23rd March -Manila - One Direction - Coron (Busuanga)

Monday 23^rd March 2015

It is now a bright and sunny Monday morning on Busuanga Island (Philippines) and – are we back on 2XS yet??

Well no not quite…

Nothing is ever that simple.  Yesterday we left our Tune Hotel for the last time (next time it will be Red Planet and maybe no longer cheap and cheerful.)  We had a few hours to fill in so we went to the Mall of Asia, where there is a very convenient baggage drop-off.  We trudged from shop to shop trying to get photo and internet top-up, with some success.  (My modem is still flickering a bit crossly, saying NO CONNECTION, so I will have to trudge to another shop this morning to see what it is complaining about.)

I had forgotten about SECURITY in South East Asia.  Everywhere there are armed guards, even in the small 7-11 shop attached to our Tune Hotel.

We had a cup of coffee and Pete chatted to the nearest guard about his weapons – it was all about the shotgun.  My favourite guard was the one with the big fierce working dog…

They needed extra security because One Direction was in town!!  I had an inkling of this because of a weird conversion we had in the taxi from the airport.  We remarked on the heavy traffic – it was Sunday after all – and he muttered about One Direction in town.  Pete immediately chimed in with a conversational flow about one-way traffic and the new overpass striding across Manila.  I stifled my original gushy OMG, One Direction are here??  First the Pope, and now the boyband!!  (I was feeling a little bit foolish…)  But yes indeed, when we got to the Mall of Asia it was all GO!! 

Increased security, huge queues – the boys indeed were in town!  We managed to get to the airport in time to check in, One Direction notwithstanding, and then we sat on the tarmac for over an hour…Pete and I had been separated for some obscure reason.  I was next to a very silent fast-asleep woman, so I read my book and tried not to feel rising tides of panic because I was getting Zoe’s dreadful hot/itchy feelings and wanted a drink of water right NOW!!!  The engines were thrumming and the seat-belt signs on so I couldn’t totter down the aisle to ask; I just had to grin and bear it. 

I could hear Pete, a few rows back, having a most engaging chat with his neighbor.  He had the good fortune to be sitting next to a Kurdish man from Iraq, now living in England with his Philippina wife and children.  They had a most fascinating conversation about ISIS, religion, politics, life, love.

Eventually the plane took off and the cabin staff trotted obligingly down the aisle with life-saving bottles of water so all was well.

It was quite late when we arrived on Busuanga Island.  We talked to all of the van drivers, picking up passengers for various resorts, and clambered into one whose drivers SAID he was going to Busuanga Bay Lodge.  He lied.  He was going to Coron, in the opposite direction.  It was getting dark by the time we arrived here and it was going to cost us about $70 to get a van to take us to the correct place…So here we are, still in Coron, in a pleasant little Eco-Lodge!  We can buy some provisions, check out why my modem is flickering, and try to find a slightly cheaper way of getting to 2XS!!

When I woke this morning I peered through the curtains, to see…a SECURITY guard right outside the window!  How bored must he be, standing on an ivy-covered mound gazing suspiciously at the slummier end of town…

Not sure when next we will have any internet connection.  It is a bit of a moveable feast…Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t!