Welcome to Boracay

after an hour-long flight in an aircon-less, stewardess-less aircraft that i will always cherish in my memory as the "coaster na may pakpak", i barely remember my first glimpse of the fabled white sands of boracay. i think i might have been a little underwhelmed -- the sun was hiding behind thick gray clouds, dulling the colors of everything.

what i do remember vividly, is almost weeping upon seeing the room that would me mine (mine, all mine! moooahahahaha) for the next two days. ah, how the centavo-scrabbling writer of "paradise at a steal" had moved up in the world! first i wanted to twirl around and fall into bed a la julia roberts. then i started really missing marlon. *insert crude thought here*

welcome sight # 1: my room at the boracay beach resort.

home sweet home

the people from fila (i swear! grace under pressure ang mga ito!) treated me and paolo, the photog, to lunch. i believe the frozen lemonade i had at the regency set the tone for the rest of my boracay trips -- i went on this two-week long citrus frenzy which included countless calamansi/lemon/mango-lemon shakes, calamansi muffins at real coffee, and the aforementioned lemon cheesecake at lemon cafe.

then we went to work. or rather, paolo went to work.

while i pretty much watched, chatted, looked over some of the clothes, and ogled various boys pointed out to me by a woman more than twice my age and in better shape than me. i played photographer, too.

welcome sight # 2: teams practicing for the dragonboat races that weekend.

score one for the hype.

this is when boracay really started wowing me. i'd never seen the ocean that soft, pearlescent almost-white shade of turquoise before. and the sand was just absolute talc.

my first pair of havaianas. i totally get the addiction now -- which is not to say that i actually have an addiction of my own

and presenting the finest welcome of them all: the obliging male-models-for-a-day of the bugsay boracay dragonboat team.

welcome sight # 3: care ko sa girls?

work it! work it!

aside from daniel and sebastian here with their prepare-for-glowy midsections, there were also various groups of men around me at this point flexing muscles, lifting heavy weaponry (isn't the dragonboat a war vessel or something) and going "harrumph harrumph!" (or "awoo awoo!" as jeline would say). it was all very 300.

i remember marveling at all these extremely fit and tanned specimens (in fairness, pati ang mga girls) and wondering briefly whether this was what God had intended human beings to be. i felt almost sure that beer bellies and thunder thighs were not part of the divine plan.

then it was five thirty, "work" was done, and i was left to enjoy my first boracay happy hour -- and my first boracay sunset.