December 30, 2008
Rise and… holy shit, it’s just past midnight. With just under 2 hours of solid sleep, I woke up finding that I haven’t a thing packed yet. Not really a good start to what is going to be a 5 day, 4 night New Year’s road trip. I texted my navigator/buddy, Archie, that I was going to pick him up around 2am but got no reply though. Figured he was still asleep, no worries.
I started to pack, getting my clothes right off the clothesline. Yeah, I just did the laundry that previous morning as I found that I was running dangerously low on clothes. Stuffed them in my travel bag along with some toiletries and proceeded to make some sandwiches for the trip ahead.
I got to Archie’s place around a quarter to 2. We had that last mug of coffee first to clear any cobwebs then started on our journey. We took the drive to the north. First through the NLEX, then SCTEX. That went by quite uneventfully, the very early morning brought us only the scarcest of traffic. Sunrise caught us taking a break, sandwiches and juice at the 7-11 at Urdaneta in Pangasinan. Approximately halfway to our halfway destination. Of course, with the light came traffic. Tricycles plying the national highway often impeded our progress throughout the trip but we were able to maintain our (leisurely) pace and got to San Juan, La Union around 8:00 in the morning.
We were supposed to check in at some German place, but when we got there what seemed like the person in charge was pretty unwelcoming and told us they were full. No wonder there was no one in the whole inn. Duh. So we went next door, Scenic View Tourist Inn where we found more affordable rates and friendlier people. Go Pinoy!
We went up to our rooms and slept. Zzzz.
It was almost lunchtime when we woke up and pondered on what to do. We looked up some places in San Fernando City that we could see but we soon found out that our sense of direction was close to non-existent. We did find the Happy Tummy, a sort of Chowking rip off but with better prices. I had a Halo-halo despite my coughing fit. Yummy! After walking around the market and checking out some pirated DVDs that were on display, we went back to the inn and went to the beach. I didn’t swim though, perish the thought of me getting a terrible fever and being stuck in that place until the new year! Just went around and took pictures, and attempted to practice my golf swing. Too bad there were a lot of people around, besides the great possibility of hitting someone with a bad shot, I didn’t want to humiliate myself in front of everybody by swinging and missing terribly!
As the light was fading, we went back in and celebrated with a bottle of fine cognac and chicken adobo which we brought for the trip. Then I did something stupid… we seemingly ran out of cigarettes so I volunteered to run to the corner store to buy some. It was closed when I got there, but I thought there would probably be a store open along the highway, after all it was only past nine o’clock. I walked to the highway, all drunk and determined to smoke. There wasn’t much light, but I thought there should be a store not too far away that was open. Looking left, there was a bridge. That wouldn’t do, I hated walking on bridges and was afraid of heights too. So I went to the right, trudging on the dusty shoulder numb to all the vehicles of all sizes that zoomed along. In my state of drunkenness, I failed to realize that I had already walked quite a distance. I was deep into my daydreaming and was oblivious of both time and distance. When at last I got to a store, I turned around to find a sign that told me I was a kilometer away from where I started! When you think about it, the kilometer long walk wasn’t that bad, but it does start to suck when you realize that you have to walk another kilometer back to where you started. Sheesh. Funny thing was, turns out that we weren’t out of cigarettes as Archie found a pack of it the next morning. Hahaha, very funny 2008.
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