The Butler

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Next stop was Boracay, which I see now regularly tops "World's Best Islands" lists in a lot of the world's best known travel magazines. I wanted to include it on the itinerary for our Philippines honeymoon back in 1989, but was dissuaded by our travel agent. It was virtually unknown in those days; I think only backpackers went there. I was told that the trip there would have involved a two hour drive in a jeep along an almost non-existent road, followed by a hairy ride in a small rickety boat. ...and if we'd managed to survive that, we'd arrive to find there was no electricity anywhere on the island. The agent said that I might think this was alright, but suggested I spare a thought for my new bride, and whether she could cope with five days without a hair dryer. Probably best not to risk matrimonial harmony a week into the marriage I thought, so I chose somewhere else (the whole honeymoon destination was a surprise for Issy, so she had no say in the matter). The somewhere else was a tiny island called Isla Naburot about 100 kms south of Boracay. As it turned out we had to endure a hairy ride in a rickety fishing boat to get to it as well - and a very long one at that, and most of it in the middle of the night .... and we arrived to find that that island too had no electricity. No problems there at all however. It was possibly the most idyllic place we've ever been to, enhanced by the fact that we were its only guests. Anyway, I digress. Boracay had come a along way in the tourist stakes in the intervening 25 years - there was now an airport just across the water, and the crossing was via a largish modern ferry.

We stayed at the rather over-the-top (well for us at least) glitzy Shangri-La Boracay Resort and Spa near the island's secluded northern tip. Our room had a large balcony complete with a spa, with great views over the beach. It even came complete with its own butler. I'm fairly sure we shared her with some of our fellow guests, at least I hope we did. She wouldn't have had much to do otherwise. I wasn't quite sure how to cope with having what was effectively our own personal valet for the first time in our lives. She'd knock on our door every morning and ask us what we needed and I could never think of anything. I thought the least I could do was try to make conversation, so when she asked us how we slept I thought the polite thing to do was to tell her that we'd slept very well thank you very much, and to then enquire in turn how she'd slept. My offspring told me that I was being embarrassing - in their eyes at least asking the butler about her sleeping habits was not at all appropriate. I hope all teenagers think their parents are a permanent embarrassment and it wasn't just me. I sometimes wondered whether they hoped other people would think I was someone else's father. They all tried to hide under the table at the restaurant one night after I waved my arms perhaps just a bit too vigorously at the waiter in attempt to get hold of the bill.

We made a few forays down to the famous and very spectacular White Beach. It's certainly white. I think your eyeballs would need replacing if you tried to wander onto it on a sunny day without a good pair of sunglasses. The small town next to the beach was a hive of tourist activity, and every European nationality seemed to be well represented. The outskirts away from the beach didn't however look all that prosperous, and we couldn't help but feel that the locals didn't seem to benefiting all that much from the tourist invasion of their tiny island home. It seems that infrastructure development has never quite kept up with tourist demand. I wasn't then all that surprised to read later that they had to close the whole island to tourists in 2018 so they could update the sewerage system to prevent it from regularly overflowing onto the iconic beach.

It was very windy for the whole week we were there, so much so that the regular round island boat cruises were cancelled every day. It seems that wind isn't all that unusual an occurrence on Boracay. We discovered that Bulabog Beach on the opposite shore to White Beach is a world renowned mecca for windsurfers and kiteboarders. They were certainly out in force the day we were there, and it wasn't hard to understand the attraction - steady breezes over spectacular turquoise waters and powder fine white sand.

As had been the case in Manila (refer previous post), a lot of the younger locals thought that Troy bore a striking resemblance to One Direction's Harry Stiles. A group of young Filipino resort guests who jumped into the shuttle bus with us one night clearly thought that he actually was Harry Stiles, and nothing any of the rest us said seemed to be able to convince them otherwise.

The resort seemed to specialise in beachside weddings, and they didn't hold back. Standard fare included a massive sand castle complete with turrets, towers, and the bride and grooms' names carved into the side of it, and a yacht with their names etched onto the sails.

Emma and I decided to take a late afternoon stroll along a narrow deserted road through the jungle down to Puka Beach at the north end of the island. To get onto the start of the road we needed to first duck under a boom gate. There was a small booth next to it which looked like it was probably supposed to be manned by a security guard, but there was no one in it. The jungle was well populated with lively monkeys, who seemed to be doing the usual monkey things - screeching a lot and chasing each other across the road and up and down trees. We stopped at a small cafe on the beach for a drink. The beach was excellent - sandy, windswept and rugged, and the waves were rolling in hard. A few days later Issy and I decided to attempt the same stroll. As we went to duck under the boom gate a security guard emerged from the booth and yelled at us to stop. He told us very sternly that the road was closed. He said it was way too dangerous, and that if we attempted to walk along it we'd be torn limb from limb by marauding hordes of vicious primates. Hmmmm. "But what if", I said, "we had a dinner reservation at one of the restaurants down on the beach." The boom gate was immediately raised with great ceremony, and we were allowed to pass....

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Boracay
Nice story. Nice sunset.