Six days after getting back to Manila, I hopped on a bus and went to Baler, a small surf town in the north-eastern part of Luzon. The weather wasn’t perfect, I just wanted to get away. It was definitely unplanned and I had no place to stay or anything. I’m glad I had friends who covered me for the first few days, who also kept me sane and company. I moved to a hostel on my third day and kept pushing my stay. I ended up spending a lot of time in the cafe of the hostel, working or just hanging out and having beer. One local called me out on it as when we met the night before I had a bottle in hand, and when he saw me the following day, I have one again.
Being alone actually felt nice, of course some days are shittier than others and the nights are the loneliest, it’s when I miss TinderBoy the most. But also, being alone allowed me to meet and talk to people. As I was having a conversation with someone I met one evening, he asked, “Do you always talk to strangers?”, and I realized I have been talking to a lot of strangers. I met a really nice Burner, a Filipina – who by the way we’ve already interacted through FB, the stranger who asked me that question, and a group of friends from Manila.
I’ve been to Baler so much but that last trip was by far the most interesting experience, believe me when I say that, I’ve stayed in Baler for a little over a month, but this two week trip beat that. One extremely busy night in the cafe, I had no place to hang out since I no longer have a room to stay in, and I intend to travel back to Manila that evening, I ended up bussing tables, talking to customers, handing out utensils, calculating tabs, and even taking and serving small orders, all the while I was downing bottles of beers. As I was having a cigarette outside after what seemed like a very long night of just trying to kill time, someone greeted me and talked to me. We ended up having more beers, and he thought I was working for the cafe as he said I gave the menu to their party. We had a couple more beers and he invited me to meet his friends, all were very nice. They were concerned when they found out I had plans of leaving at midnight and insist on me staying in their room. Such sweet kids they were, I asked why they trust me so much. I ended up staying two more nights and hitching a ride with their group back to Manila.