New Year with a Sabang

---

We left Manila with the intention that we'd manage to do a big tour to see lots of sights and not be back until it was nearly time to leave the Philippines. Our trip started with a bus that wasn't quite out the wrapper - the seats still had plastic covers on them (turns out they all do) playing, you guessed it, soft-rock ballads which quickly turned to the video Air Force 1 as soon as we hit the highway. 3 hours later we arrived at Batangas ferry terminal for some sorely missed (!) banter with ticket touts. Our ferry was another banca, slightly wider than a mini, for a 2 hour trip to White Beach. It was fine till we got out on the open sea and then it had to keep stopping to let the big waves go past. Some of the waves preferred to come into the boat and Mark returned from the smoking section at one point, soaked to the skin with a soggy fag in hand. Tee hee! It was close but we both managed to keep our breakfast down.

On arrival on White Beach we headed for a much neaded drink in the first bar we saw where we were served by the tallest 'woman' we had seen in Asia with a particularly deep voice. We were surprised to meet a few of these very tall women on this beach with their slim hips and very short skirts, perhaps a local tribe?!!!!!

Next day we moved on to Sabang beach, where we hoped there would be more of a chance of a party for New Year. Everyone else had the same idea so we got the last 2 (affordable) rooms on Big La Laguna Beach. The Typhoon in early December had hit here quite badly so we were surrounded by roofless huts. Louise and Tom's hut had been completly redone since the storm. Met our Canadian neighbour (whose father was Scottish) and then our Scottish neighbour (formerly from Kilmarnock).

Spent our first night sampling 'Captain Gregg's' Gin juice which Tom was convinced wouldn't give us a hangover as the main mixer was water. See Tom for the results of that experiment. Then kept the nieghbours up till all hours as we saw in the start of Mark's birthday.

We went out to the famous Floating Bar for Mark's proper birthday drinks. It sits on the bay just out of swimming distance from the beach. On a hot calm day it would be divine as the water is clear and there's a diving platform from the top floor. As it was, it was a bit choppy (the gin juice coming back to haunt us?) so we didn't hang around there for too long, instead headed back to dry, stable land to continue the celebrations.

Hogmanay dawned with bangs that shook our hut. We thought we were under attack but the local kids had just somehow got a hold of some atomic fireworks. They are firework daft here and set them off from dawn till they keel over with the last one still smoking. Kids that can bearly walk play with them constantly and being Hogmanay everyone was joining in the fun. To make us feel right at home it absolutely tipped it down for us, the rain was bouncing off the sand (it's a hard life!). All set for a big night out Pino style when Tom came down with a bug, followed soon after, just before dinner arrived, by Louise so we had a quiet night beach bar crawling and saw in 2007 on the beach watching the fireworks go off in all directions.

New Year's day was nice and quiet, celebrated with a ne'er day dip. Honestly, it was as cold as the Clyde! The coral reef comes practically right up to the beach so we got to see loads of cool fish and another sea snake.

Unfortunately we were not able to carry on travelling our planned route so we had to head back to Manilla on the 2nd to leave from there. However, it was just as well as Mark came down with a fever and we had to make a precautionary trip to the hospital to make sure it wasn't anything nasty. He's fine now, must have been the shock of turning 31!

---