roadtrip!

11. February. 2010

My much awaited vacay finally came. 2 years in the making and it's a vacation-come-true!

Bogart (AKA Bambi) and I were planning about this for a long time, 2 years exactly. 2008, there was a problem with my schedule. 2009, Bogart's schedule as well as her friends' schedules are in disarray. For this year, we filed our leave as early as November 2009 and if ever her friends won't make it, Bogart and I will still push through with our plans. Turns out, everything went well. Vina and Ryka, whom I met on several occasions are going with us, as well as Ryka's husband Steph.

RCJ
RCJ Bus Station, 830pm, Lacson Ave., Manila, that's our meeting place. All of us came from work earlier that day. I was the first one to arrive (excited much?!). The girls are coming from Makati and Steph from Ortigas. By 820pm, still none of them are in sight. I was getting worried because the driver is honking and announcing that the bus will be leaving in 1o minutes. I talked to the driver to give us a few more time. Right on queue by 830pm, the girls arrived and Steph followed a few more minutes later. *whew*

As we settled inside, I can breathe easily. You can always separate the tourists from locals just by looking at what they were doing as soon as they stepped inside the bus. The tourists are busy taking pictures even if there's no scenery inside and the bus hadn't started moving yet; while locals on the other hand were busy preparing their jackets and blankets ready to doze off as soon as the bus moved.

The bus started moving and we were slowly inching our way out of the city.


CHUCK NORRIS
When we reached North Luzon Expressway, Chuck Norris' movie is being shown. It's an old movie, set in Vietnam, right after its fall. I don't know if the 'in' thing during that era was going topless and all sweaty (*eww* haha!) 90% of the movie, Chuck was topless. oh well, maybe that's the trend during those times, remember the Rambo movie series?! Are they even in the same era?! wahaha!

Anyway, the 'kontrabida' kept on saying and shouting, Braddock (the kontrabida pronounced it as Bedick) all throughout the movie, so much so that when we reached Ilocos and a few days during the trip, we kept saying Bedick imitating the kontrabida's accent.

After Chuck Norris' movie, another war movie was shown, this time; Saving Private Ryan followed by a lousy movie with an out-of-this-world subtitle.

movie: we should stay alert!
subtitle: here is the step by step procedure!

CRAPPY TOILET
After the movie, we had a stopover somewhere in Tarlac. We make use of that time to go the wash room. A 3-peso fee was charged for using the wash room. And when we got inside, there were 6 cubicles about 4 inches tall in height. Imagine the horror we went through, when you finish doing your thing and stood up you'll see the person on the next cubicle and the one's waiting for their turn in queue. And to top it all, there's no flush, you have to get a 'tabo' and water from the entrance to flush it.

BREAKDOWN
I could feel headache coming up so I slept only to wake up at 2am somewhere in La Union. There was a loud buzzing sound, at first I thought that there were cars trailing behind and honking there horns at us. But it turns out the noise was coming from the bus itself. The driver switched off the lights and the engine but the buzzing sound is still there. I don't know what happened but eventually the noise died. And they were able to fix the problem after 30 minutes or so.

I fell asleep again, woke up around 630am and we were in Batac! 8am we have reached our destination, PAGUDPUD: BORACAY OF THE NORTH.

Thank God for the safe trip.

Our vacation officially starts!