Discounting the fact that it took us 13 hours of traveling (including hours spent waiting for flights) from my house to our hotel on Boracay, a small island in the Philippines, we spent an amazing four days in a place that has come the closest to a paradise that I have ever experienced.
The journey there was an experience not easily forgotten. We left my house at 5:30 am and arrived at the hotel at 7 pm (the Philippines is in the same time zone as Taiwan). The journey consisted of a 30 minute train ride and a 3 hour bus ride to Taipei airport, a 2 hour flight to Manila and then a 1 hour flight to Kalibo, a town on another island, a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the coast, certainly the bumpiest and most nauseating bus ride I have ever taken, a 20 minute boat ride to Boracay and finally a 20 minute rickety motortricycle-taxi thing ride to our hotel. An hour and a half after our arrival we were asleep, the earliest I think I have gone to sleep since I was about ten years old!
The next morning we got our first look at Boracay and the trials of the journey almost faded from the memory (there remained the lingering reminder that we would have to repeat the journey backwards four days later). The stunning, sparkling, immaculate White Beach, as it called, beckoned invitingly from its place between the gently lapping crystal clear sea and the coconut trees running along the top of the 3 kilometre beach. A road of sorts ran, well actually, it ambled, between the front of out hotel and the coconut trees. Actually, the road was more a pathway, since it wasn't paved in any way and was an extended part of the beach. We literally stepped out of our hotel onto the beach.
The length of this path was lined with small hotels, restaurants, bars, curio stores, diving shops and tattoo parlours on the top side and vendors scattered among the coconut trees hawking things like necklaces and earrings made on the spot, hair braiding, massages and boat rides and other water sports. Pei Han provided the necklace and earring hawkers with a generous income and indulged herself with a massage in the beach while I wasted my cash on a boat trip around Boracay, which included snorkeling at a coral reef, and another trip out on a speedboat to do parasailing. We also ambled along with the path, dipped in the shallow sea, had drinks at a few of the bars and dinners on the beach at night, and satisfied our passion for amateur photography.
All too soon it was time to leave our unrushed, laid-back paradise. But, I did so with a certainty that, to quote a certain WWII General, I will return.
To see our Boracay snapshots go here and here and here!
Dion Marc Delport
21 January 2007