Sometimes you make plans
and things go pretty much accordingly. Other times, those plans collapse
moments after takeoff and you’re left scratching your head and saying, “What the
heck just happened here?” That latter scenario definitely mirrors to our initial
move to Boracay Island. I promised early on that I’d chronicle the good, the
bad and the ugly. This installment, my friends, is the ugly.
We knew the trip itself
would be daunting. 36 hours of connecting flights from Nashville to Chicago to
Tokyo to Manila to Kalibo. Then tack on a rugged 2-hour bus ride and a boat
trip to get to the Island. Now add lugging around heavy baggage (including a
desktop computer) by hand through each leg of this journey. I expected those
things to suck, and they did.
However, there were some frustrating
surprises right off the bat. When I went to get my boarding pass at Nashville
International Airport, I was told that they wouldn’t let me board the plane.
The American Airlines rep said that they’d recently been fined for allowing a
foreigner into the Philippines on a one-way ticket and due to these stricter
regulations, couldn’t honor the ticket I had already bought months prior. This
was a tad irritating. Here we haven’t even left Nashville yet and I’m being
turned away at the counter? I explained to the airline rep that there’s no
return ticket because we’re moving there. I was told they still wouldn’t let me
board the plane. The solution was not a pretty one. I decided to plop down
$1300 additional (that we didn’t budget for) to buy a refundable return ticket
that I’d never use. Incidentally, when we got to Manila, my wife asked the
person issuing visas if they’d stopped allowing foreigners entry unless they
had a return ticket. The guy said it wasn’t true.
The other surprise
awaiting us in Boracay was a heavy monsoon. For those in the west, that’s a big
rain and windstorm. The boat ride from Caticlan Port to Boracay Island was very
choppy. The waves were strong and the rain unrelenting. The boat docked, not in
the port, but on the actual beach by dropping anchor and extending a wooden
plank. Hmm. Ok. So we carted off all of our luggage and computers, trying our
best to keep them dry. By this point I was going on 2 days without sleep and
just needed to get to our cozy apartment and just collapse for a few days of
R&R.
That would not happen.
Once we made it up the
sandy hill to the main road (there’s only one highway on the island) we hired a
small metal truck. We tossed our luggage inside and sat down in the back and
rode around in the downpour, looking for the apartment we’d booked months
earlier (and for which we’d already paid a deposit). It took a while to find
the place, as it was located up a muddy hill, situated between narrow alleys.
The place was a dump, unlike the pictures we’d seen. My spirits were crushed as
I stood in the rain in front of a rusty gate with a monstrous tangle of cables
overhead, hanging low from a haphazardly erected pole. When the driver and me
shouted for someone to help us (the woman knew we were coming) it took a good
ten minutes for a woman and her angry pack of mud hounds to come out and open
the gate.
She asked if I was Jason
and then apologized for the misunderstanding. That misunderstanding of which
she spoke – she was referring to the issue of her renting our apartment to someone
else and not telling us. Wonderful.
I apologized to the poor
driver who was getting soaked with us and told him to just take us to a hotel
for the night while we sort out our living situation. The first few places we
tried were already fully booked, but we managed to find a little hut on the
beach with a shower and air conditioning (two big pluses to my mind) for around
$70 a night. It was pricey but we could get some sleep and reassess.
The next morning began a
weeklong trek (from sunup to sundown) in search of a new place to live. The
owner of that initial apartment e-mailed me back and told me what had happened.
While he was away in the UK, his wife had returned to drug use (meth, no less)
and was letting her druggie friends shack up in our apartment. He was
grievously sorry and promised to return our deposit when he gets back.
Long story short, this
island is very expensive if you’re staying long term… much more than we’d
estimated. We did manage to find a little one-bedroom place but the monthly
rent is about double what we’d budgeted. But since it’s so hard to find a
longer-term rental here, we went ahead and signed a 6-month lease. If you’re
wondering how we’re going to work that out… I’ll let you know when I know.
