4 days in paradise. Relax, lay on the beach, read my book, take a moment. All things I thought I would be able to do on my last 4 days in the Philippines, on the paradise island that is Boracay. How wrong I was! 🤦🏽♀️ After 4 days I was battered and broken, and for those of you who know me, I do not function well on a hangover, let alone an accumulation of 4 days’ worth of hangovers!
After yet another interesting (Filipino) journey on buses, planes, boats and very questionable jeeps, I arrived at Frendz Hostel, just a few minutes’ walk from the legendary White Beach, Boracay. Free beer on arrival! Happy days! Sat chatting to a few people in the hostel and after a few (lot) more beers we decided to head to the beach to see what we could see! Walking out onto the promenade at White Beach (ironic that my phone tried to auto-correct this to “Shite Beach”…) it was like nothing I ever expected. Imagine the photos you see from google….then add 5000 people with selfie sticks (you can work out the rest) and you get some indication as to my disappointment. Although the beach is beautiful it is somewhat spoilt and definitely not the paradise I was expecting.
We watched the sunset and had a really terrible, really overpriced meal on the beach. Most food and drink in Boracay is at least double the price of everywhere else in the Philippines! So much for saving money in my last few days! 😫 I called it a relatively early night after an unfortunate encounter with one of the most “unsavoury” individuals I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, but the less said about that the better!
The following morning, the girls and I had a delicious (but again, overpriced) Mexican breakfast and spent the day lounging around on White Beach, drinking cocktails, swimming in the slimy, green seaweed infested sea and snoozing! Tough life of a traveller. We headed back to our hostel to get ready to head out for the evening! Even treated ourselves to drying and straightening our hair! 💁🏽 We had a few drinks in the hostel and headed down to the beach to meet the others! A few drinks turned into a lot of drinks and before we knew it we were crammed into the hottest, sweatiest nightclub I have ever been in! But what a night! Epic night in Epic Boracay!
The next day, with an epic hangover, we jumped in a tricycle and headed up north to Puka Beach on the very northern tip of the island. This was more like it. Still quite busy but a lot less crammed in and back to the perfect white sand and blue waters I have become accustomed to! Cocktails on tap without even having to move from your sun lounger! Pretty good for shopping too! 🙄
Sadly, the day was a little tainted when aforementioned “unsavoury individual” turned up on our beach! We hopped in a tricycle and headed back to White Beach for dinner! Being the ancient old lady traveller that I am, I had an early night as I was still blindingly hungover from the night before and needed my bed.
Waking up after 14 hours sleep I felt like a new woman and was ready for anything Boracay had to throw at me. What it did throw I was definitely not expecting! The girls and I (and I really miss these girls already 😱) walked along White Beach (to try to find the “ring man” but that’s a whole other story for another time) and we ended up parking ourselves on some loungers where there just happened to be happy hour! 🤷🏽♀️
Just as we got up to leave to go get ready to go out for my last night, a waiter came over with a menu telling us the “gentlemen on the table over there would like to buy you a round of drinks.” This does not happen in real life. Not to me anyway. We wanted to leave but not wanting to be rude we went over to their table to say thanks for the offer but that we were leaving. 4 hours, dinner and about 8 rounds of drinks later, we had to get a tricycle home, having missed the infamous “pasta night” at the hostel. We had agreed to meet the “gentlemen” later and left to go shower and go out. Turns out our hostel was the place to be so we had a pretty ace dance/sing off to “The Lion King” soundtrack, complete with rain sticks and all! In true Johnson style, I also danced on tables – sorry Mum! 🙄 Another epic night out in Boracay!! So much fun with some really ace girls – thanks for the send-off ladies! 😘
Boracay – it’s been emotional!! 🙋🏽
A Grand Adventure... 