One last desperate attempt at a tan

Once I got all my flights sorted out in the Cebu City Mall I had a few days left to kill in the Philippines. The most obvious place to spend them was… the beach.

So I got up in the morning and headed to the bus station and endured the 4 hour ride to Maya… a small, almost town at the northern tip of Cebu. 4 hours? HA! I scoff at 4 hour bus-rides! Maya is the departure point for boats heading to the small resort island of Malapascua.

Armed with my trusty, outdated guidebook I was ready to walk up and down the beach to find myself a place to stay. However, on my boat was the owner of the Blue Water resort and so I just followed him. Seeing as how this was over a week ago, I can hardly recall what I did. Actually that may also be b/c I didn’t do much of anything for my 2.5 days on the island. I had lasagna at the authentic Italian restaurant (run by Italian ex-pats), went for a swim, got “tan”… or sunburnt, went for a dive, watched the sunset, and generally just hung out w/ the friendly people. Essentially at my resort I was isolated from the rest of the country that I found to be quite sketchy. Though, to be sure, the few times I ventured from my hammock I got hit up by a “give me money” kid, a guy trying to sell massages (who absolutely refused to believe I was traveling solo), and when I tried to leave a guy who tried to con me into chartering a “special” boat for 500 Pesos instead of taking a normal boat for 50. But in general, if I had come to Malapascua before changing my flights I could easily have stayed there for another week. It was just a relaxing place.

So I had to leave last Saturday and make my way back to Cebu City. I spent my final night in the Philippines at the Kiwi Lodge. I went on a good recommendation from some folks in Sagada… but I didn’t have any idea of the price range. But once I got there I didn’t feel like bothering with moving, so I dealt out a few extra pesos for the luxuries of air-con, a HOT shower!, and even a TV! Wow! I haven’t had a TV in 4.5 months! Sunday morning, I went down to the Carbon market again to look for yet another watch. It turned out that the Carbon market only had unbelievably crappy knock-offs… they could tell time and nothing else, which didn’t help since I wanted an alarm. So instead of a watch I settled on a Hello Kitty alarm clock. This matched my Hello Kitty notebook… I think I can probably join the fan club now.

Armed with my new clock, I headed to the airport. Cebu Pacific got me checked in in under 10 minutes. I hate it when they do that, because then you have to wait around for 1 hour 50 minutes until the flight! On the plane I talked to the woman next to me. She worked for the airline and has to take Cebu Pacific flights all over the Philippines. She seemed affronted that I was flying to Manila and was going to spend 7-8 hours hanging out in the airport until my San Francisco flight. So she drove me around Manila, we went grocery shopping, she delivered “unee” to her friends (they consider it a delicacy, but I wasn’t even aware you could EAT a sea urchin!), and then she bought me some Chinese food. Typical that in my last hours in the country that I would finally meet a person who wasn’t sketchy! Finally I had to head to the airport so she got me a taxi and told him in Tagalog where I was going and probably not to rip me off.

Checking in for the international flight took a lot longer. It seemed like everyone and his brother was going to San Francisco. It’s unbelievable the number of people they can fit on some of those planes. Security was insane. I walked through 2 metal-detectors, had my luggage x-rayed twice, got patted down twice and they hand-searched the luggage of every passenger. This took forever, and I’m not sure if it made me feel safe… or just like a criminal. Finally they packed us all into the plane and I settled in for the 11 hour flight back to the US.