PG chronicles II - The 9:40 am/pm brouhaha

I told them my flight was on 30 April at 9:40am. They thought 9:40am was the plane’s touchdown at NAIA.

The moment I turned my phone on, I got a call from Gina. It turned out they - Johnee, Jannette and Gina - endured additional three hours waiting for me. I was so unaware of their ordeal.

What a total blunder!

After hurriedly packing our things in Johnne’s home, we boarded a cab that would take us to the bus terminal in Buendia. By 5:00pm, Johnee, JM, Jannette, Gina and I were neatly tucked in our seats as the bus began its bumpy ride going to Batangas port.

It was roughly 8:00pm when we reached the port. Thankfully, there was one last boat going to Puerto Galera. The five of us, plus the other five guys the boatmen fished from somewhere, were herded to a jeep that would take us to the dock where the our precious boat was anchored.
It was pitch dark but we were determined to reach White Beach so we were not deterred. I found out from JM that it was illegal for small boats to go out to sea at night. Thus, the absence of a single light on the boat! It felt real creepy but I was not the least bit jittery. I was, in fact, so happy. I dunno if I shared this strange excitement with anyone from my group. My urbane, proper and genteel friends were deafeningly quiet. Could they be praying for our safety?
Oddly enough, we felt that the boat was ‘moonwalking’, like, we were not moving. The lighthouse remained a dot in the horizon. I shut my eyes and silently uttered a prayer. A real adventure, this trip was turning out to be.

What should take an hour from Batangas port to White Beach took our boat close to two hours to navigate. I wondered if the boat did moonwalk…

We arrived at White Beach at 9:40pm, famished but quite relieved that the trip was over.
It was good that Gina booked a nice place for us. We dumped our bags, freshened up a bit, locked the door and went out to score some nice food. Get a little drunk, probably???

This night, we would find out, saw the biggest turnout of people yet. Good!

We managed to find our little space, settled down on the sand and immediately ordered - what else! - Mindoro sling. We just watched as the merry melee of younger and more daring crowd showed their moves on the dance floor..err..sand. Some gal even sent the entire male population whooping as she literally showed her wares.

With that, we called it a night. We had to. It was already 3am!!!




p.s.

what i went through just to make my wish come true:

plane from Singapore to NAIA – car from NAIA to Johnne’s home – cab from Johnne’s home to Buendia bus terminal going to Batangas port – bus from Buendia to Batangas port – jeep from the port to the dock – boat from the dock to White Beach!

if there's a 'wheel', there's a way. :)