Pre Voyage prep

Day 6: In reality day six was not a momentous day here in the Philippines but that's not to say that it was without it's highlights. The day started with what I thought was our last morning at the Ponte Fino hotel. I was sad to leave such a great hotel but at the same time I was excited to get underway on my two day voyage on the water. But as it turns out we were delayed long enough this morning that we were "forced" to stay another night in the hotel but the only problem was that all the $95 dollar rooms were already booked up. So, because of the circumstances my boss had to upgrade us all to "suite" rooms. As in "SWEET" rooms!!! If you want to get a look at my room you can see it on a special page I'm doing on my blog for the hotels I stayed at. Anyway, the day kind of went by pretty smooth. We went grocery shopping for the voyage. The menu on board is pretty simple : Water, with a PB & J sandwich, chips, and fruit. It's nothing to write home about but I can't complain because I'm been eating great all trip long. Even though I've sweated so much I think I'm still coming home having gained weight. Later we got back to the boats and tested them out on the bay of Batangas for about a half an hour. Everything went pretty good with just a couple glitches but nothing major. Probably the highlight of my day was some of the conversations I've had with Santy my driver. I know I've spelled his name wrong the whole time but what do you expect. My conversations with him have ranged from talking about his little granddaughter, that he's visiting here in Batangas, to his love for Brian Adams songs. We really cover the whole spectrum of topics. And while I'm here he keeps on calling me his son because he has a son who is 32 also and after he told me that, I told him he could be my dad. He's really taken that literally, he'll say things like "I'm soo glad I have a son who's so nice". It's really interesting to get to know the people here. I talked to one guy who has two kids and in his words "one wife". And I told him "that's good, that's the way to go with one wife". We got a laugh out of it. Or I talked to another guy today who works on the docks, owns a butchery, and runs chock fighting out his back yard. It's definitely a different world over here. Anyway, tonight I'm just going to soak it all in and then leave early tomorrow on the boat. It's funny because my "Lonely Planet" book said that there was no need to stay in Batangas over night but we decided to stay four. It's on to Coron tomorrow.

Philippine Marc

P.S. Here is a musical rendition of the song "Heaven" by Santy my driver. Enjoy, raise your plastic spoons, and sing along.