After Becky left for Shanghai, I was left to mope around Buyeo and puzzle about how people can stand to move to a foreign country and live in a tiny place on their own. I found the 4 nights alone to be mind numbingly dull. There's only so much TV you can watch after all, and I've already read all the books we have (apart from the ones I was saving for the holiday...). Anyway, somehow I survived and got myself up to the airport about 5 hours too early. Ho hum. Numerous cups of coffee and a considerable amount of time watching people arrive home (which was way less entertaining and heart warming than Love Actually suggests it should be. Either Tony Curtis is a liar, or Korean people don't care much about their family going away on holiday. Or possibly I'm missing some kind of middle ground.) later, I boarded the 4 hour-ish flight to Manila. The flight is now in my top 3 worst flight experiences ever, thanks to the non-existent leg room, the exuberant baby-bouncing on the knee of the woman in front of me and the wailing of said baby after said bouncing (the other 2 would be the air-con breaking down on a flight to Australia and not being able to get a drink for 7 hours flying back from Chile.). Finally, I arrived in Manila just after midnight and got a couple of hours sleep before going back to the airport to meet Becky.
The next day we were picked up and taken on a 2 hour drive to get our boat to Puerto Galera, where we would be staying for the next 5 nights. A noisy, somewhat bouncy, but not uncomfortable ride across to the next island delivered us within a minute's walk of our hotel. It was right on the edge of a small bay, while our room was on the top floor, giving us a nice balcony with a view over the whole bay. Puerto Galera is descried by the Lonely Planet as 'a haven for foreign, alcoholic retirees' which is possibly not far off the mark - there were a terrifying array of leather skinned westerners with bellies down to their knees, all with very small, delicate looking young local ladies. It was a bit... wrong. But even their enormous bellies and dubious sexual preferences failed to get in the way of how beautiful the surroundings were. Palm trees, clear skies, beautiful seas and coral strewn across the beach... Ace.
Over the course of the week, we went swimming from the beach, took boat rides to nearby beaches, went snorkeling to look at coral and giant clams, got stung by jellyfish, swam in inland natural pools, drank fruit smoothies, ate steak for the first time in 18 months (hoooooooray!), got stung by jellyfish, visited a waterfall, took a ride in a jeepney with some slightly irritating Chinese tourists, got stung by jellyfish, avoided buying loads of crap souvenirs crossed a worryingly wobbly and buckly (that's not a real word is it? Buckly? It buckled a lot) suspension bridge, walked through the jungle and avoided getting killed by falling coconuts, visited a somewhat depressing tribal village, and ate a lot of excellent meals the like of which have not been seen in Korea since... well, ever. And got stung by jellyfish. Possibly other things happened too. It was really, really great. Except for the jellyfish. There were hundreds of them evilly floating around while we snorkeled, viciously drifting around stinging us all over the place and making me swallow huge gulps of sea water through my snorkel whilst trying to avoid them. Horrible little things.
The tribal village was also less than enjoyable. The tribe were the indigenous people of the island, who had been 'civilised' - by which I mean made to live all in one place in run down shacks, given shabby clothes and no way of making money other than farming. And forced to put up with hordes of gawking tourists parading around the village. In an obviously sincere, if misguided gesture, our guide bought a huge bag of snacks for us to hand out to the children as we walked around taking pictures. The wrappers from snacks given out by previous groups were strewn all over the floor and the children didn't really seem that excited about the snacks, aside from the fact that they were being given something extra to eat. Basically, it just seemed a bit wrong to treat the people as a tourist attraction instead of getting us to actually help them in some way.
Little niggles aside, we had a great time in Puerto Galera, and were very sad to be leaving. Especially knowing we'd be coming back to cold, cold Korea. But before that, we still had to get back to Manila and spend one night there. After another boat trip and drive, we went out to explore Manila a little. Being hot and tired, we decided the best place to explore would be an enormous shopping mall. Once we'd made it past the armed guards on the doors, we spent a while wandering about and eating, then went for a short walk out in the street. The sudden change in the crowds was really quite surprising. Clearly the guards were keeping anyone out who looked like they might not be able to afford to buy much, and the people who could afford to buy things were all getting there by car. We were quickly amongst throngs of people trying to sell us watches, DVDs, clothes and various other things, as well as beggars sending their tiny children after us. 200 metres away from the enormous swanky mall we passed some of the smelliest slums ever. At the end of the street we reached a pedestrian area by the sea, where we sat until we decided it'd probably be best not to be by the slums after dark, so headed back to the mall for dinner, then back to the hotel.
In the morning we went out for a last walk before our flight home. We got a little lost, but had a pretty good walk around the area and a local park, which was basically an old cemetery but was really nice and peaceful and a pretty good end to the trip. Shortly after, we headed back to airport and endured another horrible flight with Cebu Pacific. For some reason the air stewardesses asked us to watch over some unaccompanied children on the flight, despite the fact that they were clearly Korean children and we had as much hope of communicating with the children as they did. Also, there were a fair amount of Korean adults on the plane who would've been far more suitable for the job. But not to worry, we didn't actually have to do anything for them in the end, so it didn't really matter. All in all, a pretty good holiday! Sadly, on arrival back to Korea, I seem to have hit by a vicious stomach bug which has left me in bed for 4 days. The doctor tried to get me to stay overnight in hospital on an IV, but that didn't sound too appealing, so I decided to skip it. Seems to be getting a little better now though, so hopefully all will be will in time for the forthcoming long weekend, so we can go do fun stuff again!
