By Lucy

*Note* The power has been off and on in Palawan. The entire island lost power for 6 hours today. I’ve been trying to edit the post when the power comes back, but I set it to auto-post anyway just in case.

Pink.

The colour for the ferry brand, 2GO, is hot pink, and so everything is as pink as a three-year-olds room.

It takes several more minutes of shuffling to reach the level our dorms are on. I misunderstand the instructions a couple of times and eventually end up at my bunk, which is in the back corner, next to a porthole. Cool.

I noticed people leaving the bunkroom and coming back with vibrantly green sheets, so I followed them before there was a rush. Per my ticket, I am entitled to one sheet and one pillowcase, although I also paid 70 peso for a blanket. I’d read online that the AC dorms are very chilly, in the grand tradition of AC in SEA. They wanted some ID as collateral, and the clerk suggested not leaving my passport in case I needed it (no one ever checked it). I gave her my drivers license instead, although it would be trivially easy to get a new one… not that it’s worth it for a cheap blanket and sheets.

Went back to my bunk, quickly tucked in the sheet as a mattress cover and threw on the pillowcase. The only real problem was what to do with my bags. I can and I have slept with my luggage on my bunk, since I’m small and so are the bags, but this bunk is hilariously tiny. Laying flat on my back, I have maybe three inches to spare top to bottom, and about 6 inches on either side. The family I was sharing my space with had many bags scattered around. I ended up keeping my bag on my bunk until bedtime, then stacking it on one of their bags.

We still had about half an hour before we actually cast off, and some more time after that before we cleared the port and saw anything interesting. I hung out on my bunk for a bit, then went up to look at the passage out to sea.

I was struck by how intense the slums are. They curl all the way out to the end of the docks. Are they dockworkers? Do they steal stuff off the boats? That’s wild. And at the end of the pier, I noticed several diggers offloading trucks of gravel into the water. They’re extending the pier! Is there no limit?

Cell service fell away very quickly. I tried the wifi, but apparently you have to pay for it, because it wanted a code. I couldn’t be bothered. I’d pre-downloaded a movie and I’d hopefully spend most of the night sleeping.

While everyone else was bewitched by the sights, I went below decks. No doubt there’ll be a line for food; best to get in it now.

In hindsight, I regret not bringing food with me. For one thing, it took over an hour for the line to move at all, and I have no idea what the delay was. Even when it did start moving, it was very slow. When I got to the front, I discovered there was actually a different line to grab a box of take-out. And despite the cafeteria space being so small there was no way they could seat even a quarter of the passengers at the same time, taking dinner as take-out cost an extra 15 peso, which was not communicated until I got to the front. They’re lucky I had change on me.

I took my food to the steps where the chargers are – 5 peso for ten minutes of charging – to put my phone on charger while I ate. The abused outlets didn’t like my adaptor, though, or my phone didn’t like the voltage, or it was close enough to bedtime it was trying to slow charge. I only got 5% out of the ten minutes and decided I couldn’t be bothered. If my phone battery got too low, I’d just turn it off. I only really needed enough left to follow Google maps to my hostel.

Dinner was gross. Some meat I hope was beef, with huge chunks of gristle, indistinguishable vegetables in a gravy, and unseasoned rice. I dunno why, but people in SEA have a tendency not to salt their rice. I choked down what I could. I cursed not bringing instant noodles. The sun was down by the time I had gotten my food, and they have a free hot water dispenser in the cafeteria. I could have eaten instant noodles on the deck all by myself as the sun set over the sea.

I wandered up to the deck for a bit and watched the lights drift by. We were now in the channel by Corregidor Island. The boat was travelling at around 18 knots, and there were blinking green lights on either side of the boat, presumably indicating the usual passage route for large vessels.

The white men with the Filipino wives really gross me out. The Thai women who marry Westerners usually give a sense of being independent and in control. These women do not. Especially since, as a mostly Catholic nation, the Philippines does not have a divorce law, and observant Catholics don’t believe in divorce.

The bathrooms (I refuse to call it the head) are also pretty gnarly. I know boats can be hard to keep tidy, but I noticed over the 24 hours in total I was on the boat, there only seemed to be two working stalls in the one bathroom, which shrank to one when one of the toilets lost its seat. There was also 4 shower stalls. I guess if you were doing the combined 24 hour trip from Manila to Puerto Princesa, you might want a shower.

Eventually I wandered below to get ready for bed. Changed, brushed my teeth. About half the cabin was already in bed, so I turned the lights off and no one protested.

The movie I had picked was Wicked. Not because I want to watch Wicked, but purely for its length (almost three hours). Personally I find the whole fanfic creation of Wicked distasteful, especially since L Frank Baum wrote the foreword for the Wizard of Oz explicitly stating that it was a story of whimsy for children and he didn’t want any darkness in it.

In any case, the songs are good, the movie drags on far too long. The story is somewhat too contemporary. It was also hard not to identify with Elphaba, both for the child abuse, but also when she sings “Fiyero is that boy/ I’m not that girl”.

It doesn’t help that Facebook helpfully informed me it’s been 7 years since I finished chemo and left my husband. It’s starting to sink in that this is really me. Permanently crippled and, well, I don’t want to say unlovable or single, because I could find a boyfriend easily, but… I lack the “hope springs eternal” mindset of my compatriots. I’ve accomplished more in every month of being single than I have in any year of being in a relationship, and I’ve reached the cut-off of my ambition being more important to me than any potential love story. Especially with stories coming out about men refusing to date a woman who owns a house. I’d rather own a house and be single than have a man and no house.

Sleep was hard to come by. After I tired of the movie – I did not finish it on the boat – there was some karaoke going on downstairs. It was so loud my ear plugs did little to dent it, and it was shaking my bunk. Eventually I drifted off.

So! Coron.

Coron is interesting to me, amateur geologist that I am, because the rocks here have more in common with the limestone karsts of northern Vietnam than the rocks of Manila. Because the rock here actually is from Vietnam; the whole geological area broke off mainland Asia and smashed into the Philippine plate. I should have skipped Ha Long Bay and spent more time here. Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20.

The group of islands here are called the Calamians, consisting of 4 main islands; Coron, Culion, Busuanga, and Linapacan, with many smaller islands.

Technically, the town is called Coron because it faces the island; the island Coron town is on is called Busuanga. Coron island is mostly privately owned, but the owners are doing a fair bit to preserve the natural state of the island and don’t allow a lot of it to be exploited.

I woke naturally around 5 – it’s not like the porthole had a curtain, although there was a track where curtains used to exist – and immediately stripped the sheets off the bed. Beat the rush! I returned the sheets and the blanket and got my license back, then went down to the canteen. There was a line at the coffee shop, because it was unmanned. We waited about 15 minutes, and when the barista did show up he had to flip through a book of coffee recipes to make our orders. You sent the rookie to take care of the morning rush? I was rewarded with a boiling hot and unsweetened cappuccino and a slice of pre-packaged banana bread that listed the first ingredient as banana puree, curiously enough. Almost healthy.

I wandered up to the deck and had my breakfast while I watched small islands pass us by. Too soon, I was joined by people talking loudly and video taping themselves. Yay.

At 6, I wandered back to my cabin to pack and change. The man of the family in the bunks around me was checking on a cooler he brought, which contained several live crayfish. That’s odd.

As the speakers crackled to life to tell us we were docking, the announcer also went through a Catholic prayer.

I debated waiting in my cabin for the line to abate and decided against it. Best to clear out of the cramped space.

We were funneled down a check-in lane once we got off the boat. Anyone who isn’t a resident of the island had to pay a 200 peso tourist tax. Lucky for them I had 200 peso handy. And that was the end of my change!

Just outside the gate from the jetty was a line-up of tuktuk drivers. I determinedly marched past all of them. It’s a half hour walk to where I’m staying along the usual rural Asian road; no sidewalk, stilt houses leaning this way and that, sari-sari stores every 2 or 3 houses.

I wish I hadn’t adjusted to the AC. This heat is brutal. I’m soaked through.

Coron is a strange town because it’s so small and so new – as a town, it’s technically only existed since 1902 – so there’s no real “nice” areas. Even the rapidly gentrifying downtown core is full of poverty, as opulent hotels and eateries stand next to ramshackle shantytowns. It makes it hard to feel at ease, as poor people stop and openly stare at you as you walk down the road.

(Not that I want to complain “the poor people keep staring at me” but… y’know…)

Eventually I found a place with the sign for my homestay. There was a courtyard with a gate and no bell. I know I’m early, but I was hoping someone would be out and about…

A Filipino lady standing in the street noticed me. I don’t think she spoke much English. She asked what I wanted and I said I was looking for the homestay, so she beckoned for me across the road and into a different building. She led me up a steep flight of stairs to a modest seating area and told me to sit.

Alrighty then.

I quickly realized Reggie, the owner, is what passes for a blue blood on this island. He owns at least three buildings; this one and the one across the road, for the homestay (across the road has the private rooms with AC), and where he lives, which is neither of these. When he was explaining to me the different between the snorkeling tours, he off-handedly mentioned his uncle owns a chunk of Black Island.

I waited about 20 minutes before he ran in, excusing his lateness. I’m not sure I was late or even expected; I didn’t email that I was taking the ferry, although in hindsight I probably should have. I guess he figured out from my booking that I was taking the ferry, because he mentioned noting the foghorn announcing the arrival. He’s quite gregarious and has only a hint of a Filipino accent. I offered to just leave my bags and come back later, but he said I could check in. The place was virtually empty. I learned later that he’d actually shut down the hostel for a week for vacation, but allowed my booking for whatever reason, so I had the place to myself more or less. There was a French woman in my room the first night, but she was gone for most of the day on a snorkeling tour, and she left early the next morning on a “castaway expedition”.

He’s very used to this. He has a list of local attractions and contacts for them; people come to Coron to snorkel, dive, or to rent a bike and drive around the island. There’s even a wildlife reserve with giraffes and the like on the north of the island. Driving around the island was tempting, but I ended up not doing it because I wore myself out swimming. He also has a list of local eateries for eating cheaply. He pauses here.

“Downtown… there’s a lot of places, you can find anything. Korean, Italian, American… but it’s not owned by locals. It…”

“It’s all white people, catering to other white people, for inflated prices and not passing it along to the locals.” I say the quiet part out loud.

He nods. Now that ice has been broken, he’s blunt. “These are good places. Good prices, clean, hygienic. You can try real Filipino food, 50-100 peso for a meal. But, it’s not like your restaurants. They don’t cook it to order. They cook a bunch and when it’s sold out, they close.”

I nod. Just like a street food market. “There’s no real beach here, is there?”

“When I was a boy, you could go down to the dock and go for a swim. The water was clear, blue…” He shakes his head. “Now, they built the new dock, and it’s all cloudy. I wouldn’t swim in it. It used to be, you could see dugong -” He pauses. “You know what dugong are?”

“Pokemon?” I answer cheekily. Yes, dugong are real animals, and also a pokemon.

“They used to come up to the shore all the time. Now? You have to pay for a tour around the island to see them.” He shakes his head.

Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.

He shows me around. It’s rustic. I can’t remember if I intentionally chose a place with no AC or if I wasn’t paying attention. Each bed has a fan at the head of it, which worked surprisingly well. He did counsel us not to sleep with the fan running, but that’s because there’s a belief in Asia about a “fan death” (that you’ll somehow die of hypothermia because a fan will continually cool you down, in defiance of all human physiology and thermodynamics). There’s 4 beds in the girls dorm, and a bathroom that does not have hot water. The lack of hot water doesn’t even annoy me, it’s that there’s no handle for the showerhead, so you have to hold it and hose yourself down. The common area has no kettle, stove, or fridge, although the water cooler has a hot water function that worked fine for making instant coffee or noodles.

I’m confused by this table.

I pay for my room, drop off my bags, and head out.

Poverty is much more in my face here. On the corner I have to pass to go anywhere is a public water tap. People are here at all hours of the day, washing themselves or filling up containers to take it home. When I get up for breakfast, there’s always a line-up filling up the containers for the day.

Along this road is also where the tuktuk drivers park. Despite having a hard time finding a place to stay online, I pass several signs for hostels. I guess they just don’t advertise online, which begs the question of how they get customers. Maybe they don’t.

There are sari-sari stores everywhere. The idea behind sari-sari stores makes sense; for a small fee, you can set up a booth in front of your house selling drinks (coldness optional), cigarettes, chips and other sundries. The problem is that every third house has a sari-sari store and obviously there is nowhere near enough business to support that level of saturation.

One curious quirk I learned about here is called “peso wifi”. For a small fee, usually a 5 peso coin, you can access wifi, like an internet vending machine. I think it speaks to the insane poverty here that that even makes sense, although it does mean that as a tourist, you don’t really need travel data. You can just load things up on a peso wifi and then keep going.

I walked to the downtown core and walked around. I was immediately set upon by touts, snapped a few photos, and wandered off.

I went to a place Reggie recommended, a carinderia (cafeteria or food stall) that sells, among other thing, bulalo. Bulalo is a local beef stew, with the broth made from beef bones, hence the name – bulalo means marrow in Tagalog. It was not terrible, but it was a bit gristly. I decided it was too far to walk for milquetoast soup – it was more than halfway back to the ferry – and never returned.

I had a nap and then spent the afternoon dying from the heat. The local forum was hosting some sort of kids singing competition, which mostly consisted of them belting out religious songs at full volume with a little skill.

For dinner, I tried finding one of the other carinderias Reggie suggested. I walked there and it was a ghost town. I guess it was a little early for dinner. I stopped at a sari-sari store and bought a Pocari for 60 peso. My sweat had stopped tasting salty, which is a concern.

I found a place that offered honest-to-goodness self-service ramyeon. Ramyeon being the Korean version of ramen (although as I mentioned, most Japanese these days are ethnically Korean, so the difference is academic). The idea is that you save on service costs; you pay cost for the ramen noodles and toppings, and at this place they only charged 25 peso for the ability to cook the noodles there, which was good when I was staying at a place with no kitchen. You pick out the noodles and toppings you want, pay for them, then cook them on this little hotplate that also dispenses water. The staff cleans the dishes.

The place was run by a local girl who seemed like she was maybe 16 or 17 and not thrilled about having a job. I did meet the owner a few times, a Korean woman. The place seems to be popular with kids on school lunch breaks and that’s about it, although I frequented it because I often use instant noodles to rapidly increase my sodium levels. If it’s already going to cost me 60 peso for a Pocari, I’ll just combine the sodium with my meal and save myself some cash. Filipino restaurants don’t offer salt shakers, they offer vinegar instead.

The other girl was back at the hostel by the time I was there, frantically packing. She was still packing and video chatting someone by the time I drifted off, but so tired she didn’t disturb me.

The next day is Sunday. You’d think I’d have learned from Malaysia, but nope. I forgot everyone was at church again.

I wandered down to another carinderia Reggie suggested, which was open. Here I learned that Filipinos don’t make coffee if they can help it, they drink premixed instant coffee instead. They also looooove sugar, maybe even more than the Vietnamese, although I guess it makes sense when you look at how skinny they are. They need extra calories.

They usually eat rice with chicken or pork for breakfast. I am opposed to this mostly for variety; if I’m going to eat rice with pork or chicken for lunch and dinner, I want something else for breakfast. I wouldn’t have minded some congee, but lugaw, the local version, is super watered down and didn’t appeal. Then I discovered champorado, which is my new obsession.

Champorado is deceptively simple. It’s just four ingredients; rice, water, sugar and cocoa powder. The beauty lies in the details. You would expect, considering I just said they oversweeten everything, that it would be more like chocolate pudding than anything else, but they don’t sweeten it much at all. It’s actually left slightly bitter, because they then pour heavy cream on it, which is delightful. I think it has the potential to be a real “superfood”, because dark chocolate is very good for you, and they usually top it with tuyo (dried fish).

Anyway. From the moment the first bite touched my lips, I have been addicted and I order it every chance I get. My only complaint is that they water it down a bit and I’m never quite full after a single serving.

After I finished and paid (50 peso altogether) I wandered up the road, where some people were getting out of church service and giving me the stink eye for obviously not attending. At least I had my shoulders covered; I used the shawl Minda gave me every day of the week. Cheaper than buying bottles and bottles of sunscreen, and it also made me feel like a mysterious Jedi. I have the suspicion it also made me look wealthy, compared to the other backpackers wandering around with tank tops, shorts and tans.

I climbed up Mount Tapyas, which had been tempting me since I clapped eyes on it. It’s a 200 meter climb that offers a panoramic view of the surrounding area, which is rapidly becoming a city. It took me forever, but fortunately there’s lots of tree cover and benches to sit on. There’s also a lot of lighting, because people like to climb it to photograph the sunset, which I couldn’t be bothered to do.

There’s clearly a trail that keeps going past the top, which I wandered down for a minute, but then thought better of it and went back to town.

After getting changed and grabbing some cash, I wandered down the road with all the tuktuk drivers, lounging around. I wanted to check the prices for driving to the hot spring. The spring itself is 300 peso, which seems a bit steep. One driver told me 700 peso and I started to walk away. 1000 peso for a soak? No thanks!

One chased me down the road, “500 peso, ma’am! Just for you!”

My conscience argued with me there. Was this guy only offering me 500 peso because he was desperate? I know sari-sari stores often go into the hole, and Uber drivers don’t factor costs into the choice to drive; was he losing money on the price of gas? I ultimately decided that wasn’t something I could accurately gauge, and accepted. I will say, when, I got to Puerto Princesa, which is much bigger, tuktuk fees were half the price of Coron, so I suspect the Coron prices are inflated.

It’s only about an hour walk to the hot spring, but the road is in poor shape and there’s very little shade.

Once we arrived, he didn’t even ask for money, just gestured to a waiting area and told me he’d hang out there.

The Manquinit spring is unique. It’s not just a geothermal spring, but because of the mangroves in the area, the water is actually saltwater. The large pool itself is ringed by mangroves, which is lovely to see, but the pool itself is unshaded, and when you combine heated water with the Philippine sun at noon, you have a recipe for long pork soup. No thanks!

I managed to find a place with the shade of a single mangrove tree. Then I got conflicted. I had my bathing suit on under my dress, but all of the Filipino women were bathing in their regular clothes. I didn’t see any signs around saying I couldn’t be in my bathing suit – no sign was necessary that nudity wasn’t allowed – and I wavered.

I sat at the edge in my dress for a bit, immersed up to my knees. The water is super hot, but also soothing. After about 10 minutes, some other white people showed up and I hazarded to take off my dress. At least I’ll have back-up, but no one said anything. i tied my hair up to keep it out of the water.

It really was too warm to go deeper than chest high, and even that sent my heart racing. I splashed some water on my face and across my shoulders.

I got in and out a couple of times. Allegedly there was a cooling mister area, but I watched the other tourists go over and press the button and nothing happened, so I didn’t bother trying.

After about an hour, some more white people showed up, and the Filipinos started thinning out.

Some old Filipino man came over to chat me up. At first, he could be excused as old and not all there, but around the time he asked how my skin was so white and mentioned that he loved white skin, there was no longer any pretending what he was fishing for. The shade was starting to disappear and I was too hot to cool off by sitting out anymore, so I excused myself and took off.

On the way back to the hostel, I stopped to grab reef safe sunscreen. Some places it wasn’t hard to find; in Thailand, basically all sunscreen is reef safe, which makes sense. Idiotproof. Here had a variety, for some reason.

I walked down to a restaurant near the waterfront for lunch. Just a sandwich.

When I got back to the hostel, we had two new guests. One older gentleman who was just here for a night before he took off on a castaway adventure, who spent the entire evening chainsmoking on the balcony, and this young punk with surfer hair. He had a distracting tendency to wander around shirtless, although he reminded me of my brother and I later found out why… he’s Acadian, so probably a close genetic relative.

I asked Reggie to help me organize some tours. There’s lots of options in Coron; I could have gone snorkeling every day if I wanted, but I did not want to. There’s also a slippery slope where yes, it’s cheap – most tours are about 20$ – but you start adding up the cost of the hostel, food, and the fact you aren’t working, and you’re cherry tapping your budget to death.

One of the tours had the option to split into two tours on two different days for the same length, which is a bit of a coin toss; is the two day tours too short, or is the merged tour too long? Reggie pointed towards the one day tour, so I agreed with that. If he were just in it for money, he’d go for the two.

In the evening, I went back to the same eatery and tried a traditional Filipino dessert; halo halo. Halo halo is like ice cream but better. For one thing, the main ingredient is actually ice chips; it mixes with the cream as it melts. But it also has protein and fibre; traditional toppings include red beans and garbanzo beans; flavoured jelly; tapioca pearls; sweet potatoes; fruits like plantain and jackfruit; coconut gel. The toppings usually consist of ice cream, preferably ube; toasted rice; mashed purple yam; and leche flan.

It was a slow night.

I got up at dawn the next day – the curtains are thin – and walked down the road for more champorado. I discovered a girl on the street corner selling some to-go for 30 peso, although she then didn’t have change for me. She ran down the road and I think bought something at a sari-sari store to make change for me.

Now I need coffee.

The sari-sari store across the way is open by now. I bought a 2 pack of instant coffee for 20 peso. Breakfast for 40 peso. Not even a dollar.

At 7, I packed up and made sure I was ready and waiting for the van at 7:30.

I hated the other tourists about as soon as they got in the van. They immediately started making demeaning and insulting comments about the locals.

After about 20 minutes, we’d gathered everyone and arrived at the main outrigger dock. We were corralled under the only pavilion, the driver grabbed his money and took off.

A man with nice glasses, styled hair and a clipboard addressed us. “My name is Ali, I’ll be your guide today! Please fill out your name, age, and nationality on this clipboard.”

It seemed most of the others were from the same group. There was also a couple who looked Indian, and another couple that were French or Belgian. I ended up being the last one to fill out the clipboard, and I talked to the guide in the meantime. When the clipboard came around to me, I realized why the large group had rubbed me the wrong way; they were Israeli.

Now, it’s not just me and my anti-genocide stance. Look at any expat group on social media and you’ll quickly find out Israelis are a widely disliked group. They function the same way as the Chinese amoeba, but whereas the Chinese amoeba just sort of drifts through as an innocently insensitive mass, the Israelis are vocal. They are… well, you can call them proud or you can call them arrogant. Haughty. They’re often just off their mandatory military service, jacked and flush with cash. Whereas the Chinese always give the sense of not following the rules because they don’t understand, the Israelis give the sense of not following the rules because they feel invincible.

I hate tarring everyone with the same brush, but just to illustrate my point, at one point one of them asked me why visit Canada when it’s basically the same as the States, and I would have turfed him off the boat in indignation if the guide hadn’t interrupted us with something.

As we stood around waiting – Ali explained that all the boats head out at roughly the same time, so everyone is jockeying for a place in line – Ali also told us that one of the staff on the boat today is deaf and mute.

Now, his name is Joshua and he may be deaf but he is not mute. I suppose he’s mute in the sense that he can’t pronounce words – Ali told me he was born deaf – but he can and does vocalize. He’s whip-smart and had figured out how to call out for people’s attention. He can’t talk, but when you sign to him he’ll make some grunting sounds as he responds. Ali also told me he can swear in Tagalog, but of course I don’t know how to curse in Tagalog so I can’t confirm. I also never confirmed if he knows American Sign Language, although enough signs are universal and it’s not like we were discussing physics, but Ali says he doesn’t really sign either. He didn’t learn.

He is a jokester and all the other guides seem fond of him. He was constantly jumping off the outrigger to swim to other boats and “talk” to the guides on it. Whenever we arrived at a location, at least one person would fist-bump him and give him a hug.

Eventually we got to our boat and got sorted. Our boat was called Rycen. Ali asked us to put on our lifejackets before we set out, but that was the only time he did so. As the day went on, eventually I was the only one consistently wearing mine. We also had a couple other guides who’s names I didn’t catch, and the chain-smoking captain.

As we sailed across to the first destination, Ali said he was going to jump in as soon as we got there, but he didn’t actually end up jumping in the water until we got to the last destination. I started teasing him it was so that he didn’t mess up his hair.

Our first destination was Barracuda lagoon, so named because it’s brackish and barracudas live in it. Ali said we probably won’t see any because the earlier tourists will have scared them off, although I did see some small silver fish that could have been baby barracudas.

On Coron island, you have to wear a lifejacket, at least nominally. Ali said you can just hold on to it or tie it to your ankle if you want. I chose to wear mine for most of the swimming; if you don’t have to constantly tread water, you can preserve your strength and swim for longer. Paradoxically, the rule was put in to place after a bogan killed himself diving in shallow water in 2024, which the lifejacket will not help you with.

One of the things that annoyed and continued to annoy me is that I got on the boat first, but the Israeli platoon were never the first ones off the boat – they have to come to a consensus first – so I’d constantly have to elbow past them to get to the water.

While they debated whatever, I got through them and followed Joshua across the flooded boardwalk and up the haphazard steps to the lagoon.

Most people, it seems, just come here to jump off the boardwalk. I shoved past them to the water and swam out to the furthest reaches allowed of the lagoon (there was a buoy line that presumably indicated not to go further). I somewhat regretted not having a snorkel, but the water was clear enough that I could see the rocky sides… as it fell away like a sheer cliff. *Gulp*

At one point, I was interrupted by some other tourists making a TikTok, but mostly I had a great time floating along by myself. We had 40 minutes here. The French couple also swam out to snorkel. The Indian woman sat on the boardwalk sulking… I guess the brackish water would ruin her make-up? There was one large Israeli man who was constantly snorkeling, but most of them just stayed around the boardwalk, practicing backflips.

Now, a lot of these photos will be scraped from other sources. There was nowhere to really leave our stuff except on the boat. A lot of people had these absolute units of phone cases that allowed them to take photos and video underwater, but no points for guessing I don’t have one. I just left my phone on the boat.

Our next location was about 15 minutes away, called Twin Peaks coral garden. There’s two points of rock sticking out the ocean (the twin peaks) and the coral grows on the sandbar between them.

How to get off the boat?

The blonde Israeli offered to toss the lifejacket in for me once I’d jumped in, so I accepted that. I was the first one off the boat, along with the large man. I immediately swam out to the farthest point of the reef and watched the tropical fish along the “cliff edge”.

It was dead.

As I drifted back towards the boat, I realized large parts, maybe 50-60% of the reef, were dead and bleached.

Like I’ve said before… it’s a good thing I’m going now, while there’s still something to see. In a decade, coral reefs will only exist in aquariums.

We had about half an hour here. When we got back on the boat, the guide miscounted how many of us – the large man was still way out in the reef. We shouted as the boat fired up the engines and the guide turned around and realized his mistake. Walking up to the bow of the boat, he called, “goodbye, my friend! See you tomorrow!”

We all laughed.

The next spot is called Kayangan Lake. You have to climb a bunch of steps to get to the lake, but Ali admitted to me it’s mostly the same as Barracuda lake, so I didn’t bother going swimming. Save my strength. Me and Josh did climb the steps to the viewing platform to take photos and watch the thunderstorm roll in.

It was also here that I learned the tides are different. In Nova Scotia, we have one tide a day. In the Philippines, they have two!

We walked back to the boat as the rain pelted down. Not that it matters; no one really dried off all day. We were in and out of the water so often my towel was uselessly soaked. The Israelis took over the centre rail of the boat to hang their wet things from. I wedged my backpack under the bench seat, on top of my boots, to keep it dry. I spent most of the day barefoot and clambering around the boat with the crew, while the others stubbornly kept their flip flops on when not swimming, and had to be helped on and off the boat.

We then sailed about 20 minutes over to where lunch was. One of the crew members had been cooking it in the back while we swam. Along a cove was a strip of white sand beach where they had built some cabanas.

The Israelis eyed the food distrustfully. It was some vegetables, some fish and shrimp smoked, and some BBQ chicken. I don’t think any of it violated Kosher, but then I don’t have all the finer points of Kosher memorized (I looked it up later. Shrimp is not kosher. So I guess they couldn’t eat any of it). A couple of them refused to eat at all and the large man produced a bag of potato chips to snack on. Whatever! More shrimp for me! The Indian woman also didn’t want any of the fish or meat and just ate the vegetables and watermelon.

I mean… if you keep strict Kosher, would you not prepare for that?

I sat with Ali and we chatted. He asked me so many questions about Canada I suspect he was debating trying to move there, but the conversation moved along before I had the opportunity to confirm.

He was sort of cute though. He’s the only one with a full mouth of teeth. Older rich men can have Filipino wives… could I have a subservient Filipino husband? They’re all kinda scrawny though…

Click. ‘Cause they are poor and starving, Lucy.

I looked down at my plate of shrimp, suddenly feeling like a glutton.

We were there for another hour. I waded out into the crystal clear water and splashed around a bit. The outrigger is the perfect place to practice a pull-up. I also found a horseshoe crab and chased it around the shallows for a bit.

It was half an hour to our next location, the twin lagoon. Here is where you are expected to rent a canoe and canoe across the the one lagoon, which becomes two during high tide when the cave connecting the two is submerged. Ali jumped in to lead those of us without canoes, and we quickly left the platoon behind and paddled along on our own. They weren’t paying attention and were just doing their own thing.

I got attacked by a fish here, or maybe a freshwater shrimp. I didn’t see it and it didn’t hurt me, but I felt something tapping on my leg with indignation and swam away. I also noticed there’s a local bird that looks like a crow but has a weird hiccuping “caw” that makes it sound like a duck. They were divebombing the people in the canoes, and Ali said it was nesting season.

When we got back to the boat, there was a sea turtle!

We stopped at one more reef on the way back, but I was all swam out.

When we got back to the hostel, I was hungry but too tired to go out. Fortunately the sari-sari across the road offers homecooked meals for the same price as the restaurants, just limited selection, so I ordered some noodle dish and it was delivered to me.

The reefs are dead.

I can’t stop thinking about it, the ghost-white reefs, still and lifeless. We’re passing the tipping points. Within, conservatively, ten years, there will no longer be tropical coral gardens. See them while you can. The Amazon is now a net emitter of carbon instead of a carbon sink. The AMOC and subpolar gyre are shutting down. And everyone is in a tizzy about the effect El Nino will have on us, but do you know what happens to Asia?

It dries out. El Nino cancels the monsoon season, decimating crops and making drinking water scarce. Combined with the devastatingly higher prices on fertilizer from the war, next year is going to be a massacre across Southeast Asia.

I was dead tired the next day. I was planning on doing another tour on Wednesday and one on Friday, but I decided to scale that back. I took Tuesday and Wednesday to recover.

I went to the same booth for champorado. I had two 20 peso coins, but apparently even that was too much and she didn’t even have 10 peso change. I decided to let it go and told her to keep the change. I will say, from that day on, she always dug down to the bottom of the pot for the good stuff for me.

I spent the day lazing around, following the breeze and the shade around the hostel. I watched the new Mummy movie. It’s fine; if you like Evil Dead style horror you’ll like this. I thought it could have used another pass on the drawing board, it had some good stuff but it was missing something. I will say, it is a breath of fresh air that it portrays a modern, cosmopolitan Egypt, and not the caricature version you see in every other movie.

Also, writers cannot do math. It’s mentioned the “ritual” has been done 83 times in the 4-5’000 years that this mummy has existed. Which means it’s been done in each person’s lifetime once, maybe twice. I presume there is a bell curve where the ritual was done more frequently in the beginning and less frequently as they got better at it, which means Magician could only have done the ritual once when they seem to want to imply she’s done it three or four times.

There’s a book in Russian here. I sent a picture to Vlad and he said it was a Stephen King novel.

In the evening, me and the boy went out for halo halo, as he hadn’t tried it yet. He works as a roofer, so he’s also counting down the days until the season starts and he can head back and start working. He also speaks fluent French. My family does not… are we the only ones who lost our French? How heartbreaking!

Thunder clouds soar overhead every day. I think Coron was built in a weird atmospheric anomaly where it doesn’t rain.

More rest on Wednesday.

I walked down to the bank and took out some cash. This bank lets you withdraw 20’000 peso, which is theoretically all the cash I’ll need for the rest of my Philippines experience. I then waited in line to go inside and exchange one of my thousand peso bills for 100’s.

Reggie is hard to get ahold of, because he’s on vacation. Shivan drained all the water out of the water cooler before he left, and Reggie didn’t come to fill it up until the evening.

For lunch and dinner I went to the ramyeon place, because I was having cramps from lack of salt and I didn’t want to buy more Pocari. I’m having some decision fatigue. I kind of want to just go home. The owner comments on my Sisu tattoo, asking if it’s my name. This is when I learned that tattooing your name on your collar bone is common in Asia and random street vendors thought Sisu was my name.

I mean, why not.

Roxas is a common name in the Philippines, which makes me laugh because it’s the name of Sora’s Nobody, and if you don’t get that I’m not explaining it.

I went across the road and asked them to do my laundry. The cheapest they offer is 270 peso for 3 kilos, but I only had 2.5 kilos of laundry even when I was just throwing things in to try and hit 3. I told them it doesn’t matter and 2.5 for 270 is fine. They had it ready for pick up for 6PM.

Shivan checked out at 2PM and I finally had the place to myself.

Thursday is the gunboat snorkeling. I borrowed a snorkel off of Reggie. The van is early because it’s slow today, and I get a call at 7:25 because I’m not at the gate yet.

It’s just me and 3 Dutch boys today. They all speak English, but they’re all friends and they spend the day talking amongst themselves in Dutch. The guides this time do not have Ali’s level of English either. I spot Joshua and wave, but he barely waves back. Oh darn.

The boat today is named Xian. Immortals? Interesting.

It’s a long boatride today, an hour to our first stop, as we’re going around the side of the island. The Dutch boys nap, lulled by the gentle motion of the boat and the humidity. I watch the scenery go by.

We stopped near Apo island for our first swim, the Tangat shipwreck next to a reef. The wreck is 6 meters down at the shallowest point, close enough to freedive, far enough to be vaguely visible with a snorkel.

Now my floating problem got in the way.

No, I don’t mean that I have a hard time floating. I have the opposite problem. I never understand people who can’t swim, because I can’t not float. When I’m super fit, I can freedive, but now, every time I try to, I can’t get more than a meter depth before I bob back to the surface like a cork. I assume it has something to do with my lung capacity.

Anyway. I snorkeled around the boat and the reef, enviously watching the boys dive to it. We were there for 45 minutes.

This boat is interesting because it looks basically intact. Chatter online says they think the crew scuttled it, but that doesn’t sound like a Japanese thing to do.

Half an hour to the next destination, the Lusong gunboat.

This boat is even shallower. The guide says when it’s low tide, part of the boat sticks above the surface. As it is, it’s close enough that I can touch it when floating by. The boat has become one with the reef, with coral growing on it. A few schools of fish drifted by, parting when my hands reached out for them like oil and water. Large iridescent fish swam through the holes in the boat, along with angelfish.

We were here for another 45 minutes.

It was another 15 minutes to our next destination, which is where I made a mistake.

So, there’s a nice long coral garden here. The current also pushes you along it, so the boat just dropped us off at one end and went down to the other to pick us up. We were floating along for close to an hour, watching the fish amongst the coral. I stayed a bit back from the boys, and was rewarded by fish coming up to nibble on my fingertips.

I watch clownfish in their purple anemones, sail-shaped angelfish, forests of sea urchin hiding treacherously amongst the corals. A giant braintree coral. A spot where someone had clearly been shucking clams. I spotted an eel hiding in the deeper parts of the reef, and I watched a barracuda come over to check if I was food. I was so distracted by it I dunked my snorkel in the water and swallowed a mouthful of seawater (yummy).

By the time the boat picked us up, it was about noon. It took us half an hour to get to where we were having lunch, passing clam farms and half built expensive villas. The one on the hill was the most egregious.

We went to Pass Island for lunch. It’s a popular place with the locals, I think they rent cabins there. You can also by the local moonshine there, “tuba”, but I was short on cash. We had most of the same food as last time, plus some clams.

Hmm, debatably cooked clams. What exotic diseases am I giving myself today?

It is beautiful here. We were here for more than 2 hours, just killing time.

As I ate, I felt a prickling on my leg and scratched it. It hurt more. I glanced down. The back of my calf was red.

Oh shit.

I’ve been so good about using sunscreen and staying out of the sun in the heat of the day, and I’ve never really gone snorkeling, it didn’t occur to me that I would burn floating an inch or two under the water. My whole back was lobster red before we left Pass Island. I’m not even sure how I could prevent it; presumably an hour is long enough to wash off sunscreen.

There was another coral reef nearby, and I went out to explore it a bit, but I was sort of snorkeled out and I didn’t want to add more damage to my back. I got back on the boat and napped for probably an hour.

The wind picked up. We were crashing through the waves on the hour drive back, each spray soaking us through. I sat in front of my backpack to protect it.

When I got back to the hostel, I’m dying.

My back is throbbing and burning. The sunburn covers all the exposed skin on my back, including the back of my thighs and calves.

I run down to the nearest pharmacy. They have a giant tub of aloe for 300 peso. I don’t need that much. I run to a different pharmacy. They have a small packet for 200. Good enough.

I spend the night watching Youtube, drifting off and waking up every two hours to hose my back with cold water and apply another layer of sunscreen. If you exceed 15% of your skin with a sunburn, you’re supposed to go to the hospital. It dehydrates you. I drink a lot of water, feeling too sick to even eat dinner.

I hate burns. I can’t even think of the last time I got a real sunburn.

James got himself really sunsick once. He had such a bad sunburn he was throwing up. We managed to calm his nausea enough to shove an anti-emetic down his throat, and then I applied aloe every 15 minutes while he slept from the sedating effects. He couldn’t lay on his back for 2 days and slept on the couch. He learned to use sunscreen after that.

I feel a good bit better in the morning. I have a two-fer problem; the spot in the middle of my back that’s hard to reach is also where my bra strap would be.

Having not eaten for over 12 hours, I stumble down to the road.

The booth is empty.

Dammit.

Blinking black spots from my vision due to low blood sugar, I stagger down to the carinderia for their champorado. Then I head back for another cold shower.

Later in the morning, I walked down to the bank and traded for 2’000 in small bills. Then I went to the pharmacy, where I ended up spending almost 1’000 peso, so I should have just brought a 1’000 peso bill. I got the big 2 litre Pocari and drank a litre of it that day, to keep my salt up. I also got some instant noodles for the boat ride the next day, including a bulalo flavour the clerk said is her favourite.

I went to the 24 hour bakery. They have these cinnamon coconut buns for 5 peso each – bread is cheap here – so I bought 4 and ate one when I got back to the hostel. The other three will be breakfast tomorrow.

For lunch, I requested a spamsilog from the sari-sari store. Yes, it just just rice with fried Spam. I like Spam (and Klik). Leave me alone.

I spent the afternoon packing. The throbbing in my legs was starting to go away.

For dinner, I walked down to Tita Esh again and ordered their pancit bihon. It was really good, so good I wished I had more days here so I could eat more of it. Yum!

Today was the last Colbert episode. I’m sad and upset. I don’t think people really realize what was lost here. America is now literally a dictatorship, where journalists can be fired for speaking out.

I downloaded a couple of movies for the boat ride on Saturday and went to bed.