CNY: Our first day at the beach

Buses leave on the hour from 7AM-11PM for D'Mall; pickups @ 20 after each hour for returns. We plan to hit the beach and eat seafood @ a restaurant recommended by someone who had just returned from Borocay. Pick your dinner from the market, then sit down until it is delivered cooked as you ordered to your table. Hmmmm...lobster, scallops, shrimp, all await us after our day in the sun. We are all planning messages ($7 per hour on the beach), body scrubs (1 hour = $20), and facials (45 minutes = $16).

I put on my uniform of the week--a bathing suit and cover-up---after having coffee on the balcony. Down to the beach we go in trucks. Pick your spot--lounges and chairs, palm trees and umbrellas--and stay the day. The sand is "white," the outriggers are sailing,people are playing and sand castles are being built while swimmers float by in their rings and on their rafts. The water is waist high, clear green, with some chartreuse sea weed floating in it. I don't do salt water, but everyone else floats for four hours. I have veggie curry and a mango milkshake for lunch (I will grow addicted to the mango milkshake ..."little milk, little sugar"...available with pineapple or banana everywhere on the beach). I tire of sitting alone in the sun...morning sun is about all I can take anyway...and leave for home., a shower, a read. Back to the beach in time for closing down the family beach spots, and walking to the fish market and Shebaba, the restaurant that will cook our selections. We choose lobster, scallops, shrimp both large and small, 2 white fish, and veggies. All are cooked too bland for us chili eaters. Lobster and scallops taste like sea water...kids like the chicken better! We decided we would all go back for the giant shrimp, but not for any other of the seafoods we ordered. I did have fun walking through the stalls next to the fish market, and bought plastic lanterns (you will have to come see them strung on the oak tree in my back yard in CC), 3 small woven summer wrist purses, a cloth and bamboo wind chime, and a fresh pineapple, peeled, for my breakfast ( I am not doing the hotel's breakfast buffets...many stories to tell about the dining room again!).

Home on the bus...what a cluster...and some loud mouth man is commandeering buses and shoving his family on them. People were fighting for trucks...not enough trucks...UGLY! Sorry, but some of the travel groups are notoriously rude and loud! And for a very good reason!!!!

Back at the hotel, kids swim to get the sand off. We close out the pool, and finish the day with showers and a bit of the Olympics...biathlon skiing and shooting...not much interest here! Time to upload the pictures of our first day in Borocay...