We were headed back to my house for more practice at 1am when Alexis decided that she needed to go home to sleep. So, the last few hours leading into Saturday morning it was just Vanessa, Ken, Mong, and me working on the final few eights, trying to stretch the routine so we could make the 5-minute minimum time limit. (Yes, we are crammers and jammers.) We finally finished everything — or so we thought — at 6am.

After an hour and a half of sleep, I headed back to the gym to meet with Mader and Alexis to show them the completed routine. Mader made some last-minute adjustments to the flooring transition choreo, which I tried to commit to memory. Ken and Vanessa arrived a little later and we finalized the music; I burned two CDs containing the mix.

Then I had to rush off to La Paz Funeraria to attend my grandfather’s cremation; they were only waiting for me to arrive before they sent his remains off into the flames. I sat there, feeling numb and wondering if I was a bad person for not bawling my eyes out like Marielle was doing. Thirty minutes later, I was back in my car on my way to SM North EDSA. It was 1pm; we had two hours until the competition started.

Mader did our hair and make-up, and then we got into our costumes before our final run-through. I was running on pure adrenaline at that point (not having eaten anything since breakfast), and tension was high. My teammates and I had a bit of drama when I, exasperated, rolled my eyes and someone took it personally. Mader had to calm us down, tell us to work together, to help each other.

And then we went out on stage. To my surprise we did better than I expected, and I was glad we didn’t prove to be embarrassments to our branch. After all, we were chosen as the team because we were supposedly the best they had to offer.

Third prize went to Team Manila, second prize went to Team Metro East, and first prize was no surprise: Team ABS-CBN collected the P100,000 worth of Nike gift certificates. Still, Mader (and my Mama, who came to support me) was very proud of us, and I think the experience was worth all the sweat, tears, and bruising. I’d do it again.

If there’s anything I regret, it’s the fact that I wasn’t at home with my family when my paternal grandfather passed away. But I’m sure that he would have wanted me to honor my commitment to the Fitness First Ortigas team. That was who he was, my grandfather: the dutiful soldier to the end.

Tags: Dance Contest, Fitness First, Nike Rockstar Workout Bollywood

This is part three of a series of posts about my stay at Coco Beach Resort in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, from June 10-12, 2006.

The problem with holidays involving sun and swimming is neglecting to replenish one’s sunblock. Before going swimming, I dutifully and liberally apply sunblock lotion on my skin. Unfortunately, I don’t reapply often enough, especially after towelling off. Between us sisters, I’m the one who tans deeply and almost never burns, and I thought it would be the case on this trip.

On our first day at Coco Beach, we managed to miss most of the midday rays because we had a late lunch. I didn’t get burned then. However, on the second day I don’t know what possessed me to use suntan lotion. That’s SPF 4, folks: for the fair-skinned, only four minutes of protection before skin starts to burn. We were out snorkeling at the coral gardens at Long Beach for three hours, then came back to the resort for two hours more swimming and poolside lounging under the sun. You know what happened next: sunburn. My skin was red, warm to the touch, but wasn’t painful. However, there was some discomfort since it felt like my skin was too tight.

The next day, however, the redness had faded and I felt more like a human than a lobster. Because it was our last day at the resort, I decided to make the most of it by going swimming again. Since the pool opened at 9am and our checkout time was at 11am, I only spent an hour in the water before heading back to our cottage and packing up.

Even though I hadn’t bought anything extra to carry, my sunburned shoulders took the brunt of my luggage’s weight, and my already-raw skin rasped against the rough canvas fabric of my backpack. It didn’t help that the path from our cottage back to the reception desk had virtually no shade at midday, and to add insult to (my self-inflicted) injury we had to wait on the beach for our boat. Aside from a few palm trees, there wasn’t a patch of shade sizeable enough to accommodate three potential boatloads of people.

The first boat approached the beach and was immediately met by a rush of people desperate to get out of the sun. Among them were the Rotarian women and the Indian family with whom we had arrived at the resort. Nobody paid attention to the clipboard-holding guy shouting out instructions like, “Pakihintay lang pong tawagin ko ang inyong numero! (Please wait for me to call out your number!)”

My companions and I decided to wait for the next boat. While standing there, we noticed several boxes full of eggs and other miscellaneous goods piled on the beach. Initially I thought these were things that had been brought for the resort’s use, but as the minutes ticked by and nobody was evacuating them from the beach, I realized that these things were to be shipped off the island.

The next boat came in, a thirty-seater, and the resort’s porters jumped into action and scrambled to carry the luggage of a group of fifteen Europeans towards it. We approached the clipboard guy and asked if we could get on this boat. He replied, “Hindi po, magkakasama po ang mga Pilipino. (No, all Filipinos will be riding together.)” We were to be loaded onto the third boat, and since the pile of boxes weren’t being carried on board the second boat, we realized we’d be riding with the boxes.

It must have been the sunburn or the heat. More probably, it was the racial segregation I was experiencing from my own countryman. I snapped. “At bakit kailangan magkakasama ang mga Pilipino? (And why do all the Filipinos have to ride together?)” I said to the clipboard guy, who even seemed pleased that he was cramming all the Filipinos into one boat. He asked me how many were in my group, and I informed him that there were five of us. He waved us onto the boat with a shrug. Aside from us, seven other Filipinos were able to get on the boat, and we were on our way home.

I’m not sure if the people who run these tourist spots (like hotels and resorts) know this, but Filipinos can be tourists, too. Shakespeare’s Shylock said, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” Filipino tourists are perfectly capable of choosing where to spend hard-earned money on luxury items like vacations, and we will talk about whether something was worth it.

Coco Beach was a mixed bag of experiences, but I still enjoyed myself. You really can’t go wrong with sun, sand, and a refreshing drink in the hand. How interesting, though, that this trip was peppered with instances of colonial mentality as memorable as a bad sunburn.

Tags: Puerto Galera, Philippines, Tourism, Vacation

This is part two of a series of posts about my stay at Coco Beach Resort in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, from June 10-12, 2006.

Indulgence was really the name of the game at the resort, and every group of guests had their own way of going about it. While my companions and I ate and drank between swimming and jacuzzi sessions, the European women marked time by burning themselves under the heat of the tropical sun. Even though they were already salmon-colored by the end of their first day, the next day would find them taking up their poolside positions again. I guess for them red natural sunburn beats orange fake Mystic Tan?

The thing about going on vacation is that diets are usually thrown by the wayside, and this occasion was no exception. After weeks of semi-starvation in order to fit into a bikini (okay, not really), we let everything go to waist once we got to Coco Beach.

It started with lunch on our first day; despite the atrocious grammar and laughable descriptions on the restaurant menu, the food was good and we ended up ordering too many dishes. We kept making the same bad choices, vowing to eat less and save money, but gorging ourselves on food nonetheless. Mornings were a special problem since our vacation package included free buffet breakfasts; we kept going back to the buffet table for more helpings.

Pigging out continued when we discovered the resort’s Happy Hour promo: from 4-5pm, we could get two mixed drinks for the price of one. Over the course of two days, we indulged in mai tais, screwdrivers, margaritas, and rhum citrus coolers (not all at the same time, hopefully! *hic*) while lounging in a jacuzzi beside the guests-only Silent Pool overlooking the ocean.

The lack of structured activity for my brain coupled with the addling effects of too much food and drink only served to make me more observant of the other guests at the resort. We had come over from Manila accompanied by a large tour group of Rotary Club women (on holiday from their husbands), an Indian family, and a lovey-dovey young couple (look, Ma, no wedding rings!). Already there at the resort were: a Hispanic man, his Asian wife, and their toddler; six fat white men (more on them later); an African-American dad and his teenage son; a family from Holland; a young French family of four; and a couple of middle-aged German women.

I noted with some amusement that this international cast of characters needed only a murdered victim and a fastidious Belgian detective with a curly moustache in order to turn into a typical Agatha Christie mystery novel. (I overfilled my brain with too many such novels back in March.)

While Filipinos are generally reserved and don’t go out of their way to make conversation with strangers, these foreigners tended to provide a whole lot of information about themselves to each other. Hanging around them (actually, eavesdropping) showed me the advantage of being bilingual in Filipino and English. I could listen to them talking in English, and then gossip in Filipino with my companions. It was great fun — until I realized the guy I was talking about wasn’t Fresh Off the Plane; he had been living here in the Philippines for quite a while and his son had just graduated from an international school here. I’ll bet he understood more Filipino than he could speak, too. Yikes. My bad for indulging in gossip.

As for the six fat white men I mentioned earlier, they indulged themselves by engaging the services of three young local women. Sad but true: the illicit sex tourism trade is the dark armpit of the nascent tourism industry in the country.

This sickening mixture of colonial mentality, exploitation, and objectification was laid out for all to see during Happy Hour on our first day. We were minding our own business at the Silent Pool when all nine of them burst onto the scene and started roughhousing in the pool. I felt the bile creeping up my throat when one of the men said to his girlie, self-congratulatorily, “You look tired.” They all seemed to think they were virile, macho men; how funny that they had to go to a Third World country and pay to get laid.

The girls naively wanted to please these men so much that they effaced themselves. Here’s a typical scene: my friends and I were on our way to our cottage one night and happened to run across two of those guys and one of those girls. One guy was saying to the other, “I’ll take care of my girl and you’ll take care of your girl.” The two had a short argument and one said to the other, “You’re an asshole.” The girl giggled and agreed, “Yeah, I’m a [sic] asshole.” I couldn’t decide whether to slap her or to scratch those guys’ eyes out. I indulged neither impulse and went to bed. The next morning, the six guys were through with their “vacation” and were on their way off the island.

Happy Hour that day was much happier.

To be continued…

Tags: Puerto Galera, Philippines, Tourism, Vacation

This is part one of a series of posts about my stay at Coco Beach Resort in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, from June 10-12, 2006.

Since June 12 (Independence Day) falls on a Monday this year, Marielle and I decided to take advantage of the three-day weekend by going to a beach. Marielle had gone to Puerto Galera last April (on the weekend after our trip to Boracay) and loved the experience, so we decided to make the trip back with three of her officemates. However, instead of going to the very public and popular White Beach, we booked a stay at the private and secluded Coco Beach Resort.

At 6:30am on Saturday morning we were at the Manila Hotel, the pick-up point for our bus ride. There were already a group of people waiting there for the same bus, and we were all dressed for the beach — flip-flops, shorts, tank tops, and the works. Since we couldn’t very well wait outside the hotel entrance, we decided to go in and wait at the lobby. As we entered through the hotel’s varnished wooden doors, we had to go through an airport-style security check: metal detectors and luggage x-rays. Then the woman at the metal detector looked us up and down and sniffed, “We have a dress code here. You can’t come in here.”

We were aghast. There were no signs posted about any dress code. “You mean, we can’t even use your restroom?” we asked plaintively. It was a strange way to make potential guests welcome. I felt affronted and commented, “Well, just put us somewhere you can hide us so we don’t ruin your beautiful hotel.”

A middle-aged lady who came in behind us told the woman, “If we were foreigners you wouldn’t even have said a word.” A few minutes after we had taken seats off to the side, some blonde foreigners cruised in through the doors and lingered in the lobby talking among themselves before making their way to one of the hotel’s restaurants. We were still miffed at this double standard when our bus arrived to collect us, but the four-hour bumpy road trip to the jetty port in Batangas pushed our hostile thoughts into the background as we napped, listened to music, or watched cheesy fantasy flicks on the bus’s television screen.

At the jetty port (which was really nothing more than a glorified pebble beach), we clambered into a twenty-foot long wooden banca boat for the 60-minute ride to Coco Beach. We arrived with the tide out, so our banca couldn’t approach the beach. A speedboat was dispatched from shore to fetch us and our things, and we finally landed on the island at noontime.

After receiving a free coconut drink and our keys, we walked to our cottage. “Climbed” might be a more appropriate word, since our cottage was nestled midway up a hill and it took us fifty steps on a narrow cement staircase under a scorching sun to get there. The view was worth the sweat.

To be continued…

Tags: Puerto Galera, Philippines, Tourism, Vacation

I was out on the beach a little earlier than the previous days, but I didn’t feel like going in the water. I just sat down, sifted handfuls of sand through my fingers, and rubbed my sunburned shoulders while looking at the kind of people who’d be around at 5am. Workmen were raking the sand for rubbish and cigarette butts. Policemen riding on 4-wheelers were out on patrol. Some people lolling about in the sand looked like they’d been up all night sitting on the beach. On the waterline, mommy and daddy types were taking a morning hike with each other.

We were leaving Boracay before 9am, so Marielle, David, and I went to Jonah’s Fruitshakes at 6am. We had a great breakfast (with milkshakes!), then savored our walk back to the cottage.

And then it was time for the family to hustle. After making sure we hadn’t left anything (or anyone) behind, we took a short walk away from the beachfront to reach a two-lane road that ran the length of the island. Motorized tricycles, multicabs, and motorcycles used the road to transport goods and people, and the road branched off into smaller paths that led deeper into the island. We were taking a tricycle to get to the island’s jetty port.

I have this old postcard of Boracay that shows a vast expanse of virgin rainforest blanketing the interior of the island. I once stuck the postcard onto my dresser mirror and said that one day I’d get to go to the place in the picture. As our tricycle hauled us away from the place we’d called home for three days and three nights, I remembered my old postcard. I could finally say I’d been to the place in the picture, but the place didn’t look like the picture anymore.

From the Boracay port, we reached Caticlan in 20 minutes, then got into our rented van for the four-hour ride back to Iloilo. The long drive seemed shorter, probably because we weren’t looking forward to anything in that city other than our plane ride home. We had lunch in the town of Pototan at a roadside carinderia, where the menu options were tapsilog (tapa, rice, and egg), longsilog (longganisa, rice, and egg), and porksilog (porkchop, rice, and egg) — but they were all the options we hungry travelers needed. And at 35 pesos per person, the price was right, too.

We were in Iloilo City by 2:30pm, but our flight was scheduled for 7:20pm. In the interim, Aunt Gel’s friend entertained us at her house, where they served us La Paz batchoy from Ted’s as an afternoon snack (!!!).

We landed in Manila at 8:20. Marielle and I met our parents at the airport gates, then drove home with them, away from sun, surf, and sand toward the city’s metal, dust, and concrete.

I can’t wait to go back, and I don’t want to wait to go back, either. Some say that with the rate of damage being done to Boracay, in ten years it could be totally ruined. My dad says that the ruination of the Pasig River began when algae started multiplying and killing off the microorganisms that were the base of the river’s food chain. The algae fed on waste products that were dumped into the Pasig River, and this is what’s happening to Boracay, among other distressing developments.

There was a PCIJ report in 2003 on the ecological destruction of Boracay, and it seems greed and booming, reckless tourism are the main culprits. Something has to be done, or else Boracay will become Burak-ay.

Rome Jorge in a column on Holy Week tourism suggested some practices that tourists can adopt:

• Pick up trash found along trails, beaches and rivers even when it is not yours. Bring a sack if you have to. Dispose of it properly in urban areas.
• Patronize local products and cuisines. Pay a fair prize. For tourism businesses, employ locals and promote local themes.
• Chat with the locals. Learn their culture and history.
• Do not buy seashell lamps, tapang usa, or other wildlife products. Do not even bottle white sand. Do not light bonfires unless for emergencies. If everyone did the same thing, there would be nothing left.
• Report illegal logging or wildlife poaching. Do not stop until proper action is taken. Alert the media.
• Patronize eco-tourism programs and regional art center events.

So, to those who are looking into taking a vacation on Boracay, I would say go now but leave Boracay a better place than when you found it. Once a paradise is lost, it could be lost forever.

Tags: Boracay, Summer vacation

“Pau? Pau? Sige na Pau, punta ka na rito! Pau! PAAAAAU!!! (Come on, Pau, you’ve gotta come here already!)”

Imagine waking up to a teenage girl’s voice bellowing these words at 5 in the morning. Our cottage is actually a two-floor set of separate rooms each with their own toilet, and a group of adolescents had rented one of the four rooms on the second floor where our room was situated. The walls between our rooms were concrete, but they weren’t thick enough to shield my ears. Besides, this girl was standing right outside our door, slightly(?) drunk, yelling into her cellphone. It made me wish I’d spent the night sleeping on the beach instead.

I got up and staggered out onto the balcony, peered out over the edge, and immediately stepped back. An open-roof garbage truck had stopped right there and the truck driver was changing a flat tire.

My parents were leaving Boracay early that morning, but Marielle and I were staying on with Aunt Gel and Uncle Rene’s families for one more day. After seeing the parents off, Marielle and I went in search of breakfast. It being only 6am, we found ourselves at d*Mall looking for a place that was open early. While there was the ever-present Andok’s Chicken, the previous day we had breakfast there and the servings had been small and slow to come. So, Marielle and I sat down at Jammers, a 24-hour burger joint semi-decorated in 1950’s soda shop style. We were served good omelettes and foul-tasting mineral water by a woman who barely smiled, but she was pregnant so we left her a tip anyway.

We did some more sunbathing (sunburning?), then hid in the shade at Jonah’s Fruitshakes where I had a melon milkshake and moped about my pink bikini. I had bought it at Robinson’s Galleria right before we left Manila and had never swum in it until that morning at the beach. To my dismay, I found it was prone to Janet Jackson-type wardrobe malfunctions. I resolved to hunt for a replacement.

Marielle and I walked down the length of the beach after a heavy Italian lunch at Aria, where the cheese pizza is excellent. We got as far as Station 3 before our feet started telling us it was time to head back. I found a great chocolate-colored bikini by the side of the footpath, but it was priced at 1,250 pesos. My eyes bulged out at the price, but I decided to splurge on it for my own peace of mind. (Fashion tip: well-endowed women will benefit from halter-type swimsuits, which provide both support and coverage.)

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to food. Aunt Gel brought us to Real Coffee, a little place right around the corner from our cottage. When the television series Globe Trekker featured Boracay, they showed their host patronizing the shop. I avoided a clump of dog poo on the path, but as I sniffed for odor, my nose was instead filled with the aroma of freshly baked goods. “It smells good here, so that’s a good sign,” I quipped as we entered.

The American lady behind the counter said her calamansi cakes were just about ready to come out of the oven, so we couldn’t resist trying them. She was the owner of the place and seemed like she was enjoying the laid-back lifestyle such a business gave her. As she served us and the other customers, she bopped to music playing on the small transistor radio. “I love this song,” she announced as the Square Heads’ single “Happy” started playing. She dispensed with electric coffee makers by brewing coffee using only a pot, a paper coffee filter, and a coffee machine’s funnel. We left Real Coffee feeling like we’d experienced something of the old Boracay.

Marielle and I headed back to the beach to bake — er, I mean chill out. The previous day, the owner of the Glimmer body art stall had introduced himself and one of his friends, and as we sat there waiting for sunset he, his friend, and another guy sat down with us. All three of them were businessmen, but two were based in Manila and had only come for a vacation. The owner of Glimmer had settled on Boracay and ran both his stall and an Ice Monster franchise.

We left the guys to have dinner at Hawaiian Barbecue, which was also near our cottage. (I don’t think we got out much during our stay on Boracay.) The restaurant was run by the same people who owned the Singing Cooks and Waiters Atbp. restaurants in Manila, and if they weren’t so concerned about providing fast fuss-free food service in Boracay, our waiters would have gladly displayed their vocal chops.

After stuffing myself and feeling like I didn’t belong in a bikini anymore, Marielle and I had coffee at Cafe del Sol, where the three guys joined us. We gabbed until midnight, when our internal Cinderella decided to go home. I had decided to wake up extra early. After all, we were leaving Boracay at 8am and I didn’t want to waste every last second I had on the island.

To be continued…

Tags: Boracay, Summer vacation

(Note: Sorry for the suspense. I like my weekends tech-free these days. Ü)

I woke up disoriented and wondering where I was. Then I realized I still had sand between my toes. I got out of bed while the rest of my family was still sleeping. It was 5:30am, but the sun had already crept up behind us. The sky was grey, the beach was deserted, and nobody was around except for the delivery truck that passed under our private cottage balcony as I emerged from its sliding doors.

I went off for a walk up the beach and managed to see a few of the more famous sights on Station 1: Cocomangas, Fridays (with the best-kept sand on Boracay), and some private property owned by the Elizalde family. Okay, so I only saw their beachfronts and fences, but it was a great walk anyway. On my way back, however, I also saw the more infamous sights of an overpopulated beach: green algae clouding the clear water (their enthusiasm for growth is encouraged by island sewage seeping into the ocean), and human refuse poking out of the sand and floating in the water. Boracay is no unspoiled paradise, and I walked back to the cottage with a heavy heart.

Aunt Gel had booked an island-hopping tour for our three families, so we all got into a small motor-driven roofed boat with skids on the sides and made our way out to sea. We went to this island but didn’t disembark because of the huge waves crashing on its beach. Then we came to a supposed snorkeling area, where I got into the water. The coral wasn’t very well kept and the colors weren’t even vibrant, and the only fish there were fingerlings. I was charged twenty pesos as a snorkeling fee, but the fee was collected by this man paddling a canoe. I don’t really know where that money goes because the place wasn’t even impressive. (In other words, I really mean to cry “Corruption!”)

The best part of the island-hopping deal was landing on Puka Beach. It was actually back on Boracay, but on the other side of the island. Though the sand wasn’t as fine, the spit of beach was short, and the waves were stronger, it was a tranquil escape from the main beach’s commercialization and green algae. The off-season for the main beach lasts from July to September, since that side of the island is lashed by the seasonal winds known as Habagat. Puka Beach, however, is perfect at that time of year.

We got back to the main beach after lunch. I had my hair done in cornrows, and also got a temporary glitter tattoo at the Glimmer Art booth near our cottage. Marielle and I sunbathed for a while, then watched the sun slip beneath the waves. And then it was time for dinner. A resort called Ban’s also runs an ihaw-ihaw on the beachfront, so we had some broiled fish and pork for dinner. The food was great but the music was loud and terrible.

After dinner, Marielle and I went to explore d*Mall in Station 2. It’s a commercial district populated by restaurants, souvenir shops, and clothing stores with its own plaza. We discovered the Lemon Cafe and had its specialty Belgian chocolate flourless. We wanted to make plans to bring the parents back there, but it wasn’t to be: they were leaving ahead of us early the next morning.

To be continued…

Tags: Boracay, Summer vacation