Homeless Diver

It was looking to be such a nice evening with the lessening of my cold. What the hell, lets go see what the guys are up to in the Blue Mango dive shop!

Nice weather, topless French girl on the beach, good breeze…man, that was a good decision I think to myself. Even though the new staff in the hotel can’t figure out the simplest task of taking a food order and drink order from me, its still OK. I’ll just wait for that rum and coke, the one that she repeated back to me. Twenty minutes later, still no drink. BAH I think…I’m not gonna dwell on it and let it ruin my unusually good mood.

Sitting there watching TV, chatting with friends, and sipping on drinks brought from the Bar next door (CocoLoco’s), and the lack of food…’C’ decides to on a trip to Arwanas for some fajitas and we’re taking a visitor. His first day on the isle and soon-to-be Army cadet/officer. A guarantee of good conversation for all of us; perpetuating the good mood. I like.

Arwanas, for some reason, has shut down the kitchen at around 6:30 PM. Really odd, so we ask why. This guy says its because there weren’t any customers….hmmm..then why the hell is it still open with music blasting downstairs and a full staff around? oh yea, there’s no customers because your dumbass keeps turning customers away!

Nextstop - Crafty’s Rooftop! Yes, good call. The food was good as always, the staff cool as hell, the drinks always perfect. Steve didn’t recognize me but what the hey, I haven’t seen him in a few months. Yes, definitely a good call to eat there.

Leaving there, I stop in at Hey Judes! You cant call it a night out unless you have stopped in at Hey Judes at least once. They keep on down the beach while I get a drink. They already have it ready for me in the 10 seconds since they saw me…thats what I call service!
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Ya know, theres been so much drama this past week, I’m gonna turn off the SEO entry for this one. But sure enough, I’m still not going to list the details here. In the US, we call that “Pleading the 5th”. Or drinking a 5th….or something that somehow connects alcohol and legal issues…..

Well, the nice weather is gone and the sun came back out yesterday, after raining for almost a week. That creates humidity. OK class, all together now lets pronounce humidity….” DAYMN!” I can see how the different pronunciations might be confusing…in in the mother tongue of fat-crackerese, DAYMN! said loudly is a valid expression of painful humidity.

Lets see…

• I found out my cell phone is jacked up. It sends messages out to people not intended. The clicky sound for the camera also stopped.
• I have been drinking myself stupid recently, worse than normal and I hit black-out drive before 10pm last night.
• I used FaceBook to find a long-lost best friend I had back in the Army.
• I am single again and could sell my sheets to a sperm clinic.
• I found out that I can pack everything I need into 2 bags and a backpack…not bad considering my scuba stuff is in there too.
• I also found out that I can swim in stormy water at 05:30am using a mask with no strap.
• I got my visa renewed, late as usual.
• I found out that I have been here so long that they will not let me leave when I want. I am required to now pay 500 pesos for paperwork a week before and another 1400 pesos at the immigration office in the airport. So, if theres an impending death in the family, basically I’m screwed. Thanks for visiting the Philippines and spending more money than my family makes in a year!…oh and be sure to leave your wallet on the way out. Bye now!
• I have had the feeling of hair-in-the-back-of-my-throat for a solid week now.
• I shaved my head back down; sweating in that mop was not doing me any good.
• I accidentally sent a few hundred emails to people by mixing up the merge of gmail addy books and adding people to Yahoo messenger.
• I had a deep conversation with a guy who spent 5 months in a mental wing of Philippines prison last year…then agreed to have him teach me some diving specialties.
• I cleaned the house spotless last week; now it looks pretty unsanitary.
• I spent way too much money this past week.
• I am going stircrazy on this island. I dont want to dive. I don’t want to see the same people over and over. I dont like tourists anymore. Nothing blows up here. I need to get back to work just to have something to do.
• We have had more and more power outages.
• A big part of Boracay island was without water yesterday. Apparently one of the suppliers were low on supply so they sent people to sneak out and turn off the lines to certain areas so the ‘big guys’ could have water. Small businesses, residential, public…no water. Resorts and spas and anyplace with a swimming pool - lots of water. I watched the guys fan out to turn it back on later. They denied doing it even as about 20 of us watched them. While the denial words were coming out of their mouth, they were kicking sand back over the access cover so it wouldn’t look disturbed.
• I got heartburn last night for the 1st time in months.
• Got a sunburn on my head, neck, and shoulders.
• Looks like I’m losing weight again.

As I type this, leaning on my bed, I look around and cant stand the sight of the inside of this house anymore but really dont want to got be around any one else either. That means I have to wear clothes. On the brighter side, I have a new outlook on finding a better quality of female companion. Not that this will actually happen, but hey, its a start.

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch….

I was doing much better this morning but now I almost wish I could hurl. Some salty soup didnt do the trick like it should have. Some pickle juice had me feeling better for a while and the body was responsive too but that was short lived. It didnt help that my lower back was killing me from the start. The only thing I was lifting was a foam mattress but I guess that did it.

And damnit! Why the hell does it smell like piss and milkfish all around the place! Urine oder is wafting around the hillside. The people downstairs are cooking with scrap construction wood again and the smoke is coming inside thru the balcony. Milkfish! I don’t know if thats what it is but Filipinos eat that stuff all the time and it smells like rotting flesh in a garbage dump. Cooked or raw, stinks to high hell. But they like it.

On the bright side, the stormy weather season is early this year! They call it “Habagat” which is when the winds change direction and start coming at us from the west. Even when the typhoons spin up and arrive from the eastern side, because of the rotation of them, the wind actually hits on this side of the island first - directly from the sea. This time, we are up on a hillside with two balconies facing the sea so this should be really sweet! And the wind!  Oh man, it’s gonna kick up and be almost constant for a long time meaning we can kill the aircon pretty much. I can’t wait! I just might jizz right now while typing!

Usually, its a pain to walk about the house with the heat. Soon the rain will start as well. Even though this place is impossible to shutter-up, it still has poor air-flow qualities. But now the wind will come directly thru the house! And much cooler too! weeeeeeeeeee!

Well, the ratings are in and Boracay not only lost the questionable rankings they had but this time, it’s from the largest traveler site around and they didnt make a single list!

Trip Advisor Awards 2008 - it’s a pdf file so you should know how to save it.

The thing is that a few years ago, it somehow mad a top-10 list on AskMen.com as one of the best beaches in the workd. It was odd because there wasnt a poll conduucted and no research was done. If you looked, you could not find where they came up with the list…several dozen commentors asked that same question and never got an answer. Hundreds of commentors total and not a one agreed with the list.

Then, last year, a Yahoo list came out that listed it in the top 10. But they admitted on the travel pages once that almost every vote came from the Philippines itself…not exactly very accurate to list it as a world class location when almost all the voters are people that have never been out of the country. And that list is STILL being used today. But thats OK, if they want to believe it then cool, I’ll use it too on my commercial sites and make money from them.

But the largest peer/traveler site in the world is www.TripAdvisor.com . It used to be Lonely Planet but they simply stopped updating the site and its a pain to navigate as well as having to hold multiple logins for different sections. Trip Advisor, on the other hand, had a massive amount of features and its really easy to navigate and best of all…it has the most travel reviews of any site around. Sure, theres a lot of fake stuff, just look at the Boracay pages and you’ll see reviews by single-post accounts that are obviously written by a resort owner or a marketing person. (real people don’t use travel brochure words to describe a trip). But I’m getting of topic.

They have Top 100 lists and then Top 25 lists for each region and Boracay didnt make it onto ANY list. OOPS!

Trip Advisor 2008 Destinations

I’m laughing my ass of about this. Unlike Yahoo and AskMen, this is compiled from real travelers reviews and not quickie polls.

The weather in Boracay is pretty bad right now. It will get really cool for about 10 minutes in the middle of the night, then it will rain a downpour, then get warm again. The next day it will be massively hot and humid.  People who wish to travel here for now are going to really not like the outside weather. There is no wind, perfectly calm. No breeze of any kind. Humid and sticky.

Boracay is still having power outages also. Travelers dont ever get told that their hotels might have aircon but no electricity / power. I would be upset to travel here on a vacation and find there was no electricity. Even though the modern marketing electronic age is increasing tourism, its going to also make it easier for would-be tourists to find the truth. Power outage.

The water has also been really bad lately.  For people that travel here on vacation, here is the trick … be sure they don’t open your water bottles for you. A lot of places advertise free bottled water for guests but its not bottled at all. They reuse plastic bottles and push down on the cap when turning so you can hear popping sounds as if it had been sealed. Truth is that most places boil the tap water and refill bottles for cooling. My point is this, the tap water from both sources has been having silt and dirt in it lately. In the small bottles, you cant see it. In a large container, it looks downright brown.

I was starting to feel bad about sleeping all day and waking only after sundown … not any more. I would be highly upset as a tourist right now.