Homeless Diver

Pinoy Blog Machine mentions some interesting items about PAL’s new EconoLight (super economy) and how the cheaper fares dont even allow for a simple drink of water , 15 kg max allowance (33 lbs) the same as a single backpack, and peanuts… erm… well, even though PBM says they’re all-u-can eat for all flights (as well as sodas), I dare anyone to prove this correct. I have many PAL and CP flights where nothing of any kind was ever offered. PAL is my preferred complaintaint - I asked for another ‘cup-o-water’ and was refused  on most flights.

As things find themselves, I will find out again in a soon fashion if the standards are still there. But either way, kudos to PBM for the info.

I asked why there were so many police check points along one section of road. The answer: New Peoples Army. Yup, the NPA was in the mountains to my left. The person described them as revolutionaries that went after corrupt government officials and business leaders. I’m not sure what I should read into that. They have support from within the military and police ranks yet are enough of a danger to have frequent vehicle check points.

There is certainly a difference between deluxe and the cheaper first class buses of Partas lines. Perhaps is due to the time of day, but first class is a step above chaos, a small step. Its not the bus itself but the operations.

The deluxe was 805p for a 7 hour trip from Manila to Vigan. Nice seats, kickin’ aircon, western movies, frequent stops for dropping off people and rest stops.

First class, on the other hand, is 200p cheaper. However, there is one HUGE flaw and that is they let these damn vendors on the bus at rest stops and seemingly random spots on the road. At the rest stops, u cant even get off for a snack or smoke before these annoying people start blocking the narrow isle hawking everything from peanuts to grapes to newspapers to something looking like a taco bell burrito that had been run over in the dirt (but was actually coconut based).

The ones that get on randomly, they dont seem to pay for traveling a few blocks or a few towns while standing in the isles leaning their butts on seated people.

I think we all know what i think about pushy vendors.

Some minor things would include the constant stopping all over the place for new old people like it was a city bus line while lacking all but two comfort stops for a trip thats now already into its 7th hour and only halfway there, mediocre aircon, lacking movies, and leaky ceiling.

To be fair, I should point out that the deluxe trip was late at night with no traffic. This one is middle of the day with traffic all over the country side.

(UPDATE: the trip was 10 and a half hours total)

I got a wild hair up my ass and headed to Manila. I dont really remember much about it but they said I arrived around 7pm. Audie invited me to stay with him in the Manila townhouse where we partied with Brian, Maffie, Jaqi, Gaz, Sai, Bukkit, Jay, Amirah and pretty much most of the Boracay gang. Yes, we drank a lot. Boracay must be dead right about now since theres no-one left to party there any more…..I wonder what they think about our remaining bar tabs.
Audie then invited a bunch of us to stay as guests of his generous family at Baluarte. Just google that name and the city of Vigan and you’ll see why I used the word ‘generous’. I havent been online in about a week and a half I think but finally found a spot outside where we can pick up wi-fi. ‘ll get on a little more now for pic uploading. I’ll post more later but left my good camera on Boracay so only a cell phone camera. For some reason, I didnt take many in Manila. The rest of the crew arrives today. Here’s a few pics.

Oh yea, I also got to see a lion gettin’ it on with a tiger - then he started playing rough and bit her neck (hell yea!) - she got up and he slapped her in the ass with his paw as she walked away. No shit. It was hilarious.

Gaz and Audie in the bell tower

Audie in his cousins bar

Baluarte house from below

The living room of the guest house

Looking down on the house from the new tower construction…thats th roof of the private house. Complete with 2 swimming pools and a couple of tigers. For a sense of scale, the path coming out of the patio is wide enough for 2 people to walk abreast. Its friggin huge.

Audie, Gaz, and Baya next to a callista (sp?)

Gaz and Sai in the pottery shack

Audie and JD striking a pose for the bell tower

Living room of the Manila townhouse

The crew in front of a really old church…. just waiting for lightening to strike us all down.

JD in the bell tower

Today, July 1st, 2008 marks my one year anniversary on Boracay.

I had parted ways with Iraq and The Company in mid June 2007. No more contractor for me. They gave me a ticket going to Texas by the most lengthy and impossible route imaginable. I had no intention of going back to the USA. In Dubai, I purchased my own ticket to Manila - one way. Copped a squat there for a few weeks for some dental work (bad decision), new glasses (that broke in 4 pieces when a took them off and they refused to replace them), and to wait for Chad. He had been visiting Boracay for 3 or 4 years constantly and suggested staying here for a few months before we parted and looked into other fields of work. Neither of us had any great plans at the time so it sounded like a new plan in motion.

We set foot on July 1st, 2008 and walked up to Blue Mango where Chad secured us a couple of rooms at monthly low-season rates with ease. Vaughn was very accommodating and the party began!

It honestly doesn’t seem like it’s been a whole year.

We might have our differences Chad, but for this past year, I say Thank You. I can easily say that its been a blast and the best time Ive had.

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.

Its not enough that Boracay has a brown-out every day but now there are these weird power surges and drops. Down in the dive shop, appliances have been blowing up. In the house here we have gone through three extension cords, an external hard drive, a camera charger, two cell phone chargers, a soldering iron, a hot-glue gun, and a set of bed sheets. All destroyed from these power fluctuations. Well, the bed sheets were burned when a drop-then-surge caused an extension cord to catch fire on the corner of a bed.

There is one good thing though, well its not so much good as it is just a lack of bad weather. By bad weather, I mean ‘normal’ hot and humid weather here. I don’t know why Filipino travel sites extol the virtues of vacations here during the summer. They use terms like escape to Boracay during the sizzling hot summer days. I’m thinking..uh-huh, its more humid here than in the cities and much clearer skies (read: hotter). But recently, there has been a lack of hot weather…oh its still hot at times but we have been having daytime and nighttime storms and the coolness has been accumulating a little bit to where I don’t use the aircon for most of the night.

But anyway, back to the power surges. A surge is always bad but most modern appliances can handle it. Even computer cords. These, however, are drops in voltage then you can hear in your fans and air conditioners that it starts fluctuating up and down really fast and finally spikes upwards before settling down. Not good.

And another thing to complain about while I’m at it: this has been going on for years from what I’m told. Do they sell surge protectors here? Not a single one to be found! I went to the only electronics shop on Boracay and two of the three staff members didn’t even know what I was talking about. Very nice people, but not very electronics knowledgeable. (dont ask them for a 200 gig laptop drive with external enclosure, they don’t have a clue what youre talking about and will try selling you a desktop IDE model).

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.