Day 114: It Gets Better

After last night's big storm, we woke up today to mostly clear skies! Hurried breakfast and time to hit the beach, which we did at 9am.

A good long swim followed by a long lounge in a beach lounger. This place is so much different when the sun's out, it's actually startling. The sand is very white (though not quite as pristine white as southern NSW beaches), the ocean turns a beautiful shade of green and blue, the palm trees sway, and the little sailboats all line up along the shore. Given the difficulty of getting here and the issues we've had, it's not my favourite place in the world, but today I'm definitely feeling glad we came here.

Spent the day reading and hopping in and out of the water, as well as doing a bit of people watching. It's still National Week in China so there's more Chinese tourists than usual, but they aren't in big bus groups and seem to be wealthier than average, so have much better standards of behaviour and etiquette. I haven't seen any brazen displays of shouting or spitting, anyway. Just people having fun on a holiday (and taking a LOT of selfies).

I had a sandwich from a shop in the outdoor mall for lunch, then resumed my spot in the beach chair. Listened to music, finished Book 10 of War & Peace, had a few swims. And best of all - we saw our first dachshund of the trip!! A Japanese lady was walking him just in front of us, so we of course made a big fuss over him and gave him a few cuddles. Didn't quite catch his name since it was Japanese, and he was an overweight Standard dachshund, so much larger than Schnitzel's slim Miniature size. But still great to see and cuddle!

Evening rolled around and we realised we were both quite sunburnt, despite putting on a decent amount of sunscreen during the day. Headed a few doors away to a Greek restaurant for dinner, where I had an enormous lamb gyro (kebab) with capsicum rice as a side. The rice "side dish" was also enormous, and would've easily sufficed for a main on its own! Out the front of the restaurant they had fire-twirler dancers who were quite good, though we only had an intermittent view as people would stop in the walkway to watch. Entertaining, though I started to get a bit lightheaded from the kerosene fumes!

Back to the room around 9pm, where we wound down for bed. And to cap off a great all-round day - a massive rainstorm started at about 9:30pm, by which time we were both safely ensconced in our bungalow for our last night on Boracay. Flight to Manila tomorrow!Read more