One of the couples I work with, and am friends, with planned a weekend get away to Hundred Islands National Park. They had a friend that was in town visiting and its a fairly easy 4 hour-ish drive up the coast to what we've been told is a really nice island hopping/snorkelling spot.
So my colleague's friend "Jack" was from the States and within 6 hours of arriving in Manila he fell into the classic Philippines white guy situation. He met a Filippina, she was 20, which isn't creepy as it normally is because he was only in his mid-thrities, she spoke minimal english, she had very little education and we're pretty sure she didn't have a job. Regardless Jack was hooked, and she was now attached to him. Just imagine how shocked we all are to hear that he showed up in Subic with a complete stranger to stay at our friends house. To make matters worse she was terrified of hanging out with our group. Which would make for an awkward trip. One of the main problems being we had rented a van for us to all drive up in and now with the extra person we all didn't fit. The problem was easily solved when she convinced him to take her on a trip to go see her family up north. From there they would meet us at our hotel at a Hundred Islands.
On Friday after school we headed out on our adventure, we dodged animals, trikes, and thought we were lost for a little while, but we managed to get there in one piece around 9:30. The main problem being we hadn't stopped for dinner on our drive and by this time we got there we were starving, but everything had closed.
We had booked two rooms, one five person room and one two person room. When we arrived Jack and his friend were already there, the room that they had put them in had a double and two twins. The air was an odd combination of stale mould which only complimented the decor -everything was covered in pink frills or brown floral. We asked to see the other room we had book and found only a double bed. Turns out the double with two twins was a five person room, which made no sense to us, but perfect sense to the man who worked for the hotel. Which lead to a lot of strong discussion between us and the hotel workers. All the while Jack's friend had locked herself in the bathroom and was not coming out.
It was 10 o'clock, things were closed, we were starving and our hotel was one bed short. So we did what any experienced traveller would do, we left our bags in one of the room and when knocking on hotel front doors to see if they would feed us or had other rooms. We found one place that had one 2 person room and another one with two double beds and a pull out couch, the rooms smelt a lot better and the bathrooms had considerably less questionable stains.
As we solved the first problem we were still plaugde by the fact that we hungry and no one was opening their kitchen for us. Then came along this little old lady, she shuffled out on the street, and told us she would make us food, We entered a living room with a long table and benches in it, across was a small tv in the corner which was playing a Korean soap opera dubbed in Tagalog, there was an empty unplugged freezer under the window. She asked us what we wanted, we told her whatever was easiest. She smiled at us, missing one of her front teeth and said "Chicken. Fried?" I wasn't sure if that was a question or a statement. We were given glass bottles of Spirt and a beer for Brandon. She went into the back kitchen and soon the sent of cooking had wafted into the living room, it smelt amazing, only adding to our starvation. When the food came out there was a huge plate of rice and fried chicken, the Colonel has nothing on this lady. It was amazing. We left a generous tip for her and her hospitality. Went back to our original hotel gathered our bag drop the key off at the front desk, and relocated to our new place. They told us the would get a bonca boat for us for tomorrow. We feel asleep fast with the hope of waking up early to get some good sunrise shots over the islands.
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