October 1, 2016
Asis and I first time to travel alone together. We’ve wanted to visit Hundred Islands since then but we just couldn’t find the time. I was busy with work and he was busy finding a new job — he got one, thankfully though. Hundred Islands is like the El Nido version of Northern Luzon (I’ve never been there. Just basing it on the photos I’ve seen here and there or maybe not?) and because it was just hours away from the concrete jungle we’ve decided to make it our next travel destination. I took a day’s leave from work to get ready for this trip. We were all packed and ready to go. Our tent was now folded neatly. We even had a portable stove and canned goods for this trip. Everything was just perfect. We took the bus at Victory Liner Cubao around 2am and we arrived at Alaminos around 7 or 8 am. There were tons of tricycles that can drop you off at the Lucap Wharf, the jump-off point for island hopping, or you can even make a deal with the driver to just dropped you off to a direct boatman to save money. And so we did the latter. We took the island hopping all-you-want/overnight service boat package. We just went to a few islands though and didn’t bother to tour around since the islands/islets are somewhat the same and some are not accessible and can only be appreciated from afar.

Here are the highlights of our trip:

• The 123 steps staircase to the view deck of Governors Island
• The floating bridge that connects Virgin and Governors Islands
• Helmet Diving – This was an amazing underwater experience. It was our first time to try this activity and it took me a lot of guts to do this since I’m terrified of the unknown that lurks under the sea.
• Cave diving (Imelda Cave on Marcos Island) – I didn’t jump but Asis did. Just got this mini phobia after all those cliff jumps I did at Kawasan Falls, Badian, Cebu. *ngayon pa talaga ako natakot after ng mga 15ft to 30ft jump sa kawasan!*
• Shell Island – This was our favorite island and where we decided to camp out because it was the only island that has a wide space to pitch a tent.
• Survival-like experience. We managed to cook rice using the mini stove! And we own the island all to ourselves.

There you go, but since you gotta expect the unexpected.. things turned out drastically different than we planned. My sister borrowed beforehand the tent we were supposed to use and she ended up mixing the tent poles with her friend, thus we can’t set up our freaking tent and the timing was just perfect because it poured. We were all wet and scared because we thought the rain would not stop and there was no water or bathroom on the island. The rain stopped though but we still decided to head back to Manila. It was such a mess. Our moods were deflated and we were tired that we didn’t bother refunding our money. So yes, we got back home around 11pm, the same day. I even broke my Nokia 1280 and Asis’ Sony Xperia because I forgot to tuck them safely inside our bags while it was raining. It was a complete disaster. In just a day we managed to travel back and forth from Manila to Pangasinan and vice versa.

Despite all these, we still managed to be positive about it and just laughed it off. This trip has been the most epic fail so far but still thankful it happened because these circumstances are sometimes the best stories to look back to when we’re both old and gray. & thank God we are safe. Oh well.