Boracay 2013

Our parents aren't big on traveling so my siblings thought that we should venture out of Luzon as a family for the first time. My sisters suggested Boracay and I had reservations at first because I think it's not really "senior citizen" friendly (though our dad is only 63 while mom is only 59). Turned out I was right because they hardly went out of the hotel, darn.

My siblings enjoyed the trip though. We went sunset sailing and island hopping while they went para-sailing and watched the Jay Sean concert. Us young 'uns also did the ATV thing though I chickened out the last minute and rode the buggy with the guide.

I first went to Boracay in 2009 and I think it's a lot more commercialized now. It's hard to walk along the shops at night because of the crowd.

Some photos from the trip:

Some random notes:

* Water is apparently gold in Boracay. Whenever we headed out, we made sure we brought drinking water. We had lunch in Calypso and they told us they don't serve "service water" at all and their bottled water costs like something like P65. We had dinner in Aria and they have "service water" but it's not filtered water. So I asked, "San galing?" and they answered from the tap. I forgot to retort back what do they use for cooking then. Hubby asked me isn't it in the law that restaurants must serve potable water for free - well, I never read that in the Water Code.

* I hate Airphil Express/PAL Express. When I was booking the trip in January, I found promo fares with Cebu Pac for Manila-Caticlan but the return flights' rates were unconscionable. So I settled for Kalibo-Manila via Airphil. Our aunt who was supposed to go with us had to stay behind so I contacted Airphil in March for a name change. It was then that I learned that our flight got rescheduled from 1:10PM to 10:30PM. That sucked because our parents had to travel back to Pangasinan. Airphil won't accommodate us on any earlier Kalibo-Manila flight because we were many daw (a group of 10). After a couple of stressful days dealing with their Online Support, I decided to rebook us (for free because it was a schedule change) on a Kalibo-Clark flight at 2:25PM. I thought that was the end of it. The day before we were supposed to head home, I received a text message that they rescheduled again our flight to 4:35PM. My gahhhd. So our trip home was Boracay-Kalibo-Clark-Manila and it took nine hours, just like our parents who headed home to Pangasinan instead of Manila. Never again, with flying via Kalibo and Airphil/PAL Express.

* I begged off from the ATVs yet I rode the Sky Cycle in Dreamland. We had no idea it was going to be 100x scarier than the ATVs. My brother also chickened out at the last minute but he failed to take pictures because the cameras with him had drained batteries. That was our biggest regret hehe. This post has pictures - basically the ride is like a roller coaster but there are no machines, you pedal the bikes yourselves. Thing is, the bikes are on top of the rail with no safety net below nor any cables above it. I was shouting the whole time and my hands were glued to the handlebars really really sweaty by the time we finished. Again, never again.

Buti na lang the Boracay sunset is consistently beautiful.