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Experience in Bicol 

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Road trips, who doesn't love them? Well during holy week, I had the road trip experience of my life. Let me start from the beginning. The original plan was that we were going to just stay in the city since my brother had work. However, people love changing plans last minute, so my brother's event was cancelled and didn't have anything to do for Holy Week. Suddenly, my brother was told my Tito Jojo's classmates were planning a bus trip Bicol and asked if we wanted to join. So we decided to tag along. 

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It then came to the date we were leaving, on the way to the meeting point, we saw tons of people looking for ways to leave Manila. All the streets and pavements were full trying to leave, whether it would be by bus, or one of those FX taxies where you can ride with strangers. It was as if the apocalypse was occurring and everyone was being evacuated. 

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When we arrived at the bus, not everyone had arrived yet so while waiting we prepared everything we needed with us in our seats and everything that needed to be put in the storage under the seats. Luckily, there was a 7/11 nearby, we dropped and bought drinks and some food for the trip. It was 12:00mn, and everyone was already tired, so everyone pretty much decided to go to sleep. We were told this was going to be a 10-hour journey so by the time we would wake up, we would've arrived in Bicol. 

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8 hours later everyone woke up and we have arrived at a Filipino canteen type restaurant, and we had ampalaya, fish, corn beef, rice, and etc. (My Tito Buddy went on a tractor outside the restaurant it was hilarious.) Now since we were 8 hours down, I expected it to be around 2 more hours but when we checked Waze, it said that had 6 more hours left to go. We'd be late for a few more hours. We got back on the bus since we had a lot of time left, I decided to go back to sleep. An hour later I woke up, I asked how much longer it would take for us to arrive, and they said it would take even longer! I looked outside and saw that we were in complete standstill traffic, no cars were moving at least an inch. So pretty much after those moments, we were stuck, no cars were moving, every vehicle was so close together that you would feel claustrophobic just looking at it. 

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When we decided to get food, we were looking for anything that was open, but unfortunately, everything was closed, except for McDonalds and Jollibee. We decided to have Mcdonalds, and we ate it on the bus, but it was really shaky, so you could see your fries shaking while you tried to grab them or put them in your mouth.

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The roads continued, the hours expended and before we knew it the sky was getting darker, and before we knew it we wanted dinner. And we had... Mcdonalds again! After that, we still had a long way to go, so we played bingo with everyone on the bus. Oh, it was a WILD one. Everyone was getting excited, they were shouting, everyone was getting really into it. If you won a round, you would get P1,000. Sadly, I was not able to win a single round, even though I came close quite a few times. But we still had a long way to go, so I went back to bed.

 

Now it was around 10 pm. You would think we would’ve arrived by now right? NO. We were still on the road, and at this time my Tito Jojo and Tito Buddy were saying, “We” ll never make it.” In this very unique, raspy, high pitched voice. ( Go on Youtube and look up Gulliver’s travels, cartoon: Glum.) Because we were in the area of the boat docks late in the evening, we missed out the boat to the island. We were told there was another port there is another dock which was a 30-minute drive from where we were. 

 

It was an hour later and still, we had not arrived. It came to the point everyone on the bus was saying, “We’ll never make it.” Plus, While on the roads on the mountain, which were full of zigzags, my head was practically spinning. If you tried falling asleep, you would fall out of your seat. Even the boxes underneath the seats would keep sliding and hitting people legs. 

 

Finally, we arrived at the dock; it was around midnight; there were two boats, everyone got on either of the two boats. On the way there, it felt as if it was another long journey. Since it was midnight, you could barely see anything; the water was pitch black and waves were strong, just the thought of falling in was terrifying. 

 

When we’re just about to arrive, the brother of the one who took us here was so excited, he jumped into the water fully clothed. ( Which was still pitch black.)

 

Now we were told the island that we were staying at was like Survivor, so we were expecting a beautiful sandy beach with lovely wooden houses. When we arrived we saw the houses were made out of grey concrete bricks which were actually fishermen houses. It reminded me of the documentary Fyre Festivals, (If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend you go and watch it on Netflix because I’m gonna mention a line from it.) when the attendees arrive at the venue and the bus driver says “Oh my god! That’s where you're staying!” 

 

When we docked, we had to walk into the water. I thought it was going to be sandy and I was expecting a soft touch; but when I stepped in the water I was walking on rocks barefoot, it was sooooo painful. Everyone around me was feeling the same thing, all everyone was saying “Ow!” or “Ouch! Ouch!” Repeatedly. When we got on land. I went into my bag to get my slippers and when I put them on it felt as if I walking on a cloud. Everyone was laughing about our situation, then all of sudden we all heard a Shhh, we thought it was one of our companions, then we hear it again, we look around and notice it was the fishermen trying to sleep in the Buko huts. 

 

I follow the rest of the group up these steps, into a concrete brick two bedroom house where everyone is putting their things and we saw that there was a meal of fish and rice prepared for us. 

 

While we were eating, the lady who brought us to the island asks my auntie, if she could call her to ask her husband to ask his friend who owned a hotel resort if they had any rooms left, since we were in a house with on two bedrooms for 20 people.  

 

After she had called at 1 am, everything was obviously fully booked because it was Holy Week. We were all gathered around the dinner table when we were told that there was a cave on another island just around the corner.  Everyone decided that they wanted to go to the cave, sadly, I was too tired from the trip to go to a cave, so I and the daughter of the lady who brought us here decided to stay here and sleep. So we went to bed, and when I woke up they were already back, and my brother went to sleep in the bed I was in. I went out to the dining area, they had breakfast prepared for us. It was the same thing as last night… except there was scrambled egg and they added adobo as well.  While eating, I noticed some of the group were preparing their things and taking them out. It turns out we were only staying here for 7 hours; they were placing their things on the boat already, in the meanwhile I was still eating and my brother was still asleep.

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When everyone arrived on the bus, we knew we had a long trip ahead. Can you guess what we did?? WE SLEPT. 2 hours driving through the mountain this time. But while we were still on the mountain, one of my titas needed to pee (I won't mention who), unfortunately, there weren't any toilets around, so they had to pee in the bushes right outside the bus. And we could look out the windows, otherwise, we would see them.

When we started driving on the flat roads, it felt as if we landed on a plane; we looked for a place to eat, but as you know, everything was closed. So we went to... McDonald's!! We had a classic Filipino McDonald's meal; chicken with rice and gravy. Going to the house we were going to visit, I felt as if I was in uncharted, with all the crooked roads, going through small villages, driving into rivers, seeing the locals, the kids playing in the rivers, and most especially the jungle, (If you don't know what Uncharted is, it's a treasure hunting video game Where you follow Nathan Drake, a thief, in his travels, it's more of a movie than a video game; I recommend you check it out).

We got this small farm in the actual middle of nowhere, but it was really peaceful. It was surrounded by rice fields, and there was a little garden by the entrance if the house, it looked so pretty; you could see the animals; There were ducks, chickens, and a flipping cute puppy. They gave us this popular Filipino dessert, which was called Malagkit, it was pretty much just rice and sugar, and they served us soda along with it.

When we left the little farmhouse, we brought a ton of coconuts onto the bus, they on the floor of the bus so, majority of the gang had a hard time getting to their seats. 

When we left we had another sequence of slopes, rivers, views of the ocean, sights of extravagant beaches. It already dark and we were still on the way to the next village (I think, or was it just one house?? I'm not sure).  Suddenly, we were going through this road and it was blocked off, the road was tight, especially for the bus; the brother of the one who brought us there was going to go outside to help the bus driver with reversing, but he couldn't get out. THE DOOR WAS JAMMED. My Tito Jojo, then said, "We'll have to climb through the windows to use the bathroom." At that moment I felt as if I was in the Jeepers Creepers 2 situation; with all those High school students on the bus when they were trapped. (I highly recommend watching it. Especially at night.)

They kept on pushing, but it wouldn't budge. Then we asked some people outside of the bus if they could try and pull the door open. It' still would not open. Then we tried reversing the bus with the locals outside guiding us. We then arrived to an open road, where hopefully it would be another route to the area we were trying to get to. However, we were stuck in the middle of nowhere with a busted door. So we kept driving around to see if there was a place that could help us with the busted door. 

We arrived at this bus layover and tried opening the door there. And it was a success! We were able to exit the bus safely, however every few minutes, the door would close instantly, within a blink of an eye. So for those who went outside to use the toilet, when they came back, they had to rush quickly getting in, (Or they would be snapped in half; kinda like Indiana Jones). 

We were back on the road; again going through small towns, hills, & roads in the jungle. Then we got to this town but we went through the wrong way, the brother of my Tita who brought us there, went outside to direct the bus in reverse. We reversed all the way to the area where the house was, and he walked the whole trip directing the bus to where we needed to be. 

Going down from the bus, I saw it was pitch black outside; we were in the middle of nowhere, we had to turn on our phone lights to make way through the grain fields. You could hear the cows mooing and the dogs barking and howling in the area. Walking through the fields, felt as if I was in a Jeepers Creeper scenario again. I even got my phone out, took a video of where we were and sang the Jeepers Creepers song. 

At the community we were at, there were quite a few people in the area we were eating at, We were eating outside where everyone was, since the houses were very small, I'm pretty sure all 22 of us would not be able to fit in one house. It was a good thing that the cook was able to cook enough food for us, considering we were a lot to feed. While eating there was this really cute dog; every time you would try to pet him, he thought you had food so he would go up to your hand, but once he realizes you don't have food he'll go away and try to look for someone else who has food. Momentarily, after we finished eating everyone wanted pictures with my brother, it kinda turned into a crowd of people wanting to take pictures with him. 

We got back on the bus and we were back on the road, again every time we close the door it would always snap closed, when we finally reached an area where they had 7/11 everyone shouted "civilization!". I felt as if My stress had been lifted; we arrived back to where we were picked up at 4:00 am we then decided to look for any restaurants opened at any gas stations on the way. We then saw Petron had the North park open, we went in and all we talked about was the journey and laughing about it, how crazy it was, what we got ourselves into and how much of adventure it was. 

I then felt as if because I've done that trip I can do any trip now.​

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