Bantayan Island, Holy Week, 11-16 April 2006

Day 2 (12 April ’06)

Lunch was again at Manong Pito, they have the best food, 2 kinds of dried fish and fish tinola. YUM! People there seem to be drinking all the time. I’d see them drinking before meals, during meals, and after meals. Hehehe. They drink mostly beer, they would have several big bottles of San Miguel Beer and Gold Eagle Beer, and they would offer us beer all the time. Well, since I’m too polite to refuse, I’d drink the beer, despite the fact that I don’t really like its taste and despite the fact that my stomach is rebellious with beer. What’s worse is that most of the time, the beer is not cold, it is beer warmed by the Philippine Summer Sun! Give me rum or scotch whisky anytime.. just not beer.

Afterwards, I got myself a Henna tattoo on my back and arm. The guy who gave me the tattoo also tattooed some celebrities in manila. I was their first client in Bantayan. I had to wait for 2 hours for the tattoo to dry up then I could rinse it, and in those 2 hours I must not sweat. Kinda impossible, being under a tent, with the afternoon sun blazing over us. So there were 2 people fanning me to keep me from sweating... Hahaha, I became the King of Bantayan! Despite that, however, my arm still sweats a bit, and parts of the tattoo smeared a bit, but not much. Now, time to rinse my arm. I went in the water, and while rinsing I realized that my fone was still in my short pocket, which by now was already wet! Huhuhu! L My Nokia 6030 which I bought recently!!! I took it out of my pocket, it was dead. I had to take the battery out immediately and had it air-dried. While waiting for my fone to dry-up, I met the gang of the tattoo artist. The tattoo artist is Juanlou, his senior and head of the tattoo federation of the Philippines (or something like that) is Ricki, and Ricki’s wife Camille, their friends Froilan, Dwight, Lucky, Ice, Jude. Then afterwards I had to go to Budjong Beach Resort. I was also able to eat jelly fish while waiting, tasted like squid, but all the tomato sauce kinda masked its true taste, then they took out the uncooked jellyfish and showed it too us, didn’t touch the jelly fish dish again after seeing it. Yuck! Seeing those tentacles in glorious pink or glorious green removed my appetite in an instant.

Stanley and I then entered in the 1^st Beach Volleyball competition that was organized there, it was sponsored by Gatorade. We decided to enter so that we had something to do while we were there. Trip lang! And also because it costs pretty cheap to enter, all you had to do was buy 4 Gatorade’s being sold at 40 pesos each. There I met the organizers, Jamil and his friend, and also the other volleyball players. Most of them were Obet’s barkada, quite a few were from Cebu, among them were Ricki and Karl, and 2 of their friends who are surf and swim dudes, and only 1 was from Manila. One of the perks we get, the volleyball players get to enter Budjong Beach Resort for free! No games were scheduled at that day, the games would start Thursday. But the parties had already started at Budjong Beach Resort, it was scheduled from Wednesday night til Saturday night. The big ones being Thursday night and Saturday night. Well, back at my usual hang-out at the tattoo tent. My fone was still dead. But since I’m free, I had my leisurely swim again. This later became my daily routine during my entire stay there. :-)