Under My Skin

Oh man. Look, I’m getting really embarrassed by all these blog posts that begin with me saying “It’s been a while since I last wrote here”. Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before; probably nobody cares. Still, my tight schedule (and by tight I don’t mean “we tight!” kind of tight) has allowed me less and less time to update my blog regularly, and when I do get the time I use it for zoning out on a random garbage reverie that has nothing to do with my life – I’ll have to talk about that someday. That, plus videogames – hey, my Wii is still new – kept me very preoccupied that writing has been shoved aside to the fringes of my priority: you know, like those hobbies anyone claims to get around to doing someday, probably when they retire. In any case, I hope this is just a phase.

So anyway, I just came back from my 3-day trip in Boracay. For those of you who have never heard of it, Boracay is the top tourist destination of the Philippines. An island located somewhere in the middle of the archipelago that is our country, its main attractions are the white-sand beaches (notably the creatively named White Beach; I lost count of how many “White Beach” there are in the Philippines) where you can swim, do watersports, or just lounge around in. There are also many kinds of shops, bars, and restaurants nearby.

That was a fun weekend, but right now I’m irritated by my sunburn. My skin flays all over the place, and since part of my face is sunburnt too (the cheek, especially) I look like some kind of science experiment gone wrong. Gee, I hope I’m not becoming a zombie; crass commercialism and Hollywood movies certainly aren’t helping to remedy that paranoia.

Although I enjoyed my stay in Boracay this time – which is the second time – I can’t help noticing that the place is becoming worse or that at least it’s not becoming any better; and if I come here again in the next two years, I might get sick of it. What’s telling is that although I often am alone in thinking negatively about most things, I don’t seem to be the only one pessimistic about Boracay — the travelers seated next to me while I was traveling home certainly shared the same sentiments, complaining loudly amongst themselves about what they’ve experienced. The thing they ridiculed the most is the Environmental Fee for tourists. Doubtless, most of us who come here could spare a P50 (1 US Dollar equivalent), an amount we have to pay so that presumably the government – particularly Department of Environment and Natural Resource (DENR) - would have the funds to make the place cleaner; and nobody would’ve been complaining had DENR been doing their job well enough. Even when I first went there, I saw a lot of garbage among the plenty of driftwoods and seaweeds washed ashore. Two years later, and it’s just as dirty, if not dirtier. Heck, right now there is even some garbage floating at the sea. While I was swimming, I saw a plastic thing that looked like a used condom floating nearby. Ech! By the way, does anyone want to give me a hug?

Let’s do the math shall we? There are at least around a thousand per week of tourists going to Boracay (ten thousands during the peak seasons). If you multiply P50 by 1000, you get P50,000 per week, and that’s a generous estimate! I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject, but isn’t that more than enough to keep the place clean? Or shouldn’t DENR be finding ways to encourage our citizens to pollute less? So what is DENR doing with all the money it gets from the tourists? If the dirtiness of Boracay. as it is everywhere else here, is any indication, nothing!  I guess DENR Secretary and renowned sycophant Lito Atienza is more interested in using all those funds on organizing wasteful Manny Pacquiao victory parades than in actually cleaning up this already-polluted stink-pit of a country.