This is the second entry of an attempt to a travel log i started when i was young and life promised.
It sounds harsh but actually, it reflects the transition and the shock of a young couple used to a tiny Paris apartment, the noise and the fast city life, upon meeting the wonderful simple life that is still possible to live in this shambling world. Please bear with us and our citadine bad ways as we transition into real human beings.
Meet the STARS of this adventure
The Previous Episode ended like this:
The owner is not there but her 78 year old mother welcomes us and gives us a room and a tour of the place, a little fan ripples the heat waves as we set to watch the sunset from the balcony, dogs barking, a cat comes to say hello, we see a very appetizing pig on the garden and we are offered food and beers, they have not been expecting guests tonight so there is only fish and rice as choice, to this date I still suspect we ate their dinner…
Mamma Vicky tells us how she risen her 9 children after losing her husband to the sea, or civil war, or a sea accident during the civil war, that was not very clear as her broken English is constantly overcome by the barking of the dog and the singing of what sounds like an army of roosters in the background.
She tells us how she came to live with the eldest daughter after her German husband died and how the Guest House was built, she tells us about the house up in the mountain, a proper brick and mortar one, and how life was good.
During her tale the sunset ended and the night dropped hard on the village. So there we are thinking how fortunate we are, the city boy’s (boy and girl) and our perception upon contact with simple life… The typical: cleanse my guilt holidays where you are convinced your 15 $ per night are going to really change the lives of your host people…
And so day 2 of our adventurous holidays end with San Miguel, fried fish, white rice, tales from granny, jet lag and plane tiredness. Life is good!
OF course all this is forgotten upon waking up at 4am after a night of stewing in our own sweat and interrupted sleep by the army of roosters. Unable to find a way to get busy in the dark, just praying for the sun to rise to find the tooth brush in our bag…
At 5 am we start to hear human noises on the outside, so venture out in the hope of a coffee and the promise of sunrise on the water balcony. Sadly by breakfast we had decided "screw this" we are not staying… it has been 3 days since we left home and we have not been able to sleep properly nor take a shower… This sounds more like concentration camp than dive holidays…
But the mist lifting from the mountains as the sun rises was a wonderful sight and we start to feel guilty.
However the call for a shower was stronger and we manage anyways to explain to Vicki’s mother that we will be leaving on the next boat, she seems worried, disappointed and upset as only a 78 years old Asian is able to display all that at the same time without proffering a word.
Our sudden decision to leave has arisen hell in the Guest house… immediately a cacophony of Tagalog starts around us, I suspect they were blaming each other and looking for a way to apologize for whatever crime they committed that is pushing us to leave, it was already hard for us to leave as we were on one side feeling guilty of our escape to a place where we would pay more than ten times the price here, and because of the warm attention we received during our short and unexpected stay.
This was our first contact with Filipino hospitality and there we where betraying it. They are very welcoming people and it was the main feature of our whole trip… in all a very pleasant experience.
So after excusing ourselves paying and saying goodbye we scurried away in what seemed the tiniest Banka in the south China sea which belonged to a fisherman that had agreed to take us to the utterly expensive Paradise Resort, were instead of a chords trio and refreshing drinks, our welcome committee consisted of a smiling but armed security guard which probably thought we were pirates disembarking on his island to rob everyone, but eventually his suspicions subsided and he called the hotel staff.
- Do you have a reservation sir?
- Is the resort full then?
- No…
- So why do I need a reservation?
- Well do you have a reservation sir?
- Is there a room available? otherwise I just take my tiny Banka back on shore
So after a little while more of this exchange they agree it is possible to have a room without reservation, especially, because of their prices 78 of the 80 rooms are available… Then I mention the reduced diver rates Dirk told me about.
But sir, those rooms are under renovation, we can offer you sun view rooms, or sea view rooms for only 200 $ per day per person.
Ok I take my Banka back then
Finally the staff manager agreed to the divers rate in a sun view room (which was fairly hidden but yet was bigger than our Paris apartment) it had an actual view to the next room and a mountain that topped the island and we could see about 1 meter of sea to the west… so it must have been a sunset room.
So far it seems that it is going to be one of those horrible holidays that end up making up for a Hollywood screenplay in which after lots of funny but uncomfortable episodes the protagonist dies… But no... The holidays get better, and that is about to happen in the next paragraphs…
To be continued:
In the next episode: the actual Dive Adventures, Neil, the crazy happy military medic from Cirque du Soleil and the sunken WWII Japanese ships tale.
We promise, in part three we actually stop complaining and start enjoying the real way of life
Promocionado por el equipo de Curación de RockDio | @nnnarvaez wannabe witness para venezuela
welcome to philiphine, cool air along with beautiful scenery coupled with friendly environment, beautiful adventure, I will await your next adventure
Thank you! I enjoyed a lot my endeavors in Palawan, and over the years I have met many Philiphino living and working abroad, I have the warmest memories of the country and the people.
I've met them in Brunei in the Emirates even in Nigeria and you all share this unsurpassed joy of life, friendliness and humanity.
Also we seem to share our liking for 80 good rock and playing music in general.
I treasure the memories of night shifts in oil platforms drinking patayas coffee while one of the guys plays "Blaze of glory by Bon Jovi in the background and we are all having a good laugh while waiting for the crew change and finishing the reports.
I actually had a plan to set myself in puerto princesa, but life happened and plan had to change, maybe in the near future I'll be able to do it.
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forward friend