14-16 April...I think

I haven’t written in a while…I know. I’ve either been having too much fun or on a remote island somewhere with no electricity or both.
I didn’t wind up going to Banaue. While in Manila I made myself a little passport of friends (Zoe..England, Frank..Switzerland, Shanti…Canada, Alex..France, Mattias..Holland). Alex and Mattias headed off to Apo island and invited Zoe and I to join. We decided that sounded like fun and booked our plane tickets for Tuesday. We hung out in Manila for a couple more days with Frank and Shanti had too much fun and not enough sleep. Tuesday came around and I was happy to leave Manila. Not only had I spent the last 6 nights staying up past the sunrise but had also lost a number of things...
Things lost in Manila:
1 Shoe, One of my favorite earings, The 17,000Php camera I had jut bought...stolen by a prostitute.., 800Php..also stolen by a prostitute..., 18 hours of my life, My sunglasses and countless hours of sleep.
...Zoe and I were exhausted and delirious packed and in a taxi by 11:30 for our 1:30 flights. I made my flight ok but Zoe was dropped off at the wrong terminal and had to take another taxi and almost missed her flight. We met back up in Cebu around 3 and took a taxi where we were hoping to get something to eat and pick up our boat tickets in advance for the 7:30 boat to Dumaguete. The travel office told us that we had to get our tickets at the pier but confirmed that there was in fact a bus leaving at 7:30. By the time we found a place to eat and ordered we were a bit pressed for time so we had to take most of it to go. It’s OK..we’ll eat in on the boat. Well that should be interesting since they wrapped it up in plastic bags and we had no utensils..We’ll figure it out. We rushed into a taxi and to the pier…really short on time now. There were about 7 ticket windows at the pier and the first 5 we tried said that there were no boats going to Dumaguete and that we would have to wait for tomorrow. No way…I could clearly see a boat with Dumaguete written on it and people aboard. Luckily at about 5min till 7 we found the window on the other side of the building that would get us to Dumaguete. Perfect. The boat was in the first slot we had just enough time to walk over and get on. We were heading that way when a man shouted “Ride the bus! The bus! Ride the bus!”…It was much funnier at the time than it sounds when typed.. We were then shuffled back to the other side of the building and onto a bus which took us all the way to the other side of the pier to the furthest slot from our boat and then all the way back to the place where we started…… Seemed a bit unnecessary to me but ok. Luckily this is the Philippines and everything moves at an extremely slow pace so our boat was about an hour late departing. The boat was unlike anything I have ever seen..each deck covered with bunk beds. It looked like some sort of prison orphanage or something. Zoe and I found our top bunks and settled in. As the boat was departing we stood at the rail looking out. An 11 year old boy approached me and began to ask me a series of about 1000 questions “where are you from?” “have you ever been to Hollywood?” “Have you ever seen a real live mermaid?” “are you drunk?” Haha.. No I wasn’t but apparently I am such a mess that I just appear drunk to children. The boat took off and Zoe and I took our bunk beds, had a couple beers and Pad Thai and curry out of a plastic bag that we had to eat with a tongue depressor I found in my first aid kit. No wonder small children think I’m drunk..lol.
The boat arrived in Dumaguete around 3:30 in the morning and we took a motorized tricycle to Harold’s Mansion…sleep. The next morning I met Harold himself and he convinced us to stay one more night. That night we had a BBQ then went out to a bar for some live reggae. Hanging out with several people from the hostel we got totally wasted and decided to walk into town at 3am for some food. After eating Chow King we were too tired to walk back so we grabbed a trike. Luckily, Lee, the guy next to me was paying attention because the trike driver fell asleep. Twice. We made it home alive and went straight to bed. The next morning we woke up late and hung over….again. We took a trike to the jeepney station, a jeepney to the road that led to the boats for Apo Island and walked down it. From there after about 2hours of waiting around..hot and hungry…Finally for 300Php each we hitched a really wet boat ride to Apo. Checked into Liberty’s..Food…Nap in the hammock. When I woke up from my nap I found that Alex and Mattias were not only still on Apo but staying in our dorm. Nice luck.