Actually, my holiday began way before Stuart joined me in London. By the time we set off for Italy, I had already been holidaying elsewhere for more than a month.
PUNTA FUEGO AND TALI BEACH
It began with a fabulous all-weekend beach wedding party in Punta Fuego and Tali Beach with the Sydney group. It was rather a throwback to our carefree days when most of us were newly married and just starting families. We were the centers of our universe then, not the generation now getting married.
This time we all came together for the wedding of one of the girls we watched grow up; some of us helped bring up those kids. It seemed a world away now. We have since lost some members to various tragedies: four have died, three in the past year, and some have just dropped out in varying degrees of animosity and heartache.
We all tried our best to be reckless and irresponsible. Some swam naked in the sea; most just lazed in the sun. We drank a lot of wine, sang bawdy songs, and posed endlessly for pictures. It was a weekend that was, like the Sydney days, unrepeatable.
CEBU
I was back in Hong Kong for only a few days, and then flew to Cebu to spend a week idling with Marilou and Eddie. We watched DVDs at home, checked out the newest restaurants, listened to jazz standards at a local dive, had massages, and shopped.
Cebu prices are remarkable. I bought beach paraphernalia in Makati-style malls at Baclaran prices. At a newly-opened day spa I had an authentic Thai massage at an unbelievably low P200! A 3-course set menu dinner in an unmarked neighborhood restaurant (somebody’s garage really; just tell the taxi to take you to 10 Dove Street) cost a princely P190.
BANTAYAN ISLAND
Bantayan Island, reached by ferry from the northernmost tip of Cebu, is the best kept secret in this PR-challenged country. Powder-fine white sand on a beach that goes on for miles before you touch water- warm, clear as glass and blue as the most raved about swimming holes in the Pacific or the Mediterranean.
I discovered a lot of things about the island and its people one evening at dinner with a group of very interesting locals, all related to one another by blood or marriage.
One of the island’s biggest mango producers told me his grandmother invented the original recipe for dried mangoes. He is also currently developing a new process for canning a local variety of sardine.
Our hostess, one of the town mayors, (the island has three towns) comes from a family that has produced a long line of mayors as well as the best canned crabmeat in the world. She said that a group of travel journalists visited the island a few months ago, requiring a variety of special food and services, and I’m curious to see what kind of exposure the place got as a result of that visit.
Some lifestyle adjustments still have to be made to transform this idyllic wonder from Gilligan’s island to a rock star’s paradise. There is not a single ATM in sight and few places accept credit cards. Also, for some reason or another, the local airstrip is not in operation. Otherwise, the island is fabulous.
We had three days of glorious sea and sand and a surfeit of fresh fish. We swam at high tide and walked on the beach when the water retreated into the horizon. We lazed on deckchairs on the front porch of Eddie’s White House (that’s what the locals called it), sipped cappuccino brought in from the hotel next door, and watched the ferries navigate around the shallows. We had massages that cost even less than at the day spa. I felt that the price was exploitatively cheap but Marilou said I mustn’t ruin the market so what to do but to lie back and enjoy it?
I bought an entire catch one morning on the beachfront, all for P200. That evening, courtesy of friends who owned a resort, that bargain-basement fish was magically turned into a superb Peruvian-style feast. Wine was on the house; and so were the bazookas (multicolored layers of Bailey’s cream, Kahlua, and blue Curacao.) The evening quickly degenerated into bad karaoke and, for Marilou and me, our weekly fix of American Idol on TV.
On the car ferry going back to the mainland, we dozed in the air-conditioned cabin. The sea was smooth as oil.
THE FARM IN BOGO
Before heading back to the city, we detoured into a rolling landscape of coconut trees and sugarcane. Clumps of little blue flowers made bright splotches on the roadside. We were expected for lunch at a farm.
Nestled at the foot of Winnie’s mountain, the farm was straight out of “Out of Africa.” Winnie, a recently rediscovered childhood friend of Marilou’s, owned the farm so she called the mountain her mountain. It was planted with sugarcane, coconuts, coffee, fruits, and mahogany. So she had a personal supply of hardwood for renovations to the farmhouse and for beautifully carved furniture crafted in a barn right in her backyard. Near the entrance to the property was a chapel with a lovely churchyard. Beside it was a daycare center with a little schoolroom for the children of workers who lived on the farm.
The garden was beautiful and completely organic. Winnie claimed that nature was her pest controller. The garden was watered from a rain-water cistern where a gang of frogs discouraged the breeding of mosquitoes. In the house, a hole in an attic wall served as an open invitation to an itinerant bayawak to come and feed on the rats. At the end of every other harvest, sugarcane fields are burned to make way for next season’s planting. (Is that ecologically sound?) Hence, the rats in the attic and the bayawak on full board. In the main living areas, snuggled behind various paintings and wall hangings, were three blue-spotted geckos employed full-time to deal with spiders and small bugs. (Winnie crooned, “Aren’t they lovely?”)
I must admit I saw nothing peskier than a few gnats. We had lunch on the terrace and talked about books, in the cool embrace of Winnie’s mountain, her garden spread out before us. The meal and the view were delicious.
