The Rest of the Story

Sorry about the drama of my last post. I was just being grumpy and here's why...

(just indulge me in getting this story out of my brain)

Leaving Thailand was kind of a relief. It was so hard to see the immorality so widely and openly accepted. Plus, we were excited to move onto the Philippines and get to work finding a vacation home.

John has 8 employees in the Philippines. This is one reason we have chosen to vacation there. 2 of them have worked for him for 4 years and they have never met, so we arranged for them to spend the 3 days there with us (I would call it a paid vacation, but it just wasn't a vacation). So they picked us up from the airport and got us a taxi to our hotel. It took an hour to go just a few miles because of the traffic in Manila. It was a bad omen.

The next morning our rental car showed up to chauffeur us around the country looking at beaches and the homes on them. When you rent a car in the Philippines, it comes with a driver, which I don't consider a perk, but we had to have him. So off we went, me, John, James, Pete (John's employees), and our driver on a 3 hour drive to the beach. 3 hours on windy roads. It was a nice break to walk the beach and talk to all kinds of interesting characters about various homes. 2 more hours on windy roads, more homes, another hour and lunch. My stomach was so carsick, all I could get down was a diet coke. Actually, lunch was a highlight of the day for me and I'm only going to write it so I don't forget. We ate at a place called Jollibee. It's a fast food place with a weird variety of things. I got my coke and sat to watch out the window. There was a group of kids outside that didn't look homeless or too sad, but they looked hungry. I watched them loiter around for a while until one little boy pressed his head against the window and watched another group of people eat. So I went out and herded all of them in (4 boys and a girl with her baby brother) and told them to order whatever they wanted. One boy was about 3 and couldn't stop jumping. When it was his turn to order, he looked at me and said "Coke too?" I said "Yes." He jumped even higher and faster. It was so stinkin' cute. It cost me less than $10 to feed them all and I gave them my change. The girl was very shy and wouldn't make eye contact with me, but the boys all gave me high 5 and waved when we left. So easily pleased. My kids are so spoiled, they'd never jump up and down for fries and a coke.

Back on the road for a couple more hours and more house hunting. I was a little frustrated because we weren't finding what we wanted, although it was nice to know where we didn't want to be. At one stop we were just 30 minutes away from our last destination for the day. From there we would take a ferry (or row row, as they call it) to another island. As we headed out, we were detoured because a bridge was out, so our 30 minute drive turned into a 2 hour drive. On windy roads. I was so sick, I just needed a still place to lay down, but what can you do? Our little detour made us miss the last ferry of the day. We went to the port and talked to a security guard. He said our options were to higher a private boat that could take us that night or wait until the morning for the ferry. We were anxious to get over that night so we could maximise our time on the island that day, so we opted for the private boat, but we had to have dinner first. After dinner, when we came out of the restaurant it was dark and raining and the security guard was waiting by the car. I still don't know how he knew where we were. He said he would take us to our private boat (no doubt wanting a tip). He climbed into the car with us and pointed our driver in a different direction from the port. Before we knew it, we were stopped in front of a group of broken, shanty homes and there were people all around the car. They opened all the doors and started pulling our luggage out. "Where are we?" "What's going on?" we kept asking. They just kept telling us "Private boat. Private boat." They'd also say "White sand beach" or "Resort." They must know the buzz words. I couldn't see how we were going to a private boat, a white sand beach, or a resort. We weren't anywhere near the port, but off we went into a little ally between these make-shift homes. We were following a cobblestone walkway that was only about 2 or 3 feet wide. Someone had carried my bag off and I hoped it would end up at the same place as me. There were a couple people with little flashlights, but besides that it was totally dark. I just followed and tried to keep up. At point, the whole group went straight and I continued to follow. A woman with a little flashlight yelled to me "No! You go this way." "I want to stay with my group," I told her. "You go this way. Your group this way." By now my group was out of sight and it was just me, John and this woman. my heart started to race and I was worried that they wanted the Americans separated from the rest of the group. John and I looked at each other and didn't know what to do. I called for James and Pete, but they didn't answer. She urged us on her way and we just went. Now I was really scared. We were just getting deeper and deeper in this maze of third world homes without, surprisingly, any shelter from the rain. I whispered to John"I'm scared." Being the big brave man that he is, he said back "Whatever happens, you know I love you, right?" I couldn't talk anymore. We just walked. At one point we had to squeeze past a mom sitting on a little bench with a baby about 18 months. He was jumping on the bench and laughing. I looked the mom in the eye, smiled, then looked at the baby and said "Hi Baby!" They can't be mean to me if I'm nice to them, right? Just when I really was losing hope of this being legit, the ally opened and we were in a little cove of the ocean. I could see the port across the way. The rest of the group was standing in the rain while a bunch of men were sliding a poor excuse for a boat into the water. I had to roll my eyes at our "private boat" but I was so anxious to get on it and away from that place. The woman shoved the flashlight into my hand and pointed for us to join the group. John went straight to James and Pete and told them they never should have left us behind and we were terrified. They said "No. Not in the Philippines. We don't hurt Americans." It didn't make me feel better. There was a boy there about 7 that asked me "Are you American?" When I told him I was he said "Wow! Do you have any money?" I truly had nothing on me or I would've given it to him.

Poor James and Pete were scared to get on the boat because one couldn't swim and one was afraid of the dark ocean. I was the first to jump on. I am less scared of the dark ocean than I am of being robbed, kidnapped or killed.

We were told it would take an hour to get there. I cried and prayed for the first half hour and prayed for the next. After an hour I could still see our destination in the distance and our boat "motor" died... (Silence)... "Wow" John said. "Out of gas," our "captain" (as he introduced himself) said. I laughed. I just had to. And we all laughed. They poured more gas in from a can and we got going again in no time. Another 30 minutes later we were there. Not on a white sand beach or at a resort. We just pulled onto the sand and jumped out into the water. No dock. An old man, about 60, ran down to us and offered his help. He hoisted my suitcase onto his back and lead us to a "resort." Which was really just an old home with rooms for rent. A young girl showed us a room. When she turned the light on, a cockroach scurried under the bed. "$10 a night," she told us. No way. I was so drained. I just wanted to put my head on a pillow without the worry of getting lice. We told her we didn't mind paying a more for something nicer. She showed us another room with a shared bathroom that was outside and across the hall. $20 a night. Finally John said "We'd like something really really nice. We don't mind paying more." So she offered to take us to the nicest hotel on the island. Great. I didn't care what it was going to cost. We all trekked a few blocks (with my suitcase still on old man's back) away from the beach to "The Mermaid." It was good enough for the snobby Americans and we only paid $50 a night for the nicest hotel on (that part of) the island. I took a luke warm shower (I wanted hot) and went to bed.

The morning brought more rain. We had arranged with the old man that carried my bag to rent his boat and have him take us around the island. At breakfast I said "Who thinks we're in for an interesting day?!?!" They all raised their hands and said "ME!" like a bunch of school boys. We were so right.

Even in the rain we headed back to the beach and to the old man's boat which was actually slightly nicer than our private boat from the night before. It was a beautiful, wet ride. We looked at lots of beaches and even walked a few, taking pictures and talking to care takers of the homes. We were going to head around to another part of the island that was supposed to be more promising, but the rain was really coming down and the water was starting to white cap, so we decided we should take the last ferry back to the port and not brave this little boats in this weather.

We got some good contacts on the island and even though we were a little disappointed in not seeing everything we wanted to, we felt good enough to head out. We could have stayed that night on the island, but our flight home left the next afternoon and we were told that we really shouldn't cut it that close because really, if one thing were to go wrong, we would've missed our flight. So we boarded the last ferry out that day. It was only supposed to be a 45 minute ride. We knew to double it. I fell asleep on John's shoulder and woke up when we stopped. "Are we there?" I asked. John just laughed. I heard men yelling "Out of gas. Out of gas." Since our last out of gas incident was only a 5 minute delay, I wasn't too worried. They refueled and tried to start the engine. Nothing. I knew we were in for it. We sat for over 2 hours. We started visiting with other people on the boat. Lots of them were European, the rest Filipino. The entire 8 days we were gone, I never saw another American. Anyone else white was Australian or European.

Anyway, we finally made it back to port when another boat came and towed us. Then we had a 3 hour drive back to Manila. On windy roads. By the time we got back, I was drained. I went straight to the hotel room, took a bath and went to bed. I was completely nonfunctional and I was not looking forward to the 30 hours of travel I had ahead of me. Although I was really looking forward to getting home.

So there you are. My excuse for being grumpy in my last post and for having killer jet lag now.

However, we made it home and found all well here, so now we just have some good stories!