No Longer a Philippines Bachelor and Funny Boracay Rant

Have not updated the blog in a while, but I have been uploading more videos to my You Tube channel that you can find at Philippine Dreams.

In recent news, my lovely ray of eternal sunshine has formally moved in with me.  She came up about a week and a half ago intending to look for a job, as the prospects in Dumaguete were better for her than in her home town of Pagadian City.  Well, not even a week later, and she hooked a job.  Well, not just a job – a VERY good job, and we are both very happy about it.  She will be getting paid very well as a virtual assistant (kind of a long-range secretary position for a real estate firm in the US) but the only downside is that she will be working overnights in order to accommodate the 12 hour time difference.  S’all good, though, as it is her first real world job.

We are in the adjusting stage of the moving in process – getting used to each others little personality quirks and boundaries.  Overall, it’s going very well and it is truly wonderful having her here.

This is Holy Week in the Philippines – basically the whole country shuts down for a week in order to accommodate the Lenten observances.  If you happen to be in Pampanga on Luzon during this time, you might get to see Filipinos actually getting crucified.  Me?  I’ll pass.  My sense of Irish Roman Catholic Guilt is not ready for something like that.

We are moving back to Dumaguete city on the 30th of April.  Dauin was quite the cool experience, but it will be nice to be back in the city.  It’s just more convenient.  Plus, living without screens here has been a bit of a bear.

OK, enuff of that.  I am including a pretty funny recap a guy made on the Living in Cebu forum about a trip he made to Boracay.  I guess the place used to be pretty nice, but it seems to have gone downhill a bit in recent years.

Here it is:

You’re doing yourself a favor there. If you have even the slightest idea of what things cost in this country you will be disgusted, and that disgust will start when you get off the plane and find out you need to get an overpriced trike to an overpriced piece of drift wood posing as a boat, then when off the boat you have to get an extremely overpriced trike to your hotel (which takes about 20 minutes of driving through an extremely crappy and polluted cess pool of a town).
 Then when you get to your hotel they inform you they overbooked and your room, which you paid for in full for online, won’t be available for two more nights…..and won’t give a cash refund.

 You then find out every ATM on the freaking island is out of cash and you only have stood 7k pesos on you. Not that it mattered any because apparently the entire Korean Peninsula decided to take a vacation to Boracay that week. You go to every hotel in Station Suckacock except for “that one” and they are all fully booked, so you are forced to go back to “that one” and pay 5k pesos that was on par with a 150 peso a night boarding house. Knowing from previous experience that any charge on your debit card made in the Philippines will instantly lock your account for “security reasons” (no matter how many times you have told them you live there and not do that crap anymore) and it’s the weekend so you wouldn’t dare to risk to even try to find something better and risk not being able to use the ATM tomorrow.

 Hungry, thirsty and stressed out from all the walking and BS trying to find a room you then try to get something to eat and have a drink to calm your nerves. You then realize that a rum (Tanduay 5 year) and coke will run you around 150-170 pesos a drink…..which consists of far more ice and coke than rum. Order the meal for you and your girlfriend 600 pesos and get a raw piece of chicken served to you, they take it back and fry the crap out of it. No refund. Don’t forget the 18 percent service charge automatically added to the bill!

 After dinner with 200 pesos to your name you quickly realize you can’t do a damn thing in “paradise” without cash. So to take your girl to the beach and take a seat on a chair….Ha, jokes on you, “for customers only sir!”

 So you sit on the sand and some kids want to make a sand castle with you and your girls name in it. Thinking that would be a sweet thing to do for your gf with your last 200 you have the kids make it. Well, before you can get a picture of it with your gf the god damn sand castle nazis come and kick the shit out of your castle and inform you that making sand castles is illegal in “paradise” and threaten to write you a ticket if you do it again.
 You then contemplate if you should beat the shit out of the cop, steal his weapon and kill everyone on the island or just go back to your room. You decide there aren’t nearly enough bullets in that pea shooter so you go back to your room that smells like cat piss and cigarette smoke and make an exit plan for the next day.

 Such was my one…..and only night in Boracay. Even if all had went as planned, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The “white sand” isn’t white, walking on the row of restos and businesses is like working your way through a local disco on a Friday night, the street vender are relentless and everything is 5 times or more the normal price……with the same service you get anywhere else in the county.

8 comments

  1. Hi Dude,your living my dream !
    Can i ask if you dont mind, how much do you pay for the property there in Dauin?

    Many Thanks and good luck
    Andy

    1. haha sorry i should of carried on watching the video…..duh!
      i just saw it thanks…15k

      take care and good luck with the move back to Dumaguete.
      Andy

  2. Thanks Andy.

    Yeah, I dreamed about coming here for a long time myself. And now that I am here, it has exceeded my expectations. If you haven’t been here before, I recommend joining a forum like Living in Cebu Forums. I joined it about a year before coming here and learned a LOT. Just stay away from the yucky American politics on the forum. 🙂

  3. Hiya,yeah well ive been already, fell in love with Dumaguete,the people and a particular person too 🙂
    Infact ive swam in the sea just there near your pad,with my love.

    So tempting to sell up here and live there…very tempting in deed!
    Andy

  4. Hey dude can i ask you when you went to live there,did you take a large capital with you,or do you live on a regular income,like a pension?
    also was much involved in applying to live there?
    maybe you can email me?

    andyokan@hotmail.com

    many thanks

    take care

    Andy

    1. I budgeted about $1500 a month but am well under that, spending about a thousand USD a month. A really nice two bedroom goes for about $300 US (but people usually spend about $200 for OK digs) and food is really cheap as is public transportation.

      Numbeo is pretty accurate in its cost of living breakdown: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=Philippines&city=Dumaguete

      All you need to come here is your passport and a positive attitude. 🙂

  5. Interesting rant that guy posted about Boracay. I have been coming to the Philippines for 30 years, and last year (January 2014) was my first time on Boracay, and I will be back there in 2015. All I can say is that Boracay met and exceeded my every expectation. I have never been anywhere else in the Philippines that I enjoyed as much as my five nights on Boracay. Our fan room at Casa Pilar, right on the beach, was about $32 per night. They had a great, free breakfast in an indoor/outdoor resto right on the beach, which was white, powdery sand, and the water was warm, shallow and crystal clear. Although the resto at Casa Pilar was decent, and had live entertainment most every night, we had our choice of hundreds of restaurants of every food type within 5-10 mins walk of our hotel, and the list of activities of which we could avail ourselves was endless – power boating, sailing, kite boarding, kayaking, paddle boarding, scuba diving, etc. The problem I have had with Philippine beach resorts in the past is that they were usually quite isolated, our only choice of dining was at the resort itself, and, outside of the ubiquitous swimming pool, there was absolutely nothing to do – no kayak rental, no boating, no snorkeling, no nothing. Boracay has one big downside; it is overcrowded as there are huge groups of Koreans and Chinese on package tours. But, it you rent a kayak or other boat you can quickly and easily reach secluded beaches where you are the only ones there. Boracay has it all; prices of food, etc., are a little higher than other places in PH, but it is totally worth it. There is simply nowhere else like it in the world; Conde Nast always ranks the beaches of Boracay among the best in the world. Check out my photo album, Boracy 2014 on my Facebook page, Mike Henebry.

    1. He actually runs a forum here in Dumaguete. Take his rant with a grain of salt – he could have just been a bad day, he might have been in a bad space, or it could just be one of those situations of anything that can go wrong, going wrong. I’ve had a few days like that…… Thanks for that input on Boracay, Michael.

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