Thursday was Checkout day, we said our goodbyes to Agustin and caught a trike to the ferry Terminal.
the Ferry booked was defiantly the fast one this time and it would depart Tagbilaran and head to Dumaguete.
the Ferry Ride will take around 2 hours on the calm seas and arrive at the next port at around 1pm
Dumaguete is a small seaside town that has a total of 135000 people in a density zone of 4000 people per square KM. the town does not offer alot in the way of beaches as the waterfront is an artifically built Esplanade that stretches for about a Kilometer.
we have booked a kind of housing unit just 400 meters from the town centre by the name of Elaine’s Abode. it is a small 3 level house with 4 rooms on each floor, each room has an AC unit, 2 beds, designated Wifi and a balcony.
it is a family owned house and there appears to be about 3 generations living under the roof on the bottom level from Grand mother to Grandchild.
the family that owns it are very respectful and polite to tourists and treat every guest with Courtesy and respect.
Marge and i Drop our bags off to the room, have a quick refresh then both decide that we feel like Pizza and pasta for lunch.
Dumaguete offers 3 Italian Restaurants that all have will over 600 reviews each and around 4.8-4.9 stars, the one we choose is Called Italian King and is around 1.7 KM from our location
during the peak day sun we decide a trike is best and make our way outside to flag one down.
the ride takes us down some alleys that would be suitable for organ harvesting and after 7 or 8 turns down back streets we arrive at the restaurant. we are the only ones here and we do our normal ordering of 1 Pizza , 1 Pasta and some cheese to share. the food is pretty good but the pasta we ordered was a bit odd.
i thought we were ordering Carbonara. however i think the chef has no idea that Carbonara isn’t supposed to have the egg almost scrabbled in it…. it tastes okay but the texture is F****d.
we agree to walk back to our accomodation to burn of the Carbs we have just consued by the hundreds and on our walk back we get a large 5L bottle of water to hydrate ourselves and a Milk tea, also called Boba tea.
waiting for our tea marge does some google-ing and find a bike rental place over here in the city for our adventures on friday. the shop she finds is The DudZ motor rentals.
she makes contact an the owner is in Cebu on buisness but one of his workers will drop a bike off to us later in the evening.
we wont be charged for the Evening use and from tomorrow at 9Am our 24 Hours will start.
the bike we rent is exactly the same as what we had in Alona (something semi familiar to us), and will cost us 1000 peso’s for the period $31.25NZD.
Marge needs a nap and i have just discovered my wrong debit car is hooked upto my Amazon account for my Kindle. so i am back to reading my 5th book for the trip.
at around 8PM the phone rings and its “skinny Pablo Escobar” with the scooter, i head down stairs to meet the guy and have a very bad pigeon english conversation with him, he wants to hold my NZ Passport for the 24 hour period while we had the bike and as the the conversation was getting heated ….marge finally came down and de-escalated the situation.
I explained to her that the can have any ID but they are not having my Passport regardless, i told her to explain to him that if he looses that document the closest Consulate is in South Korea and that its no offence to him but i dont trust anyone with it. marge finally got him to agree to take copies of both my passport and Drivers lisence but i would not be relenquishing either to him.
once that was settled we parked the bike up and track down the second
at around 10PM after a cold shower to wash the street dust and sweat off my Adonis tanned body.
We agreed that it was time for dinner.
we went down to our pipmed ride on the curb side and loaded up. The streets are quiet with only few vehicles on the roads and the air is still an humid.
we head east to the end of the street that is only about 150 Meters away. after that turn left onto Hibbard Avenue and make headway to E J.Blanco Drive.
we are heading towards the waterfront to find a light meal before the end of the day.
heading down Blanco Drive a pair of Police officers pull up next. we will call them Starsky & Hutch.
they are ordering us off the road and to pull over. They are speaking and yelling in Bisaya that is the local dialect here in Dumanguete…. unfortuantly Marge doesn’t have much experience with this. although sone words are shared most are not.
We pull over and marge manages to make out that helmets must be worn by all riders of a motor cycle/Scooter… this comes to a shock to both of us as we had seen nothing but people riding with no helmets so we assumed for short travel this was okay…. well it is not
I said to marge to show some skin and try get us a warning but after a few minutes of talking that was not going to happen. The Fuzz tell us to follow them back up West of E J.Blanco Drive and make a left back onto Hibbard Ave.
as we get to the end of the road there is nothing short of 100 People waiting for there little love letter from the Dumaguete Traffic office.
as we stand there looking like lost sheep a Scooter of 3 young boys/Men go screaming through the checkpoint at Warp speed. withing the blink of an eye, 3 motor cycles come out of the crowd with men dressed in Camoflage military gear and automatic weapons and take off after the youths.
the crowd is all looking west up Hibbard Ave waiting to see what happens next.
once the youths had finally got out of view the officers went back to extorting the local public for their next promotion.
eventually in the process of getting my new piece of parchment the youths return and the crowd started cheering like some scene out of movie and clapping for the youths in their attempt for trying to get away.
the ticked advises that you have 7 working days to make contact with the locat traffic office to pay the fine. after doing some research the Ticked is 1500Peso …. around $46.75 NZD.. i wont be paying this fine tho and here is why.
1. im a tourist so i will play dumb and say i thought it was a warning as there is no amount stated on the ticket
2. with such a disorganised society i figure that with 7 working days the ticket wont be due untill monday following week
3. from there they hand it over to the govt office for processing as a no show to local traffic office
4 Ill be 30,000 Ft in the air by friday following week.
now all this banks on the fact that they are disorganised. and the fact they use hand written tickets still i see this as pretty good odds. if in the event i get stopped at the border upon departure i will play country dumb and see what happens.
Dinner this evening was supposed to be a nice meal at Hayahay, this is a seafood restaurant on the waterfront of the esplanade however our run in with law enforcement had allowed us to miss the boat on that one.
we started to head back to the accommodation in search of a 7-11 and ended up going past some 24 hour rice and meat shack. there specialty was a delightful meal of Luke warm rice and cold fried chicken with a Luke-warm sauce to go with … this cost a total of 2 NZ per meal and we were also greeted by the local breastfeeding cat that marge decided to feed against my pleading her not to.
During the end of our meal the Rain started to fall, we both decided on Cheese Pringles for desert and went off in hunt for the Quickee meart. there was one up the far western end of Hibbard Avenue. the ride in the dark was around 4 minutes of relaxed cruising.
pringles are about the same price here as they are in NZ. i would presume they are a global price by this because everything else is dirt cheap in chip form.
the rain started to Pour hard and fast and we had to take shelter at a banks eves on our return journey.
sadly outside this bank was a Father and his son lying on cardboard and his son was shivering up next to his dad which is a little heart breaking to see a 5 or 6 year old boy on the street trying to survive.
the rain was not stopping so marge and i made executive decision to suck it up and get wet.
we got back to Elaine’s abode and marge was very excite to tell them i had already met the local police
the husband of Elaine (the proprietor) had a big grin from ear to ear hearing this.
we retired upstairs and decided we would try again with life tomorrow.
“When two persons are together, two of them must not whisper to each other, without letting the third hear; because it would hurt him.”
– Prophet Muhammad.
Quantum Entanglement 