Boracay

Boracay: The day after the wedding Joy, myself and the Americans headed off to Boracay. Boracay was once a sleepy little island with amazing beaches but it got a lot of press as one of the nicest beaches in the world (and it is the nicest beach I’ve ever seen), and lots of people developed it, now it’s a bit of a haven for Europeans and Americans. And can get very crowded on holidays. Holidays like New Year’s Eve… the day we were traveling to Boracay. We waited too long to make arrangements at Boracay and Joy worked really hard to find us a place to stay together. We finally arrived at spending the first two nights at a place called Dalisay Paradise Nest, and the next two at Casa Fiesta. It turns out that the first choice was a bad one. But more on that later...

When we got there, Joy, Heidi, Cairo and myself got to Boracay first. We verified with the lady from Dalisay who was meeting us that there would be someone to meet the next batch of people, she assured us that there would be (the first of a long string of lies), and we went on. When we got to the hotel it was very much in disrepair, but we were so glad to be at the beach that we just dropped our bags off and found a restaurant (a nice restaurant run by an older Italian guy) and proceeded to relax. The others got there later and it turns out that they weren’t met, they came by themselves and got scammed by people at the airport to pay triple the amount you should pay to get to the ferry. One of the things you learn is that in Asia if you don’t have an inside connection you are likely to pay the “white” tax.

So we finally connected, spent some time at the beach and getting settled into our rooms it became clear that this was a really bad hotel. Lots of things didn’t work (water, doors missing handles, suspicious stains, etc.) So we decided that we would look for another place to stay tomorrow. We had already paid for the first night up front and the receptionist asked for half of the second when we checked in… we did it but it seemed fishy. Well, we put that out of our minds and wandered around checking out Boracay and found a nice place to watch the fireworks show. There was a place that served food and drinks at the beach on low tables and bean bag chairs and actually had a decent guy on a guitar singing American songs. So we hung out and relaxed for several hours, some of us occasionally falling asleep. It was good that we got a place early because Boracay was full of people. And starting about 11:30 PM and going till about 12:30 AM the fireworks went off. From places down both sides of the beach and once place right next to us so that the fireworks seemed like they were right over us. It was really a quite impressive show.

When it was done we went back to the hotel and found that the front open restaurant area had become a karaoke club, and there were some truly scruffy individuals (as in tattoos on shaved head level of scruffy) at the bar and the worst singing I have heard… truly like cats fighting… coming from the karaoke area. Amazingly we got to bed, though some of the guys stayed up in their rooms making fun of the singing, because it was so bad that it was actually entertaining.

The next morning we got up early to search for another hotel. Staying in that hotel was just not a good option. So Erik and Neuanda found another hotel, And I went about trying to get the money back for the originally proposed second night, and hopefully a bit of a refund back for all the badness that was the first night. Thus began a tug-of-war that lasted most of the time at Boracay… I would show up asking for money, the receptionist would say that she can’t do anything, I’d ask to speak to her manager or the owner and would be given promises that the owner would be there soon. I finally got the money back from the unstayed second night, but never did see the owner. It got so bad that near the end of the trip Joy and I were walking down to that end of the beach to retrieve something she left at the second hotel and the people in Dalisay saw me (spoke quickly to one another and when we walked back they had gone into hiding). I had kept the keys from our rooms to encourage them to actually find resolution, but the owner or manager with some small amount of say never did show up so I kept the keys and gave them to the other people as a souvenir of the worst hotel in Boracay

We stayed another five days in Boracay and stayed in two other hotels that were quite nice. Heidi and Annie left in the first couple days, and Matt Jennings and Dan and Jenny Crank left at the end of the time. But we had quite a bit of fun during the rest of our stay, eating great food, going to a wonderful spa (the Mandala), hanging out on the beach and attempting to skim-board, Dan and Jenny rented a sea kayak at one point, the guys went out snorkeling (though the water was a but choppy) and to an island with interesting caves and a little castle. All in all it was a great time, though the first days were a bit rocky.

Wedding!

Hmm... what can I say about my own wedding, my second wedding to the same woman in less than 6 months. As Joy jokingly put it in our rehearsal, when Papa Nacion gives her away again its like he's saying: "I already gave her the first time. Why you didn't take her? Take her please... I beg you."

The preparation period was not very busy for me, I'm the groom, I put on slacks, dress shoes and a barong tagalog and I'm pretty much done. I rewrote my vows and memorized them. And then basically waited until it was time to leave.


Joy and the girls were of course working feverishly with stylists, photographers, flowers, and other feminine arcana that serves to provide huge amounts of work and complexity and support whole populations of hard working beauty technicians.

The wedding itself was very beautiful. Way nicer than I had thought. Not everything was to Joy's liking (she had a very defined idea of what she wanted and she is quite artistic), but it was still a very nice wedding. It was outside at a venue called the mango farm (since it used to be a small mango plantation) so most of the trees are these large beautiful mango trees.


we had some minor hangups as we spent quite a while waiting for everyone to arrive at the venue (the number of cars was quite small for the number of people and it was about a 20 min. drive). But once we got started it was very beautiful, the ceremony itself went well. I'm really not a fan of ceremonies, but the setting was very beautiful and the group was fun. And of course I got married to the love of my life again. Although I'm not fond of ceremonies, its because I'm much more fond of reality, the truth that Joy and I are married.




Compared to the previous wedding, this was more formal... less joking around... less humor... but more beautiful, more artistic.

Here are some post-ceremony pictures of the present immediate family:


and of course the entire Nacion-Layosa clan... a powerful contingent:


The reception was nice... good food, some fun games, not overly long. Oh, and there is this great thing where the new couple dances through the reception area and people pin money on them (we made a tidy haul of money which kept us going through Boracay).

MMLDC: Fun punctuated by random inconvenience

We came to MMLDC on 12/29 and had quite a bit of fun there despite some real issues with the hotel/convention center. The issue is that MMLDC claims to be both a hotel and convention center, but the reality is that it is really just a convention center. there were not very many people there and lots of things in MMLDC were closed, even things like the in-house restaurants, including the promised free breakfast on the last day, etc. So we had fun but we will never go back there again. [breathe] OK, I'm not going to get into that rant. lets focus on the fun.

The rest of the Americans got to MMLDC before Joy and myself. And spent some time checking out the nice aviary.



Joy and I were sharing our condo with her parents and brothers and sister on 12/28 and finishing wedding preparations and then met up with the group in the evening. We had good fun playing different games in their game room that evening.


We went out for dinner because of the aforesaid issues [rant excised] but we had a lot of fun doing it. we got into several tricycles and rode into the town of Antipolo. For the uninitiate a "tricycle" is actually a motorcycle and large open sidecar that you can cram 1-9 people in on and around depending on your size and determination (I think I have actually seen 8 people on one and yes several were children).



We got some fast food at Chow King and Joy was presented with a gag gift... a handbook for me. It mentioned lots of very important things, like me not having an off switch, there being no warranty, and that my primary fuel is mountain dew. We got a good kick out of it that evening.


here is a random video that Dan took that night evidencing the cuteness of the shortest Greenlaw:



On the way back we noticed a large Christmas tree at MMLDC.


On closer inspection we realized the tree was actually created entirely out of copper. It might help to know that MMLDC stands for Meralco Management Leadership Development Center Where Meralco is the electric company for Manila. So I guess they recycled some old copper into a gigantic Christmas ornament.

Commuting

Commuting in Manila is truly an artform. And by artform what I mean is that you are likely to do things that seem improbable and silly in pursuit of a particular end. This is largely due to Metro Manila being one of the top 20 cities worldwide in population and something like #4 in population density. Oh and traffic laws are essentially non-existent. I mean I've been to a lot of places and Manila is right at the top of traffic absurdity. The most funny thing is that most public transportation vehicles have a "how am I driving?" sign with a phone number on the back of it. It begs the question Erik West asked: "what would you say? He failed to cut off someone in traffic that he could cut off?"