A Blog In Parts: Help Me, I'm German!

We had a godawful 6-hour van ride from Puerto Princesa to El Nido. And not just because the trip took 6 hours. It was mostly the stretch of unpaved road and loose gravel that a tour guide once termed as a "free massage service." Really now.

But to look on the bright side, at least we weren't riding a bus or jeepney, entering Dust Clouds of Death every few meters or so. Not even prophylactic doses of steroids would have saved me from severe bouts of sneezing and quite possibly, eventual anaphylactic shock.

Our resort was a few minutes away from town which was just as well. As beautiful as El Nido is, the town just isn't all that awe inspiring. Cramped streets, unpretty houses, not to mention crappy food places but we'll get to that later. Anyway, Dennise and Karsten made me take a photo of them somewhere near the shore only to have it end up looking like they were in some back alley, just waiting to be robbed.

We stayed at Four Seasons Resort, which was owned by a Filipina who married a Korean guy. There were Korean touches everywhere. In the menu, the books I saw on a ledge somewhere, and in this door hanger. This would have been okay if it had been hanging on some other doors like, let's say, Karsten's but no... This was on our door. The "Family Room" door. The room that Marco, Ebi and I shared.

When Dennise saw our "special" door hanger, she took it and I was all, "Go ahead. Take it. (Please.) Not like we have any use for it anyway." Hehehe...

We visited a lot of places in El Nido but I think my favorite would have to be the Secret Beach. You have to swim through this small hole so you can get to the actual beach, hence the name. But typical Dennise said, "Why do we have to go through some hole? I'm sure there's some sort of detour the boat can take to get in." Right. The locals, for years, have been fooling tourists into taking the hard route. The scammers. >_>

Now, not a lot of people know this of me, but I have a tendency to lecture. I once scared off a little girl who was just admiring the pretty sea creatures when I started blathering on about how the horseshoe crab has blue blood and predates the dinosaurs. Anyway, Dennise, Karsten and I were sitting on the sand at the Secret Beach when I suddenly started talking about white sand. See, parrot fish eat corals and the organisms on the coral and the undigested portions are passed out as white sand, which they produce tons of every year. Then topic jump to cone snails and powerful neurotoxins. Now, the sand we were sitting on wasn't exactly white sand but more like white gravel, not exactly a byproduct of parrot fish digestion. Then Dennise starts covering my legs with the stuff and kept yelling, "Parrot fish poop! Parrot fish poop!" And then she sees an empty shell and shouts, "Ooooh, cone snail! I'm covering you in parrot fish poop and cone snails!"

Stop calling things what they aren't!

I really should stop explaining things to this woman.

------

Anyway, back to that crappy food places issue. We ate dinner at Og's Restobar and the menu looked promising. I ordered a ham and cheese burger. I really wasn't paying that much attention to what the others ordered because I was hungry.

Strike 1: The Sandwich Masquerading As A Burger

I think I got my burger almost an hour after ordering it. And it didn't even look like a burger. It was 2 slices of wheat bread with a burger patty in between. Being a tolerant person, I didn't say anything much. It tasted like a burger so, whatever.

Strike 2: The Sandwich Masquerading As A Burger: Miniature Edition

Safti ordered the exact same thing but he got his order much later than mine and instead of using the same bread, they used tiny ass slices of white loaf bread, which was clearly half the size of mine!

Strike 3: It's Only Simple Math, Not Rocket Science

Dennise was so pissed off already and after 2 hours of waiting for our food, we just didn't want to wait any longer. So we asked for the bill for whatever was actually served and we would leave. And it took them forever to compute the costs!

So, with Dennise shaking with anger and me commandeering the "cashier's desk" to calculate the bill myself, we left and transferred to El Nido Boutique and Art Cafe. Reviews put it as overpriced but at least they served you what you asked for and not some version of it.

Whatever.

Anyway, Meike and Rich arrived on our last night in El Nido. Over drinks, Dennise and I were teaching Rich useful phrases in both Tagalog and Bisaya (which is the dialect spoken in most of the cities in Visayas and Mindanao). "Help me" is "Tulungan mo ako" in Tagalog and "Tabangi ko" in Bisaya.

Then, Rich asks for the translation of "Help me, I'm drowning."

Now, Dennise is not deaf. But there are times when she hears things differently, to put it mildly.

"What? Help me, I'm German?"

Pastilan.