After a year of working in Bahrain, and have earned my first annual vacation leave, I was back in Manila during the yuletide season of 2003. Christmas time in the city is a hectic series of parties ( magdamagang tomaan at videokehan ), mushrooming of all sorts of carnival rides on every public park available and walkathon in shopping malls, tyanggehan and divisoria. Of course, I chose the first option, and nothing more, he he he.
But my relationship with dear Manila is love-hate in nature and after the climax of romancing her has gone down, the reasons of hating her started coming out … like the traffic jams, noise and smoke! And lots of smoke and noise there will be come New Year’s Eve Celebration!
Having foreseen this, and as pre planned, my whole nucleus family ( my wife, my son and me, that is ) along with my sis in law flew to Aklan, stayed one night in Caticlan and rode the ferry boat to that island called Boracay.
After a thirty minute shaky boat ride, we disembarked with the help of the aides and in seemingly ceremonial manner, wet our legs by the cold water as our feet touched the sand.
Boracay is not exactly my idea of a paradise. But it is an experience to revere with. Exciting night life, restaurants, shopping arcade, and other what-have-you’s are all lined up along the beach edges. Foreigners promenading in their minimalist getups, movie stars hanging around and lots of beautiful people, my family included, ha ha ha ha ! We saw the likes of Nina with Jimmy Bondoc , John Estrada and Vanessa del Bianco walking in all abra siete sweetness, Eula Valdes parading her then new husband, and some familiar celebrity faces .
It was a good decision to stay away from Manila for the New Year’s Eve revelry. The owner of the hotel we stayed in, prepared a free dinner buffet for all the guests. And there were fireworks along the beach with all the resort owners outdoing each other for more than an hour. Marvellous! Apparently, there’s a price for the best firework display as sponsored by the local government. Brilliant!
The days that followed we just hung out by the beach, me drinking beer, and my son his milk ( he was about one year old then ). My wife and I, at one time, had an oil massage by the beach. Cool!
Derico, my son, had the greatest benefit from the trip. It liberated him from the caring support of his grandparents in his first attempts in walking. He first learned to walk independently on the white powder like sands of Boracay!
