Last Spring Vacation…Boracay!

We saved our last family vacation of the Spring to take when my mom and Jenni came for a visit. Mom had a request that we go to “that place with the beautiful beach pictures you showed me.” So, to Boracay we went. Jenni and mom arrived on a Thursday morning and we left the following morning for the beach. Of course we were able to show them a true Philippine airport experience. I don’t think we could have paid for a more accurate experience for them, it was priceless! We arrived an hour before our flight to Philippine Airlines’ Domestic Terminal, to be told by the guard checking itineraries that this is the wrong terminal. The flight is actually a Philippine Airline Express flight. Hmmm, well, that wasn’t on the itinerary we had. I was pretty certain, when I sat in the Philippine Airlines office for 3 hours last February securing the tickets, that I bought PAL, not PAL Express tickets. Apparently, that has changed.

Onto the phone and a quick text later brings the driver and car back around and all 7 of us and our luggage pile in. So, off to the new Terminal 3 (yes, you have to drive for 5 minutes, so it isn’t a quick walk away). Now we are a bit happy for the change, as the new terminal is the best one. Few airlines fly in and out of it, so this was a pleasant change…for the brief moment we were there. As we drag ourselves up to the counter over an hour before our flight, mind you, we are then told the flight is already closed. It seems they changed the flight time to 20 minutes prior to what was on our itinerary. (I will admit that we did check online the night before and saw the discrepancy in the time, but weren’t about to let the agents know as it wasn’t our job to check on an airline and flight time change. There was no mention of the airline change, just a time change. Not to mention we are still 45-50 minutes out from departure of the new departure time.) I tried to jump in with my fury, but Curt was angry enough for both of us and spent a few minutes arguing. It wasn’t too hard to plead our case when we have the itinerary from Philippine Airlines and there is no mention of an airline or time change. They even looked up our record and noticed there was no mention that they tried to contact us about the time change. So, guess what! They buy us tickets on the new cheap airline here, Zest Air, and we have to get us and all our luggage on a shuttle to the Manila Domestic Terminal. Now this is the ugliest of all 4 airports we have here. And, we have now shown our visiting company 3/4 of the airports in Manila. All in one morning!

From here, it was uneventful. By the time we got to the gate, the flight was boarding. We sat down, plane took off, we landed on time and life was on it’s way to being soooo tranquil. When you land, you are greeted by the hotel staff, wait in a little waiting area for 5-10 minutes and board a van that takes you to the boat terminal. From there you load onto a boat and take an 8 minutes ferry ride to Boracay Island. Off load you go to another van for a 15 minute drive to the hotel. We were greeted upon arrival by our registration agent. She walked us to our rooms and the view takes your breath away, even though we have been there before!

Down to our room we continue where we are all greeted with a welcoming foot wash. OK, Jones didn’t avail, but the rest of us did.

We all get prepped and ready for the beach. You can’t see a clear shot of it from our rooms and I know mom and Jenni are dying to know if it really looks like our pictures from last year.

Mom with the girls.

 

Jenni doing the obligatory burying children in the sand.

We all had so much fun in the water. This island has no tide, so swimming is easy, warm and the water is clear. This year we came too close to monsoon season and had some algae in the water. Aleah called it allergy for a few days until we corrected her. It was so cute, it was tough to tell her she was wrong.

Jones is loving the sand and aunt Jenni.

It’s tough to post so many pictures as Facebook has a ton more and our website (www.thegoodens.com) has even more. It seems redundant here.

We arrived back from Boracay on Monday afternoon. We spent days eating and shopping through Manila.  Jenni was hilarious. She picked up on a lot of the Filipino nuances here and allowed herself out of her comfort zone with her food choices. I think she enjoyed her first major international experience. Maybe she can talk the rest of the family into coming to visit. It is so wonderful for us to have visitors. sharing our life here with our friends and family is what makes living here exciting. Even though some things here are frustrating and very non-America, it’s the experience of it all that is truly fun and interesting. Having someone to laugh with when you are misunderstood, getting themselves all worked up over why there isn’t toilet paper in the public bathrooms, etc. I can laugh about some of it today, but some days it brings me to tears.

We had a friend, Katrine, over for dinner, with her two girls. We were telling her about the Philippine Airlines experience and she was laughing so hard. When she finally caught her breath, all she could say was “at least they get to experience our lives every day here.” It’s true, when it happens to others you can’t help but laugh, as some things are just obnoxious. When it’s happening to you…ahhhh! Although my more experienced expat friends tell me eventually it all makes you laugh as you expect a complication at every turn. I think I am at that point and then I realize one day that I am not, when I am beginning to look like the angry American lady who yells all the time. One day at a time…and a few glasses of wine!

Thank you Jenni and mom for your visit. It’s wonderful to have people and the girls are truly excited to share their life with their family. They just light up when they get to show off their school and introduce their teachers and friends to you all. We will be home soon, at least for a few months.