We All Get Older, We Don't All Get Grown.

Well, I couldn't catch a flight to Northern Palawan as I originally hoped. Because I had to come back to Puerto Princesa, I left myself with a couple of options:

#1- Drive 9 hours north to El Nido, only to have to make the same drive back a day or two later.
#2- Fly from Puerto to Manila and then fly to Busuanga in hopes of getting to spend a day or so there.

I've been feeling a little under the weather since getting back from Sabang, so I'm not extremely motivated to do either. Luckily tonight I got a call from my good friend from college, Chris Sisson who just so happens to be visiting the Philippines as well with his Pinoy best friend, Alex. They are in Manila so I decided that I would hangout with them for my last few days here. Alex's aunt lives here and they are cool with me staying, so that is another huge plus.

After thinking about it, I'm not really sure why I even asked to stay. I have enough money to afford a nice hotel room for the rest of my stay and I'm not the "couch surfing" type. I really don't want to be a burden on the family and I hope they won't have to go out of their way too much to accommodate me. I guess I just miss being around family. Eating meals with people. Making plans to do something with someone else. And I am SUPER excited to see some familiar faces! I can't wait! It should be a good ending to a great trip.

Other than deciding to go back to Manila early, not much else has really happened the past couple of days. My main highlights have been living with a mouse in my room that I decided to name "Marty", figuring out the "local" cost of a tricycle ride, and not being able to find a body wash without a "whitening" agent. I know its not much, but not everyday can be a huge adventure!

Marty the mouse decided to come out one night and run around when I was trying to go to bed. I kept seeing his head pop out from under the other bed and then hearing him scurry across the room. I got up, somewhat freaked out, and tried to get him out of my room to no avail. I caught him mid-scurry once and he literally jumped in the air, landed awkwardly, and then hid again under the bed. The look on his face actually made me laugh and from that point on I decided I wasn't afraid of him anymore, so I named him. Wait...I just re-read what I just wrote...I must be going a little crazy after all this solitude.

So with the tricycles, when I first arrived they originally said I had to pay 50 pesos per ride. But then I started noticing that some drivers were less bold and were charging 40. And then another only 20! So I finally decided I was going to figure out the REAL charge for a tricycle ride. My strategy was that I was going to be silent. From all my research before the trip, I was told multiple times to ask "How much?" before taking a taxi, to avoid being ripped off. It turned out that is exactly what you should do if you want the locals to know you are from out of town and you have no idea how much stuff costs around here. So I got a ride and was completely silent the whole ride. I decided I would let the driver initiate the payment process. I got out and handed him 20 pesos, waited for a second, he looked at me, i looked at him, he reached in his pocket, and gave me back 10 pesos! So from there on out I just gave everyone 10 pesos and nobody said a word about it, nice.

Lastly, since I'm going to be visiting a family, I decided to clean myself up and shave(for the second time during this trip). I went to the drugstore and the only size shaving cream was a Costco sized can that would probably last me a year. So instead of being wasteful i'd have to figure something else out. I also ran out of body wash, but literally every single bottle they sold had some sort of "skin whitening" agent in it. Since I value my brown skin, my only other option was Johnson & Johnson Baby Bath. It worked out pretty good too, because now my skin is baby soft, I was able to use it to shave, and if it gets in my eyes: No Tears!