the Trip to Boracay

May 5, 2008

sHeSpeAks: Fiscal/Sai Eldred Cole

I was off the grid for a couple of days; the reason was because I attended the National Prosecutors¢ League of the Philippines¢ convention at Boracay and spent four nights and five days literally having a ball. It was supposed to be a convention, you know, when people of the same profession gather together annually to discuss serious stuffs that affect our respective jobs, but this one became an adventure of sorts.

What do you think would happen if you put a group of so-called serious people who purported themselves to be professionals in a place which is a vacation getaway? Well, for one, expect them to bring their whole family with them, if the grandparents are still mobile, bring them along too or the pets, for that matter. Second, wait for them to act juvenile, which of course, inebriated by alcohol, even if it¢s not Boracay, they would still end up being so. Third, imagine them to act like normal human beings who just want to have fun, or take a break from the monotony of prosecuting people five days a week since they joined the National Prosecution Service.

So it was a vacation-cum-convention. With some of us who went solo, it was a bonding experience. You get to know that there are some traits your colleagues have that you never want to know or even have any leaning to be on familiar terms with. There are those who snore like a pig, or the ones who eat like there¢s no tomorrow, or having a body like a top down submarine if he takes his shirt off or has an allergy which can take her to a hospital in a minute, or who has this penchant of photographing anyone he meets with his digital phone camera, which thank God, nobody has taken offense and slap his face.

Much as it was a breath-of-fresh-air trip, it was a long road to Boracay from Cagayan de Oro City, though. There were several things that dampened our trip. You see, the prosecutors from our office went there without money in our pockets since the financial assistance promised to us by the local government was not released even until press time. Thank heavens for credit cards and a generous soul who has some deep pockets we can dip into sans interest.

Second discouragement is practically tied down to the first. It is literally circuitous to go to Boracay. You have to ride a boat to Cebu then hop a plane to Kalibo, board a jeep to Caticlan, and then be conveyed by a small boat to Boracay. That is just the easy way. Some had it bad when they went through Cebu-Iloilo-Kalibo-Caticlan-Boracay route or the most expensive one: Cagayan de Oro City-Manila-Caticlan and vice-versa. And if you have not enough dough, you will never set a single digit of your foot in the white sands of Boracay.

And of course, there is this unavoidable flight delays and arduous boat trip. We spent approximately four hours at Kalibo airport waiting for our plane bound for Cebu. I developed a close relationship with the airport chair and nearly had a love affair with the back of the chair in front of me because I was hugging it too tight trying not to fall flat on my face while taking a nap. Then the boat ride. It was as if it was towed by a banana boat. It was too slow; it took eighteen hours from Cebu to Cagayan de Oro City, when in the expanding era of high technology, it could be done in four hours flat. But considering that there¢s no other ship available, we just have to make do.

The fourth let-down was the hype-versus-the-real-article thing. Perhaps because of the barrage of ads declaring how great Boracay is, it was kind of disappointing to note there was no total truth in advertising, or is it because some of our beaches in Mindanao are equal or better than Boracay¢s? The beaches, white as they were are also littered with mostly white people. We had fun ogling the bikini-clad-hour-glass-bodied sun worshippers while at the same time scorning them for being them as opposed to us being well, us.

And the last downer is the price of accommodation. It was literally prohibitive. How can an average Filipino enjoy his own natural milieu if he is made to pay for it in dollars? No wonder our local tourism industry is not in bloom. It¢s a shame that we give importance to foreign tourism that we don¢t give equal substance to our local tourists. How can we promote love of our country when our own people can not even afford to even glimpse how beautiful our country really is, minus the politicians of course?

The trip, which literally became a vacation for us over-worked and underpaid government employees, was an eye-opener. That there is a world out there to be explored and that our country is as beautiful as the foreigners claim. That the people we are in close contact with day in and day out at work are also human beings like the rest of us, with foibles and idiosyncrasies that you could either learn to love or love to hate for the rest of your time spent together at work or until he or she retires. (For comments and/or violent reactions e-mail me at coi_416@hotmail.com).

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Written by admin · Filed Under Sai/Mami/Fiscal Eldred Cole