By Lucy

I woke up early to make sure I had time to reach the boat. I was still toying with the idea of walking, but the sunburn on my back killed that idea.

After I got down to the dock, the office for 2Go wasn’t open yet. When it did open, they wanted 50 peso to print my ticket. What a racket.

I waited a long time to board. Staff kept thinking I was getting on a boat to El Nido, so I started getting really nervous that I was being misdirected.

Before boarding, we had to line up our bags on the pier and step back for a bomb sniffing dog to search. Since I left Manila, I did look it up and discovered ferry bombings were fairly common in the early aughts. Abu Sayyaf has been inactive for a while, but they started up again just last month, so I’m glad I didn’t risk the ferry crossing from Sandakan.

I had almost the exact same bunk as last time, just across the aisle. I didn’t bother grabbing sheets as I had no intention of napping. The girl on the bunk under mine was German and had absolutely 0 idea of what she had signed up for. Her connecting flight to Bali left from Puerto Princesa and someone/something had set her up on this ferry as the cheap option to get there. I ended up helping her out, nice guy that I am.

Away we go!

The journey didn’t really get underway until close to 10, and you can imagine there are few frills on this boat. Staying above decks to watch the scenery means baking in the full sun, so I stayed on my bunk and watched through the porthole (since no one was in the adjourning bunk). The German girl and a couple of the locals napped through much of the trip, which makes me wonder how well they slept that night.

For the days’ entertainment, I had pre-downloaded the new Superman movie, and Flow, a movie made in Blender by 5 guys from eastern Europe. If you can watch Flow, I’d recommend it; it’s a cute little movie and gave me a lot of ideas for things to do in Blender by myself, since Jeremy fired me (no I won’t let that go).

Superman was good as well, I suppose. It’s very James Gunn, you could probably squint and convince yourself it’s Guardians of the Galaxy volume 4. My favourite character is Mr Terrific; when Lois calls the T Sphere “circles” I also yelled “they’re not circles, they’re three dimensional!”.

I made myself a cup of noodles and waited until about an hour had passed after the call before going down for lunch. I opted to eat in the cafeteria instead of paying 15 peso to bring it back to my bunk. Lunch consisted of some pork, steamed rice, a mélange of peas and carrots, some damp eggs, and three pieces of what I was told is called “bitter gourd”. Apparently it is popular for boosting your iron levels. The Filipinos are obsessed with their iron levels, one of the few countries where people approve of my iron-taking. Iron supplements are all over my Youtube ads.

I couldn’t find a table. Resigned, I sat down on the stage, but a mom and her kid called me over to their table and offered for me to sit there. Her kid was definitely in her teens, and I put my foot in my mouth by assuming the mom had the kid in her early 30’s like what is common in North America when it now seems likely that she had her in her late teens. She was probably only a couple of years older than me, but she started it by saying “my generation”, probably assuming I’m only 19 or 20. Yay assumptions! We had a lovely little conversation, but I excused myself once I was done eating and never ran into her again.

Half an hour before they stopped serving lunch, I woke up the German girl and told her she should go get some food. She seemed rather put out that I had eaten already and didn’t want to go by herself. I did consider waking her up when I was going, but obviously I don’t know her from Eve, so.

Lord, I am so tired of unseasoned white rice.

I wrote a bit, did my word searches, went up on the deck when it clouded over and did a couple of laps. Around 2:30, we passed close enough to an island to get cell service, and I ran up onto the deck and quickly loaded some more webpages to read.

For dinner, this time I woke up the German girl to go with me. This is when it turned out she’s vegetarian, so they gave her some cold food from lunch. Dinner included mystery sausage rolls that were the best part of the meal. The chicken was gristly and I can’t stand any more white rice. We left most of the food on our plates and I showed her how to make instant noodles on the boat.

We spent most of the evening talking. The ferry technically arrived at 9:30, but because boats don’t come with brakes, we had wait for an hour for the boat to go into reverse to slow down enough to dock. There was quite the light show going on above Honda Bay.

Once we got off the boat, the fighting started.

I had decided I wasn’t going to bother trying to walk across the city this late at night. I’d elbow past the usual pushy tuktuk drivers hording around the gate and find someone quiet and respectful lurking at the back.

This absolute hotshot was halfway down the walkway, the other tuktuk drivers yelling at him to get back to the gate before he got in trouble. He fixated on me in particular, for some reason; because I was young and pretty? He kept following me and the German girl, and I stopped to let her walk in front of me so he wouldn’t be able to get to her.

“Ma’am, where you go? I give you cheap rate.”

“No thank you.” I said curtly, as we stopped and scanned the crowd.

“I will drive you, ma’am.” He said, trying to grab my bag off my shoulder.

“No thanks.” I ducked out of his reach.

The other problem is that the other drivers assumed we were spoken for/ didn’t want to get into a fight with him. We walked halfway up the block before the crowd started to thin out, him still following and yelling at us.

“Look, I’ve told you ‘no’ politely, now f*ck off.” I told him. The German girl was starting to look really nervous.

“Is ok ma’am, I give you ride.”

“We’re not interested, please leave.”

“Ma’am -” He smiled cockily.

Rage flashed through me. I grabbed his hat off his head and chucked it into the middle of the road, where it was run over by a truck, before putting both hands on his chest and shoving him backwards. “F*CK OFF!”

At that moment, a quiet man slipped through the crowd. “You want a ride?”

“Yes. Go, go.” I shoved the German girl after him.

We walked another half a block to get to his tuktuk. Late to the party? It had the advantage of placing us out of the traffic jam around the port. He loaded our bags into the back and I told him to take us to Mojo hostel, her hostel. Away we went.

When we got there, he unloaded both bags from the tuktuk, and I had to explain to him that I actually needed to go to a different hostel. She thanked me for getting her through her trip on the ferry and I wished her a good time in Bali and away we went. I never even got her name.

I don’t like the hostel I ended up at. It might be fine and it’s just me that doesn’t like it, but I regretted it. It was clean and relatively quiet, and the beds were the most spacious hostel beds I’ve seen all trip. The problem is that the bathroom is located inside the room, facing the beds, so every time someone turned on the light to go to the bathroom it woke me up. It was particularly annoying in the morning when a girl turned on the light to do her makeup, which took half an hour, and then she left the room and left the light on. F*cking rude.

When I checked in, I gave them a 1’000 peso bill and he asked if he could give me change in the morning. Yeah sure, whatever. It was 11:30 and I was both tired and too wired to sleep, imagining whatever nefarious plans that tuktuk driver had for us. There’s no way he was that persistent just to get a 150 peso payment out of us. That guy was planning on something else…

The breakfast options at the attached restaurant were overpriced. I wandered off down the road hoping to find a carinderia offering champorado, but no luck. It is Sunday morning, after all. I did find a bakery that was open, so I bought something called “egg pie” for 20 peso and smuggled it back into my room. I ate it in my bunk while I packed.

When I went to check out, I had to wait for a few minutes while the lady confirmed I was owed change, as he hadn’t written it down anywhere. Eventually I got my money.

Now what? I googled the bus stop location. And how do I summon a tuktuk driver? There’s some app called Backride Palawan that only exists to summon a motorbike. I guess I’ll just walk until I get lucky. As I stepped out into the Philippine heat like a slap in the face, a man across the street in a tuktuk waved at me with his phone. “Did you ask for a ride?”

I looked around, “No, I did not. I am looking for a ride, though.”

He ran across the road, “Where you go?”

“The bus terminal.”

“To El Nido?”

“No, to Nagtabon.”

He stares at me blankly. I can generally muddle along in my pronunciation, but Tagalog is giving me trouble. Instead, I pulled out my phone and punched the address into Google maps. A staff member from the hostel came over to join us.

“Ah, ma’am, no bus goes out to Nagtabon!” The hostel staff nodded in ascent.

“No, but surely one drives past the road, and then I can walk from there.”

“There’s nothing out in Nagtabon. No shops.”

But this hostel is there. It has very good reviews and everyone said it was a 20 minute walk from a pristine beach, which sounds like my jam. I know the hostel itself has a restaurant, and there might not be “western” shops, but there’s never a more than 15 minute walk from a sari-sari store in the Philippines, and I’ll bet a carinderia or two nearby.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Long walk from highway. I can take you.”

“What about whoever called you?” We all glanced back at the hostel, but no one appeared. He shrugged. I suppose he might have been waiting a while and was getting frustrated with the no-show. “Just take me to the bus terminal.”

Part of me wanted to snap, “I bet you do.” They were obviously talking about how attractive they found me. At the same time, Paolo could have lied or not said anything at all. I also found something a little heartwarming about it; it seemed like an admission on Paolo’s part, that he liked how smiley I am, not just my white skin and my Canadian passport.

He agreed and hoisted my bag into the back of the tuktuk. On the way, he explained that a bus ticket would cost 700 and he’d only charge me 1’300.

Hmmm…. assuming he isn’t lying about the cost of the bus ticket, 150 for him to take me to the station, 700 for a ticket, 150 or an hour walk from where the bus will drop me off… I suppose it’s only 20 dollars. A ride from one side of Tbay to the other would cost the same.

“Alright, take me to Nagtabon, I guess.”

“Good choice, ma’am.”

He pulled into the next gas station and topped up his tank, then checked his brakes and the tire pressure. Makes sense. I snapped a photo of his dash, which included a Whatsapp number.

“When are you coming back?”

“June 1st.”

“You Whatsapp me the day before, I come pick you up.” He offers.

I’ll keep that in my back pocket. It’s possible I won’t need it, there might be someone heading back that way the same day as me, but it’s always good to have a back-up option.

I dunno if Eddie just liked me or if he was offering me premium service, but we had a pleasant scenic drive. He offered to stop by the markets and let me buy snacks, but I was pretty sure any hostel with an attached restaurant would frown at bringing my own food, so I declined. The road weaves through the mountains that divide the small island in two – it’s very long, but only 20 kilometers wide here – and we sang “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as we drove. We also stopped for some photos.

His tuktuk is very slow. I don’t know if it needs a tune-up or if it was just unable to handle the weight, but basically every other tuktuk and motorbike passed us easily. The thing screamed a loud metallic death constantly as well. I’m sure I lost as much hearing capacity from that one drive as I did in the past 4 years of carpentry.

Eventually we reached a weathered sign: B and R hostel.

He pulled in. Two Filipino women were standing at the bar, and neither of them seemed happy to see me. I paid Eddie and he hung around for a moment.

“You have a reservation?” The lady behind the counter, Rose, asked.

“Yes, for Lucy.”

“You booked for 8 nights.” She confirmed. I dug out my money. As I did so, she said, “We’re actually closed right now. It’s just me, my sisters are on vacation. My partner is coming tonight. Well, we were supposed to be closed. You made advanced booking before I could block it.”

Umm… ok. Define advance booking… I only booked this place on April 10th. Also, I’m surprised she didn’t just email me and tell me I couldn’t come, if she was going to be this hostile about it.

Also, how is my luck? I keep ending up at closed places.

“Oh, ok. I won’t be any trouble. This place just had such great reviews.”

She softens a bit at this. “You want to go sightseeing?”

“No, I just wanted to be able to walk to the beach.”

“Some days, I might close early so I can go out with my partner.” She warned.

“That’s fine.” I guess my concern about them not wanting me to have my own food was misplaced. “I’ll find something.”

“Oh, yes.” She gestures down the road. “There is Chaolong place. And shawarma place, you know shawarma?”

I nod.

She shows me my room. I’m sharing an 8 bed dorm with a man who is here for work. He’s an electrical engineer named Dondon and he spent most of his time off flopped in his bunk with the AC cranked up.

The other guests were Dondon’s coworker, Joel, who is an mechanical engineer; Joel’s wife, who was polite but mostly just hid in their cabin; and Juan, a legendary Peruvian flute maker (my words, not his. I looked it up and his flutes can sell for 50K USD).

I had 0 cell service the moment I got away from the “highway”. The wifi was good, but there was only one repeater and Rose moves it to her house in the evening for her kids, so the internet goes away around 7-8 o’clock.

Rose is an interesting character. She’s 37, so we’re within the same generation, but her kids are at least 12 years old. They speak fluent English, but they’re too “shy” to talk to me. I also suspect, since she called her man her “partner” and never her husband, and he didn’t really interact with the kids, that she married young to the husband of her children, who had left, and since the Philippines has no divorce law, she was just dating this man. I never asked. We bonded pretty quickly; by Wednesday she declared me a real “Pinoy” and forgot I was only there for the week.

The first thing I did, once I unloaded my bags, was order lunch. I asked what thing on the menu was easy to cook and ordered that. It was tuna pasta, which was actually pretty tasty. Juan says Rose also makes a real carbonara, but I never tested this theory.

Shortly afterwards, it started absolutely bucketing it down. I got out my laptop and played around. I had some dinner and by then the rain had stopped and I tried to walk down to the beach.

The beach is uphill both ways, it turns out. For an ordinary person it’s a short walk, for me it’s a marathon. Still, it was a pretty beach and I enjoyed swimming there.

Since the wifi goes away in the evening, I’ve been downloading Community to watch. I have a love-hate relationship with the show – I hate Chevy Chase, for one – but it’s noise.

It’s funny how time has changed it. Jeff constantly hitting on Britta has not aged well. Pierce is even more disturbing. But my personal experience colours it as well, like hippy Vaughn wearing a mala around his neck, or Pierce being the member of a cult that claims to be Buddhist. The sailing episode is also hilarious because of how little sailing gets done. They throw around a lot of nautical words and they don’t get anything technically wrong, but it just doesn’t feel right.

I slept alright. The mattress is cheap, and the sheets are threadbare. Dondon keeps the AC cranked up, although I fiddled around with the settings so it sounded like it was cranked but wasn’t.

Joel snores so loudly I can hear it at the bar.

I had breakfast at the restaurant – Rose makes actual drip coffee – and walked down to the beach for a swim. The tide is going out at this time. I swam until 10 and then I got out before I got another sunburn. The locals fish off this beach, and the boats start coming in around then as well.

I had lunch at the restaurant, and then another thunderstorm rolled in.

I put my backpack on the ground and the dog started chewing on it, presumably attracted by the salt from my sweat. The dog’s name is Dodee or Tudy or something along those lines. He’s only 8 months old and he doesn’t understand English, so I emailed Yolanda asking for commands in Tagalog. There’s also three cats; an orange one who’s sweet, a black one who is an unfixed male, and a white one that’s pregnant and cranky. Rose keeps yelling at her for being pregnant and hungry, as if that’s something the cat can control.

For dinner, I wandered off down the road with the intent of going to the Chaolong place. However, I walked right by it, because most of the food places on this road are just off the road and blend in. Eventually I happened upon a carinderia where a chubby man was swiping away on his phone, looking like the nadir of boredom.

“Oooh, what do you have?” I asked, walking over. A carinderia should be cheaper than Rose’s cooking.

“Adobo, soup.” He says, hopping off his stool and coming over to the counter. “Where are you from?”

“Canada.”

“Oh, you are Lucy, from B&R.”

Blink blink.

“Dondon told me.” He adds hastily. “He comes here for breakfast.”

“Aah.” That makes some sense. “What’s your name?”

“Paolo. P-a-o-l-o. But you can just call me Pao, baby.” He blushes when I look aghast at this. “Or just Paolo.”

He goes into more detail about the food. I start to get the sense this isn’t just the cook at a carinderia. This guy loves food. And he must be wealthy, wealthy enough to be fat.

“Well, I’m going to keep walking, but maybe I’ll come back.” I say. I’m not quite hungry yet.

I walk down the road a bit more. I find the grocery store, but it’s not a grocery store in the sense that I would call it. I buy some pastries for 12 peso. At least I have breakfast sorted.

I walk back to the carinderia. “I only have a 1’000 peso note. Is that ok?”

He nods.

“Can I have some soup?”

“The adobo is very good.” He insists.

“But I want soup!” I argue.

He plates up some soup and a bowl of rice. After he serves me, he comes back with a small bowl of adobo chicken. “Try it, no charge.”

It is pretty good, I admit. But I was just in the mood for soup. We talk about food a bit more. I mention what I really want is champorado, and he laughs at this. He offers to make me champorado for breakfast the next day. I pay with the 1’000 peso. It was only 85 for the meal. Not bad.

Dondon and Joel spend the evening trying to convince me that Dondon is a catch and I should marry him. With the cultural differences, it’s hard to tell if they really think we should get married, if they’re just being flirty or annoying (tradies) or if he just wants a Canadian wife. Being Canadian is quite the golden ticket here; everyone seems to think the streets are paved with gold. People also kept asking me if it was really legal to smoke cannabis in Canada, to the point of boys on bikes stopping me to ask. Weird.

The power also went out, the first of three power outages. It seems common in Palawan.

I’ve started converting the tense on my novel. Gabe is taking a while to edit it. Which is fine, I’ve already admitted I can’t currently pay him what he’s worth, but I am getting a little itchy waiting. I used ‘find and replace’ to replace all 1’500 uses of “was” and the document crashed. Oops.

The mosquitoes are bad here, which is unfortunate because Palawan does have endemic Malaria. Mostly at the southern tip, but mosquitoes pick up illnesses from biting someone with it, so every once in a while someone with malaria comes north and there’s an outbreak in Puerto Princesa. I haven’t been able to find a bug spray with DEET for a while and this all natural stuff is bull. I can hose myself with citronella all day and it doesn’t seem to do anything.

My sunburn finally started peeling. It peeled about three times over the course of the week. I must have done a bit of damage.

On Tuesday, I woke up and laid in bed for a minute. It’s funny how I would consider myself not chained to my phone, but I definitely get up faster if the wifi doesn’t reach my bunk. Dondon got up and went outside.

I gather my things and head outside to the bathroom. I was going to load up a couple of articles on my phone before walking down to Paolo’s.

As I came out of the bathroom, Dondon waved at me before gesturing to his bike. “To carinderia?”

“Oh! Yes, one moment!” I washed my hands and ran back to the room to grab my shoes, then ran down and hopped on the bike.

Casual bike ride with no helmet is casual.

Paolo was tending to a steaming pot when we arrived. “Almost ready, Lucy!” He called. Dondon made us coffee and showed me that the berries hanging on the trees outside are edible, called panamaberry.

And then the champorado was served.

“I added some tamarind. The dried fish is called tuyo, sweet with salty. Try it, try it!”

I smiled up at him, in a way that probably seemed like I was doubting his skills, but really I was just confused. How did this guy end up in backwater Palawan?

Ah, it was really good, though. Nothing compares to that bowl of champorado.

“Is good?” He asked, leaning against the counter.

“Mhmm.”

Dondon said something in Tagalog that made Paolo laugh and reply in Tagalog. Perhaps sensing that I would get irate if they made too many inside jokes, Paolo said, “I was telling Dondon that I like how much you smile.” Dondon snickered.

“Thank you.” I replied, simply.

Once we’d finished, back to the hostel.

I got changed and walked down to the beach. Like the day before, I stayed there until 10, then started to head back to the hostel. A local stopped as I was trudging up the hill and offered me a ride, which was kind of him. I was a little gunshy after how it went in Malaysia, but nothing untoward happened this time.

Dondon headed to the carinderia for lunch. He stopped and invited me, but I was on a good writing flow and I didn’t want to interrupt it. I had Rose cook my lunch. Her partner cut down some coconuts in the afternoon; they were getting too big and a risk of falling and killing a cat. So I got a giant free coconut.

Around 3, Juan stopped by. “Want to go to the beach? I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Sure.” I stood and stretched until my joints cracked. “I need a brain break.”

Juan’s fun to talk to. He’s pretty smart, although he believes a few silly things – like that ivermectin heals all ills – and we chat for a few hours, nursing a couple of drinks as the sun slowly sinks towards the ocean. My ‘mojito’ appears to be a shot of gin in a glass of Sprite. I keep calling him Puerto Rican and not Peruvian by accident, although he’s here on an American passport and lives near Boston, somehow.

Juan says we need to get back for 6, as there’s a party. Unbeknownst to me, Dondon is flying back to Manila on Wednesday. We’re sending him off.

Oh sweet, I get the dorm room to myself now!

When we get back to the bar, some British guy is drinking a beer there. He’s also working on the jobsite, but instead of grabbing a beer from the bar on the beach, he stops at Rose’s.

The food doesn’t get put out ’til closer to 6:30-7. They lay out the table with banana leaves and put the food on it. I recognize most of it; rice (obviously), lechon (pork), rock melon, green mango, and whole smoked milkfish. They provide no utensils; we’re eating this the old fashioned way. I have to coach Juan through trying the green melon and the milkfish, but he enjoys both.

At 7:30, Paolo shows up with some bottles and someone busts out a karaoke machine.

Of course the tradies are drinking. Some things transcend culture.

When I grin at the 1 litre bottle of Tanduay whisky, Joel’s wife says, “Don’t worry, they’re not alcoholics.”

Why would I be worried?

We take turns passing the karaoke mic around. Joel does American love ballads. Dondon does Filipino love songs in Tagalog, while the others tease that he’s singing to me (keep dreaming). Juan sings Eric Clapton and Frank Sinatra, which he does not have the pipes to pull off, but credit for trying. Paolo is convinced to do a couple of songs, clearly sweating buckets the whole time. I sing Neil Diamond and John Denver, because I don’t want to do anything racy.

Dondon keeps trying to top up my glass. I drink more than I wanted to, but I don’t feel the buzz. When I grab the mostly empty whisky bottle to stop him from filling my glass again, I realize it says “Light whisky, 20%”. Oh, no wonder I don’t feel a buzz. Also, no wonder drinks are cheap here. What the shit is this?

Around 9, Paolo – who is the soberest one besides me – hops on the bike and goes to grab more whiskey, as the first bottle is empty. He also comes back with some local candy for me to try, and some other snacks.

At 9:30/10, I head to bed. I have no interest in getting stupid drunk with this crew, and if they’re busting out a second bottle, this is gonna be a long night.

At 5:30, I’m woken up by someone beating on the door. Dondon slept through his alarm, and Joel helps him hurriedly pack and hauls him out the door so fast they leave the light on and the door open. I get up, correct the situation, and lay in bed for half an hour, trying to fall asleep again. No luck. I’m not hungover, though.

I change and walk down to the carinderia, but Paolo is not there. The two people staffing the place smile sheepishly, clearly not wanting to admit that Paolo is laid up from the wild party last night. No champorado today. They offer me some of the usual, but I’m not big on standard Filipino breakfast. They like to add vinegar to things, and I’m not British, I don’t want vinegar for breakfast.

I walk back to the hostel to wait for Rose to wake up. I wonder who those people are in relation to Paolo. Does he own the carinderia? Are they family? I asked him a couple of times, but never get a clear answer, and I can’t tell if it’s the language barrier or if he just doesn’t want to discuss it.

Rose wakes up late. While I wait for her, I tidy up the bar, which is a mess. There’s at least 5 empty bottles of Red Horse – 500ml – in addition to the two empty 1 litre bottles of whisky. At some point, they started putting out cigarettes on the table, and the bag of candies ripped open on the ground implies either the dog or the cats got into it after it was left out overnight.

“Dondon almost missed his flight at 6.” Rose says, “He just made last call.”

I facepalm, “He stayed up drinking when he had a flight at 6? How late were they up?”

She shrugs, “I’m not sure. I think my partner came to bed around 1?”

Tradies.

I have a quiet breakfast, chatting with Rose and later Juan when he surfaces.

Around 10, Paolo calls me. Filipinos are terrible for video chatting instead of texting or even a normal call, which is especially hilarious when Paolo knows I only have service within the hostel. He continues to call me once a day, even though I never pick up. Anyway, the others told him I had stopped by and he asked if I wanted to go out for lunch and I accepted.

We rode on his bike. No helmet, and he’s missing one of his pegs. When I question this, he mumbles something about Dondon breaking it.

We go out for Chaolong. There’s a place nearby called Viet Ville, where a bunch of Vietnamese refugees settled after the war. Pho got turned into a Filipino dish called Chaolong; chao means hungry in Tagalog. It’s salty, good for a hangover pick-me-up.

“What do you want? My treat.” He says, quickly translating everything on the menu.

We order regular chaolong. He also orders a banh mi. I tease him about ordering too much food and ask him if he’s hungover (he insists he’s not). He says he finally left at 2AM.

As I blew on my chaolong to cool it down, Paolo said, “I like that you smile so much. Some people…” He lost the English words for it and made a vague gesture. “Always sad.”

With my smile I turned the world upside down!

“How do you know I’m not sad?” I grin.

“I don’t! But still, always smiling.” He said, with a sad smile himself. And I thought back to all angry yelling chefs on TV, the fraying tempers and short fuses seemingly baked into the culture of high class cooking. I wondered again how bad things had gotten, for him to give up on everything and work at this run-down carinderia in the middle of nowhere.

“How long were you a cook for?”

“I was in Manila for 15 years.” He pulls out his phone and shows me photos of meals he’s made, including a deconstructed chicken adobo that got him second place in a contest.

“Why’d you come back here?”

He mumbles something about being burned out that doesn’t really satisfy. Really, none of his answers about his life were complete. I don’t even know how old he is, or why he’s on Palawan. Did he grow up here? Just wanted to move far away from Manila?

After lunch, he dropped me off at the hostel and left.

I went inside and had a nap. Then I disovered Fitbit is dead.

Google has killed it. Which isn’t really surprising; there’s even a whole website called Killed By Google that lists companies acquired and killed by Google. It’s even getting rid of its own search function. But killing Fitbit is what did it for me. I went and changed all my search browsers to Duckduckgo’s “No AI” browser, which specifically has no AI “summaries”. I’m turning into a complete Luddite, but it really seems like things have reached a point of no return. Thunder Bay really is the best place to wait out the end of the world.

Me and Hanuman got into a slightly silly conversation where I pointed out that in an apocalypse scenario, I’d need to find a source of salt since I don’t absorb it properly. Hanuman offered to walk to Goderich to get some, which turned into both of us deciding to be salt traders in the post-apocalyptic northern Ontario, making a journey to gather a large amount of salt and then trading it for things.

I mean, it’s a great idea, once we got to thinking about it. The whole reason the opium wars started in China was because England was addicted to tea. People want what they want, even if it takes 6 months and several millions dollars to get there.

After my nap, I wander back out to the bar.

“Where you go for lunch?” Rose asks.

“Me and Paolo went out for chaolong.”

“You and Paolo, huh?” She grins knowingly. “That’s cute.”

I want to argue that it’s not like that, but it’s obvious it is for Paolo. I also want to argue that a week isn’t enough time to get to know someone, but me and Vlad bonded pretty strongly after, what, 3 days? And it’s not like I don’t like Paolo. If he lived in Canada, I’d probably date him. But I don’t like him enough to try and make it work long-distance. I just sort of nod and change the topic.

As we chat a bit, Rose starts talking about her sister, who’s now a single mother. Rose forgets I’ve only been here for, like, 4 days, and rambles about things I’ve never heard about, before I correct her and she changes the topic. Juan later explains to me that Recel’s foreign husband ditched her and the toddler and moved in with another Filipino.

For dinner, I walk down the road to the shawarma place. It’s hidden in the scenery. I discover it’s run by a Russian man and his Filipino wife; I later learned that shawarma is popular in Russia and most shawarma places in the Philippines are run by Russian expats. While his wife disappears into the back to cook, me and Cos are left alone at the bar. He seems nervous about my opinion of Russians until I tell him my friend Vlad’s family is from Tolyatti, then he’s all smiles and unthaws; his mother is from Tolyatti. We have a good long chat about traveling before the shawarma is served, and it’s pretty good. It’s not really shawarma, but it’s good.

The next day, I walk down to the carinderia for breakfast. Paolo is up this time and spends half an hour trying to convince me to eat anything else before agreeing to cook champorado, which takes another half an hour. For a boy who wants to convince me to marry him, he’s making a poor case of it. He should have my champorado hot and ready for me.

Bored, I throw a 5 peso coin into the peso wifi machine. It works really well, actually, and the timer only runs while my phone is connected, so any time not used is saved until I connect again.

Once I get back to the hostel, a thunder storm rolls in and knocks out the power again. I don’t go to the beach.

I walk down in the rain to have lunch at the carinderia. The gas still works, so the food is still hot. When I get back, I asked Rose to book an underground river tour for me for Saturday, but she misheard me or forgot what day it was today and books it for Friday instead. Which ended up being fortuitous, but I didn’t know it yet.

Around 3, the rain goes away and I walked down to the beach for a swim. I got a couple hundred meters down the road before Juan stops next to me. “Hey, it’s the Canadian.”

That’s all my identity is here. It’s really weird, like being Snow White.

“Want a ride?” He offers.

I hop on. He drops me off before continuing down the beach to his buddy’s place.

You can tell a storm swept through here, all this torn-up seaweed’s been washed in. No one else has ventured out, it’s just me myself and I.

When I’m done swimming, I go to the bar and order a burger and something called a surfer’s punch, which must include Midori because it’s green. This is living, right? Ordering a neon green drink and watching the sun set over the ocean.

Since there’s wifi here, I sit around until the sun is mostly down. I half-planned to get a ride back from Juan, but there’s no sign of him and I don’t want to deal with mosquitoes. Plus, I need to wash the salt out of my hair with enough time for it to dry before bed. I find a shell I like on the way back.

Juan doesn’t get back until like 8. He tells me the shell is a bad idea and customs will fine me if they find it in my bag. I roll my eyes at this. Contrary to popular myth, taking shells from the beach is not bad from the beach. The study often cited as evidence of this found that “tourism” is bad for the ecosystem of the beach, not specifically removing shells, and that more shells are removed by being destroyed by vehicles and grooming the sand. Which, considering all the locals ride their motorcycles up and down the beach, means I’m not the greater evil here.

Whatever.

Just another night in paradise…