I Am White Guy Travel Blog: Goodbye to Boracay

That is Boracay. It was tough to leave.

But I'm starting this post at 2:33am from Harold's Mansion Hostel in Dumaguete, Philippines. Meeting my friends Chris (former Dumaguete local and recent UW graduate) and Logan (who I'm traveling with for the next month) tomorrow afternoon, so I'll try to be snappy.

For now, just recapping today --- but let me say that I had an amazing, AMAZING time over the last 5 days in Boracay, which I should post about tomorrow (probably too tired for that today, and I'd like to do it justice). Met a group of killer, killer people and had a blast, in a way totally different than my awesome time in HK/Macau. Too good for words beaches, easy living, cliff diving, night swimming, dancing, excessive everything, etc, etc. Save it for tomorrow.

Leaving Boracay, though, probably wasn't AMAZING or anything. Definitely some word that I haven't come up with yet. Interesting? Unique? Painful? Hmmm. Here's how it started:

930am: Wake up. Eat breakfast.

1015am: Leave for Dumaguete.

130am, the next day (today): 15 hours later. Arrive in Dumaguete.

Giddy up! How did it take that long? Here's how:

-Tricycle to Boracay Port (20 min)
-Ferry to Caticlan Port/Bus Station (10 min)
-Bus to Iloilo City Bus Terminal (5 1/2 hours)
-Taxi to Iloilo City Port (30 min)
-Ferry to Bacolod (1 1/2 hours)
-Taxi to Bacolod Bus Terminal (15 min)
-Bus to Dumaguete (5 1/2 hours)
-Tricycle to Dumaguete hostel (5 min)

The only really, really painful part was the Bus to Duma, which left at 8pm and got in at like 1:30am. We were actually super fortunate to even catch it (the last bus of the day from Bacolod to Duma) since we got to Bacolod only thanks to Filipino lateness. The last ferry going to Bacolod "leaves" at 515pm, so when we got to the Ferry station at 540pm, we were happy to see that it wouldn't leave until 6pm. Good karma!

But, yama hama, those last 5 hours were pretty rough. I guess the bus itself was the toughest thing to endure. My French-Canadian buddy Francois I was traveling with (which was a total blessing by the way, having someone cool to bus hop with rather than go solo) complained about his ass hurting after 10 minutes and rightfully so. And literally every 20 minutes, we would fly over a pothole and the backwheels would fly off the ground and everyone on the bus (not just us unexperienced non-Filipinos) would lurch awake.

Here's what it looked it:

Also, we were accosted by begging kids for the first 5 minutes (pretty tough to watch this 5-year old tap Francois on the leg for a solid 2 minutes just to get 1 peso -- about $.02 US), it was air-con-less (shirt guaranteed to stick to you in 15 minutes or less) and the driver was totally out of his mind and honked approximately 46 billion times at anything from stray dogs to oncoming locomotives to drivers who weren't willing to sacrifice their lives to make it to Dumaguete in under 6 hours.

"This driver's pretty fucking something, man." Francois summed him up well.

And I forgot to mention that it smelled like BBQ sauce about every hour (still figuring that one out) and that there were roads being re-paved or re-constructed about every 30 minutes or so, bringing everything to a 10mph halt (like I-5 on Thanksgiving, minus pavement or seat cushions or just general comfort).

If that wasn't enough, probably the absolute, crazy, WHERE-ARE-WE? kicker came after about an hour at 9pm. We came to another halt in traffic, which looked harmlessly like any one of the construction slow-down spots...except this one was loaded with police, ambulances, etc. Then, as we start passing this accident, everyone starts to stand up, row by row, starting from the front. We are on the left side of the bus (the accident to our right), so we just sit there, hoping that nothing that crazy happened.

Well, after about 10 seconds of everyone standing, people started yelling "motorcyclo!" so we could figure it was a motorcycle crash. Then a few seconds later, everyone still standing and looking, the women a few rows in front of us start, wailing...."AYEEEE!!!" which to me sounded like laughter at first. It wasn't. More like cries of just, I don't know, horrificness.

At this point, anyone could figure that someone had died. I motioned to the dude in front of us and asked, making the universal gesture for death:

He responded with a nod, said "Dead" and then returned the gesture...but to make things worse, one of the ladies then started wailing louder and was just in shock and started motioning with her hand in pieces, first at her neck, then lower to her torso.

And it was at this point that we realized that the guy had returned my gesture not as a sign of death, but to say the motorcyclist was beheaded, I guess at the torso, though I'm still trying to figure out how they left the guy there to be seen by a full bus of onlookers. God. I took a picture of the aftermath just to recall the bedlam, that's her in the yellow in the lower right corner:

Then the lady in yellow shook it off with a four-points prayer, and a few seconds later, the conductor made a joke in Filipino. And it must have cheered her up because she smiled and laughed. I was a little shellshocked. And putting that in words, I realize how heavy it sounds now. But at the time, everyone was a little upset for a fleeting moment and then just moved back with their business. How it goes, sometimes.

But all and all, even the crazy bus trip was a good experience, at least to me. The middle 2 hours were relatively bump-free and I was happy just to check out the different Filipino neighborhoods we drove through.

Also, we got to watch 2012 (!!!) on our ferry from Iloilo to Bacolod, which was quite possibly the best movie I've ever seen (Danny Glover as the President!!!), and it was totally awesome (they definitely squeezed a lot of humor out of the end of the world) if you like watching monuments and people get owned for 2 hours.

But even though I enjoyed it, it was a little tough to watch a movie about the apocalypse-via-tidal-wave while on a boat... especially when it gets super stormy, there is lightning on the water all around you and the boat starts rocking profusely. My hands got semi-clammy (and not just because of Danny Glover).

Anyways, here are a couple more pictures of today...hopefully get back at the world tomorrow, barring a late sleep (which is a solid 80-percent chance of happening).