Puerto Galera

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Puerto Galera is in Mindoro, which is a contraction of Mina De Oro or "Gold Mine" in Spanish. As per the guide book, after 500 years they still haven't found any here.

Had a restful night. I went out to eat around 6pm. It was already dark. My hostel was quiet. I went to another restaurant down the road, it was too dark and not festive looking, just some tourists eating. I went to the town center again. The whole way down there people on bikes kept asking me if I wanted a ride somewhere.

I ended up at Bahay Pilipino, a restaurant/hostel which caters mostly to Europeans. It was bright and lively. I went in and had some food, lumpia shanghai and fried rice. Still too chicken to try out more exotic stuff.

I met up with some tourists there, a couple from Switzerland and a guy from England. I got out of my shell and spoke Tagalog to the staff there. They were really friendly. They just pulled up a chair, sat at my table and chatted away. They thought I was Korean. I gave them a bar of Cadbury chocolates, they were just melting.

I woke up at 4:30am, still jet lagged. I had breakfast of tocino, fried rice, and egg at the hostel and wrote there for a couple of hours.

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