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.