One more for the road.

Greetings from Taipei, boys and girls. Here is where I get the priviledge, nay, the pleasure, of spending 4 glorious hours on my layover before my super duper extra fun 12 hr flight to Vancouver. I'm sure the families of 12 are already in line at the check-in counter with all their worldly belongings and their distaste for waiting in line for anything. I figured one more blog post from the Asian landmass was in order to pass the time.

I had an action-packed few days in Siargao following the last post. On Thursday night we left on an overnight trip to a place that I'm 70% sure is called Sohoton. Or something like that. Haha its all a bit of a Tanduay haze how we planned that one out, but Bertus had it under control. First stop (after getting lunch and booze) on our little boat adventure was the Naked Island, called so because its just a giant sandbar in the middle of the ocean completely devoid of any buildings or plant/animal life. Basically it was an awesome place to get completely belligerently day drunk in the blazing sun and work on our tans. A few of the local guys came along with us to spice things up a bit. For lunch they made us an awesome grilled fish, which they seasoned by dipping it in the ocean - for salt! I have discovered a shameless love of grilled fish over here, and this one as usual did not disappoint. They grilled up some sailfish steaks on a chunk of wood they brought with them using some dried up coconut husks and dead palm leaves. Soooo delicious! Next up was a 2 some-odd hr debaucherous boat ride full of spontaneous singalongs and Tanduay straight from the bottle to this completely random house in the middle of nowhere. I don't think I could describe this place acurately or in a way that will make sense, but basically it was a 2-story house perched on the side of a jungle-covered cliff in an area of 70 acres full of smallish cliffy uninhabitable islands. Everywhere there was these amazing views and the water is half-salt half-fresh and completely still, with no waves or surf. It was so quiet after being ocean-front for so many days. Grab some google images if you can, because its so stunningly beautiful and peaceful and amazing that my dazed mid-flight brain can't quite grasp it. In any case, this place was awesome. We spent the late afternoon jumping from the 2nd story balconey into the water and swimming in the water, which is really cold for the first 3 inches or so then gets really REALLY warm underneath. So cool. The night was yet again another amazing meal of squid, some kind of salted fish, watermelon, soup, grilled squash and pumpkin, and chicken adobo. I swear, the best meals I've had in this country are the ones where some random lady is cooking you whatever she damn well pleases and there's no menu, just great grub. That night was the standard debaucherous rowdy times, with the Canadian team trying to teach a dozen very confused Pinos how to play Sociables.
The friggin biological clocks in the lifelong surfers woke them up at the crack of dawn. Its like they could smell high tide. Since they couldn't surf, they proceeded to resume the cliff-jumping cheering and laughing from the night before, much to the chagrin of the hungover Canadians who had passed out just before sunrise. We spent the morning chillin at the house, eating an awesome breakfast and swimming for a solid 4 hrs. After that we managed to herd the unbelievably drunk South African (our freakin tour guide) onto a boat for the planned day excursion. We went on small boats paddled by locals thru the coves/lagoons area, and hit up 2 caves, the names of which I sadly can't remember. There was one that was very much like a cenote swim in Mexico, all dark and stalectite-y. And the other one (where there was friggin BATS) we climbed up thru this column from the water inside the cave that spat us out about 30 feet up on a cliff-side. So more cliff jumping! The boys invited us back to this guys Rasta's house that night for a fish bbq, to which we readily agreed, so we all piled back into the boat for the long ride back to Siargao.
The fish bbq was AWESOME. More delicious non-restaurant food. Those boys can COOK. We had my new favourite fish, grilled blue marlin steaks, some Sinigang, soup, pineapple, and rice. YUMMMMMMY. Time to get smashed again, as it was unofficially our last real night in the Philippines, and our last night on Siargao. A very rowdy night was had by all. At one point I was on the back of a bike heading to Nine Bar and we almost ran over Bertus, sitting in the middle of the dirt road in pitch darkness wearing a panda touque playing guitar all by himself. He gave me a look of "hey, what are you doing on my road?" and we sped off. Sooo random. The night ended with a barefoot dance party at the bar where we had spent our first night. Such a great island.

Saturday was an epic travel day. Really its like I'm taking 4 days to get home. We left Siargao at 9 to take a jeep to the ferry, took a really shitty hungover ferry with no shade from the blazing sun for 3 hrs to Surigao, the capital city of the island. There we got a crappy hotel room for the afternoon that had no A/C and only 2 beds, so people slept as best they could and I sat there hating my life. I have developed a rather nasty infected cut on my butt cheek (ew, I know) and sitting down is super uncomfortable, so I sweat my bag off while laying with my back on the bed and my legs on the ground. Worst 5 hrs of my life. We were all very happy with the prospect of leaving that hot-box for the airconditioned night ferry back to Cebu. I was wise enough to have bought some sleeping pills for this one, and I popped 2 and passed out for the night. In the morning I woke up feeling like I had just been hit by a bus, chugged a bottle of vodka, snorted a line of laundry detergent, and been clubbed in the head. Those things were POWERFUL. I'm taking one on the plane tonight so I may be slightly delerious by the time I get home. I think I'll need it if I'm to sit on my sore ass for half a day.
Last night we were in Cebu, and it was a pretty anticlimactic last night in the country. We all passed out when the ferry arrived at 6am, and the girls headed to the mall to boost the economy. I did very very well on that trip. Almost to the point of being unable to pack my backpack - thank god for compression bags! I threw a couple of bottles of Tanduay in my bag, and even though I got a fragile sticker put on it, I was informed today that one of them broke in my bag. I have all my clothes in plastic compression bags, so I hope they make it home ok. So last night Kaitlyn and Brynn left at midnight, so there was lots of hotel drinking and drunken hugging and reminiscing. This morning I left alone at 9am to start my flight days home.
I'm thanking my lucky stars that I had 4 hrs in Manila, it took me almost the entire time to get there, take a taxi to the international terminal from domestic (soooo far, the airport is so spread out in the middle of the city), wait in the huge Air China check-in line for the Chinese people to get all their baggage in order, get through immigration/security, and find my gate. Manila is also one of those airports where there is absolutely nothing to eat on the other side of security. I was so happy to get out of there. Now I'm in Taipei waiting for my flight home! Catch you guys on Canadian soil!