Monday, January 3, 2010 En route to the Visayas

Like I said earlier, literally every seat on every bus from Naga to Manila was full last night, so I had to just stay over in this random business hotel (which required I pay more for hot water... because businesspeople are fine with cold showers before their meetings?)  I had a leisurely morning of getting some breakfast next door, checking out the mall, going online, and then getting lunch at my favorite; the food court.  I got rice, shrimp, fish, pork panang curry stuff, pork skewers, mixed veggies, and kare kare.  All for $8, and of course I ate the whole thing.  Glorious!  I got driven to the airport in a van, if you can even call it an airport.  All the planes are props, there are 2 airlines that service it, there is one waiting area, and check in and security take a combined 8 minutes.  I got on the plane and slept the whole way to Cebu City, the central hub of the Visayas (basically, all the islands of the Philippine archipelago between Luzon in the north and Mindanao in the south).  I was actually really excited to get my island on, finally, after doing nothing but riding on buses my whole vacation thus far.  I was pretty depressed it was completely overcast; that just really puts me in a bad mood when my BEACH vacation is cloudy.  Cebu was a pretty damn big city for such a little island; there were skyscrapers, sprawling housing complexes, slums, big ocean liners, and fish farms from the coast all the way up the green hills.  My experience in Cebu City was short-lived; I took a cab straight to the bus station and immediately got on a bus to Maya on the very northern tip of the island.  Cebu City from what I saw, was pretty much a gritty city stretching for miles on end along the coastal plain.  People were everywhere, I guess that's what happens when there is only so much inhabitable land and 90 million citizens using it.  The beaches (and by that I mean cement shorebreaks) were dirty and rocky.  We had a pit stop somewhere along the way, and I ended up getting this tiny bird (I swear it was like a pigeon) skewer on a stick.  It looked so "foul", but not going to lie, it was delicious.  Another point: Bathroom economics of the Philippines cracks me up.  Everyone pees wherever they please, which is cool because that means I'm free to do that.  I mean, it's gross and what if you're peeing on someone's property, but whatever.  So because you can pee wherever you want, public bathrooms that charge for use (they are making a killing on women), but it is half price for #1 and full price for #2.  Definitely if you were trying to be discrete in front of your co-workers or in-laws, well too bad!  I ended up in the tiny town of Maya at 8pm, and of course all the normal (I say 'normal' and not 'scheduled' because 'schedule' doesn't exist) ferry service to Malapascua Island ended hours ago.  So instead, I had to hire a bangka outrigger canoe from an old couple to go across the channel.  Wow... talk about an experience; that boat was rocking and the wind was howling, I'm pretty sure there were whitecaps.  Not to mention it was pitch dark and all I had for bearings were the lights of the island ahead.  It was pretty sketchy, but to be honest I kind of got some sick pirate pleasure from being on a rocking ship in the middle of the night in high winds, getting sprayed in the face by the ocean water.  But I'm pretty wimpy compared to those Polynesian seamen who sailed like 5,000 miles to Hawaii from Bora Bora in nothing but an outrigger canoe with sails (and then they got sad there were no kids so they went back and brought kids the second time).  I had a tout show me a cheap hotel because at this point I just wanted to be on land in peace.  It was pretty basic; a bed with mosquito net, cold shower, and all concrete.  Whatever, I didn't come here to stay in my hotel room; I came here to lay on the beach.