Woke up nice and early today at 8am.   Unlike most of the people in the hostel (and for that matter, in Boracay) I didn’t go out and party last night.   One thing I “found” about myself during my trip last year to Europe is that I’m just not into that lifestyle.

It’s just not me and I can’t change who I am.   It makes for some weird spots with people you meet along the way as they go out to party while I stay in.   In the end though I’m done trying to be someone who I’m not just to conform with others.

Anyway, that was a tangent…

So, yeah, woke up at 8am.   As we were weren’t meeting up for a few hours to go parasailing, I had some time to kill before that.

I decided to take a stroll down through the D mall (the main strip mall here in Boracay) and over to the white sand beach just to check things out.

It was hot with a capital H.

After an hour of walking around I was sweating profusely and my shirt had a nice sweat stained design to it.   Of course my sweat smells pleasant so no issue there…

I only bring this up because what I was wearing was all I had until 4:30pm when my laundry would be ready for pickup.

Around noon, myself, Jisu (the girl I met last night), Jamie (a girl from Kentucky teaching in Korea), her Filipino friend June and Leann (a girl from the UK) went to meet the man doing organizing our parasailing.

We took a speed boat out to a floating dock where we transferred over to the boat that would take us out parasailing.

We got hooked up in tandems and myself and Leann went first.

Now I’ve done a few things out of my comfort zone but this was really out of my comfort zone…

I have a mild fear of heights and I’m not a big fan of water.

So, here I was being strapped into a harness attached to a parachute style sail about to be hoisted 150 meters above the water.

At least the sail had a big smiley face on it…

The ride was only 15 minutes but it felt like forever.   I remember making small talk up there with Leann in a concerted effort to take my mind off of what I was actually doing.

The best feeling in the world was when we started to slowly be reeled in down towards the boat.   There was one surprise awaiting us though – a dip in the water up to our waists.   So unexpected, yet so awesome!

After Jisu and Jamie took their turn we returned back to the island.   It actually was pretty cloudy out and was on the verge of rain.

We suggested that maybe it would be better if we did our packaged sunset cruise tomorrow instead of later that afternoon and they were fine with that.

Sure enough, it started to rain in the afternoon and then the power went out.   Luckily our hostel has a generator.   I guess the fact that they have a generator shows how often this happens.

I finally had some nice fresh clothes in the late afternoon – one big load of laundry done for only 95 pesos ($2).   Ah, heaven!!!

As the rain stopped and dusk came upon us, Jamie, Jisu and I sat on the rooftop patio watching the animated movie Frozen on Jisu’s laptop while munching on white chocolate popcorn I had picked up at the market.

It was so cool watching the movie as the day turned to night.

Around 8pm, Jamie and I joined a couple of Ukrainians (Brother/Sister – Jenny and Olis) and a transplanted Filipino from Toronto (we’ll call him Alex) for dinner.

We walked all the way down to Station 3 on the island (there are 3 areas, 1, 2 and 3… our hostel is in 2) in search of some nice seafood for dinner.

We ended up in a place that had a great fresh fish display outside and were enticed by the “eat all you can” for 230 pesos.

Of course the buffet had literally no seafood in it except for a crab and corn chowder.

I mean the dinner was good – it was just kinda funny that we walked all the way down there for seafood and ended up not having any.   But, honestly, if we had seafood I’d have no story to tell so I love when stuff like this happens.   Oh yeah, there was bad karaoke being sung too.

So, yeah, it was an awesome dinner!

The night ended with our determined pursuit of Halo Halo which is a dessert popular here in the Philippines.   I’m actually not entirely sure what’s in it as I’ve only seen photos so far but it looks like shaved ice, ice cream, different fruits and some gelatin stuff.

Now, obviously, our pursuit was in vain otherwise I’d be telling you exactly what was in it.   We went to a few places but came up dry.   One only served it Korean style (no ice cream and with beans), another was out of ice cream, and yet another was closed.

Oh well, maybe tomorrow…

That aside though, it was a pretty awesome day filled with a little bit of this and a little bit of that with different people – exactly the kind of day I’d love to have every day I travel.

Tomorrow we have an island hopping tour for a few hours and then our sunset boat ride.   Here’s hoping the weather is beautiful again!