6 a.m. tomorrow

(dated Feb 5-6, 2008)
So my camotes adventure continues. ‘6am tomorrow’ the answers we received every time when asking what time the earliest ferry was leaving the island. Crap! It was not so cool anymore if we were trapped here until 6am tomorrow. Apparently, our best bet was the 1am freight ferry going back to Cebu. Really sketchy about it leaving at 1am but there was really the only option. So this is how we killed the evening –watching 4 hours of local community basketball tournament. The first two hours were okay, but it went down from there, just unbearable (with final score of 101 vs. 58).

Finally, boarded the boat at 11:30pm. This is classic-a boat with 3 decks packed with bunk beds. So actually going to sleep my way to Cebu. Of course it turned out to be another sleepless night for me on the not-so-comfortable bed with melody of snoring from everyone on board, but it definitely topped my travel adventure (Overnight ferry/bunk beds: Check √ ). Felt that I was one of those writers of Lonely Planet, having gone through the roughest of the roughest. At least, by far, this is the cheapest day – nobody (I meant really no one) was trying to rip us off and didn’t have to haggle my way through everything: 10 peso for 2 hour jeepney rides, 150 pesos for the ferry (actually quite expensive for the local standard) and 200 peso for taxi back to Tambuli at 5am in the morning (amazingly, I saw the taxi meter for the first time in Philippines).