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Microtel Boracay
O hai sponsors sup?

If it were not for our lovely sponsors, I would not have spent last weekend with bloggers in Boracay. It’s funny, because I’ve been to Boracay twice, and I don’t believe I’ve spent more than a thousand pesos for both trips. The first time I was at Boracay, friends from Canada took care of plane fare, my hotel accommodations, and everything else I ate or drank. The plane fare and accommodations of last weekend’s Blogger Boracay Trip was paid for by Seair and Microtel Boracay respectively, with dinner sponsored by Zuzuni on Saturday night. The only time I shelled out any money was when we went clubbing on Saturday night. Even then I didn’t need to order too many drinks because we had some Absolut vodka beforehand, courtesy of the Microtel bar.

My life is made of awesome like that.

My life. It is awesome.

Most people I know who have been to Boracay rave about how Boraaaah is THE place to be at. Take it from me though - it’s not as great as people make it out to be. Or maybe this is because I’m the type of person who’d rather go camping at isolated beaches or shack up at low-key resorts, the kind that don’t have the comforts of home, instead of partying in tourist-trap tropical islands.

I arrived in Boracay late Friday afternoon and was very disappointed to wake up to dark, overcast skies on Saturday morning. Not that it stopped me from attempting to swim in Puka Beach (which isn’t meant for swimming to begin with) and snorkeling out in the sea.

Me and Gail at Puka Beach, pwnt by the waves

A fishies. I can see them!

After a lovely dinner at Zuzuni, we went clubbing. Yay, how totally unpredictable! I was itching to do something completely out of the box though, so I decided to go on a mission that evening. My objective was to make a new friend, and that friend has to be a foreigner. Boracay in January is crawling with tourists from the west and I had difficulty suppressing how envious I was of them. How lucky they are to be in a country so strange and foreign to them! I wanted to get to know someone and live vicariously through his experiences, adventures, and views about the world. And yes, it has to be a guy because girls scare me.

A night life. We has it!

As the night progressed, however, I realized that a discussion like that might have been too much to hope for. I did meet a lot of guys that evening, some too briefly to even consider them an acquaintance. Most of them were only interested in dancing with me or making small talk in heavily accented English. At two separate occasions however, I did get around to have a proper conversation with two guys who told me all about Madagascar, Africa, the villages of northern Thailand. But even these conversations had a small talk-like feel to them. Also, it was difficult to really listen or make yourself heard when there’s a large speaker blaring hip-hop or dance music two feet away from you. I was tempted to ask, “Would you like to go someplace more quiet?” but thought the better of it. I’m Filipino, they’re white - what else do Filipino girls and white guys do in Boracay? They didn’t seem like the sleazebag type but still; the last thing I wanted was to look like I was trying to pick them up. In any case, the conversations never got very interesting and as if on cue, my party companions would drag me out to another bar right when I was running out of questions to ask.

All I wanted to meet that evening was some kind of a kindred spirit, but I suppose Boracay is the wrong place to look for those. You see, people go to Boracay to visit the clubs, drink the booze, get tanned, try out the water sports, and most importantly - have random, anonymous sex. I bet they don’t even notice that the locals live along narrow, dirt-road streets in crowded, hollow-block houses half the size of their hotel room. They bury their cigarette butts in the sand and toss their cellphones overboard. Marc actually spotted an old Nokia phone among the corals while he was snorkeling and fished it out of the water. Yay for decent human beings who remove tourist trash from the sea!

It makes me a little sad about how the hordes of visitors to Boracay don’t really give a damn, but on the other hand, I can understand why they feel that way. The allure of Boracay, according to a Manilenean I talked to there, is that its’ a beautiful escape from the stress and reality she has to deal with back home. That’s not a very telling statement since all vacations are a grounded escape from reality. I think the real allure of Boracay is that it’s a safe, familiar escape. This island, really, is pretty much what fancy mall Greenbelt would be like if you added a tropical beach to it. Boracay’s white sand and white tourists is enough to make you feel like you’re far away from home, but it’s familiar enough so you don’t get culture-shocked by strange customs and unfamiliar languages. It’s a great place to meet strangers, fuck strangers, and act out in any way you want because chances are, everyone will be too drunk to remember all the stupid things you did there. Who you are in Boracay is not who you are in Manila. For people who don’t have the balls to act the way they want to in the city, anyway.

I’m still me wherever I go, though. Idealistic notions about the world and all.

Some unsolicited advice for those of you who are planning to go to Boracay. Wear your tsinelas (or Havaianas, or whatever you call them) as your feet will get wet when you get on and off the boat. Make back-up plans in case of rain. Respect the locals. The beach is not an ashtray, so your goddamn cigarette butts in the trash. And don’t be an idiot and take your cellphone with you when you go out swimming.

Oh, and because somebody on my Livejournal commented that I look like an endorser of Microtel in my photo, Bim took the liberty to make the following awesome adverfisments:

Other entries about the Boracay Blogger Trip:
Boracay Escape with Pinoy Travel Bloggers
Microtel Boracay in Diniwid Beach
Boracay and the Dream
A Long Boracay Weekend with Bloggers
Pinoy Travel and Photo Bloggers Go to Boracay
Microtel Boracay
Bloggers Boracay Bound