Finding Myself on Sambawan Island

With four days off for Christmas, a few of the volunteers decided to take a trip to Sambawan, one of the nearby islands, with three of the local volunteers. So, while the rest of base was drinking punch, mulled wine, or Tanduay (or all of the above) as Christmas Day turned into night, we were preparing for the 4am wakeup call the next morning.

After asking a few volunteers to join the trip, our roster was stacked. We had:

1. Britt – from the Netherlands but living in Australia
2. Davide – from Italy but traveling indefinitely
3. Mustafa – from Egypt on his first trip out of the country
4. Patrick – from Germany and plays the guitar (yesssss)
5. Melissa – from Spain but Filipino
6. Nora – from France and impossible to find on Facebook (until recently)
7. Karina, Emily, and Cara – local Filipino volunteers
8. Me – serial blogger and feeling introverted at this point in my trip

Luckily for me, Patrick was part of this roster, because if he hadn’t stormed into my room at 4am calling my name, I may have missed the entire trip. Let’s say I’m not a morning person, even though that’s only partly true, but half-awake and dreary-eyed, I met the rest of the group on the road as we tried to hail a tricycle to get to the van terminal.

The plan was to take a van from Tacloban to Naval, where we would then catch a boat to Sambawan. Emily was already at the terminal saving us seats for the next available bus, and Melissa was already in Naval because her family lived there, so the rest of us caught two tricycles from Utap to downtown Tacloban to meet Emily at the terminal.

We bought tickets for the 5:30am van to Naval, which gave us just enough time to hit up McDonald’s for a fried chicken sandwich at five in the morning. Armed with greasy food, we boarded the van with a surprising amount of energy for the early hours of the morning.

…and then I fell asleep for most of the ride.

I woke up when the van began to take twists and turns on the road, swaying back and forth in a nice nausea-inducing rhythm. I had brought motion sickness pills for this exact reason but forgot to take them in a McDonald’s-induced haze, but alas it was too late. Feeling dizzy and on the verge of throwing up over my friends, I was thankful when we finally arrived at our destination – a Prince supermarket in Naval.

We stood in front of the supermarket for about two minutes trying to find Melissa before a man approached us asking if we were Melissa’s friends. We followed him to a house nearby where we met Melissa’s aunt and leaned that Melissa was at another market getting supplies for Sambawan, since there wouldn’t be much on the island that we could buy.

When Melissa returned with fish, vegetables, charcoal, and other supplies, I took this picture of Melissa and her aunt looking at someone else as they took a picture.

We ate breakfast (toast, papaya, boiled bananas, eggs), gathered some snacks from the Prince supermarket, bought 30 liters of water, and purchased the one bottle of Tanduay for the weekend (we’re the tame bunch). Soon, we were on the road, headed to the dock to catch our boat to paradise island.

After taking some photos of the dock and the breathtaking views of islands we would never actually visit, we loaded up the boat with our food and bags, I optimistically took my motion-sickness pills, and we piled in for a 30-minute ride to paradise.

When we finally landed on Sambawan after what seemed like an eternity, especially since my motion-sickness pills were working questionably, I stumbled off of the boat to the safety of land.

After weighing the pros and cons between getting a cottage and a hut, we ended up paying for a cottage, which was a good idea since we were staying the night and a private toilet and shower ended up being useful. And enclosed walls. And beds. If we didn’t have enclosed walls, we would have been in a bit of trouble the next day when we had strong wind and rain.

With our housing situation figured out and our bags safe and sound within enclosed walls (reaaaally wanted those enclosed walls), everyone decided to hit the beach and go swimming…except for me. Part of it was that I always like exploring the beach, part of it was that I didn’t pack a swimming suit, part of it was that everyone was coming out of the water with bleeding feet because of the sharp rocks, and part of it was I didn’t want to get sticky(er) from the salt water.

But I suspect the real reason was that I was going through the phase I hinted at in my last post where I was closing off and becoming even more introverted than normal (which is definitely saying something) because I was quickly realizing that everyone I was meeting would soon leave and I might never hear from them again. The fact that I myself would be leaving the Philippines in less than a week from this island trip didn’t really help much either.

I thought about how all of the energy I had spent trying to meet new people and how exhausted it had made me. And now that a lot of friends had left, was that exhaustion really for nothing? Rather than face these hard questions with the new friends I had on this island, I decided to experience Sambawan through the filter of my camera lens on my own, which ended up producing some pretty sweet pictures but not many answers to my anxieties.

Essentially, I found the island was separated into three sections – the South section, which I couldn’t get to without venturing into the water and swimming around because of the high tide, the middle section, where our cottage resided, and the North section, which I would try to venture to later. After discovering that the Southern section would be difficult to get to without a swimsuit and with Converse, I decided to walk up to the watch tower at the top of the middle section to get a better view of the island.

After going for the South and middle section of the island, I decided to see if I could get to the North part of Sambawan. Everyone else was still swimming/snorkeling/sleeping, so I walked past our cottage and made my way North, towards the rocks.

I made it fairly far on the rocks but ended up in a bit of a pickle where the tide was coming in over all of the rocks I needed to get to the Northern part of the island. So, after about 20 minutes of clinging on to a ledge watching the tide come in and deciding there was no rock I could safely jump to, I headed back to the cottage to take more pictures and catch up with everyone else.

As the sun began to set on our paradise island, Melissa suggested we go to the lookout tower to see the island as the sun set and also take about 380912849321 pictures, so we obliged. Lucky for you, I’ll only post the best ones.

After watching the sun set from the lookout tower, we headed back to the cottage to eat dinner in the dark. Luckily, Melissa’s water bottle was actually a torch, so we had a little light, and the dinner was delicious! I’d post pictures, but it was dark, so…yeah.

After dinner we decided to walk as a group to the Southern part of the island, since most of the group didn’t take an existential solo journey over there during the day. With the help of Melissa’s water bottle/torch/solar-powered thing, we made our way to the Southern area and plopped down on the sand/mostly rocks and shells to admire the ocean at night.

Because I was smart and brought the Tanduay with us, we decided to play a game of “Never have I ever.” Like I said, we were the tame group, so our questions dealt more with travel and experiences than relationships and sex, but we still did learn a fair bit about each other.

As we sat under the moonlit beach with the waves creeping closer with every crash, I realized something that night. My worry before about spending energy to get to know people and then immediately losing them was a completely valid phenomenon, but was no excuse to completely avoid talking to new people. Because part of the joys of traveling and seeing the world is the process of getting to know new people and new perspectives, and these are things that can stick with you even after the actual person is far away on another adventure. And who knows, there are special people you meet that you might end up staying in touch with and seeing again in the future. But for the time being, getting lost in the moments, enjoying the present, and enjoying the company of the people around me was what mattered most. As we finished the bottle of Tanduay and walked back to our cottage, I was happy to be with these wonderful people, in this wonderful place, having a wonderful time.

The next morning, we woke up just before sunrise to try and see the island through the light of the first sun, but when we got to the top of the lookout tower, we were surprised to see the sun behind clouds. It was still a nice view though!

While most of the group decided to do one last scuba trip before coming back to pack up for our noon departure on the sea-sicky boat of doom, a few of us stayed back to guard the cottage. And by “guard the cottage,” I definitely mean “party hard and drink a bunch of coconut wine, or ‘tuba.'”

And by “drinking all the tuba” I definitely mean “sleeping a few extra hours after wake up for the sunrise.” We ended up sleeping a bit, resting a bit, and saving everyone’s stuff from the torrential downpour and heavy rain a bit. When the death boat came at noon, I had already taken a few motion sickness pills and strapped in for the ride back to the mainland.

Surprisingly, the motion-sickness pills either worked or I became temporarily immune to motion-sickness, and when we docked I threw up over everyone. Just kidding, I had no motion sickness at all, a Christmas Miracle!

With a few hours before our van back to Tacloban, we decided to go see a nearby waterfall before going to the van terminal. So we hopped into the back of a truck and headed out!

When we got to the waterfall, I went back to my normal introverted self and sat on the rocks, listening to the water flow into the pool below while most of the group dove into the water. There was something calming about the sound of the water washing over itself that made me feel at peace. I felt glad that I was with friends who didn’t make me feel like I had to join them in every water adventure (because really, I’m not usually a fan of water with sharp rocks in it), but were nice and kind enough to take me on this adventure with them and make sure I wasn’t completely slipping off the radar. I think it was at this point when I decided to write the “here’s to” of my last post, and end the post on a note that I hoped to see some of the people in the future, because the people on this trip are definitely ones who fall into that category.

We ended up making our van on time and getting back to Tacloban in time to eat a group dinner at Dream Cafe, the signature cafe where you could always count on seeing someone from All Hands sitting at its tables. When we returned to base late that night, we all went our separate ways, most of us heading straight to the showers to clean up and get ready for a big day of work the next morning.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I am so incredibly grateful that Patrick came into my room that Saturday morning to wake me up, because without that I may have completely missed out on this amazing experience. Not only did I get to see a beautiful island, but I also came out of this trip feeling like I finally had friends that I had actually gotten to know a little deeper than the usual people on Base. I’d still grown close to people who didn’t go on this trip, but as I said in my previous post, this was the point in the trip where I came out of that quiet zone of Brian talks to no one and began to feel at home. And three days before my departure date no less, but honestly I think I had to go through those motions to truly appreciate what had happened. To repeat a bit from last post:

The first week I was in the Philippines, I was anxious to meet new people, mostly focusing on remembering names and quirks and less on actually getting to know others. The second week I started meeting and caring for everyone a whole lot, being talkative (for me at least) and social. The third week, a bunch of my newfound friends left for more adventures and I had that existential crisis, but by the fourth week I had met some great people who showed me that worrying about what might happen in the future does very little good for the present. In a traveling world, people come and go, but experiences stick with you, so have experiences, and maybe the people will stick with you in your heart.

…But I still expect to see some of you in person in the future!!!