Bohol and the lobster incident
Before leaving for Bohol Island, we went to see a local attraction. This happened to be at the pier outside Lapu Lapu. I thought I had seen crazy traffic before. I was basically Jon Snow. I knew nothing. It was wall to wall the whole way there. Philippines wall to wall, meaning people were parked in the road for no reason, there were u-turns being pulled all over the place. Shit was crazy. Our trike driver Ti-Ting was a champ and got us there in one piece. From there, while Juliet tried to get us in the queue for a pier restaurant, we went to see the "10 thousand roses" at the end of the pier. What this actually amounted to was 10 thousand (probably) light up, electric flowers on sticks. The more impressive spectacle was the 10 thousand selfies being taken around them. I've never seen such self indulgence and I don't think a single photo was taken in the area without the photographers own face being included. We left quickly and waited with Juliet. We enjoyed our dinner sitting right by the water and the Filipino meal we had was actually pretty tasty. The next day we took taxis to the ferry terminal to get on our way to Bohol. Every taxi we have been in so far here has listened to religious radio, except this guy. He listened to talk radio and the general style is to repeat the radio station name every 30-45 seconds, which the guy literally yelled. BRIGADA BALITA! The ride was almost an hour. It took me nearly the rest of the day to get that sound out of my head. The ferry ride was actually pretty cool. We could see flying fish gliding across the water the whole way. Extremely interesting to see up close. The ferry we took was a "Super Cat". I know that because they made a stupid music video and an even stupider song about it and played it on repeat for a good chunk of the ride. We did get a free muffin and some water, which was a nice surprise. The first attraction we hit on the island was Alona beach. It was gorgeous. Fairly full of people but gorgeous. We went a little further down and sorted a spot just before the private beach started so we ended up not being so jam packed in as people near the main entrance. We found a dive shop to rent us some snorkelling gear and Maggie, Maggie's dad and I hit the water. The amount of sea life was incredible. Clownfish and tons of other colourful fish everywhere. The real shock was the sheer number of sea urchins. They are everywhere. If you ever walk into the water out here without shoes of some kind, I mourn for you. You're basically fucked immediately if you're not paying attention. They were gorgeous though. We were kept busy out there for a few hours and we loved every minute of it. After our day at the beach, we and Maggie's parents tried to find a restaurant with food that was either edible or somewhat tasty, since we'd had endless bad food experiences thus far. We did find a restaurant with an upstairs patio, and relatively to our experience (pier restaurant mentioned above excluded) and in our beach day ecstasy, we declared it the best restaurant in the Philippines. Three of us had mediocre spaghetti and Maria had a coconut soup, but damn it felt like the best food we'd ever had. Our major mistake became apparent when we got home. Lobsters. We are lobsters now. Our backs and the back of our legs, fucked. Straight fucked. The worst victim being Maggie's poor butt. I blame it's buoyant nature. We had to go to a Korean market and find some aloe vera to survive the night. Dark times, my friends. Dark, painful, super red times. Tomorrow, Maggie and her folks go on a tourist adventure and I go scuba diving on a nearby island
