Where's Scott?

We’ve planned another dive, and we wake early to catch the boat. Seb really tied one on the previous night, and he’s in really bad shape. He puts on a good British stiff upper lip (or stomach in this case) and we have an excellent dive exploring an artificial reef created by dumping some old Jeepneys just offshore. By the end of the dive, though, Seb’s really suffering, and when he hits the boat, he just collapses on the deck and stares the water, comatose! He’s actually green at this point, and prays for a good vomit (which he’s not granted).

Needless to say, Seb’s sorry state puts the kibosh on most of the afternoon’s activities, but we have some downtime to talk about the future. We broach the idea of hitting Tokyo for a quick visit, and the prospect of epic sushi actually has us considering leaving paradise! OK, so Seb and I are slaves to our stomachs, what can we say?

I wake and the family’s madly cooking for Mabel’s birthday party. The spread looks crazy, there are close to 100 little styrofoam boxes being filled with an assortment of snack bites in one corner, a massive pile of diced, spiced pork being rolled in rice tortillas into tiny logs and fried in another, and a group out on the porch weaving strips of coconut leaves into a tiny triangular containers and filling them with raw rice (to be cooked later). The house is a zoo of people working, and there’s a large group of kids gathering outside in anticipation of something.

Seb’s planned ahead, and has several bags of small hard candies on hand. Once the throng of kids has reached about 50, he and Mabel make for the upstairs deck. From there, they start tossing candies down as the screaming kids leap over each other trying to catch them (with some adults even catching a few).

After the candy supply is exhausted, some form of filtering process is started, with kids with some (shirt-tail?) relation to Mabel being invited in the house, and the rest lined up outside – this must be a regular birthday routine, as all the kids are well behaved, and know exactly what’s going down; I, on the other hand, am clueless.

Once the outside gang is sorted, a few family members start handing out small bags (oddly condom shaped) of orange Tang. As each kid receives their juice-bag, they bite in professionally and start to drain them dry, and then wander off into the twilight; apparently, their party is over.

Inside, there’s a huge commotion (40 odd people in a confined place), but there’s order in the chaos, and the styrofoam boxes are being portioned out to each of the kids, and they too begin to filter out into the twilight – clearly, there’s a well defined, multi-level pecking order, and everyone knows where they stand.

Next it’s time for the adults to chow down. There’s usually a strict order to the eating: nobody eats until Seb, Mabel and I have finished (as guests, and well, the money) – we’ve been bitten by this by not eating until late not realizing that it makes everyone else wait to eat, but they are too shy to say anything about it! (It also means we always eat as a threesome, and never with the family). Tonight however, there’s no waiting, and everyone digs into the variety of pork, fried rice, veg mixes and “specials” like chicken feet and chicken _heads_ on a stick. I opt to try the heads, and they’re delicious – they’ve been sliced in half, skewered, and deep fried, and taste rich and buttery, with just the beak being inedible. Seb, on the other hand, “chickens out” (although gets a great pic apparently licking one 😉

The party then turns disco, with a monster stereo (borrowed from a family member) setup outside on the porch, cranked loud enough to wake the dead (and much to Seb’s delight, piss off any living neighbors!). One 5 year old is a killer dancer, and we urge him to “get down and boogie” and he doesn’t disappoint! The dancing is a bit odd though, with the women dancing together, and the men, if they dance, dancing with the other men! I try to spur things on by getting each of the women to go fetch a man to dance with, but it doesn’t last, and as soon as the songs end, they split back into same-sex groups. I ask Mabel about it, and again it’s a “they’re too shy” thing – can’t change it, at least not without some serious Tanduay!

Seb and I are thrilled to be back in paradise! We decide to take full advantage of it, and make plans for another trip out to our second rock! The only boat we can get, though, is a TINY fishing boat. We try to get three in it and it promptly swamps, so Seb and I carefully crawl in and start to Hawaii 5-0 it out past the breakers.

We do quite well for about 5 minutes, and then suddenly one of the stabilizers is in the air and… up, up, and we’ve flipped and are in the water! OK, we didn’t expect everything to go smoothly, so we hop back in the boat and start to bail. We can see that a “rescue” boat has been dispatched, but we’re determined to do this on our own. We’re underway again before our saviours can catch us, but they quickly overtake us and snare us with a perfect lasso throw! We’re their captives, and they tow us the rest of the way, our egos quite bruised…

They release us at the rock, and we discover we’ve lost a mask in the dump (we later found we’d left it at the house; we’re both incompetent and stupid! Wonderful). We take turns snorkeling and sunbathing on our tiny explorer, and our rescuers leave us to our shark-bait destiny. We manage it back to the beach under our own steam, but our big fat asses break a hole in the poor fisherman’s seat. We promised to fix the seat (it appears to be this tiny old man’s only worldly possession), but our offer is defiantly refused! That’s not how it works here…

Dinner is spam, eggs, shredded pork, spam, rice and spam. I’d never thought I’d say this about a spam dish, but it’s _wonderful_ (and loaded with MSG, which they even use in the fried pork fat/skin that’s equally yummy). It also makes us seriously thirsty, and flush with cash, Rotel’s quickly on hand with some nice bognow beers, and another marathon card session is soon underway.

By morning we’ve agreed not to repeat the bus trip of death, and hunt down a nice AC bus. Seb gets into another shouting match with Mabel over the sudden appearance of a couple of Mabel’s friends who are joining us in Malapascua. Seb makes a point that these are more mouths to feed, and he wasn’t asked out it, and Mabel starts to sulk and gives Seb the silent treatment. The bus can only take us as far as Bogo, but we jump at it, and have a relatively comfortable trip (even catching a few episodes of Lost).

In Bogo, there’s another massive shopping trip, and more sparks between Seb and Mabel. Seb tells me they never fight this much, and he’s at a loss as to what’s causing all the tension. We jump on another death bus, and get to Maya just in time for a nice sunset crossing. We tease Mabel’s friends about the sharks and how the boat’s likely to sink (they don’t swim, and the boat is sitting very low in the water!) and it lightens the mood as the waves get bigger, and we get wetter.

Whoops! Time’s been flying by on Malapascua, and Mabel points out that our visas have almost expired! We’re just about out of cash again anyway, and since we’re not sure if we’ll get our visas extended, we pack up everything and prepare for the long road trip to Cebu city. We leave early, and bid a quick farewell to the family and the beautiful beaches. The tiny boat glides easily over to Maya, so we avoid the soaking of our last trip. We grab an open-air bus for 4 plus hour journey to town. The road is very dusty, and the driver is insane – passing on narrow bends, slamming on the brakes so hard the pads burn, and reaching insane speeds on the straight-aways when the road’s flat enough (reaching what must have been 90mph at times, with palm trees and buildings close enough to touch on either side!). Amazingly, we arrive alive, and aim for the cashpoint and then head for the consulate. They’re just closing for lunch, and someone with a badge offers to get our visa extensions done for us and deliver our passports later for a small fee. Seb asks Mabel if we can trust the man (badge looks official enough), and hand over our precious docs when she says yes.

Outside, Seb and Mabel get into a heated argument over what “can we trust him” really means, and both of them get very upset – there’s clearly still some very big “lost in translation” issues between them, and sometimes they both agree when they really don’t have the same idea in mind. (“Don’t want some juice?” will be answered “Yes,” meaning she doesn’t want juice). Seb has the hang of some, but not all, of these language quirks, and I wonder if this means we’ll never see our passports again…

Once to our hotel, it’s clear we’re too far away to expect our passports to be delivered, so we pop back in the cab and head back to the consulate – luckily, the man is as good as his word, and we recover our precious docs with their visas extended.

We head over to “White Gold,” a multi-market that Mabel used to work in, and have a late lunch. Mabel earned only 150 pesos ($3) a day working here, and yet she smiles to be back on her old stomping ground. Seb heads to the toy area and loads up on massive amounts of toys and balloons; Mabel’s birthday is coming up, and with our visas in order, we plan on heading back to Malapascua so she can be with family for it. Gemma, Michelle and some of Mabel’s friends are going on a massive shopping trip in the dry goods area, and it’s clear we’ll be buried in groceries!

We head back to the hotel for an early night…

The second rock off our beach has been calling to us, and with a new snorkel mask from Cebu, we decide to swim out again and see how the coral compares. We take our time, and finally get out to find a beautiful expanse of hard and soft coral and a huge variety of sea life! We spend an hour paddling about and by the time we head back, a strong cross current has picked up. “By chance,” generator man and a few family members show up in a small boat and pick up Seb; I try to solo it in, but a large fishing net blocks my way, and they motor back and pick me up before the current whisks me around the island. We vow to make a return trip by boat, this is the only way to travel!

We’ve arranged for a shark dive with exotic, starting at 5am! We wake long before dawn, and Mabel’s cousin picks us up on his motorcycle. The dive’s an hour offshore, and we’re told dawn is the best time for shark spotting. The ocean floor is pretty barren, and the dive is almost uneventful, spotting just a shadow of one shark, and one devil ray on our ascent (dives can’t all be winners!). Seb and I have a nice breakfast, visit the i-cafe for some beers, and wander around the villages a bit. We pop into “La Dolce” for some more pork, and a few more beers, and then stop by the motorcycle taxi rank for yet more bognow (Visaya for “cold”) ones.

While we chat, a very drunk and boisterous local sitting at the next table takes an interest in us. “I run a cock fight today. Want go? I take you”. By this point we’re quite pickled ourselves, and we decide to further defer our return to Mabel and the house for a unsupervised excursion into the underworld of Malapascua. We jump on motorcycle taxis (Seb’s driven by our drunken teacher/cock-fight chief) and head out behind the village shacks to who-knows-where. I arrive at the arena (already buzzing with life) and Seb’s nowhere to be seen; after a few minutes he pops into view, a bit rattled and pale. Looks like our escort was drunker than even he realized, and Seb had to work at keeping the man’s bike upright and out of the barbed-wire fences!

We feel safer when we spot a few white faces in the crowd, and it’s not long before the fight begins. It’s short, and indecisive – apparently our drunk friend was too plastered to even run a cockfight, and the crowd quickly becomes disgusted and starts to head off to an alternate venue. The backup ring is dilapidated, and clearly hasn’t seen action in ages! As a few locals attempt to perform some basic repairs, some new discussions start on who’s going to fight. We spot our dive master, Ronillo, and he explains that Mabel’s been texting all over searching for Seb (we’ve been wandering the far side of the island all day, and without a working phone haven’t been able to tell her where we are). Seb borrows a phone to fire of a text, and we quiz Ronillo about how the fight works. Turns out Ronillo’s a bit of a whiz, and he picks a number of winners (and wins a tidy sum himself).

By the time all the fights are finished, the sun’s setting, and we don’t get back until after dark. Mabel’s (justifiably) furious at Seb, and Seb’s in the doghouse bigtime (not a safe place in the Philippines! ;).

We “waste” a day lazily lounging around the card table, and the family decides to make us a fresh chicken dinner. The men jump to life, and gather near the BBQ with a few live chickens. After positioning a bowl to catch the blood, one of them pulls back each chicken’s head while another slits open its throat. They talk casually while the struggling chicken’s life is drained away, and then pass each to Noel who drops them headfirst into a warm bucket of water. Noel seems to enjoy his task more than the others, and gives us a single-toothed smile while holding the three chicken underwater by their twitching feet: “Heheh, still alive! Heheh, still alive!” a twinkle in his eye… Finally, he dunks them in near-boiling water, and they all attack the chickens, plucking the feathers off easily. In a few minutes, we’re eating the freshest chicken I’ve ever had…

One of Mabel’s relatives is a dive master with Exotic on the far side of the island, and Seb and I are eager for a bit more scuba! We have an excellent 2 dive excursion out to Gato Island (Sipadan hasn’t completely ruined the sport it turns out!), and spend the afternoon drinking and eating and generally getting a micro-taste of civilization in the area around Exotic.

We decide to continue the diversion, and after a short stop and some beers at the i-cafe, we try a local restaurant “La Dolce Vita” – we’d spotted proscuitto on the menu the day we arrived, and Seb’s been itching for some all week. The sandwich doesn’t disappoint, and has mountains on it; Seb just sits there, eyes closed, slowly savoring the flavor… but eventually parts with a few slivers so Mabel can try: “Chew SLOWLY, and don’t just swallow it” he warns. You think he’d been someplace without salted pork for years – oh, right, he has! (Malaysia)

I’m amazingly not hung over, but I wake up to find a nice pool of vomitous on the floor and the wall, and apparently out the glass-slat window and down the outside of the house (oops!)

There’s some ugly business going down outside my window – it appears that our neighbor has brought in the local Baranggay (like the police) to officially report on the generator, and the whole family is all over the situation. The Baranggay (being a local) completely sides with the family that the generator is legal, allowed, and expected to be used, and lays into the guy for creating such a fuss over it. There’s talk of filing legal complaints and calling the sheriff, and I wonder if this guy gets it: he’s surrounded by Pepitos, and he’s seriously pissing them off! Filipinos take family seriously, and really hate being told what to do. Clearly this guys headed for major trouble.

Seb’s also suffering from memory loss, and we decide that this is an excellent day to take it easy. I deflect the many “Tanduay! Drink!” (followed by howls of laughter) thrown my way by members of the family, and we decide to get a little away time in the water. Seb and I have been eyeing some tiny rock outcroppings a few hundred meters off shore, and we gear up to swim out to them. It’s a long swim and it takes close to an hour to get out to the rocks – the family, probably concerned about our health, shark attacks, and as Seb puts it “generally watching their wallet” sends out a small fishing boat to ghost us, so we’re not really in any danger. The soft coral is fantastic, and by the time we head back, the sun is rapidly setting. It’s a fabulous sunset, and as we float in the warm water and watch the pinks and yellows transform over the silhouette of the island, we realize we’re living the ideal postcard vacation!