The Restless Firefly

“Music saves the soul.” Play it first. . 🙂

Valentine’s Day is only for cheesy couples. Wrong! 🙂 As early as January (or sometimes, December of the previous year), I contact all my single female friends (there’s actually not a lot, by “single female friends” you must already know I refer to my trusted travel buddies Myrna and Aubrey) to plan for our crazy love day. . Instead of sulking alone in our own rooms and silently ranting to Cupid on how he has been so mean to us every year for not shooting an Adonis before the love month comes, we think of February 14 as one of the best days of the year when we can celebrate friendship, singlehood, and the existence of beach and alcohol. . Blustering about past relationships and the endless discussion about the threat of single men getting fewer in numbers than single women (law of supply and demand, you know what I mean) is legal on this day as long as you’ve already drank a shot of jager-bomb and 2 glasses of whiskey & coke mix. . Last 2014, we decided to do this in Boracay, Aklan. Cold powdery fine white sand under our feet, the sight of the stunning turquoise sea water, seafood and street food, plus a whole lot of crazy gaga lines and acts, our Boracay trip was awesome! Super awesome!

I took a past-midnight flight from Singapore to Manila then my friends picked me up and we flew from Manila to Kalibo airport on early morning (around 6 or 7 AM if I remember correctly) of Feb 14. There’s actually 2 airports near the famous island – Caticlan which is about 30 minutes drive from airport to port; and Kalibo which serves cheaper flights as it is further to the island with more than 2 hours van ride to the port. We have another “single” friend (thanks to the creator of the quotation marks as it gives the subject the benefit of the doubt, haha!) who frequents to Boracay and we let him manage all the transportation apart from the flight. He also booked a very cheap and quite nice accommodation at Station 2 that only costed us approximately Php 3000 per night shared by all 4 of us.

I know Boracay is the most famous island and is the heaven for all beach worshipers, but I and my 2 gals have flew to a lot of other Philippine beaches before Boracay. Hmm, I don’t know why but we have this common fondness of serene and not-so-crowded beaches so the likeliness to go to Boracay was not that strong until we suddenly decided early this year. Hehe. . Upon stepping foot on the beach area, the first timers were such in great awe of how beautiful the island is; it was too beautiful that my photographs are no match and can not give justice to its alluring aura. However, I must warn you that we were not wrong about our postulation of the island – Boracay was in fact a fancy and very commercialized beach place full of people who can afford to fly every time all the typhoons from the Pacific stop raging in our country. It was too crowded, that when we went out at night to look for a good place to dine, drink and hang out, we literally took baby steps on some areas. The beauty of such a picturesque sea skyline suppresses the annoyance brought by these negative descriptions though. With a pleasant weather, Boracay is still the best if not perfect. I recommend the mouth watering seafood dishes in Talipapa market, hoarding of souvenirs, pigging out on almost all food stands you can see when you have a sudden craving, the scary cliff diving (which my stupidity caused me heavily bruised legs before I flew back to Singapore and left me on sick leave for 3 days, haha!), island hopping and helmet diving, and dinner with the poi fire dancers. We’ve seen/experienced those plus an epic Valentine’s night at Epic Club (which played the most enjoyable and latest electronic dance music we loved by the way) with lots and lots and lots and lots of vodka or whiskey mixes, jagermeister shots and beers. It was one hell of a memorable celebration of love for sisterhood. Haha! And as most people say, what happens in Boracay stays in Boracay. I wonder if we can do the same beach madness on other parts of the country, in Cebu in particular where we decided to celebrate the singles’ V-day 2015. Hehe. . Here are a few personal photographs of our over-the-weekend stay. Enjoy! Visit Boracay, it’s more fun here. . Wink! 🙂