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Hey darlings!
So following on from the last entry, we did manage to escape Boracay on the day of my horrendous sickness but not until about 6pm - 13hours of sickness, diorrehea and sweating 😞 Kate fed me mentoes, Gatorade and soda crackers to try and give me enough energy. The owners of the hostel kept coming to visit me, offering more Gatorade and stomach tablets. They offered to let us stay another night which was really sweet but we had already booked a night in Kalibo where we were due to catch the plane from on Tuesday. In the back of my head I was desperate to get away from Boracay - partly just because we'd been there so long and partly as I knew Kalibo offered our own room with aircon!We made the journey fine. Fairly smoothly. Nelson came to see us off! The Kalibo room was perfect, newly decorated with a clean bathroom and no other people in it! I'm sad to say that we picked up a McDonalds for dinner but we wanted something we could trust rather than pavement food. Tuesday morning we caught the plane as anticipated but not before we had to empty
5kg out of our rucksacks each! And stuff it into our hand luggage. Two flights later and we landed in Dumaguete where we headed to the port and caught the ferry to Siquijor. A fairly air-conned day until this point! A significant help to my continued nausea. On siquijor we felt proud of ourselves as we managed to haggle 100 pesos off the cost of the tricycle to our resort...100 pesos we may have been better spending to arrive in one piece! The drive was longer than we anticipated anyway and about 30mins in our tricycle got a flat tyre. The driver hopped out, lifted up the vehicle with one arm and propped the wheel arch up using the seat we'd just been sitting on! We waited in a bus stop (?!) watching the lightning on the horizon and eating cheesey poofs while he whipped the tyre up the road (literally) to get a new one. 20 mins past, it was getting dark now. The driver finally returned with a new tyre and two amigos on motorbikes, he told us that they would take us the rest of the way (backpacks and all) and tried to charge us P100 more.
Kate took offence and tried to haggle a more reasonable price considering he'd only taken us half the journey. The haggling continued until, coincidentally, Old Grampa Joe turned up with his tricycle (with a cage instead of a sidecar). We asked how much it would cost to travel with him and he jumped at the offer of P200...of course he did, we were soon to discover that Gramps had zero fuel; literally running on empty and zero sobriety. He spoke broken English when it suited him (asking repeatedly if we were single, but not understanding when we tried to ask whether he should stop for petrol) and claimed to be the cousin of the owner of our resort. I'll be honest, my heart breathed a sigh of relief every time we passed by a dwelling with a light on, in case we did conk out again. I was not so much worried for our safety as a) I figured it was part of the adventure and b) we both play rugby and this guy was shorter and weedier than even I! (I later found out that Kate had been panicking about the potential of him taking us back to his
4 strong sons...how untrusting!) However we finally saw signs to the resort and our minds eased slightly...just as the gravel under the wheels gave way and we skidding down the small hill heading for a tree. Kate jumped off the machine which seemed to confuse Gramps, suggesting that he had everything under control. Luckily the resort was over said hill and our journey came to an end. We were shown to our cottage where towel swans were arranged on the four poster bed and the sound of the sea could send us to sleep. This place is ideal - pool, little restaurant, our own cottage, motorbikes to rent at a reasonable price. We shall write again to tell you of our adventures here; we have taken the bike out a couple of times to explore the place. I am starting to get used to the Filipino way of life. To start with I was struck by how many people just didn't do anything! There are people literally just sitting around a lot! But the way they adapt to life - like having tiny shops on the side of the roads selling litre cola bottles filled with petrol and the happiness
of the kids faces when the white girls on the motorbike wave at them has made me more contented 😊
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