So my Philippines trip was not the trip of a lifetime that I had hoped for. If fact, it was downright dreadful. I had hoped for beautiful white-sand beaches to lounge on with a book and a fruity drink in my hand. I wanted to learn to SCUBA dive, and complete my Open Water certification, Advanced Open Water cert., and a course on Underwater Photography. I wanted to ride a jetski, kayak around limestone cliffs, meet some fun people, take a million amaing photos, and return to Korea rested and relaxed. The vast majority of these things didn't happen.
What did happen was this:
I realized that I needed to plan more thoroughly, and do more research. I'm usually very thorough, but with summer session classes consuming my time in the weeks leading up to vacay, I couldn't do nearly as much as I wanted or needed to do. Because of this, I arrived in Cebu after midnight, and had to sit up for 5 hours until the counter opened to check in for my next flight. I didn't realize that after arriving in Manila, it would be a 2 hour bus ride to the port where I would catch a 2 hour ferry to the island where I was headed.
I went to Puerto Galera, on the northern coast of Oriental Mindoro, because it's an area renown for its amazing diving. There are 15-20 sites within a 10-15 minute boat ride. Unfortunately, that's all there is. There's no white sandy beach. In fact, where I stayed, on Small Lalaguna Beach, there's NO beach at high tide. At low tide, there's only 15 feet or so, and it's nothing you'd want to lounge around on. My first morning going to my SCUBA center, I had to walk through the water to get there. I quickly learned which store front walls to walk over, and how to get where I was going at high tide. So much for that.
I tried to make the best of it, and mostly enjoyed my (thoroughly stressful) first day underwater. During my pool dive, some fishermen brought by a massive tuna to the resot restaurant. That night for dinner, I had the freshest sashimi of my life. And that was the beginning of the end.
I didn't know until a week later that all fish must be thoroughly frozen or cooked prior to being eaten. Fish have many bacteria and worms that can't be killed without one of these methods.
Within a day, I felt like death. I was having every possible stomach problem concurrently, but kept trying to dive. Honestly, once I got in my sausage-like wetsuit, I wanted to get as many dives done as I could before I took it off and felt like crap again. But I couldn't go on much past Thursday. Friday I finished my Open Water dives and one toward the A/O/W, and couldn't go on. I watched a lot of movies on my computer over the weekend, in short doses around bathroom runs. It was highly unpleasant, to say the least. The "visitors" in my room didn't help. In one night, I saw several huge cockroaches in my bathroom, a gecko, a tiny frog, and a cat and her three kittens outside on my chair.
Monday I did one more dive, then went to the doctor the next beach over. That was an experience I had only read about it books. I walked up the makeshift driveway path off the main alley. I passed the biggest turkey I'd ever seen in my life, and his wife (who gave my dirty looks and squawked at me furiously), a stray dog and puppy, a stray cat, and countless roosters, the national animal of the Philippines.
I walked into the door of the clinic, one of two in Sabang. There was a single desk with a nurse standing nearby, a single treatment room, and the house where the doc and many others lived surrounding us (with the most unsavory bathroom you'll ever see in a doctor's office). Thank god they speak English there, or I'd have been sunk. We talked for a bit, and she wanted some samples and such. I went back the next day for the lab results, and she told me the bad news: I had a kind of pinworm, plus bacterial dysintery. Fantastic.
She said we couldn't deal with the bacteria until we killed the worms, so she gave me some pills; one for now, then one for two weeks later to kill the eggs. Even more fabulous. I paid my bill, the equivalent of around $20 for the doctor's visit, lab fees, and medicine. Not too bad.
I went back to my room and took the first pill. Within an hour, I felt like a million dollars. Unfortunately, the next night I felt bad again, and had to take another pill. I tried and tried to dive again, but it just wasn't meant to be. My supposedly "global" Korean ATM card wasn't working at the single ATM within 30 minutes of where I stayed, and few places accept debit payments because of the outrageous fees imposed on them. So after I finally started feeling halfway normal, I had to have an adventurous day to solve this problem.
On my last day in Small Lalaguna (the end of week two, after being vitually immobile for over a week), I ventured back to Puerto Galera (a 30 minute jeepney ride away from my resort) to try one last time at the bank. No go. I bought a ferry ticket, and waited the hour until it left for Sabang, and on to Batangas. Batangas is on the next island over, on the one where Manila is. The trip took 2 hours, then a short motorized tricycle ride later, I found the bank where others had had luck. I got out some money, but the amount I could get in one day was not enough to settle my bills at the resort. What now? I took what I could, and ventured back "home".
Nine hours later, I made it back home. Luckily, my SCUBA center was willing to work with me. They knew how much I'd been through during my trip, and suggested that I could wire the rest of the money back to them when I arrived back in Korea. They were amazing.
I took the very long trip back to Manila the next day, and was exhausted when I finally found a hotel near the airport. I rested and had some room service, then went to the Mall of Asia. It was amazing. It was so huge! I saw so many things I hadn't seen in a year since I left the U.S. like Sbarro and Cinnabon. Yum. I did some great shopping, including my mom's birthday present. I found a second-hand English bookstore, with an amazing array of U.S. history books and tons of magazines. I was in heaven. It was a great trip, and made me end my vacation on a high note.
I didn't get to have any cocktails on the beach, relaxation, or water sports, but I did get one certification and two dives toward the next one, about six in-room massages by a woman named Lynn, and a slew of fantastic pictures. I had the best chicken alfredo of my life (a few times!), even if it didn't stay down very long. I met a couple of great people, including my masseusse and SCUBA center owner, a driver in Manila that was personal chauffeur for the evening and morning I was there (with a cell phone number for my next visit!), and a woman in the taxi queue leaving the MoA, who was leaving work and chatted me up.
I had a horrible time, and whether it was due to location or illness, I didn't see too much beauty or fun around me. The pictures look better than it felt at the time. I hope everyone can enjoy seeing them more than I enjoyed my experience while taking them. I hope someday I can have an interest to give the Philippines another try.
