BBQ sticks & mango shakes

Finally, we're in Boracay. The plane ride from Manila to Caticlan was a little sketchy, but we made it. After geting to the airport we had to take a tricycle (motorcycle with attachment) to the boat which took us to Boracay. From there we hopped in the back of a truck and headed for the resort area. The truck dropped us off near the market area and we had to walk the rest of the way (about 15 minutes). Luckily, the resort provided workers to help with our bags.

We checked into the hotel, The Red Coconut, and scoped our new digs for the next 3 nights. It's right on the beach, like every other resort here, and very nice. We're staying in the garden villas which all have double doors that open onto a nice size patio.

Everyone seemed to be pretty tired, i guess the jet lag was kicking in, but we decided to take a walk up the strip and check out everything we could. There's no roads here it's just one long sand walking path along the ocean filled with trendy on-beach restaurants, shops and cafes. There's also street vendors selling anything from food to jewellery to massages. We decided to eat and we picked a Hawaiian BBQ place. We found a table on beach and shared multiple plates of anything that can be BBQ'd. We had to call it a night.

Second day started at 7am, as Melissa and I grabbed breakfast at the hotel. We set out to get massages to start the day proper. We found one on the beach and splurged for the 1 hour full body massage. This cost us 700 pesos ($18) for both of us! After that we went into the market grabbed some iced coffees, and explored the markets. I got flip-flops for 200 pesos ($5) and Melissa got a beach dress to wear later for our New Years party. We met up with Mike, Priscilla and Dave and we sat down for another BBQ lunch (are you seeing the trend here?). We were going to eat at the Hobbit House but felt it was just wrong.... let me explain, it's loosely based on The Lord of the Rings, and from what we could tell the only employment requirement was that you had to be a little person... seriously.

Lunch was followed by an ocean swim and a powernap to recharge for the countdown. We all met up and decided on a beach buffet and bottomless margaritas for dinner, then we went back to the hotel to have a couple more drinks. We got to our 'White Party' (everyone had to wear white) at about 11:50pm. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 ... HAPPY NEW YEAR!! fireworks went off down the whole stretch of Boracay and horns were blowing for good hour after the new year had officially started. Needless to say, our drinking saw no limit and the street side bbq stands for were never to far out of reach. I grabbed a couple of glow sticks from a young entrepreneur and somehow these got labeled as 'Weng-Wengs'. A weng-weng is a local drink which consists of about 16 different shots of alcohol with a touch of orange-pineapple just to make it edible. Anyways, you can probably see the connection between the term Weng-weng and an 8 inch glow stick, so I won't go into any explicit details. We ended the night with pork bbq sticks and mango shakes.

This morning was not pleasant, but I think I'm on the road to recovery.

Happy New Year!
Kev