Once on this island (is enough)

The province of Bohol has upwards of 70 outlying islands. Panglao you are probably familiar with. That is where most of the resorts are. A short ride from the airport and you’re beachin’, baby.

Lapinig — ever heard of it? Not likely. It is second in size to Panglao, but with exactly one resort to show for it. My friends and I spent the weekend there. Back in Cebu, Connie’s mother, a Boholana, asked for specifics. Where did we stay? Oh, some resort. Where was this resort located? In some island. What was the island called? Um… we never thought to ask.

That says a lot right there, but more on that later. For now, a little geography lesson, as much for my edification as for yours: Lapinig is located across the northeastern tip of mainland Bohol. It belongs to the municipality of President Carlos P. Garcia, which is pretty much the whole island. From there it’s only an hour by slow boat to my place in Leyte (I have to admit that I regretted not taking this direct route — after a five-hour trip to Cebu, an hour by fast-craft to Tubigon, a two-hour drive to Ubay, then a 30-minute banca ride to the resort; in any case, it won’t be too far off to say that it’s the remotest a resort can get in Bohol).

As our banca rounded a corner of the island, we were greeted with stretch upon stretch of uninhabited coastline looking out into the wide expanse of the Mindanao Sea. So far, so good. We sailed on, making our way through marine sanctuaries (PCPG has 16 of them, the most of any town in the province), past an outcrop that Bob, our American host, referred to as Snake Island, and just when I thought we were steering across the channel up ahead straight to our front door, we turned left and touched land.

I’m going to mention the word “beach” just this once and then never again. I have a pretty definite idea of what constitutes one, and the resort fell short in that regard. It had a shoreline, sure, but it wasn’t sandy, pebbly, or even rocky. It was… dead-corally. As in forget-to-wear-slippers-and-lacerate-your-soles dead-corally.

Well, nothing to be done about that. Here at least was a place where you could live out your Lost/Cast Away/Blue Lagoon fantasies, but with the benefits of running water (salty, but still), electricity, and mobile coverage. You only saw people you were supposed to see, if only because there was no other human habitation in sight (apart from our group, there were two other guests — a couple — but they hardly came out of their cottage). You could hear the wind, the bird-songs, the waves breaking up on the shore, the crunch of dead corals beneath your (slippered) feet. You could even hear yourself think about hearing yourself think, which is not as crazy or hard as it sounds; you just have to be there.

In short, we (or at least some of us) sat around doing nothing. Or we slept. Mostly we talked — about cosmetic enhancement and celebrities (Connie’s a US-based nurse; Jerome and Gilleth are in show business. Speaking of showbiz chismis, we had to keep it PG-rated on account of Connie’s kids, who weren’t as worn out as they should have been from dodging jellyfish earlier in the day. That was why we fell to talking in the first place — no way we were swimming with those critters. I mean the jellyfish, not the kids.)

Don’t get me wrong. We had a good time and the place kinda grew on me. Unlike Panglao, which never really feels like an island (not least because it’s connected by bridge to the mainland), Lapinig is not only decidely insular and out-of-the-way — it’s practically off the tourist map. The resort itself was set back — almost hidden — behind a grove of coco and noni trees, so that you would be hard-pressed to tell from a distance if it was there at all. It’s an ideal place to hide away from the world.

This, of course, entails a willingness on one’s part to rough it — a scout mentality, if you will. Fine by me, as long as we agree on one thing: if something sucks, it sucks. That was the case with the food. It sucked major ding-a-ling. I feel sorry saying this because the cook (our host’s Filipina mother-in-law) happened to be a very nice lady. But there was no getting around the fact that her cooking sucked.

“No wonder the cats look so healthy,” Connie observed, surveying the crime scene that was the lunch buffet.

“Not much competition, that’s for sure. Where’s Therese?”

Therese had organized the trip. But of course. She manages an events company and due diligence is her middle name. To be fair, the resort wasn’t her idea — she heard about it from me (and I from a flier). She had made the requisite inquiries (especially about the food), received assurances (especially about the frickin’ food), and now… this. I knew she wasn’t going to take this development sitting down.

She wasn’t. I found her in the kitchen, halfway inside the chest-type freezer.

“Where’s the pork?” she was saying. “Heaven help me, I will do the cooking myself if that’s what it takes. Where’s that pork? Surely you keep pork in stock?”

The cook exchanged glances with the handyman/bangkero/hubby. Therese was dangerously close to tipping over into the freezer when one of them finally spoke up.

“We don’t serve pork; we’re Seventh-Day Adventists.”

Tininining-tininining… “Was that the theme from Twilight Zone I just heard?” I said. I mean, what do you say to that? You really had to be there.

“How about pancit?” Therese looked to be at the end of her wits. “Can you at least manage pancit? Just omit the chicken; Jerome’s allergic.”

“We have beef,” the cook said.

“Oh yeah? I didn’t see any.”

“Here,” she said, helpfully holding up a can of corned beef.

Long story short, we took over the kitchen (the noodles weren’t any good, either). Bob wasn’t too happy about it but he had little choice, seeing as how he was up against our collective ire. And he was a long way from Chicago.

As for the cook, Therese tried to educate her about proper serving portions (e.g., why pickled green papaya should not be served heaped on a plate), the limitations of ketchup (i.e., you don’t douse something with it and call the resulting dish sweet-and-sour), etc., etc. I hope she was paying attention; she certainly didn’t look it. If I had to guess, she was more concerned about working on the Sabbath, perhaps to the eternal damnation of her soul.

I missed out on most of the shop talk. I was busy. I had found a large grouper which I marinated in aromatic paste (for grilling). The head I set aside for sinigang. Then I whipped up some kalamansi-garlic butter for the steamed crabs (I would later regret not making more; Gilleth was quite mad for it). Finally, Therese wiped the ketchup off the huge red snapper from lunch (it wasn’t cooked through), sliced the fish into manageable pieces, and, with some re-frying and a can of salted black beans, did the creature some justice. All in all, it was just another day at the kitchen.

“You handled that rather well,” she said later that evening as we sat under the stars, patting our strained bellies. She should know. Back in college, I was not exactly the calm and collected type. I wasn’t even into cooking then.

“Oh, we only saved dinner, didn’t we?” I was not playing modest. The truth was, I had fun. It had been a long time since I cooked for friends — these friends in particular — and Lord only knows when I would get to do it again given that we’re all over the map these days. To be sure, this wasn’t the kind of fun I had in mind when I imagined my vacation. This was even better. I got my island getaway, with the best company I could ask for. I got to de-stress in the kitchen (sounds weird, I know; if you don’t cook, I don’t expect you to appreciate the logic). And I had the pleasure of hearing my companions turn down an offer of dessert (“No more! Too full!”). Smart buggers knew when to quit, said dessert being the Adventist cook’s. Whatever it was, we figured the cats could handle it. If not, they could at least use the occasional surprise. Island life can get a bit boring, you know.

Photo by Mannix Villafania