Vacation

As I was sitting on my balcony drinking a bottle of Red Horse and smoking a few cigarettes I reflected on my vacation this year and I have to admit this was by far one of the most memorable. I finished working on the 22^nd in the normal unorganized way by rushing to the post office to send this DVD of interviews of our clients that my co-worker and I collected for this big court case in Japan. Luckily I got there at the last minute before they close for the holiday season. Living in the Philippines has made me used to this kind of unnecessary stress but honestly I have been this unorganized my entire life. So anyway, I gave my small gifts to my co-worker and the nice lady who cleans our office about once a week and I set home to plan the next couple weeks.

Tragically, my good friend from Korea unexpectedly had to cancel his stay here. He was supposed to stay here until October but he discovered a chance to take an entrance exam at a very good university in Korea and so made the wise (but definitely not popular here) decision to seize the opportunity. It was hard for me because he was the first guy I met here and we became very good friends. Interestingly, it took a Korean guy to help me assimilate to life in the Philippines. I'll miss that guy but I hope the best for him in Korea.

All of my roommates spent Christmas with my landlord and landlady and their family. We had this entire roast pig (here its called a lechon). Supposedly the pig came all the way from Cebu where they have the best lechon in the Philippines.

It was delicious and just cracking the skin off and munching on that almost made my Christmas by itself. My landlord and landlady have always treated my roommates and I like we're family and I really appreciate them inviting us to share Christmas with them. It was really nice. As is apparently Filipino culture (or I think just the culture of my landlord) we shot off a bunch of fireworks to celebrate the occasion. Haha, I'll get into the fireworks later when I talk about New Years but fireworks are awesome here. I bought professional grade fireworks and stuff that I think is illegal in the States for almost no money at all. The Chinese fireworks are decent quality but you have with the local Filipino brands which you should be careful with as I discovered...

I was sad on Christmas day because this was the first time that I couldn't spend Christmas with my family. I got to admit I was tearing up a bit but I talked to my family and grand-parents through Skype so I was not in total despair. I'm really amazed at how awesome Skype is. I mean just fifteen years ago it would have been unthinkable to have video calls across the world for free.

After all the Christmas festivities my New Zealander roommate and I decided to go on a trip to one of the beaches that the Philippines is famous for. We decided to invite this American guy that we both knew. He's a lot older than us but he was alone for the holidays so we decided to invite him along. I hope he doesn't read this blog but that guy honestly caused me a lot of problems and stress during this vacation. I had heard from my other American friend that he was spending almost two weeks at this nice beach over on the island of Mindoro. I loosely met a Filipina girl through Facebook and I knew that she lived in a town called Sablayan in western Mindoro. My roommate is bad with names, especially Filipino ones, and when he talked to my American friend in Mindoro he thought that he told him that he was in Sablayan. When I heard that I thought this coincidence would be a good opportunity to meet this girl and chill out on a beach for a few days. So we took the bus to Batangas which is a major port of the northern island Luzon and in the usual Filipino style the bus showed this super violent action movie. We arrived at the port and I was in contact with that girl and she gave me good directions for getting to Sablayan. Right before we boarded the ship I get a call from my friend on the island and I casually told him we were about to board and should get there in the evening sometime. However, at that point I realized he wasn't in Sablayan at all and actually Sabang. We only had ten minutes to board the boat to Sablayan and so we discussed it a bit and made the last minute decision to just go to Sablayan. The ferry took a couple hours and when we arrived at the town of Abra de Ilog in Mindoro my friends were questioning what I had gotten them into. The town was tiny and the place just seemed like farm country. I asked local people around how we could get to Sablayan and I was told to take a Jeep to Mamburao and then from there we could grab a bus to Sablayan. It seemed easy enough but there were so many people taking this Jeep that the three of us had to sit on the roof. I remember asking my friend if this was safe and he just laughed and said of course not. The Jeep didn't drive so fast so it wasn't really dangerous but definitely fun. We cruised these country roads in Mindoro as the sun was setting over the mountains. It was really beautiful and a great experience but I didn't realize at the time that it wouldn't be the last time I was riding like that.

We got to Mamburao and the locals informed me that the bus to Sablayan wouldn't come for a couple hours and so we grabbed some dinner. It was night so I couldn't really check out the town but it seemed very tiny. We had some time so I was talking to the girl at a bus stop kiosk about what is in this town or what it's famous for. She grew up there but couldn't tell me anything about the place. Also, she didn't speak English so our conversation was based around my very broken Tagalog. I found out later that that town is famous for jars of pickled fruit or something like that. After about two hours I asked again where the bus was and then all of sudden she said that maybe one will come in morning. I was getting kind of anxious since I was getting all sorts of looks from sketchy looking characters and I knew that I didn't want to hang around there longer than I had to. My friends were also looking for an alternative to get to Sablayan and we found this tricycle driver (its one of those motorcycles that has a little car attached to it) and we told him we'd pay him 1,000 Pesos to take us to Sablayan. He was seriously considering it but his girlfriend was pleading with him to refuse. My friends offered to take her along as well but then out of nowhere the bus arrived. The trip is about 2 hours by bus on some real rough road and so if we had taken a tricycle it would have taken hours and would have been a terrible ride. This bus was also full so we had to jump up to roof again. It was already dark so the stars were out and it was definitely a beautiful night. Aside from having to dodge some low hanging power lines and tree branches it was a relatively painless ride.

Finally, we got to Sablayan by midnight or so and met up with Mary Joy who was that girl I knew through Facebook. Luckily, she worked at a cheap hotel along the beach. Her and I hit it off pretty fast but I don't want to write too much about her on this blog since I think she would be embarrassed if she read it. Just ask me personally. During that first night I was sitting with her by the beach just talking about this and that when this random drunk dude stumbled into the hotel. He was apparently the chief of police for Sablayan. He got right up in my face and was demanding my visa and saying all kinds of crap. After awhile he lost interest in messing with me and left. According to Mary Joy he's got a mistress at the hotel so he comes a lot and she said she really hates that guy. Anyway, by the morning we decided to take a look around the town and the local beaches. The beach around the hotel was nice but not really nice for swimming and I heard from Mary Joy there was a nearby island that had a world famous beach. It was called Pandan Island but unfortunately was owned by some rich French guy and there was only one boat going there a day and it was 250 Pesos a person one-way. That's pretty pricy especially since I could almost swim there, well maybe not me but a strong swimmer could definitely do that. My friend spotted some small boats in the water and there was a small community of fishermen living there. He was convinced he could get a guy to ferry us over there for just 300 Pesos one way for all four of us. The other guy and I were real skeptical and even Mary Joy said it was probably not possible. We went down there to ask around and seriously the first person we met agreed to do it. It took about 5 minutes to convince him. I was surprised and kind of apprehensive since Pandan Island is a privately owned island and I was thinking we might just get turned away once we got there. The boat was tiny and made of ply wood but it sufficed. I assumed that the guy would take a discreet way to get us on the island but we just stormed the main beach. It was funny seeing some people snorkeling getting taken aback at these random guys showing up in this little boat. Apparently, the staff at Pandan don't really care how you get to there but we had to pay an entrance fee of a hundred pesos which is about $2.50 so I wasn't going to complain. I'm not usually a beach kind of guy but that was probably the most beautiful beach I've been to. The sand was soft and the water was clear and warm. There was a large coral reef just a few meters into the water from the beach itself and I saw some amazing fish when I was snorkeling over there.

I had a great day there on the beach with Mary Joy but it was that night when things got complicated.

We went out after dinner with Mary Joy and a couple of her friends to have some drinks and sing some Videoke (Kareoke). I don't really like that stuff but Filipina girls love to sing for some reason. We were chilling, drinking, and I was thinking that everyone was having a good time until that older American guy made this massive scene out of nothing. Mary Joy's friend was showing some interest with my friend from New Zealand and so I invited her to come with us to the beach the next day. I don't know if that other American guy was jealous or something but he just flipped out. He started yelling and swearing at the girls; calling them whores. I got real upset and luckily my other friend got him out of the bar before he made a bigger fool of himself. I mean seriously, what kind of 46 year old man behaves like that with 18-19 year old girls. That's inexcusable and I don't tolerate that kind of crap. It took like 2 hours to get Mary Joy to feel better and stop crying. There was no fight between him and I but I made it clear that I wanted him to leave. However, the next day we discussed it and I made the mistake of letting him stay since it was such a far journey. Anyway, I don't talk too much about that guy but I enjoyed the rest of my stay at Sablayan; really because of Mary Joy.

We stayed there for another day and checked out the beach again. Overall, it was really enjoyable and I recommend that if anyone goes to the Philippines Sablayan is great place. It had one of the best beaches I've seen and for a fraction of the cost of a resort. The hotel room for two people is only 400 Pesos($10) a night and the beach is easy to get to cheaply if you find a local guy to ferry you there.

We decided to head back to Manila for the New Years and seriously I'm glad I did. The day of New Years Eve my landlord took us to Enchanted Kingdom which is an amusement park. It was fun and I'm glad they took us by Kennywood is better.

We were drinking shooting off fireworks with my landlord at first and then decided to head down to Makati to check out some more fireworks. I thought it was kind of telling that the first taxi driver refused to go there because there was too many fireworks. We eventually found a guy who would ride us there and getting out of the cab was like being in a war zone. People were throwing homemade fireworks at the taxis and each other. We checked out some bars and then by 12 went back to the street. From the road I could see three or four other professional firework shows going off and hundreds of people lighting their own fireworks in the road. Some guy even threw this powerful firecracker out his window and it exploded like 3 feet from where I was walking. I met these drunk guys who were lighting some homemade fireworks off and they offered to let me light them. I'm talking about fireworks so loud they blow out your ears and could easily blow off your hand if you hold on to them. I remember lighting this one but the fuse didn't seem to work so I tried again to light it and I took two steps and shrugged at the guy when BOOM. I was laughing about that one for awhile but now that I think about it, I'm pretty happy that I didn't get seriously hurt. There is actually a lot more that happened but I can't say everything because my friend claims he could lose his job or be expelled from the country if I list all the details. I think he's being paranoid but you never know.

Today is my last day of vacation before I resume my volunteering. I'm sad that this vacation is over but I am kind of looking forward to starting work again. I came here to volunteer right? Not just have a good time...