Sleeping Around (39 page)

Miss Diva smirked. ‘Yes, but there's a sniper up in that building.'

Our last karaoke bar was a midget bar. The bar itself wasn't small, but all the staff were midgets—or dwarves, or little people, or vertically challenged folk or whatever is PC and accepted in polite company nowadays. Although the bar was called Hobbit House, Jude didn't tell me about the bar's unique staffing prerequisites and I got quite a shock when someone down at my knees asked if I wanted a drink.

We grabbed a table and when our waiter returned with our drinks, little hands came up and plopped them on the table. The bar may have been run by small people, but they had big prices. Our beer cost three times as much as in the last karaoke bar. I also noticed that they didn't have Randy Newman's
Short People
on the song list.

‘How do you say cheers in Dwarfish?' Jude asked, after I'd got through my fourth and final version of
My Way
for the night without a single shot being fired in anger.

Back at Jude's place a short time later, however, I was woken up by what sounded like a gunshot. It was probably the consequence of another bad version of
My Way
. The startled fright I got helped knock the couch rating down a fraction:

Couch rating: 8/10
Pro: The neatest bedroom on the trip
Con: I couldn't get
My Way
out of my bloody head all night

20

‘I don't have a couch. Does that matter?'

Elvie Malinao, 21, Siquijor, Philippines

(Cousin of a couch surfer)

In the morning I found myself sitting in a brand new A320 Airbus flying to . . . I'm not exactly sure where.

Jude told me that I couldn't possibly come to the Philippines without visiting one of the islands. ‘I'm not going to let you just write about Manila,' he'd said. In between visiting Karaoke Bar One and Karaoke Bar Two the previous night, we had walked into a travel agent and fifteen minutes later I walked out with a return ticket to somewhere called Dumaguete on the island of Negros. From there I was jumping on a boat to the island of Siquijor, where Jude had arranged for me stay on his cousin's couch. He'd been frantically texting her while I was buying my ticket. She texted back and said it was fine, ‘But I don't have a couch. Does that matter?'

I was quite impressed with Cebu Pacific Air. Not only did the plane depart right on time, but the crew were cute, considerate and courteous. On the short walk from the terminal building to the plane, they even handed every person an umbrella to block out the hot sun. The view from my window seat was just as impressive as we flew over countless islands—or if you do count them, there are 7107—that looked like green pearl drops in a blue and emerald sea.

I caught a taxi from Dumaguete airport to the port and as we pulled up the driver yelled, ‘Quick, quick, there's your boat'. I scampered onto the pier, but it chugged away just as I reached it.

‘You can go on that one,' the ticket-seller said, pointing to an abandoned wreck tethered to the pier.

I craned my neck looking for a boat behind it.

‘No, that one,' he said, pointing again to the rickety raft.

I had to walk across a narrow and rotting plank to get aboard and then climb over a mountain of bags to get to the top deck. The boat I'd missed was called ‘The Fast Boat' and took 45 minutes to get to Siquijor. I dubbed this one ‘The Ludicrously Slow Boat'. It took two-and-a-half hours. I didn't mind, though. I lay on the top deck and dozed off in the sun.

Even from a distance Siquijor announced itself as perfectly idyllic: deep green, white-fringed and afloat in a softly glittering vivid blue sea. Its ‘ferry terminal' seemed equally enticingly tropical. It was one small wooden pier against a backdrop of white sand and swaying palms. Laughing children were jumping off it and splashing into the clear blue water.

I knew nothing about this tiny island. On the small map of Siquijor in the airline magazine there was good news and bad news. If the name of one of the island's main towns was anything to go by, it would be the perfect place to relax. The name of the town was Lazi. But what was I to make of the fact that it was on the river Poo? ‘There's a couple of resorts I think' was all Jude had told me. Elvie worked at one of those resorts—Coral Cay Resort, near the town of San Juan. I caught a tricycle, which was a motorcycle with a sidecar, from the dock and we skirted the coast, past thatched fishermen's huts nestled amongst mangroves. On the twenty-minute drive we passed three cars, a couple of mopeds and a bicycle. Coral Cay Resort was off the main road at the end of a gravel track lined with palm trees. Elvie was waiting for me at the small reception building. ‘It is very nice to meet you,' Elvie said with a glittering smile. Elvie was positively tiny and positively gorgeous.

‘I'm so sorry, but you can't stay with me,' Elvie said, smiling serenely. ‘My room is too small.'

‘Oh . . .'

Elvie grabbed my hand. ‘But it's okay, because I have got you your own room.'

Elvie led me down a track between huts that were scattered around a picture-postcard-perfect pool, past an empty open-sided beachfront bar and restaurant and onto the beach, a slim arc of soft white sand shaded by swaying . . . you get the picture.

‘It's very quiet at the moment, so you can have this,' Elvie said.

Gasp.

‘That's a ten out of ten,' I muttered excitedly.

‘Pardon.'

‘Nothing.'

I hadn't even seen inside, but I was pretty sure I'd found my perfect ten-out-of-ten couch. The thatched beach hut, which also had a large verandah, overlooked my very own hammock that was slung between two palm trees on the water's edge. When I did look inside, I saw polished wooden floors, a huge double bed, marble-tiled bathroom and air-conditioning. Even though I'd only just met Elvie, I gave her a big hug—which left her a little confused about my intentions. She rushed off rather quickly and said, a little nervously, that she'd take me out after work.

So anyway, an Irishman, a Canadian and an Australian walked into a bar.

I wandered into the bar for ‘happy hour' at the same time as the resort's only two other guests arrived. Doug, who had a deep chocolate-brown tan, was in his mid-50s and had found out about Siquijor from a work colleague in Manila where he had been for a business meeting. ‘I wanted a little break, so he told me to come here. I should have been back in Canada three days ago,' he shrugged, ‘but I can't leave.' James was backpacking his way around Asia and had been in the Philippines for a few weeks. ‘I stayed with a family in Cebu and they recommended I come here,' he said.

‘It's good to have you here,' Doug said. ‘There's only been the two of us here all week, so it's nice to speak to someone else for a change.'

‘Now we've got only four staff each, though,' James said when the waitress brought us another beer.

‘Which room are you staying in?' Doug asked.

‘I'm in one of the “Beach Deluxe” huts.'

‘Oh, very nice,' James said. ‘We're only in the “Garden” rooms.'

I couldn't really tell them that I was getting my ‘very nice' room for free.

When Elvie finished work, she met me at the bar. ‘So, are you ready to go out?' she asked with a dazzling smile.

‘Sorry lads, I've got a date,' I said as their jaws dropped.

‘I thought that maybe you would like to see a traditional cultural performance,' Elvie said as we jumped on the back of a passing motorbike that she'd flagged down. It wasn't quite the ‘traditional' performance I was expecting, however. I had it in my mind that we'd be going to some little village to witness an ancient, and time-honoured, ceremony. Instead we were going to Coco Grove Beach Resort for the weekly ‘Traditional Cultural Show and Buffet'. The resort was a bit more flash than Coral Cay Resort and somewhat busier. Around 40 or so guests were sitting outside around candlelit tables that had been set up in front of a stage. Off to one side a line of chefs and waitresses were manning an impressively laden buffet table—including an entire glazed pig on a spit.

After we'd pigged out at the buffet (well, actually, I did most of the pigging) the show began with traditional Filipino dancing—which was a cross between the Macarena and Irish dancing. When the third lot of dancers came out in different outfits, but went through identical moves I asked Elvie why she'd left Cebu City to come to Siquijor.

‘Cebu City has too much crime,' Elvie sighed. ‘Here there is no crime at all. I also like it because it's quiet. The population of Cebu City is seven hundred thousand and the population of the whole island of Siquijor is eighty thousand.'

Elvie also had plenty of work on the island. Not only did she do waitressing and reception work, she was also a ‘qualified' foot masseuse.

The ‘Traditional Cultural show' went for more than two hours, although by the end it wasn't all that traditional— girls were dancing in hula skirts to the theme tune of
Hawaii Five-O
.

On the walk back we stopped at a newly opened bar on the beach. James, who was the only patron, was drinking whisky with Jurgen, the six-foot-six German barman and owner who towered over his five-foot Filipino wife. I couldn't help notice that large chunks of Jurgen's leg were missing and what was left was nothing more than mangled flesh and scar tissue.

‘It's a souvenir from my holiday in Australia,' Jurgen said matter-of-factly.

Jurgen had gone to Australia for a holiday and only three days into his trip he went diving and was mauled by a shark. ‘I spent five weeks in a Perth hospital,' Jurgen said, lifting up his leg so I could get a closer look. ‘It was fifty-fifty whether I'd keep my leg, but the skin grafts worked.'

Jurgen smiled. ‘Now it just looks like the remains of a pork roast.'

When Jurgen brought out a bottle of liquor that smelt like methylated spirits, Elvie called the night watchman at the resort to come pick us up on his moped. As we were leaving James skolled a shot of the firewater and almost fell off his bar stool.

Okay, so my “Deluxe Beach” hut wasn't actually a couch, but it was free so it counts. Drum roll please . . .

Couch rating: 10/10
Pro: Luxurious in every way
Con: Stay too short by many days

I had a taxing morning lounging by the pool. The taxing part was trying to decide which one of the twenty or so empty sun-beds to choose. ‘I'll have the other half of the pool then,' Doug said when he turned up in his tiny bathers.

After a delicious calamari salad for lunch, I embarked on an extremely perilous journey to find the most beautiful beach on Siquijor. The reason the journey was so perilous was because Elvie had kindly sweet-talked the night watchman into letting me borrow his scooter. I was quite nervous to begin with—what with my dodgy riding skills and all—but the bitumen road was good and there was hardly any traffic. Or people. As I puttered along the road to San Juan I could only see a distant fisherman lazily hurling a net out into the shallow clear water and a couple of kids playing basketball with a coconut. There was no one else in sight.

The road, which hugged the coastline, was like a necklace strung with small villages with exotic names like Tagibo, Bonga, Dapdap and Bogo. There were a few more people in the villages and as I rode through just about everyone would wave and smile and giggling school children would chase me down the road—which isn't that difficult considering how slowly I ride.

After briefly heading inland through dense jungle, I came to the turn-off for Salagdoong Beach, ‘the most beautiful beach on Siquijor'. A steep narrow track wound its way through a forest of molave trees down to . . . paradise. There was a pristine, white-sand cove with crystal-clear water and, overlooking the beach, a thatched karaoke hut. Swimming and singing—now that's what I call paradise.

I spent an hour lazily splashing about in the warm and tranquil water. The only other people were a small group of local teenagers who all at some point paddled over to say hello. After my swim I had a beer at the bar and— surprise, surprise—sang a song. When I'd finished belting out
Sometimes when we touch
a score out of a hundred came up on the screen. I got 98: ‘You are a perfect artist!' It was a shame that there was only an audience of eight to witness my exemplary performance. A woman got up after me and sang a Barbara Streisand number. She sounded not unlike a cat on heat. When she got a score of 95 I had to stop myself from screaming out: ‘Come on! That must be only worth a sixty at the most.' Now that I had a standard to judge my score against, maybe I'd have to cancel that Karaoke World Tour I'd suddenly started dreaming about . . .

When I got to the jungle on the ride back, I hit the Great Wall of Rain. The monsoonal downpour was so heavy that I couldn't see a metre in front of me. It was like having a strong and warm horizontal shower. Then, when I was only ten minutes from the resort, I rode out the other side of the Great Wall of Rain and into a clear and cloudless day.