I love traveling. Love to see the world. Since we are not big on taking pictures, writing it down is probably the only other way to keep the memory lasting. I'm still kicking myself for not writing down our 2005 honeymoon trip of Vegas - Hawaii - Seoul - Taipei. Just the other day, I had to be reminded to remember we went horse back riding on a ranch there.
Year 2008 was a very eventful year for us. Housing transactions, career changes, personal & business trips, international visitors. "Predictable" would be about the last word I would choose to coin our life in 2008, or most of the months of it individually. Ending the year with a trip to the Philippines was just the perfect choice.
We picked Boracay over some other nearby popular holiday destinations, due to safety records and also for visiting Liam's uncle George. George started out as Liam's ex-wife's uncle, and I am glad that he has become Liam's uncle since. We haven't seen George for maybe 6 years, and the chance to visit him at home while on vacation was just perfect.
Since I had never heard of Boracay prior to this, for booking the trip I did some research online. It turns out that Boracay is featured as a tropical paradise on the Internet. According to Wikipedia, it was a "well guarded secret" until some foreigner either made a film or wrote a book about it. Now it is seen as "having the best beach in the world". Good to know, right? About the same time I learned how difficult it is to book tickets for this place over the New Year peak season. We were lucky to find return tickets to Boracay through Caticlan, even though the thoughts of flying a 32-seat propeller frightened me. Then we counted every sleep until the day our vacation began.
We flew to Manila on the Philippine Airline. This was my first visit to the Philippines and Liam's third. Although having some idea of the history of the Philippines and how Manila might be like prior to the trip, I was still sort of shocked by the street scenes on our way to our hotel. Some of the neighbourhoods our taxi passed look like the ghetto - decaying buildings and people in shabby clothing sitting around the streets. Thoughts about the inherited inequality of the world filled my mind again. Next, the triple security checks at the door of our hotel gave me a further shock. First they checked the taxi with some kind of a "wand", probably to detect any explosives. Then they had a K-9 sniffed our luggage, and then I had to show the content of my handbag to them. Ironically heightened security seems to only make people more fearful for their safety than the appearance of free access. At least that's the way it works for me. We enjoyed our first night there entertaining our cash away at a local casino at the Heritage Inn.
Our flight to Boracay was in the early afternoon. There is no airport on Boracay itself, because it is not big enough I suppose. So by flight, you have your choice of transferring from three nearby cities/towns, and taking either Kalibo or Roxas requires an extended boat ride or bus ride following the flight. The ideal route is to fly to Caticlan, spend 3 minutes on a tricycle to the port, and sit through another 15 minutes on a boat (Banca) across to Boracay. This was our route and we are glad. George came to the Caticlan airport to pick us up, and he was as surprised at the weather as we were, having been living there for 11 years. Dec - Jan is supposed to be in the "dry season", so we were anticipating a calm, blue sky over the white sandy beach. I packed tons of sun blocks and two sets of bathing suits. And we never swam a day. As soon as we stepped outside of the airplane, it was cool, rainy and windy. We got a bit wet from the rain, and George joked that he thinks the Ice Age is coming to Boracay. According to our travel experience in the last two years, generally once Liam and/or I arrive at a place the weather warmed up and the rain stopped. So I told that to George, "don't worry, we will bring you good weather." Hmm...our magic didn't work this time.
Finally we arrived at George's place. After we dropped our bags, he showed us his "petting zoo" in the back yard. OK, he didn't call it a petting zoo. Technically it doesn't qualify anyway, if you would prefer to keep all your fingers intact. The zoo hosts two monkeys, some wild birds, and the only thing somewhat pet-able is a 2 year old domesticated cockatoo. The gender unspecific beautiful bird can dance by wobbling its body, and imitate cat meows and dog barks, etc. Cockatoo's gender, as I was told, can only be certainly known after they turn 3, by checking the colour of their eyes. We teased the bird every day.
Every time we got close enough to its cage, it grabbed our fingers, and held them with its very hard bill. Interestingly, because the bill was "designed" to work with hard surface such as seeds, it doesn't really grab on well on softer surface such as our flesh. So the bird actually prefers to work with harder surface. I made this observation after the cockatoo repeatedly tried to rip off my finger nail. There is another baby cockatoo being raised in a box. We fed it sometimes, tried to teach it how to fly (a holiday thing), and saw pictures of it when it was just hatched. Boy! Are they ugly when they are chicks!
From that point on our time in Boracay became largely involved with "activities" at bars/pubs on the beach, sleeping and getting over from hangovers. We bought some souvenir and talked to unrelated fellow vacationers. Just like how tourists should be. I was puzzled to learn that Boracay is very favoured by the Korean tourists, among Asian visitors. There are many signs in Korean. We even hiked up a small hill only to get ripped off at the "vista point", with tortured wild animals sadly exist in inadequately small cages as their "bonus track". And on New Year's Eve, we celebrated the last bit by watching the fireworks on the beach with everybody else. As I am counting the highlights of everyday there, suddenly "12 Days of Christmas" came to mind. If I had the talent to write a parody, like a "7 Days of Boracay Trip", it would probably has something like "A night at the Nikki Nukki bar"; "two Long Island ice teas"; "three days a-lying (down)"...Well at least I can say I tried. Life is very laid-back on the island. It was a nice break from the fast paced life in Singapore. I only checked my email once, successfully.
The tropical paradise is not without setbacks. The roads are full of potholes. The drainage system obviously isn't fully functioning there, despite its location in the most typhoon-prone area in the world. There are brown outs everyday. Even the cable TV flickered signals every, maybe, 20 minutes. And throughout the island all the schools I saw look like some kind of ruin. Probably due to the consequentially limited career options there, it was a rather common scene to see foreign guys coupling with girls much more junior. We encountered some kids, some 4 to 7 years olds, who basically just hang out around the bars all day. Tourists who felt bad fed them and gave them money when asked. Among the kids is a four year old girl wearing a super over-sized spaghetti top which obviously hasn't been laundered for a long time. She kept leaving her half naked top in view public view due to the unfit clothing, next to a group of men. I am not saying there was any funny business. It just kind of put her more subject to harm's way. The continuing inflow of more tourists has been helping the island's economy. It certainly also has been seeing the island's green patches disappearing, yielding ways to new property developments. Some of us wonder how the benefits of the developments are being distributed. That includes the "environment fees" we had to pay at the boat terminal in AND out of the island.
So at the end of the 6th day there, we were kind of ready to leave it behind. I began to get fed up with all the mosquito bites I got - 20 in total! Even the weather took a turn down south. According to the weather reports, there was a tropical storm forming, in January! That's just one step short of a typhoon. For that we had to leave early in case they stop running the boats, and had to hang out around the Caticlan airport for four hours. The flights were all delayed too, and we were lucky enough to make the last fight since they are only allowed to fly from dawn to dusk. We stayed one extra night in Manila, spent few hours at another, much nicer casino near the airport, winning (Liam) and losing (me) some more pesos to mark the end of our vacation. The excitement doesn't just end there though. On our way to the airport, the very old taxi stalled and we had to get another one. But I am just glad it didn't stall on the express way, because we could hear there's something wrong with the clutch or the engine on the express way already. Liam said tricycles were passing us. Well I guess this kind of thing comes with "seeing the world". What really matters is we had a great time and we are home safe and sound, looking forward to the next journey.
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