The Philippines

What a beautiful place!

We arrived in the airport around 2am on Saturday, December 29. We hung out there for a couple of hours, then got a cab to the port. Our cab driver was a rock star who really took good care of us from 4am-6am. Cebu is an extremely dodgy place--and there were loads of creepy looking people about even at 4 in the morning, so it was so nice to have a taxi driver to take care of us. He drove us to three places trying to find a boat that wasn't full to take us to The Camotes Islands. He made the 1 hour drive in 30 minutes to Danao from Cebu and handed us over to two other guys who basically shoved us on without tickets. We even got to sit in the cabin with the driver because we were the only 2 while people on the boat. The trip accross was pretty nice as the sun was coming up.

When we arrived we hired 2 drivers, of motocycles, to take us to the resort. The resort was beautiful and exactly what we wanted! It was quiet and clean and just lovely. The entire time we were there we met between 10-20 other foreigners, so it was a pretty authentic experience of a Philippines province. That day we went for a swim, went shopping in the town of San Fransisco, and had a nice meal at the resort restaurant. When we went to sleep we couldn't believe we had only been there for one day--but we had been awake for nearly two!

The rest of the trip was spend reading and laying around. We visited some caves and went swimming in them, and saw an incredibly untouched lake that very few people know about. A man we met who had lived there for 15 years said that we are the first American girls he has ever seen on that island! Everywhere we went, with our motorcycle drivers, all the people ont he side of the streets would yell and shriek when they saw us! Two white people! It was really funny.

New Years Even we spent with our friends we met, a Taiwanese girl, her Aussie boyfriend, an English man who lives in Sweden, and two Swiss guys at the village disco on a basketball court by the beach. It was great! Everyone was just dancing and loving life--all of the townspeople, including small kids and babies! At 11 they stopped the dancing and everyone went inside for mass, then at midninght they all rushed back outside in time to rev their motorcycle engines to welcome the new year. We had a blast! The next day wherever we went everone would ask us how we liked the disco--apparantly the news of a handful of foreigners being there was hot news!

Being white definitely has its advantages: tables and chairs materialize out of thin air, glasses and bottles of beer appear, taxi drivers risk their lives for you, and all the natives greet you with an attitude of reverence, but it doesn't help you when you are trying to bribe the coast guard into squeezing two more people onto the last boat back to Cebu so you can make your flight. Which is why an hour later we found ourselves with 8 other strangers crossing the Sea of Camotes on a wooden motorized boat the size of a large canoe through a storm and 6-10 foot swells. Emily and I spent the first five minutes assessing the situation and taking an inventory of the things we had that could be used as floatation devices (no life vests, or anything). Then we both settled into a state of silent shock and utter disbelief. I choked back a few tears just as the first of the big waves crashed over the side of our boat. It's interesting the things you think about when you believe you are definitely going to die. I thought about how I had my friend's books and I felt bad he wouldn't get them back, and "I wonder if they will ever find our bodies" and "I can't believe I am doing this just to make it back to work tomorrow" and "It would be nice to be burried in that great champagne colored dress I have back home" and "It's a good thing I am going to die because my parents would be so mad if they knew I am doing this right now." It wasn't until we were about a mile from shore, and I could make out some buildings that I began to develop any hope in survival. I fully expected that the next giant wave would be the one to end it all. It was a 3 1/2 hour voyage, and every second of it I just watched huge waves rise and fall; some of them over the boat. It was also hard to ignore that the guy in the back of the boat was bailing out water the entire time as fast as he could. I have been in many near death situations, and have knowingly put my life at risk countless times, but never in my life have I experienced such a terrifying thing as this, or been so absolutely certain that I was going to die.

But we lived!! And I still can't believe it!!!!! Everything we had was wet, so when we finally got the airport we changed into he driest things we could find in our backpacks, and went straight to the bar.

I loved the Philippines, I definitely recommend it as a holiday destination--just make sure you BOOK YOUR BOAT TICKETS IN ADVANCE!!!