Somewhere in Leyte (Dulag?) – Tuesday night

Out of a wild Euro-Asia Spring Break on a paradisiacal tropical island, we now arrived at night, almost suddenly with our hosts, via a chauffeured, large white Toyota SUV with darkly tinted windows, at a nearly brand new and renovated private luxury “guest house” overlooking the pacific ocean, owned by an old friend of Anna’s Aunt, a rich sharp minded, sharp tongued, older and chic and stylish woman, who owns of a multitude of small financing companies (aka “loan sharking” businesses, as Anna somewhat more coarsely translated.) We were given a tour, shown the pool and our private bedrooms (all made and freshened with incense oil burning), and then left alone for the night with a maid (Cynthia – who is currently hand washing our laundry and offered to give us massages, too), and a full spread of food and wine and sweet sticky rices, and pork chops and pineapple and mangoes, and a uniformed security guard outside wandering among the serene pool and landscaped yard with fountains, one with coi or giant goldfish, and dining gazebos and zen like rock paths through the manicured soft short grass. It was all a bit like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole, or as Anna put it the next day, like having several fairy godmothers watching over us and planning a grand time for us, or in other words, all a little surreal, especially as the other unspecific servants (grounds keepers or handimen, I suppose) blew up air rafts for us and ran around while the driver Edgar helped straighten things up and took pictures with his camera phone, I think of us, too. All this taking place on a beautiful nearly full moon lit night after the rain suddenly stopped after several hours and after driving through it after dinner at a local Ialian-Filipino restaurant in Tacloban, unexpectedly owned by an old school mate of Anna’s who showed up as we were leaving. We stopped at McArthurs’ Landing to take some pics, with the driver following as our photographer in the rain, of course,


then off, back in the SUV, past shacks and cute small town streets and shops, almost running over a drunk looking man in the middle of the road after the thunder storm really started. Now very sleepy, 9pm here as I write. No idea what is planned for tomorrow except sun on the beach or by the pool.