Island Hopping, Part 2: Apo

Our time in the sunny Philippines is over--already! The three weeks we had wasn't even close to enough time to see all these islands had to offer, but I must admit, I was almost ready to move on. The landscapes were varied and beautiful and the locals friendly, but I was exasperated by what I started calling the White Person Tax. Many locals are under the impression that because you are traveling, you have sufficient funds to pay more than the regular price for things. It wasn't a scam--they were very upfront about it. "Yes, the local price is 25 pesos," one tricycle rider told me when I was arguing over a price for a ride. "But you are a foreigner, so it is 75." And that was that.

My favorite place in the Philippines was Apo Island in the Visayas. Most people pass it over in favor of the more developed Palawan or Boracay, but those people are dumb. There's no running water on the island (Stay with me.) or electricity (Going unplugged is good for you.) or motorized vehicles of any kind (Who needs 'em when you've got a push cart?), and it's all part of the charm.

                                           *The only mode of transportation on the island.

This tiny, 72-hectare island is straight out of a book. There were generator-powered lights on the island from 6:30-9:30 pm, during which time everyone would hang out at the one karaoke bar or crowd around the few TVs in the village (even if that meant standing outside the neighbor's window like a creeper). After that, it was straight to bed so you could tolerate getting up around 4 or 5 with the multitudes of roosters strutting around the island.

Apo is a protected area for sea life, and the sanctuary there is 100% community run, meaning that defending the island from other fishers, etc., is up to the locals. Interestingly, up until 30 years ago, the islanders primarily made money from dynamite fishing. Then a local professor realized that, if the coral and tropical fish that called Apo home were allowed to flourish, the islanders would have a great source of revenue on their hands. He convinced them to make Apo a protected area, and today, tourism brings in more money than fishing ever did.

Because of the sanctuary, Apo is a mecca for divers and snorkelers. In fact, I wasn't a diver when I arrived on Apo, but I was by the time I left.

If you had told me three weeks ago that I would get my diving certification, I would have snorted unattractively at you. I can't snorkel for more than five minutes without getting a nose-full of sea water. But everyone raving about the coral convinced me to do an "introduction to diving" dive. Me being me, I prepared beforehand, reading the manual thoroughly and taking each self-assessment quiz. But, of course, book learning is quite different from real-live experience.

You control where you want to be in the water with your Buoyancy Control Device (BCD), which is a vest you can inflate and deflate with air to go up or down, and basically my learning period with it went like this.

Why isn't this thing deflating? Wait, it is. Whoa, it really is. Inflate! Inflate! Crap, I'm going to crash into the reef, just like the manual said not to because that destroys delicate aquatic life. I hate destroying delicate aquatic life! It goes against everything I believe in! Aaaaaand . . . I'm prostrate on the reef. Oh sure, BCD, now you inflate. I would make a horrible mermaid. That's fine actually. If Ariel is any indication, they are all dipshits. Bleck, this air is making my mouth dry. OK, relax. Look around. That's the point of this ridiculous exercise. OMG! I FOUND NEMO!!!*

From then on, I didn't think about my BCD or the air or the fact that I really had to pee (OK, I thought about that a little bit.). The fish and coral were mind-bogglingly beautiful. There's no way I could describe them, but let's just say I also saw Bloat and Crush and a lot of electric blue starfish.

Our divemaster, Mario Pascobello of Mario's Scuba Diving and Homestay, really added to the experience. He was thorough (He made me practice taking my mask off and putting it back on underwater five times, which is how many times it took for me to quit snorting water up my nose.) but also pretty chill. He was, and continues to be, a key player in making the reef a protected area, and was the captain of the barangay for ten years, so he was an all-around cool person to get to know.

                                                                        *Mario's selfie

This week, we're rocking Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Asia's most glamorous cities with delicious food (I have a food belly already). Then it's off to Indonesia, where more diving awaits us.


*Apparently, all my previous experience with underwater life has been through Disney movies. I even caught myself humming "Under the Sea" into my regulator.

Island Hopping, Part 1: Siquijor

Yesterday was an R&R day. We've been going pretty hard for two weeks now, trekking and caving and jolting around on top of jeepneys. When even your armpits are sore, it's time to take a break. We're currently in Sagada, an idyllic mountain town up in North Luzon, Philippines. With rice terraces, alpine forests, and chilled-out locals, there isn't a better place for an easy day.

                                                     *The view is always better up top!

So, yesterday afternoon, we're lounging in our room at the Sagada Homestay. With pine wood flooring and walls and breath-taking views, it's the nicest place we've stayed in so far. The breeze is gently blowing the curtains back from the open windows, letting in a few sun beams. I glance over at Josh, who looks contemplative.

"What are you thinking about?"

"The Zodiac killer."

"What?"

"I was just reading some TV reviews on The Daily Beast, and there's a new one about serial killers that looks cool. You know they never caught the Zodiac guy?"

I was thinking about the great trip we've been having so far, but to each his own.

We kicked off in Dumaguete, the capital of Negros Oriental. It was a great place to start because you have all the conveniences of a city but can catch ferries to a variety of small islands. The first one we hit was Siquijor. There are some beautiful falls, and the white-sand beaches are gorgeous and almost tourist-free, but rather small. The real thing to do there is see a witch doctor.

Yeah, a witch doctor.

Stupid Lonely Planet acted like it wasn't really worth the effort to see one. Were they ever wrong. It is a bit of a drive--we rented a motorbike and drove up through the mountains to San Antonio, a village about an hour and a half away from the main town. Luckily, once we were in the area, we got flagged down by some guys harvesting coconuts who wanted to offer us some fresh juice. While slurping it right out of the coconut shell, I asked about seeing a healer.

"Annie Ponce," said the oldest guy. "She is the best. Just drive up there and ask--everyone knows her."

Annie lived in a nipa hut with her family, with a little room added on for her to see patients. From the moment we walked in, it was obvious that the practices of this "witch doctor" weren't about sorcery. Instead, they were a funky mix of older, traditional healing and Catholicism, the country's popular religion. Hanging on one of the walls was her assortment of handmade cross necklaces, which she explained could protect from illness, evil spirits, and "people who don't like you." There was also a statue of a saint I didn't recognize, and a small bowl with a handle in the shape of the Virgin Mary.

Annie started our session by asking what she could do for me.

"Uhh," I hesitated. I was doing it out of curiousity, but I'm pretty sure you can't just tell someone who considers herself a doctor that she's a tourist attraction. "I umm, just heard that this was an interesting thing to do."

She looked at me skeptically.

Great. That was probably insulting.

"She has allergies," Josh interjected helpfully.

"Ahh. OK, no problem,"Annie said.

She had me sit in a chair and made a charcoal fire underneath it, which, I must admit, was a bit terrifying. Then she wrapped me in a sheet from the neck down and basically smoked me out. While the smoke was getting thicker and my seat frighteningly warmer, she started crossing me over my head and the back of my neck and chanting prayers. Then she mixed a concoction of coconut oil and herbs in the bowl with the Virgin Mary handle and massaged it into my face, neck, and back, followed up by some more crossing and prayers.

"OK." She removed the sheet and the escaping smoke billowed up to the ceiling. "Don't take a shower today. Also, don't eat chicken, fish, or shrimps anymore."

I nodded obediently. (I definitely broke all those rules within like six hours.)

"How do you feel?" She looked at me expectantly.

Uhh, oily? "Relaxed!"

She nodded resignedly and looked at the unidentifiable saint.

Crap. Another insulting answer.

She said payment was donation only. I paid a lot. It must have been enough for her to overlook my ignorant insults because she sent me home with a coconut oil potion, good for "skin infections, insect bites, and stomachaches."

I have to admit, since my visit with Annie, I've reduced my Zyrtec pills by half. Of course, that could be because I no longer live in my moldy Taiwanese apartment . . .

Byebye Taiwan. Hello SE Asia!

I worked in residence life during college, and once I proudly went on about my wonderful organizational skills in front of my boss. He laughed/snorted and said, "No, Mel, I'm pretty sure that's called being anal retentive." He sugar-coated a lot of things--probably a coping mechanism for living in the same building as 186 college kids--but when it came to my neurosis, he called it like he saw it.

In college classes, this probably worked in my favor. I never lost assignments or forgot exams, and my notes were essentially transcripts with doodles in the margins. But this behavior predated college by about 18 years. As a child, I kept my book series in numerical order and used a ruler to underline things in textbooks (to avoid squiggly lines of course). One Christmas, my gifts were "organization themed." I got an electronic organizer, Mary Engelbreit Post-its, and a markerboard. This might sound like lackluster parenting, but I was delighted by these presents. ("This organizer comes with a stylus?! SCORE!")

There are some upsides to trying to keep life mess-free. I rarely do things I will regret, like drunk text or paint my nails neon orange. And I've never gotten an overdraft fee or choked on poorly-chewed food.

But the downsides suck. I approach everything in life with the same attitude I have about gynecology appointments: "Let's get this over with so I can check it off my list." This has led to me missing out on some key rites of passage, like streaking or dating a bad boy. OK, I don't mind skipping the bad boy drama, but do wish I had run across the soccer field topless with my friends in college that one time. It was only streaking in the strictest sense of the word (It was the middle of the night and no one saw them except each other.), but I opted to sit in the running car and keep a look out for campus security.

It's not that I want to radically change who I am. Structure keeps humanity from imploding. Deadlines keep the world moving forward. Aspirations give people something to work towards.

I just want to stop getting nicknamed "Mom."

I have lightened up over the past few years. Living with another person has required it. Once Josh and I started splitting laundry duty, my once colored-coded underwear drawer turned into a mosh pit of mis-matched socks, men's T-shirts, and other miscellanous items such as plastic bags and ripped mittens, all bouncing out like a bunch of Bieber-crazed teens whenever I opened the drawer.

After about a year of such household mayhem, I realized two things.
1) Spending a few minutes a week searching for matching socks or re-sorting the recycling is not worth an argument.
2) Josh spends half as much time planning his life as I do, yet the vague plans he has in his head work out about as well as the bullet-listed ones I write down on sticky notes.

Since these epiphanies, my life has gotten a lot more relaxed. It started with small steps--mixing darks and lights, leaving the house without mascara, shaving ONLY once a week during winter--and now I've moved to the big leagues: backpacking through Southeast Asia for four months.

Yes, that's right. Josh and I are leaving Taiwan on Monday to traipse through the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam until July (or until we run out of money). We've been planning on this trip for almost a year, and I have been super excited. Until last week, when we went on a two-day trip to a friend's house. I was in the shower one morning trying to figure out which bottle was the shampoo.

This one? No. Facewash.
This one? No. Silky bodywash.
This one? All Chinese. Let's try it.

As I lathered up my hair with the mystery liquid, I thought, "Man, I can't wait to shower in my own shower again. [ Pause. ] On our trip, I won't have my own shower. Our trip is four months long. OMG. FML.*"

I don't miss sleeping in my own bed so much, but there's something about showering in other people's showers that freaks me out. That tile is caked with dirt and sweat and dead skin cells that countless strangers have scrubbed off their body, likely after peeing down the drain first, all sealed in by a thick coat of soap residue and mildew.

Also, I can't see in the shower. I'm pretty near-sighted, so to find the bottle I want, I have to either hold it a few inches from my face to read it or rely on the senses of touch, smell, or taste, which is not ideal.

Even without communal showers, this trip's potential for messiness is HIGH.

We are living out of backpacks.
We are staying with a couchsurfer for the first three days of our trip. After that, we're just rollin' into town / village / island without a plan.
The timeline we have put together ends abruptly on May 27. I typed up a timeline, but it has a lot of question marks. Like, for example, underneath "Return to U.S." Hell, we haven't even decided where we're returning to.
During the next four months, we are just going wherever the wind takes us.

WTF?!?!?!?!

I am terrified. But I'm also excited. I'm excitified.

The anal retentive me would have only felt sheer terror. So, even though I wish I could just be excited, I guess this is--albeit meager--progress.

I am excited for obvious reasons, like new cultures, top-notch snorkeling, and alcoholic concoctions in coconut shells, but I'm also excited for the personal growth this trip should bring. I have long envied the process-oriented, the ones who do for the sake of doing. They are the chalk-street artists, the sky-divers, the casual daters, the ones who do not live in a tiny drab box.

Really, it's the reason this blog is titled what it is--I am not bohemian by nature, but the idea is appealing. It always has been. My grandmother has a picture of my sister and I dressed up in my mom's old clothes when we were kids. My sister is button-cute in my mom's old Brownie dress. And I am dressed in a black sparkly top and a multi-colored tulle skirt. My grandma says I look like a gypsy. I guess part of me has always wanted to be a roamer. I just wasn't ready to embrace it until now.

Now that I think about it, I am brandishing a bejeweled wand in that picture, so I was probably going for princess. But I look like a gypsy. We'll just go with that.



*Yeah, I think in text lingo.