When Lee came to my room for breakfast, I had taken a shower and the hot meal was waiting for us.

After breakfast, we just drove around. We did not know where else to go, so we decided to go to the tourism center to get some information about the major tourist spots in Alaminos. We were done with island hopping, the highlight activity in the place.

Upon reaching the tourism office, I had to fall in line for quite a long time. First, the officer recommended Bakawan/Mangrove Park and second, she recommended an orchidarium.

We drove and drove around until we reached Mangrove Park. It turned out that the Mangrove Park was the place we first unknowingly headed for when we were looking for the Hundred Islands Park proper.

We enjoyed walking in the bridge while watching the jjantong-o fishes, as Lee calls them. He was happy to see those fishes because he thought that those fishes were found only in Korea. He then went on to say how delicious spicy jjang dong-o soup is. He kept on saying jjang-dong-o tungtung-an, which means fat jjang dong-o. I don’t know the English name for jjang dong-o; I don’t even know how call it in my mother tongue; it was my first time to see it. Let me just describe it. Its eyes are high up on its head, like those of a hippo. It has gray spots all over is body and at that time when I saw it, it looked like it was flapping in the shallow water with its thick (or fat) fins.

There was nothing much to do there at the Mangrove Park. As usual, we enjoyed the serenity of the place and we admired how the place is being maintained. We watched some fishes swimming around the dense roots of the mangroves, we watched some birds flying above the mangroves.

After a while, we decided to look for the orchidarium. After viewing the sea for a long time, we wanted to see some flowers.

While driving on the country road,  we sang “ jjang-dong-o tungtungan” to the tune of Jason Mraz’ Distance (which, at that time, was being playing on the car stereo), a duet with the beautiful Christina Perri.

We just drove and drove for almost two hours  but we could not find the orchidarium that the woman in the tourism office told us about. We asked the locals but they all gave contradicting directions and as a result, we just kept on driving on to and fro on the same country road, wasting our gas and patience, Fortunately, Jason Mraz was spewing out his ballads one more time and we had a great time singing along with Jason Mraz’s Beautiful Mess. There was a line that said “Here we are, here we are…” Lee and I both realized the irony in the situation so we laughed.

We got tired driving around. Finally, we decided to go to our accommodation and just kill time. We stopped by McDonald’s for lunch. I told Lee about the conversation I heard on Pilgrimage Island, about a place called Bolinao. He instantly Googled some pictures and checked the travel time. Lee told me to hurry up; we were going to Bolinao.

I just wrapped my half-eaten burger with napkin and we headed back to our accommodation. Lee could not hide his excitement. I hurriedly packed up, I quickly cleaned my room which was our cooking place. I was quite anxious because it was already past 1pm, and we did not know where we were going. I reminded myself that it was a road trip after all, so I just had to let things be.

We saw the sadness in the house owner’s eyes. He was sad (and of course disappointed) because we were cutting our stay short.  We apologetically said goodbye to them. The caretaker of the house was also sad but he politely told us said that Patar is the best place in Bolinao. Again, Lee checked the pictures of Patar beach and he was clearly impressed.

A few minutes after, we were already heading for Patar Bolinao.