The world moves at different paces dependant on location. Jumping right out of normality for me, I travelled over 7,000 miles on 3 planes, a boat and a motor-bike to finally end up living in the small village of Daan Secante, Tudela on Poro Island in the Philippines for two weeks . I immeadiately wrote in a letter to my wife. "The locals live in randomly constructed shacks, many of which are see through - and sometimes through the shack behind too." The economuic structure was totally different, no luxuries, living hand to mouth.
Scanning the internet before hand I was all set for a nightmarish experience on arrival at Manila, but from leaving the aircraft, immigration and customs to standing outside the airport on Filipino soil, maybe 15 - 20 minutes. The first thing that hit me was the heat, 35°C - that being the cool season.
Next on the agenda was to transfer airport terminals for my onward flight to Cebu, taxis come flying at you from every direction all honking their horn hopeful you will board, but I had pre arranged to meet my brother, so walked out into Cebu City trusting my mobile phone would not let me down!
I sat down under a tree to wait, attracting attention from locals un-used to seeing a white european out alone, kids stared, adults glanced, taxi drivers hopefully tooted and hailed me - I got thirsty. It seemed like ages, but in reality only half an hour before my brother hauled me into a passing cab, we made our way to Terminal 2 together.
Landing in Cebu we took a Trisikad several miles up the coast to await our 5am boat.
Trisikad, were they in the UK would probably be allowed to carry two sidecar and one pillion passenger. The Filipino way however, if you can fit in or on, it's fair game. So there I sat, squashed in with 4 more passengers in the sidecar and another 3 plus driver on the motorbike. My luggage on board too!
4 hours accross the water proved uneventful, landing to the west of San Fransisco Island.
Maybe 50 motorbikes awaited the handful of passengers arriving all desperate to make a few Pesos.
We met my driver 5 minutes into the trip, I swapped bikes, continuing through towns and villages, San-Fransisco City built of shack like dwellings made out of bamboo, tree branches, reeds, leaves, rough thatch, occassional corrugated iron - basically anything they could get hold of to build. The very occassional concrete building stood out from the others...
Accross the causeway to Poro Island, following the rough concrete coast road along the south side to the small municipality of Tudela. Leaving Tudela behind we headed north away from the coast, up hill into the forest. Paved roads ceased, Maco's skill (my motor bike driver) came into play, somehow rough terrain smoothed out under the wheels of his Badger.
