The motley crew of saturdaysoftball players, family and friends have just returned from an exciting trip to the lovely Philippines. It was a great 8 days, which increased to become 9 days due to certain extenuating circumstances, which I shall explain later. Anyway it was awesome to travel with the crew for this week, lounge by the beach, and just talk while having a good bottle of San Miguel. I shall try and document some of the noteworthy moments of the trip, of which there were many, so if I leave out anything, sorry about that. So without further ado, here is the story of the journey, which is just so chocolaté.
List of characters (in alphabetical order):
Al aka Jaguar
Anneka aka Dolphingirl
Chris aka DT aka Legend Mr Amazing Race
HY
Martin aka Contrary aka Fake Steve
Tim aka Rickey aka Crepé Rické aka Breaks like the Wind aka Running with Snails aka Crepé aka Grasping at Straws
XM aka Mrs Reginald "you can call me Reggie, love" St. James
This is the story that has never been told. This is the epic saga of the Chocolaté empire, comparable to Benhur, the Ten Commandments, or more appropriately, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. This is the tale of the trials and tribulations, the blood, sweat and tears of the founders of the Chocolaté group and other miscellaneous characters that have emerged in the due course of these few short days.
7th May, Sunday.
The 6 of us met up at the international airport early in the morning to check ourselves onto the flight. After a quick meal at Mickey D's, we made it into the departure area to get a couple of things before we proceeded to the gate to board our flight, PR 502. The flight was tempered with some fair amount of sleeping, bad movie viewing, and some toxically strong whisky and coke given to us by the air stewardess. She was rather liberal with her whisky, which she used to fill up one of those little plastic cups nearly two-thirds of the way, which she topped off with a dash of coke. Feeling a slight buzz (or looking like a spotted animal like I was), we flew over land and sea and eventually landed at Manila, Philippines, where we were stuck at customs for more than an hour, trying to get through the lines, or collecting our baggage which was going round and round on the meandering carousel, no where to be seen for the longest time. I didn't think it was possible for something to be frustrating and soothing at the same time, but watching the conveyor belt go around the nth time was probably the closest I'd get to that. Or maybe it was just hypnotizing seeing the multiple boxes and umbrellas coast on by. For some strange reason, there was an inordinately large number of umbrellas that passed me by. But I digress.
In the meantime DT was stuck in line trying to get the tickets for our domestic flight to Bohol somewhere else. That left us with very little time, as we zipped through the airport after getting the tickets, running through the innumerable security checks across to our gate and getting to our plane just before it left. That left me rather zonked out, but I couldn't sleep because of the insane kid with ADHD bouncing about two seats away from me, with his mom as his last line of defence and preventing me from throwing him out from the blooming airlock. Damn those social norms that hinder us from teaching spoiled kids a lesson or two. His mom deserves sainthood just for tolerating his bloody wiles and unpredictable temperament, as with some other people I know, but I shall not get into that.
Anyway, when we arrived at Tagbilaran air terminal, we were greeted by the lovely sight of the Contrary who met us there with transport to get us to our hotel named Vest Pension. Settled down in our rooms, went downstairs to have a couple of beers, played some Minimum, which would prove to be a card game that I would prove to be really bad at in the long run. Dinner time was spent at a seafood restaurant, which was rather nice, especially the sinigang, a clear, sour broth with vegetables, and you can usually have it with fish, shrimp or pork inside it.
8th May, Monday.
This was a rather long day, and considering all that I wrote in the journal entry was lines in German at 430 in the morning, muttering something about me being tired, it was a good day and something else I can't read, I am going to try hard to recollect the day. Basically we started off in the morning after breakfast exploring Bohol, where we first went to the spot where the Legazpi-Katuna blood compact was performed in 1565 and there is now a statue at that spot commemorating the event. The blood compact was done to seal the friendship between the Spaniard and the Bohol king, and Legazpi also apparently had a similar pact a few days later with the other Bohol king. We also saw the highway to nowhere, some old churches, went on a touristy river cruise down Loboc, and visited a tarsier "sanctuary", which we discovered later to be illegally-run tourist-orientated tarsier cages, so it was true what we suspected about it being iffy. Poor little bug-eyed creatures. We also made a trip down to the Chocolate hills, which are basically brown pimples on the face of this earth, but they are cute in their own pimply kinda way. We were honestly rather surprised that they didn't sell chocolate at the chocolate hill since we all seemed to expect that sort of gimmicky merchandising targeted at tourists, which essentially led to the birth of Chocolaté. This trip was essentially a class in the fine art of bullshitting as the story of the Chocolaté empire expanded to incorporate other characters and elements later on, and I don't even know if I can keep track of even half of it. A chapter about the Chocolaté empire might come later, or I could just leave it to someone else to deal with it, because it's just way too much bullshit even for me to deal with.
In the evening, we left for Panglao island, checked into our rooms at the Dumaluan Beach Resort, and quickly changed into some swimgear to wade around in the water in the gloaming, until we couldn't really see much. Had dinner afterwards, and then it was more Minimum, which led to much drinking of Tanduay rhum, the locally-produced rum/rhum, in various forms, and some bad local beer. There was some serious punkage going on, especially towards the end, when it was all on the line, because the punkee had to drink the last few shots of the nasty rhum. That ended up being the Contrary. When the game ended, DT and I left for the pool to bum around and talk about more random things. Who knew, the guy who stays in the room next to XM and me, Creepy Rickey, started mooching around suspiciously, and then just sat there on his front porch, seemingly staring at the two of us. We just did our best crocodile impression and lurked just above the surface of the water and didn’t move for a long time, until he decided to leave his porch and enter his room. That was totally crepé. Anyway after that, Martin came and joined us and we left for the beach. I kinda stuck around for a while, but decided to leave since I was just about to freeze, and the thought of Creepy Rickey lingered in my mind. Then it was a quick shower, and I was out for the count.
9th May, Tuesday.
Next morning. I don't think I woke up all that early, but I think it was still sometime in the morning. Tuesday was spent bobbing about in the sea, playing some basketball, pool and table tennis, where I, the fleet-footed one, stumbled and stomped on the table tennis ball by accident. Memory fuzzy, don't remember doing anything else.
10th May, Wednesday.
We had to wake up pretty damn early, because we were going out on a boat to watch dolphins. Rented some masks and snorkels, and set off for the vast open seas. By the time we got to the area where the dolphins usually appear, we were obviously not alone, as we were joined by at least ten other boats like ours, all set to seek out the dolphins. Then the games begin. When the dolphins appeared, all the boats swarmed towards them like a pack of rabid wolves hunting innocent prey. If I were one of the dolphins, perhaps I might like it, thinking it was a game. But more likely, I'd be one helluva pissed off dolphin who just wants these dumbass humans to bugger off and leave me alone. Then again I'm misanthropic, so it might not be an entirely fair argument. Anyway that was that. Dolphins galore, and it was pretty cool to see so many of them. After that, the boat brought us to another location where we got to snorkel for a while, and got to see some colourful underwater life, which is always enjoyable.
Then it was back to Panglao, where it was time for breakfast. It was only about 850 by the time we headed to the restaurant, so we were up too damn early indeed. After that, we bummed around for a while more, before heading out to the beach to snorkel about a bit in the seagrass field to try and see if we could find anything. There were tons of starfishes amidst the grass, and some fishes, but beyond that, nothing too exhilarating. I do like going about in the sea with a snorkel, feeling like driftwood floating about aimlessly, which is rather cathartic in that good ol' otiose kinda way. Oh yes, there was that strange little flat fish I saw as I was bobbing about in the sea that was really interesting. It was well-camouflaged in the sand, and it was flat, with its eyes and gills on the top of its body. I followed it around, and stopped when it did, and it rotated its right eye, and almost, as it were staring straight back at me, before swimming off not too hurriedly. After that, it was a sleepy afternoon, of walking down the beach, napping on a deck chair, before returning and hanging around by the beach, and just talking. Dinner was at a new place we chanced upon earlier in the day, and we had some delectable marlin, pork chops, pork belly, chicken thighs. Mmm.
11th May, Thursday.
It was a long day of doing absolutely nothing, in other words, the usual. We left Dumaluan at 1pm-ish to get to the mall, where we watched Poseidon, a horrible remake where we see the Kurt kick ass, even as he gurgles while drowning to death. Don't mess with the Kurt. Some shopping, more bumming, and it was to the pier where we were to get onto an overnight ship to Butuan. It took us surprising long to just get to the pier from the mall, 2 hours, especially since I had no idea the island was that big. Then it was much jostling about just to get aboard the "Princess of the Earth", which isn't as cool a name as the one docked just across from it, the "Kumander". That name had the potential to be a title for a cheesy German action flick that is so bad, it's good.
12th May, Friday.
We arrived at Butuan in the morning at about 5am. Bummed around at Martin's cafe for a while, where we had a wonderful breakfast, until we could check into the hotel. Then it was bumming in the pool, napping, eating, and just hanging around, and watching ball on ESPN. We were back at Mart's for dinner and mmm, was it good.
13th May, Saturday.
This was an awesome day. We got to play fastpitch softball with the Butuan Sluggers, and it was awesome. I haven't played fastpitch in a long while, so it was great to play it again, even though I was horrible at my at bats, getting no hits (but did get hit in the process). I shall just stick to my defensive game at first base then. Great guys we got to play with, especially Bizarro Rickey, who is the anti-Rickey. He's a 40something with the speed of a 20something. Amazing. The guys all made some really nice hits, and some good baserunning was done as well. Great play all around.
In the afternoon, we got to see a Butuan archaelogical site where ancient boats made in that area around 430AD were excavated. Rather interesting. At night we got to eat meat-on-sticks. By this point, I've eaten enough meat to make up for my meat consumption or lack thereof usually for the entire year. I feel like such a carnivore. But whatever, it was delicious. Walked about in the night market afterwards, before returning back to the hotel to eat more lechon we bought from some stall across from the hotel, and a bit of rhum to go along with it.
14th May, Sunday.
This was the day when we were supposed to leave Butuan to fly to Manila, before returning home by the evening. Emphasis on the words 'supposed to'. Our domestic flight was delayed for about 5 hours that it left the Butuan airport after the international flight that we were supposed to be on had already left Manila. We spent many delightful hours there watching the grass grow and the paint peel. Such exciting activities. Anyway that left us with little choice other than to return home on Monday morning. The domestic airline was responsible for the delay, so they did help us make some arrangements to get new tickets for the flight home the next day, and provided us with an overnight stay at the Nichols Airport Hotel. It was quite a decent hotel, but the place it was in was serious sembago territory. Creepy as hell, with seedy bars all along the dark and dodgy street. I felt dirty just walking around there for five minutes. Ugh.
15th May, Monday.
But eventually, after some effort, we were on the flight back home the following morning. Our resident doctor, Jaguar M.D., saved the day, when an air stewardess announced over the P.A. system that there was a medical situation that required assistance. So there he was, showing his mad skillz and PWNED the situation. And he saved someone…from an upset stomach. It may not be as nail-bitingly tense as some other situations, but it needed attention and was important in any case. Then, home sweet home. We have touched down.
That was that. And now, for something completely different...some of the more quotable quotes from the trip:
"Are they delicious?" - DT
"Tarsier 'sanctuary', my ass." - Rickey
Q: What's the worst booze you have? What would you NOT drink?
A: I'd drink it all. - from Rickey to stockboy at supermarket
"Be careful when you are smoking the pole, the nuts might hit you in the face." - Rickey
"I don't suck, I chew." - DT
"I'm gonna pet the dolphin all night." - Contrary
"Chocolaté."
"What if his name is Steve and his friends saw Martin and said, 'hey, that's fake Steve'" - DT
Somebargirls - DT, heard as 'simbagos' by Rickey
"Sembagos." - All
"Creepy Rickey." - Martin
"Humping his bag." - DT to group on Rickey's particular sleeping habits
"We know you like the Sausage." - Rickey
"Kan wo de QIANG XI." - Rickey
"Margaret" - hence Mei is named
"We need to go with something a little more positive." - Contrary
"I'm nuts for Chocolaté!" - Anna the Tarsier
"Free range tarsiers." - Uncredited
"Too legit, too legit to quit (uh uh)." - MC "Can't Touch This" Hammer
"Indigent." - DT
"There is too much meat, I’m not used to it." - Mei, followed by a magnificent show of restraint on the part of Running with Snails.
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