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Published: August 8th 2007
Total indulgence: Meat and rice breakfasts before beach massages This morning, we wake up and head down to the breakfast buffet that is included in our hotel rate. It is everything you want a Filipino breakfast to be - a man makes eggs to order and the rest is self-serve. Three kinds of rice - white, red (like brown rice), and fiesta rice (fried rice with other stuff in it, like eggs and onions), beef tapa, corned beef, vienna sausages, daing nab angus, other fish, other meats, pancakes, fruit, toast, cereals, juices, etc. One could really go crazy in this kind of place. I, of course, put some meat, rice, and eggs on my plate and sit down. Fruit is great in the Philippines, but I love mangoes and they are incredibly sweet here. I can’t have them all the time. Leroy also likes the watermelons here, which are very juicy, red, and sweet. For a while, he was convinced they were adding sugar to the watermelon juice because it was almost unnaturally sweet. After breakfast, I decide to walk over to Las Brisas and join Xandra for her beach massage. They laid out some sarongs on the sand and we
lay down and had our one-hour session right on the beachfront. We used Tita Reena’s special essential oils that she brought specifically for our massages, and with the fine sand blowing onto us every now and then, we also got some exfoliation going on. My cousin Xandra is one year older than me, and we grew up together in the same households for most of my childhood here in the Philippines, which means we’re like sisters. She also lived with us on and off in the U.S. and graduated from NYU with an undergrad degree in business. She was my roommate in New York after college and in L.A. too. She returned to the Philippines in late 1999 and got married in 2001. Her son Terran, my godson, was born in 2003. It’s been a long time since we’ve gotten a chance to catch up, so when our massages start, we’re still gossiping and chitchatting. Jamie tells us to relax, stop giggling, and enjoy our massages, but we just keep on giggling like we used to as little girls. Meanwhile, my mom and aunts are getting the ohm sign henna tattooed on their mid-backs. Jamie, Leroy, Linus, Sam, and Baba
are all on the beach playing Frisbee. It’s a lovely morning in Boracay, but we have big plans.
Private ihaw (bbq) picnic on a secluded beach followed by snorkeling At 11:30am, we leave on a privately chartered excursion to have a picnic and go snorkeling. We have made a deal with a man named Ardel or Arjun (something like that) who my Tita Reena keeps calling the big one or the fat one. For P8000, he will provide food at our picnic for 14 adults and one child, with special requests for shrimp, crab, pork, chicken, fish, vegetables, and fruits. For P400 a person, they will arrange transport on tricycles to the pier, private
banca (boat) to the islands, and snorkeling (with gear we rented from the hotel). The prices are decent, except that they later make a bunch of add-ons (P975) that my mom and her siblings refuse to pay but that Jamie mistakenly pays anyway. Of course, in my head, paying around U$20 for a boat and bbq on an island seems like a deal. We take tricycles for a short 5-7 minute ride to a closer pier than the one we arrived at yesterday. Tricycles are
motorbikes fitted with a cab section that has one other wheel on it (hence, three wheels). The ones in Boracay are superfitted - they also have a back section with two small benches. This means you can fit one person behind the driver, two to three people in the front cab (very squished), and four people in the back. Can you imagine eight passengers carried by a dirtbike? Well, imagine smaller, Filipino-sized passengers… Anyway, Leroy and Jamie get in the front, and Sun, Eunhee, Linus, and I pile into the back. I don’t know why we squished so much, when it ended up that only Xandra, Terran, and the yaya were in the last trike. Sun hated the ride, because the roof is so low that you have to crouch and any turbulence on the ride means a hit to the head. Leroy, who I was afraid wouldn’t even fit, seemed comfortable in the front. It was his first tricycle ride ever! I figure his Filipino transport experience is complete - he’s taken a cab, jeepney, tricycle, coaster, plane, boat, and… oh wait, he’s never taken a public bus here. But I wouldn’t want us to do that anyway.
Once at the port, there was a beautiful sandcastle that we did not take pictures of so that we wouldn’t have to pay. Most of us bought straw hats for P100 because the sun was really strong. We wrote all our names on the ship’s manifest and then waded through the shallow, turquoise water to board the boats. One boat was mostly the parents (I somehow got stuck on this boat), and the other one was called the “adventure” boat where my brother and cousins and Leroy were. The ride was short but fun - you know, wind in hair, clear blue-green waters, fantastic island views, and everyone having a good time. We docked at a picnic area where there is a cooking pit, lots of tables and benches, and a nearby kiosk where you can get water, beer, and coconuts. No ice though, so the beer was unfortunately just a tad cooler than room temp. Once there, the men we hired got to cutting and cooking. We busted out some pistachios and siriguelas (sorry, no American equivalent for this tropical fruit) and started munching to stave off hunger. We also played on a swing that hung on a tree
branch, took pictures by the caves and boats, and played with Terran. We were all really hungry so once the food was ready, we hardly took any pictures. We just dug in! The crabs were the small Filipino kind that are more flavorful than Dungeness or blue crabs. But, you have to work much harder for each bite as the ratio of shell to meat is higher. We also had shrimp with the heads still on, and they were delicious once you take the head off and peel them. So much flavor! There was pork inihaw, which are grilled pork chops cut into smaller pieces. Other items were grilled chicken, grilled eggplant, soup with fish and vegetables, and grilled tanguigue (like tuna). We made our sawsawan (dipping sauce) and proceeded to it. We were all given utensils, but most of us opted to eat traditional Filipino style - with our hands. After all, it’s really hard to eat this kind of seafood with a fork! The food was out of this world for me. I love crabs and shrimp!
After lunch, we had some mangoes, and then the younger generation decided to go snorkeling. Tita Reena is the “grown-up”
The different hues of Boracay
Looking out on the beach from Sea Wind Resortwho usually ends up hanging with us youngies - partly because she’s a bit more adventurous but mainly because Xandra also wants help from his “anma” (grandma in Terran speak). Terran has a posse! His mom, yaya, and grandma are all on hand… I guess to make sure he has a good time and doesn’t get hurt or freak out during the snorkeling. Last time we took him snorkeling, he was 18 months old and really freaked out when he saw his mom put on her gear and paddle away. Separation anxiety? Fear of sharks? Anyway, we took the boat a bit father, to a rock island close to the main port where we arrived yesterday. There, they dropped the anchor and we put on our life jackets, masks, and snorkels and stepped down a wooden ladder with three rungs and straight into the ocean. The water was not too cold. The boatman threw some pieces of bread into the water, which meant that within seconds, fish were everywhere! There were some brightly colored ones and there were starfish visible on the floor. Most of the coral was already dead in this part of the reef, but I saw a
few colorful, live ones. Jamie even saw a crown of thorns, the coral killers that we saw in Fiji; when you see them, you’re supposed to take them out of the water or kill them, otherwise, they will continue to destroy coral reefs. A lot of the Great Barrier Reef has been destroyed by these crowns of thorns. Jamie grabbed a starfish which we brought to Terran to hold. I don’t think he’s a natural water-person… he is always afraid that his yaya or mom will get hurt in the water, but with a little bit of coaxing and modeling, he lost his fear and screamed, “I’m not afraid anymore!” So he held the starfish and he dipped in the water while being carried by his grandma who was sitting on the ladder. The rest of us would venture away from the boat and try to touch the schools of fish. Only Jamie was not wearing a life jacket so that he could dive and pick things up from the ocean floor. Jamie is a certified scuba diver and is not afraid to do any of this stuff; he also knows what’s poisonous, having once been hurt by a fire
coral before.
When Jamie spots a jellyfish, the boatman warns that these are the kind that can sting and give you a really bad itch. I get stung by something, but it’s probably just the same microscopic creatures that stung me in Fiji (I forget their name). It is late afternoon, so we pile back into the boat and they take us back home. Terran is sleeping, but Xandra and the yaya are pretty exhausted from carrying this three-year-old on and off boats, so Leroy takes him and carries him on our walk back to our hotels. Of course, it is an endearing site to see Terran nuzzling his face into Leroy’s neck, and Xandra takes lots of pictures. Leroy has always been a big hit with Terran. Only “Tito Leroy” is allowed to put sunscreen on him, and they play lots of dancing games. In fact, little Boy Bawang woke up when we got back to Las Brisas and danced around the room with Leroy (caught on video, of course).
Hostage Crisis, Sunset Shoot and Slideshow We decide to go back to SeaWind and freshen up a bit. Watching TV and checking Internet, we find out that
there is a hostage crisis in Manila. A man name Jun Ducat has taken 33 children and two teachers hostage on a bus. He told them all they were going on a fieldtrip and took them from their preschool daycare center to City Hall, where he posted a sign on the bus that they had hostage and called the police. His demands were for free education and decent housing for 145 children at the daycare; he also used the situation as a moment to criticize governmental corruption in the Philippines. There was a mini-speaker set up outside the bus, connected to a microphone that Ducat had in his possession. He is a well-known activist, a bit on the extreme side, having taken a priest hostage back in the 1980s over an eviction issue. He even ran for congress and has staged hunger strikes for various causes. Today, he is supposedly in possession of two live grenades, pins out, cradled in his hands on board the bus with these preschoolers. During the day, two senators went in to talk and negotiate with him. One child was released because he developed a fever. At one point, the police brought ice cream for
the children. The youngsters could be seen peeking from behind the curtains and waving at the media and throngs of people gathered outside the bus. I don’t know why the police did not cordon off the area - if a grenade really went off, not only would the people on the bus be blown to bits, but all the people surrounding it as well. Leroy went to the bar to join Linus, Jamie, and Tito Raffy. It was man time. I hung out a bit in the room, and then decided to catch up on blogging out at the bar. But when I got out there, the laptop was usurped to catch up on the hostage issue. Apparently, he had agreed to release the kids at 7pm. The Minister of Education made some promises, but who knows what will really happen. The media treated Ducat quite favorably, with most people saying he was a nice man who just cared for the needy and poor people of Manila, the ones that politicians had forgotten. How much of a choreographed political stunt this was will have to be determined later. Those two senators certainly got a lot of press (one of them
would later email out a 12-paragraph press release extolling his virtues and skills in negotiating the end of the hostage situation).
We decided to leave CNN.com and BBC’s website and get back to vacation for a little while, mainly because the sun was about to set and we didn’t want to miss the photo opportunity. Yesterday, we were swimming in the ocean during sunset and thus had to relish it only in our memories. This time, we are after some good evidence of the beauty of the Boracay sunset, and with Linus and Jamie and their fancy cameras, we got some award worthy shots. Just hanging out there while people played games, built sandcastles, ran, chilled out… while the sun slowly descended in the sky, and the clouds played games with rays of light… it was heavenly. We met a fellow Filipino-American from Oregon and exchanged travel stories. Jamie took a photo of Leroy and me, and it will be one of my favorite pictures of us of all time - it, of course, made the blog photo highlights, so you will share it with us. The sky is a blazing fire, and we are hugged up and happy
just like we were on Match Day. You know, with over 1700 photos taken during the four-day stay in Boracay (from the cameras of Linus, Jamie, my mom, Xandra, and myself), we are exercising some real discipline in choosing what to put on the blog!
After the photo shoot, we went to Las Brisas and watched the news. Seven o’clock was fast approaching and we wanted to watch the whole thing go down. The TV cameras were right next to the bus, and we saw the children get off the bus, some of them giving Ducat a kiss and a hug as they said goodbye. He then handed over the grenades to a senator and took off the Uzi strapped around his torso and turned himself in. It later turned out that the grenades were fakes, despite the senators having claimed that they were real after meeting him during negotiations. After the crisis ended, Jamie hooked his camera up to the TV and gave us a fantastic, impromptu slideshow of our time so far in Boracay. Clearly, we were having a great vacation! We also spent some downtime showing Terran photos and videos of him on the laptop. It
Almost chicken, don't make no soup!
The next generation tries to reenact our jumping shot from last night. Tito Raffy is too cool to jump. Mamu went in the wrong direction. hahahaha was quality time with Ninang Meme (Godmother Meme - Meme being my nickname from childhood) and Tito Leroy (Uncle Leroy).
Dinner at SeaWind, Ghost Stories, and Passing Out The oldies were exhausted, passing out on the beds in the early evening. We younger ones rounded ourselves up to go back to the SeaWind resort and partake in the dinner buffet we had missed out on last night. There was a grill bar where you walk up and choose the seafood and steak that you want grilled, then they give you a number and deliver the grilled grub to your table. They also had a pasta bar from which the savory aroma of garlic would waft across the beach. Even with all that seafood there, my favorite was the pasta I concocted with shrimp, mushrooms, and a pesto sauce. After eating, we tried to rally and hit the bars, but all of us were pretty mellow. Xandra had already left the table because Terran had woken up and cried for his mom. We thought he’d calm down, but he even came to the buffet with his yaya and begged his mom to come home. So, the rest of us went
For all the kimchi in Korea
Eunhyee vs. Sun. Place your bets now!!! up to Jamie’s room and began the long and arduous process of consolidating everyone’s photos onto a central repository on Leroy’s laptop. I was trying to clean up my mom’s slow-moving laptop, but was so exhausted, I fell asleep while waiting for the thing to boot up. They were all watching a scary documentary about the paranormal, complete with ghost stories. I thankfully was asleep for all that, because I headed to bed straight away and would not have wanted to lie in bed trembling from ghost stories. Instead, I had a couple nightmares about internship year… nothing that another beautiful day in Boracay can’t fix!!!
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Brandeezy
non-member comment
Great pics from Boracay. You all sure do eat alot! :)