El Nido - The Calm After the Storm

Again no pictures until we have a better internet connection which may not be until next Thursday. There are lot's of great pictures from El Nido so check back for the pictures.

I think we're alone now...


Our amazing kayaking and camping trip had just come to an end and half the group got right in a van to make the trip back to Puerto Princessa and then on to Manila to head home. The rest of us were going to be staying in El Nido some for one day and Mitra and I for about five. What we really had to do over the five days was relax, figure out where we were going next and how to get there the easiest and cheapest way possible. It was time for Mitra to get the shock of us being on budget as I new that Manila and El Nido up to this point was going to be over budget.

Over the course of the almost two years that we have been dating I have not been sick one time so leading up to the trip it was Mitra going to every doctor available until the day our health insurance ran out. Turns out the day we get back to El Nido I got a case of Tanduay Tummy for lack of a better term. I'm not sure where it came from but I wanted it to go away and I did not want to take any Cipro to clean out my entire system. I tried to let it run it's course but unfortunately it lasted until we got to Bangkok. I will spare you all the gory details but I am glad that we paid extra to get a private bath because it would not have been fair to anyone using the shared bathroom. I do however highly recommend The Alternative as a place to stay for anyone who makes it to El Nido.

As for what we did while there it was really nothing exciting. We spent a little more time with everyone from the Sabang Gang before they left at different times to head back home or on for more travels. I personally spent an inordinate amount of time trying to book flights from Puerto Princessa to Bangkok. Apparently the airlines don't like to take foreign credit cards and the travel agent there was only able to book flights back to Manila. Finally after four days I was able to book the tickets and had only one worry left...how do I print up a copy of the itinerary? In most countries in SE Asia when you get to the airport you have to show your itinerary to get into the terminal (Mitra and I have forgotten to do this in Bali and Manila). I set off to find a printer and found one at an internet cafe and proceeded to spend 45 minutes trying to print up a single page of the itinerary. Luckily it was taken care of and we wouldn't have to worry about that when we got to Puerto Princessa.

When we were not trying to book flights or get a hostel in Bangkok we spent time reading, walking around the town, laying on the beach, saying Hi to every cute little kid on the street. I was also missing my opportunity to try Balut as I decided it wasn't a good idea with the shape my intestines were at the time. I guess I will have to make it back to the Philippines or try it in Vietnam or Cambodia. All in all it was nice to have a few days to just relax and decompress.

I was able to relax until we had to wake up for our early van ride back to Puerto Princessa. I was not able to eat breakfast as I wasn't feeling well so I popped some Immodium and drank some water and thought I would be able to make it through the ride. Well let's just say I underestimated this ride back to the airport. Mitra and I ended up in the back of the van on a bench facing to Filipina girls on another bench. This is how we were to ride for the 5 - 6 hours it would take to get back to the airport. Adding to my misery was the fact that the AC did not reach us in the back of the van, the window kept opening letting dirt fill the air inside. So we made our first stop on the road to stretch our legs, use the toilet or get some food. I used to time to get sick right next to a goat tied to a fence...insert any joke you would like here. At this point we still had about 4 hours to go so the rest of the trip was very long but I managed to make it to the airport without any other incidents.

We had a few hours to kill and I ate some food finally, Mitra smoked half a pack of cigarettes, we took a few pictures and it was off to Bangkok for the next part of our adventure. I was very excited for the flights as I was ready to get to Thailand as it's one of my favorite places and I was ready to show Mitra some of the city and then get to the beach.

Paalam

Brian


P.S. This was the SONG that was heard all over El Nido with little kids singing and doing the dance...


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El Nido – Part Deux

Song for this post:

Where Is My Mind by The Pixies

            Before we’d left on the kayaking trip in the morning, Brian and I had reserved ourselves a room at a cute little hostel called The Alternative just a few doors down from the Bayview that Brian had read about on a much more informative travel blog than this.  It appealed to me because it boasted all sorts of holistic spa services and organic shakes and food.  After my experience with chronic illness this past year and having seen way more doctors than I’d ever hoped to see in my life and ending up having a colonoscopy about 20 years sooner than expected, I have pretty much given up any sort of faith in Western medicine.  I had never been a hypochondriacal person, maybe to my detriment somewhat.  I was always the girl that would power through almost any sort of malady with the attitude that with a little bit of rest, whatever it was; it would go away on its own. 

            After this past year however, things changed and every day something that I thought could possibly be a new symptom would show up and I’d get on WebMD and diagnose myself with a new, hideous, and hopeless terminal illness.  I don’t mean to make light of the situation when there are so many people out there that I know suffering from some sort of life-threatening disease and I am lucky in the fact that I am actually in pretty perfect physical health.  I would just like to illustrate the mania that can be caused by simply not having any answers and feeling like the people who are supposed to help you, aren’t even listening to you.  But if I say anymore on the subject, I’ll get into a long tirade on exactly why health care in our country sucks more ass than a shop vac in a room full of donkeys so I’ll just say that I have little faith left these days in Western medicine and was therefore very much looking forward to staying at The Alternative.

            We arrived there maybe around 9 or so that morning after seeing everyone else off and Mavis and Summer went off to check into their digs and made plans to come back over and hang out.  Our room wasn’t ready yet so we just headed up to the cute restaurant on the balcony overlooking the ocean and ordered some drinks while I perused the menu of spa services.  Mavis and Summer eventually joined us and we had a nice time together before they went off in search of lunch and a massage for Summer.  Brian and I – I think – went down to the Art Café, the only place in town that had 24 hour electricity which meant 24 hour internet connection.  We e-mailed our families to let them know we were alive and then we set ourselves (our actually Brian did cuz that’s his man job) upon the task of getting plane tickets to what we decided would be our next destination – Bangkok.  (A word to the wise – if you got to Palawan, by all means try and have a definitive departure date and get your tickets ahead of time.  It ultimately took us about 3 or 4 days to book ours because the airlines don’t seem to like to take foreign credit cards in that town for some reason.)

            Later that day, I had made an appointment for a massage.  I can’t remember what it was called but it was some sort of Chinese massage that was supposed to readjust your organs and especially your lower intestine.  Though I hadn’t really had any problems with my stomach after getting out of the hospital, I wanted to be as vigilant about being as loving to my duodenum as I possibly could.  The massage wasn’t quite what I’d hoped, my lower intestine felt like a million pesos, but my back and neck could’ve used a little more work.  Oh well, next time.

            Later that night, Lee had arranged for us stragglers to meet up at Sea Slugs one last time.  Quincy, Kelly, Mavis, Summer, Ian, Melanie, Bobby, Jasmine, Lee, Brian and I sat down to have one last meal before more of our group took off.  As we were sitting there, a few of us noticed that Bobby didn’t look very good – he was sweating profusely (more so than the cool breeze off the ocean should have allowed for) and looked kind of out of it.  We thought it must have been due to all the drinking done on the island as Brian wasn’t feeling so hot either, but soon discovered that the night before on the island, Bobby had gotten up to go to the bathroom and on his way back to whatever tent he was sleeping in that night, had run into a tree and gotten knocked out.  He had confessed to Quincy that that was the last thing he remembered until waking up on the beach at some later time.  We were all convinced that he had a concussion and so urged him to go see a doctor.  Luckily Jasmine’s aunt was one of the doctors in town so her and Lee took Bobby off to see her.  When they returned about a half an hour later, Bobby was already looking and feeling much better.

            Not Brian though.  He didn’t eat that night and excused himself early.  When I was ready to leave, I said good-bye to Summer who had been my girl since the very beginning of this journey and then Mavis walked me down the beach back to my place.  We said our goodbyes and he told me not to stress out too much about the blog and just enjoy.  (At the beginning of this trip there was some tension between Brian and myself about getting the blog up and running.  He wanted to have it going before we even left the states and my wordiness wouldn’t allow for it.  Now as it turns out, we’re about 2 – shit, maybe 3 – weeks behind on blogging.  But don’t tell him I told you that!)

            The next day we took it easy and pretty much spent the entire day in the Art Café catching up on e-mails and trying to get our plane tickets to Bangkok.  Brian still wasn’t feeling great physically and I was pretty beat up emotionally so we were just kind of laying low and trying to regroup.  That night we had dinner at The Alternative and were eventually joined by the rest of the crew – it was their last night.  Quincy fell in love with our little place and especially adored the “nests” that protruded off our balcony over the ocean.  We spent one last quiet night with the remnants of the Gang Sabang, walked them out later that evening, said goodbye and made our promises to keep in touch and then for the first time since the beginning of our trip, Brian and I were really alone.

            The next few days were pretty uneventful – a lot of sleeping in, catching up on e-mails, long, relaxing meals, laying on the beach, walking around town, and generally just detoxing from the fun but frenzied first few weeks of our trip.  As I lay on the beach some of those days I started to really try and process and digest and analyze the shit out of what had been going on with me and how I’d gotten to this frazzled mental state and where I wanted to go from there.  And then at some point, it hit me – I needed to just get the fuck over myself!!!  I needed to start to let go of all these bullshit stories I had playing in my head over and over and over again.  I needed to get free and start living this wonderful life that was right in front of us, waiting for us to just dive right in!

            They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  They say the road back is paved with humility and I could have used a big old dose of that right then.  People often mistake humility with humiliation but as a handsome old Irishman told me when I was getting on the plane to leave France a few years prior, humility is simply telling the truth and the truth at that moment was that, my life ain’t so bad!  I had everything I’ve ever wanted – except for maybe straight teeth and full B-cup sized boobs – and the only thing that was stopping me from enjoying it was me!  The lies I was telling myself about who and what I was were the only thing holding me back.  Right then and there, I gained a new resolve – I was just going to chill out for the rest of the time we were in El Nido and then hit the ground running in Bangkok.  The Philippines were to be about landing and gaining my footing, Thailand was going to be about finding my stride, Thailand was going to be about healing.

            The last day we were there, Brian still didn’t feel great – poor thing – and I felt like I could seriously use a lung brush (though I didn’t drink with the rest of the gang on the island, I sure as shit matched them cigarette for cigarette and I was paying the price!) and a good old chakra cleansing to start the next leg of the trip off right, so I booked Brian and I side by side massages.  About 2 hours and ten cigarettes later we walked up for our appointments.  Holy Shiatsu - That was just what I needed!!!  That 

woman worked me like a piece of veal scaloppini – it was awesome! It was the best my carpal tunneled little arms had felt in days!  (Little did I know though, all that fabulous deep tissue rubbing would soon be undone once again by chakra fucking Filippino transportation.)  I’m not sure what we did for dinner that night – we’d planned on returning to a restaurant we’d been the night before at the end of the beach that had the best pizza either of us has ever had in southeast Asia, but for some reason I think we got a late start for dinner and wanted to be back relatively early so we could get to bed for our early morning adventure back to Puerta Princessa to catch our flight and be on our way to Bangkok.

            So we get up at about 6a.m the next morning.  Dear reader, once upon a time I was a morning person.  I used to get up at 5a.m. and go all day rarely stopping to rest and I was fine with it, loved it actually.  I loved getting as much as I possibly could out of a day – school, working out, working, writing, spending time with friends, hanging out with my parents, whatever.  Ever since I started getting sick though, I have become somewhat of a sleeping champion – a world-class, gold medal winner of pillow drooling, REM power.  I developed the habit of sleeping 10-12 hours a night, waking up at around 9 or 10 in the morning, making breakfast, eating it, and then having to take a nap.  Even out of all the people on the kayaking trip who were drinking all day and into the wee hours of the morning, I was usually the last person to wake up.  (It’s not something I’m particularly happy about or comfortable with and actually find it quite upsetting and later in the trip it will prove to cause some tension between Brian and I.)

            Six in the morning and it’s packing up the last odds and ends, having breakfast, and I had to run down to Art Café to change some money to get us to the airport and out of the Philippines.  (Oh yeah, just for your FYI – there are no ATMs in El Nido and we were under the impression that it wasn’t even possible to change money, but we were misinformed.  We’d brought what we thought was exactly enough pesos but forgot to factor in airport tax and a few other things.)  Brian still wasn’t feeling so hot so I really didn’t have any room to complain, even though I would’ve liked to, being up at such an unholy hour and having to take a 5-hour car ride back to the airport.  I made it back with some cash just in time – the van was waiting for us as I got there.  Now, how do I explain this?  In the front seat there was the driver and two passengers, in the next row of seats there were two more passengers, in the third row, two passengers and one of the guys that was helping out the driver (who – by the way – was an alternative energy specialist and tried to sell us some solar paneled water heating systems) and in the very back where the luggage should’ve been was two benches facing each other – Brian and I on one and two Filipina girls on the other.

            Let me just paint the picture – it was about 1 million degrees (that’s Celsius not Fahrenheit) with about 300% humidity, there was no AC reaching us because it wasn’t getting past the big German dude in the first row of seats, Brian was ill, the ride we took was the same bumpy, unpaved, nightmarish road I think I alluded to in the last post, Brian and I and the girls we were sharing the trunk with had about 7 inches of foot space between us, and B and I had our backs against the window that caused it to keep sliding open which would’ve been refreshing in the circumstances had it not been for the fact that we were racing through dirt roads that looked and felt like they’d been carpet bombed by Wily E. Coyote and therefore blankets of red clay were being kicked up and pelting us every time the window got cracked.  Oh yeah, and our backpacks were strapped to the roof of the van and were not covered properly and therefore also coated in dirt when we finally arrived in Puerta Princessa.  Can I just say what a mistake – of all days – it was for me to wear white pants?  Pants!?!  White ones!!!

            We got to Puerta, tried to clean off our bags as best we could and kicked ourselves a bit for not putting our travel duffels over our packs – note to self:  when having your bag strapped to the roof of a dirt churning van of scary, speedy, bejesus, use the protective backpack duffels that you purchased for $32.99 a piece for just such an occasion – we composed ourselves enough to negotiate a Tuk-Tuk to take us to the airport.  We had a few hours to kill before our flight took off – just enough time to get something to eat, for me to smoke a few cigarettes, and for B and I to pose under the tent at the airport that touted the name of one of the government officials of El Nido or Palawan – Mr. Mitra.  (Of course I forgot what his first name is!)  The flight to Manila was pretty uneventful; we got there, which is always nice.  Had a few hours to kill in Manila, grabbed some food, smoked some more cigarettes and then boarded the plane to Bangkok.  Aaaaah Thailand - let the healing begin...

xoxoM