My name is Lauren and this is my personal blog. Among other things I'm a 22 year old grad student, freelance writer, closet feminist, cultural Marxist, and rock star wannabe. Sith Lords turn me on. (More)
Posted by Lauren | Under Hohobags, Travel
Tuesday Apr 22, 2008
I had been to Anawangin Cove only once and had a great time despite never having gone camping before. Of course the last time I was there, I was also with experienced campers, a car, a cooler, and had answers to questions like, “What’s for dinner?” and “How are we going to keep the beer cold?” I was more than excited when I found out that the Hohobags, the Hohofags, plus Anne and Helga would be heading to Anawangin for the weekend. We all needed the beach but more than that, we all needed a vacation.
You’d think that the conflict of a camping story would be the man-vs-nature type but really, the problems we encountered were more like man-vs-man. Dealing with no cellphone signal and no electricity was the easy part. It was dealing with everyone else that was roughing it that took away the vacation-like quality of our vacation.
So maybe none of us have ever really gone camping before. So maybe we were only going to take a bus, and we weren’t entirely sure how we were going to make dinner or keep our drinks cold. So maybe we got ditched by the very person who planned the trip. So what? How hard can it be? What kind of trouble can eight girls, two guys, and one missing mountaineer get themselves into on an isolated in the middle of nowhere?
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.
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:
Posted by Lauren | Under Travel
Monday Jul 2, 2007
I damn near didn’t go to the Anawangin Cove beach trip my friends from work were organizing. For one thing, I’d been feeling strangely lethargic and exhausted all week. Then I was told we’d be heading to a remote island with no electricity, running water, or anything that’s been invented after the 1800s, and that we’d be sleeping in tents. I’m not sure what exactly it was that convinced me to go but whatever it is, I’m glad I stopped being such a pussy. This beach trip was quite an experience.
On my way up north
I wish I could tell you what the ride to Zambales was like but unfortunately, I was asleep most of the time except for the part where everyone whipped out their cameras. Oh, and I made myself semi-useful and became bag-carrier when we went to the wet market to grab ourselves some meat and a grill. It was another one of those moments where I felt very inadequate as a woman because I didn’t know shit about what kind of cut to buy for liempo or anything like that. The boys did the shopping while I just kind of stood and…watched. And waited for them to hand me the plastic bags of food. I’m going to make someone a really great housewife someday.
On an island in the sun
To get to Anawangin Cove, we parked the car on the mainland and took a 20-minute boat ride around a peninsula-like island to get to the most gorgeous beach I’ve ever seen. It was like something out of Survivor and what really struck me that the shore was dotted with fir trees instead of the usual palm and coconut trees. There was no electricity, no cell phone signal, and the only form of running water we had was a pump that led to a freshwater well. Besides us, the only other inhabitants of the island is this family who takes care of the beachfront. I was madly in love. I’m the type who’d rather relax in isolated beaches instead of partying hard at places like Boracay and up until last weekend,I’ve never been to a non-tourist trap island in my life. I immediately began plotting ways as to how I could stay in this cove for good despite my very limited nature survival skills. Perhaps I could build a hut in the forest nearby using dried leaves, live on fruits and fish (even though I hate fish), and make money by ferrying people to the mainland and back. I’ll be like Tom Hanks in that movie and make friends with a beach ball. I shall defend my island with sharp sticks and rocks.
We’ll be playing and having fun
(Click here and here for more beach insanity videos.)
Once we had our tents set up, it was smooth sailing. I dove into the ocean with everyone, then spent some time lying on the sand, reading a book and napping. Dinner was liempo and a shitload of rice. I’m not a rice nor a liempo person but for some reason, rice doused in a lot of toyomansi tastes excellent after a nice long frolic in the saltwater. We planned to spend the rest of the evening just drinking and talking but the stupid weather ruined things. At 6 pm it started to rain heavily and for the lack of anything better to do, we stayed in the tents and played cards. (I finally finally know how to play pusoy dos. Sort of. I can never get the hang of those card games, which makes me a really uncool person to be with at times like this.) By 8:30 we were dead til 8:30 the next morning because it was so cold and we were, for some reason, really exhausted.
If I could only get you ocean side
More frolicking in the ocean on day two and a lot of camwhoring. Sometime in the middle of the morning, the guy we paid to ferry us back to the mainland arrived and informed us that we apparently left the headlights of the car on the entire time. The batteries were very very dead. I couldn’t decide if that was good news or bad news, but eventually my sense of responsibility kicked in and I grew worried that we’d get stranded here for a while. Living on an island only sounds good in theory, but I bet I’d get sick of the sand and the sun after a week and start longing for buildings, pollution, and the assholes on the street. Once we reached the mainland, it didn’t take too long for us to find a willing guy to lend us a car battery we could use to jack power from. We paid them in gin and some cash and we were back on the road, speeding towards Manila and Monday and the humdrum monotony of our jobs. But not before we stopped by Subic for two hours to do some unexpected money spending and a delicious dinner of kare-kare and bulalo in Pampanga.
Now that I look back at how depressed I was before I started working, I feel a little embarrassed about all that stupid existential angst. This weekend proved to me that the fun doesn’t stop just because I’m now “grown up” and out of college. Life is full of surprises and it sure is damn good to be alive.
Props to Reg for organizing such an awesome trip and for being an excellent driver; Kat for being a great camwhore buddy; Paul for the delicious food; and Randy for providing the line that sums up the whole trip: “Into the tubig!” I wish I could point you guys to my Multiply site where I uploaded the rest of the Zambales photos, but I don’t want any perverts to get pixel copies of me in a bikini.
