Sunday August 2: Onward to Paradise

After all the fun we had had in Manila, we were reluctant to leave, but the beaches were calling and you can't find them (at least any good ones) in the capital city. We got up quickly and ate breakfast and hustled off to the airport to catch a noonish flight. Problem was, they don't run flights all that often from Manila to Cebu, especially during their off season, so the soonest flight we could catch was at 4pm. We were at the airport by 11. Fuck. How to pass the time? Easy, teach Mary (for those of you who don't know him, Jamie and Mary are the same person, long story behind it, just felt like clarifying) Korean. He made me promise him I would teach him the alphabet as he has a 50 dollar bet on whether or not he can read Korean once he returns from the Philippines. Plus, he's offering me 50% of the winnings if he wins the bet. I've been paid much less for much harder teaching. At the present day, I still don't know if he won the bet or not, but I have faith he pulled through. Or at least he better have. I don't work for free.

Anyways, we eventually got on our flight and were in Cebu before it. Whole hell of a lot of waiting for a 45min to 1 hr puddlejump of a flight, but that's life. By the time we got through the airport, we realized we were fucked to get to Malapasca Island tonight, as its a 5 hour bus ride up there and its already 5pm now. We decided to hop the bus as far as it would go that night, then find some place to crash along the way. We quickly boarded a cab and asked him to take us to the North Bus Terminal. I can't tell you how much less stressful it is to work with cabbies that can speak your language and know which buses from which terminals go where. It was a necessity in Manila as there was no central bus station so I basically got in the cab and said "I wanna go to _____. What bus station do I go to?" and the cabbie did the rest. Lifesavers. Once we got to the bus station, we realized that Filipino bus stations aren't quite as nice as the ones in Korea, though given what we saw of Cebu we should have assumed it. Cebu was just a grimy as Manila with less nice, respectable areas and practically nothing to do outside of shopping. We moved through quickly (but not before I picked up an absolutely to-die-for Dolce handbag...gorgeous!). We were pleasantly surprised to find that our tickets for the 5 hour bus ride were....wait for it....2 dollars and 10 cents, roughly. We are gonna run out of money at this rate. The bus ride went rather quickly, as we had plenty to feast our eyes on during the whole trip. From lush mountains and valleys to rice paddies for miles to villages big and small, we pretty much got to see it all on that bus ride, as you can see from the blurry pics I took from the bus. Our progress slowed considerably about 3.5 hours in, as our paved road suddenly wasn't paved anymore, making transport bumpy and slow. Finally, around 10:30 or so, we arrived in Maya, hungry and tired. The locals directed us to the only hotel of sorts in town and it was there that we met the 10 year old who blew my mind with her English level. She was the daughter of the owners, who spoke a little English and directed their daughter to show us to our rooms upstairs. Once we got upstairs, she opened up Jamie's room and heard an "Oh shit" escape from the room. Did she say that? Sure as shit she did. While we were waiting for her to clean the rooms, it quickly became apparent that this girl can talk. Sure, sometimes her accent would be kinda weird and she would say something that sounded a bit funny, but we were speaking to her at normal speed with all the weird quirks and idioms that we usually reserve for other native speakers. She didn't skip a beat. She had learned it all on her own too, from self study and watching TV, with no instruction at school (yet). Even more shocking was when I found out her favorite TV show is the Korean drama "Boys over Flowers" that had swept through Korea (and the rest of Asia it appears) like a plague back around March or so, infecting anyone and anything under the age of 20. We talked about how cute Lee Min Ho was and who her favorite characters were, etc, etc. Crazy. Eventually she stopped talking and we asked her to get us some beer. She charged us 2 dollars a beer, which we felt was a little steep for the Philippines, but still pretty damn cheap. Cept she came back with Mega bottles. These guys were at least 3 regular bottles worth of beer. Jamie bought 3. Little bit of foreshadowing, but this will come back to bite him. Next was to find some grub. Sadly, Maya has absolutely nothing for food (or anything else for that matter), especially not at 10pm. Thankfully the bakery was open so we grabbed some weird pastry things and settled down on our balcony for a quality meal of booze and greasy bread products. Yummy. Soon after we crashed in our much too small rooms. As you could see from the pics, the small Asian sized beds went from wall to wall. Can't ask for too much for 8 bucks. Yep, I paid 8 bucks for my room. Jamie paid 16 bucks cuz his room had AC, which didn't turn on till about 5 am. Hahahah. Cept, nobody told us about the rooster that lived outside the window and began crowing off and on every few minutes starting at 3 am or so. Which meant that every few minutes or so I would wake up and then go back to sleep. Jamie couldn't ever get back to sleep and gave up trying around 5 am. We were happy to get out of Maya the next day.

Pics: See Album 1, Pictures 6-14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYj9QEf1WTw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGZu-FZmKXM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfBvFFUWMDI