Day 5: I woke up at 11:30 and attempted to prepare for my inevitable departure. After getting the guys out of bed we headed back to the usual place for coffee and crepes and were greeted by our commrads from the night before. After breakfast I went back to the hostel, gathered up my things and said my goodbyes. I caught another bike-taxi and got him to take me on a tour of the island before leaving. He dropped me off at the boat station where I had to take an even sketchier boat back to Caticlan. After managing to dock the boat I caught another bike-taxi to the airport. The airport was old, dirty, crowded and had no A/C. I waited here for a few hours, constantly bothered by a nagging thought in my head that I had missed my flight. Of course this was not the case and I got on my flight back to Manila. This time the plane was a bit bigger and newer. It had 25 passengers, 2 pilots and a flight attendent but was still the same sort of two-engine, prop driven plane. It took me less than an hour to fly into Manila and once again fortune was against me, it was raining. In addition to the rain, the hidden expenses I had to pay to leave the island made it impossible for me to venture anywhere in the city to kill the 10 hours I had to wait until my next flight. As such, I essentially passed the time by reading a book and taking 20 minute naps throughout the night. On occasion I would wake up to some Fillipino siting in the chair next to me, starring at me. One can only assume he was trying to figure out how to steal my bag. 1 AM finally rolled around and I was able to check in and find a nice bench to lay down on in the duty-free area but of course as soon as I did I was told by some security guard I wasn't allowed to sit there, so I have to solider on and find another place. As you can imagine the only other place I found was a metal chair in a freezing room filled with other Korean families. By 3:30 AM I was on the plane and fast asleep, only waking up for my "breakfast". I arrived in Busan at 7:30 AM Wednesday morning, went home and showered than jetted off to work for what was to be the longest and most painful day of work I have ever experienced.

That was the essentials of my five-ish day trip to the Philippines. I left Korea with three friends but returned with a dozen, some of which teach in Korea or Hong Kong and all of which are awesome. I have made some fond memories that I won't soon forget and forgotten some memories I will not soon remember. Whichever the case let me say this, Boracay was awesome, I enjoyed every minute of it and I will continue to enjoy it's lingering effects during the ensuing months, or until summer arrives in Busan. Either way,

Slante!