Recollecting Puerto (June 2006)

I used to do order entry (soulless, soulless job) for an American company, in their newly-opened European account. My team leader had so far not given me neither American nor European holidays. So I rioted and they eventually gave me European public holidays. The first one that came along would have been my first long weekend since starting.

[Note: On hiring, when I asked how many days of leave a year I would get, they said, ten and I actually laughed in their faces!... and they still hired me! lol]

So anyway, I ask my cousin to come and she says yes with a hint of foreboding disappointment. I do some research online and decide on Puerto Galera, Batangas. A two-hour bus ride and one hour boat ride away.

Come Friday morning (the buses leave from 6am) and I'm still thinking of whether to go... alone now since the cousin called to decline (i knew it!) because she's already been "sick" twice this week and our grandmother "died" for the last, last-minute leave she took.

... 3am... 4am.. I'd hardly slept. But then I begin to pack. I think, why the hell not, I've been working like a robot. Let me use every free time I get.

It is always that moment before you decide to do anything that's the hardest. The moment before you get up to leave the warm bed to jog or to go to work. The moment you sit down and commit to writing a story or an application or a letter....

But now I've passed it and I'm sneaking out of the box of an apartment I share with my housemate. He called me cold. Said I didn't let him in on my life. But the truth is that I felt more lonely with him than with myself. I'd actually prefer to watch movies alone than with him. Eat out alone, go to work alone (we worked at the same soulless, soulless place).

And so I steal away and catch the bus and the day breaks as I head to Puerto.

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The bus arrives at the port and there are boats ahead that go to the different beach spots of Puerto Galera. I take the boat to White Beach. Internet reviews say that it's the quieter of the beaches and not one for overcrowded places, I decide on White Beach.

I take a bangka of about 12 people. I'm the only person travelling alone but I'm not bothered by it. I feel free. There is pure ocean ahead and I feel free.

An hour later, the boat lands on the shores of White Beach, I hadn't booked a hotel as it seemed, you could find one on arrival. I walk into a compound of bamboo huts and take one of them. For something like 800 pesos you get a quaint little bamboo walled room with a double bed, aircon and shower. If I remember correctly, it was on stilts even because I remember having a little balcony from which I took photos the day I was leaving.

There are women offering braiding on the beach. There are henna painters of 'tatoos'. I get a free tat of the sun in tribal design because I'm the first customer there. Henna-man gets his henna from Dubai. His sister works as an airhostess or something.

I walk the length of the beach and then catch a trike into town. I heard there was a festival there so I want to catch it.

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But there is no festival and no one seems to know anything about it! lol (trust the internet). And so I amble into the nearest resto bar and order a drink. There is a mixed group of men that invite me to join them. Two hungarian sailors who regale about touching whales, one Belgian former investment banker who gave up his businesses to really live life, watch his children grow, one local who seems suspiciously keen to offer me a bike ride around Puerto and the boss of the place whose wife keeps visiting the table with more San Miguel beer.

But after several beers, I take suspicious-acting man's offer to ride his bike and off we go around Puerto.

I would be punished by my boyfriend, if I had one at the time for doing such a thing. But my unsatiable curiosity cum naïveté blinkers all warning signs. And I throw myself head on into potentially compromising situations.

But suspicious-acting man turns out to be less than suspicious. Because after an hour of riding up, down and around the peninsula he takes me back to the resto-bar and that was the end of that.

The group is still there and so I arrange with the former investment banker man to join his hiking group the next morning. I also meet a dive instructor on the way back to my 'hotel' and arrange to go for a class the next day. He invites me and another potential diver to dinner at an Italian resto and after two huge pizzas we retire to the beach front for San Miguel (or is it Red Horse?) beers with a trannie who joins us.

She is very proud of her hormone-induced breasts and invites me to prod them. I poke them and say wow that's nice (because it IS quite an achievement) but they feel rather hard and scare me quite a bit. Two years, she tells me, I take these pills. Ok, I see, that's nice.

Eventually (one slow beer drink for me afterwards) we part ways leaving Trannie to look for new 'friends'.