Sitting here on the balcony, overlooking the beach on a beautiful tropical island, yesterday’s dangerous adventures almost seem of a different world. Waking up to a breathtaking panorama of islands spread out across the water, appearing deceptively close by, plus the first dive of the day on a reef resplendent with multicolored corals and teeming with brilliant-hued fish—these take you to a different world from wherever you might have been yesterday.
I’m staying at Portofino on Little La Laguna Beach in Puerto Galera, and am not exactly on a tropical island—Sabang Beach (the town) and Little and Big La Laguna are along the outer edge of a premonitory shaped kind of like Bullwinkle’s horn in the cartoon, a very small protrusion from the island of Minodoro. Although Mindoro is one of the larger islands of the many Philippines, it is not a major one. My hotel is almost at the end of the string of establishments like dive shops, guest houses, hotels, restaurants, etc. that stretch along the beach, and is accessible only by water at high tide—as I found out the hard way last night.
Booking at the last minute, I was able to get a second-floor suite with a separate bedroom and kitchen, and a large living area—plus this balcony I’m on, with planters in the corners, and a beach umbrella set in a round table. It overlooks several tables with round thatched umbrella-roofs on a stone patio below around the swimming pool, with the narrow beach just beyond. Several tall palms block parts of the view, so there may be more than the three islands across the channel. Small bancas (small boats with outrigger bamboo pontoons) are tied up on the shore, awaiting a charter. The usual kind of vendors ply the beach, selling sunglasses, handicraft necklaces, even watches—the beach is pretty much deserted, but they wait patiently to catch the attention of diners on the patios by the beach, or couples strolling along.
Action 4 Divers, a PADI dive shop, is just a few doors down along the narrow beach (there’s no boardwalk, and at high tide—as I found out last night—the waves crash onto the steps of the shops between Portofino and the dive shop. It’s a small operation, and we took one of the small bancas out to a wreck this morning. After a very short boat ride, with a brief stop to pick up another diver “in town’ (Sabang), we arrived above the wreck. The metal-hulled boat had been sunk intentionally, to provide a footing for marine life.
Of course, it worked, as always, and the shell was encrusted with corals and other growths. And as we swam away, I saw that the entire area was covered with soft corals, waving in the gentle current. Most were white or pink, but many were delicately painted with bright colors, resplendent in the sunlight shimmering through the rolling transparency above. And fish were swarming in all different directions, hundreds of species, mostly small and brightly colored.
Yes, that kind of experience with such intense natural harmony can sooth away the worst of memories, at least temporarily. Even the bad taste from yesterday’s horror story.
The day started pleasantly enough. The car picked us up at my hotel in Angeles City on schedule promptly at 1 PM. We stopped at the ATM and it was actually was working and dispensing cash. The day before, I had to make three trips before it gave me money. My girlfriend Teresa and our companion Zeny were in a good mood, chattering in Tagalog as we drove. Traffic was moving smoothly along the toll road—until we got to Manila. We had to drive through a part of the city. Although we seemed to be on some kind of expressway (mostly there were no traffic lights), there were establishments along the sides of the road, and cars were stopping to park and pulling out into traffic, slowing the flow in all lanes. Distinctively decorated jeepneys would stop in the middle of the road to load or unload passengers, or pull out from the shoulder verrrrry slowly.
Traffic flow seemed to follow its own rules—or perhaps, no rules. Those white dashed lines down the road did not appear to influence drivers, except at one point I noticed ours was using those lines as the center of his own personal lane, and even when he changed lanes, he was straddling the divider lines. Lane indicators had little meaning, the shoulder was used as functional lane—usually the fast one—and overhead signs like “Buses and Trucks” or “Private, Municipal Use Only” were completely ignored. I thought I changed lanes a lot, back on the freeways of LA, but our driver put me to shame on that one—and a lot of others did too.
Out of Manila finally, the rest of the drive to Batangas mostly was on two-lane roads, and it wasn’t as bad as the trip to Subic Bay I had taken earlier. That drive was mostly along a secondary (or maybe tertiary) road. The right-of-way rule there seemed to be that if there was any opening at all between vehicles on the road, you could pull out onto the road—even if the oncoming vehicle was a truck going 50 kph, and you were on a three-wheeled bicycle-type contraption. Needless to say, that drive was slow and frustrating, as the van I was in kept braking to accommodate the human-powered vehicles, punctuated with moments of terror when the driver attempted to pass in the face of oncoming traffic.
It started to rain, first lightly and then steadily for the last half-hour before we arrived, but it let up to occasional drops as we entered Batangas. They had a cheaper means of traffic control than stop signs and speed bumps: neglect to the point of creating severe potholes, usually concentrated in short stretches. Sure slowed us down.
We arrived at the ferry terminal just after 5, in 4 hours like the travel agent had promised. The car pulled up at the entrance from the street, and was immediately surrounded by vendors. They pressed around as we got out and a couple tried to grab our luggage to unload it, but I pushed them aside and tried to ignore them. But when one said “Puerto Galera?” I said yes, no harm in letting them know where we were going. He piped up that the last boat had left, did I want a private banca to take us there? Hmmm, this sounded bad. “How much?” I asked, thinking maybe now was a good time to begin negotiations just in case. “3,500 pesos,” he said. I laughed, and with a wave of my hand, said “Way too much.” The travel agent who arranged the car and hotel had quoted 2,500 for the private banca. But she also had said that the ferry ran frequently, and didn’t tell us that we wouldn’t be able to make it.
I asked our driver to wait while we went inside to investigate this unfortunate possibility. The terminal had a number of booths for ferries to different places, and I found out that the last boat of the day had indeed left, and the next boat to Puerto Galera was at 7 AM.
Standing there in the terminal, uncomfortably surrounded by touts and vendors, I pulled out my phone and the receipt from the travel agency. I called the first number out of the three, and the mechanical voice informed me that the call was not allowed. What the…? As far as I knew, all of the Philippines had a single country code. But the office was a land line, I realized, and perhaps calling land lines had different rules than calling cellphones—I knew that phone service wasn’t always as simple as I would like to expect in foreign countries. I asked the nice lady in one ticket booth how to make the call, and she suggested putting “045” in front of the number. It worked!
After explaining my situation most of the way through, the voice on the line informed me that this was not the office I had booked through, I should call another number. Fumbling for a pen, I wrote down the number she gave me. It wasn’t one of the numbers on the travel agency letterhead, but I did get the agent who had booked me on the phone. Again explaining the situation, and expressing my unhappiness that she had not informed me that the last boat out would leave around the time our car arrived, I asked her what to do now. There was silence on the phone, then I could hear some chatter in the background, then silence again. And she was gone. I don’t know what happened, but I was pretty upset, and ignored the rational thought to call her back and find out what she had to say.
The touts and vendors were still gathered around us like vultures, hanging on to every word from my phone conversation and with my companions. I told the boat tout I’d pay 2,500 pesos. He asked for 2,700—something about for the boys—and I agreed. Better to just get a private boat there and now, I thought, than to try to call back an apparently incompetent and possibly disinterested travel agent. I called our driver and told him we were OK. Thus began the odyssey.
Ramil was the tout’s name, and he led us out of the terminal back the way we came in, stopping at the vendor stands lining the street to suggest we should buy beer or other refreshments for the trip. We declined, and he started leading us along the street we had driven into the terminal.
My small suitcase was packed full, and was heavy for its size, and we had five plastic bags (Filipina suitcases)—one with the stuff I couldn’t fit in. My girlfriend and Zeny weren’t bringing much—and we hadn’t expected the trip to involve anything other than transfers from one conveyance to another. But I didn’t want Ramil or his boys to carry my bag—it had wheels, and contained my computer, so I preferred to roll it along myself.
Outside the entrance to the terminal, we turned right along a street with some shops on one side and a wall on the other. It started raining lightly. A long block down, we turned right into an opening in the wall that led between two buildings, apparently ramshackle houses. I started getting a little uneasy, but at least we were heading for the water. And the rain stopped.
The pathway was narrow, and after a few meters the paving became less continuous. I picked up my bag, since the wheels weren’t doing well in the mud between the stones. We turned left, went a short distance, then turned right. Now I was getting quite uneasy. We were in the bowels of a residential area, with doors open to reveal rooms with a refrigerator here, a four-poster bed completely enclosed with opaque curtains there, Christmas trees in some of the rooms. This was a look at the life of the impoverished Filipino I had not planned on seeing.
The pathway was dark, lit with the glare of an occasional light outside a door, or from inside some of the houses. The surface was uneven, and it was difficult to see where to step to avoid tripping. Puddles and muddy spots awaited our feet, and I soon gave up on the idea of staying dry. We turned right and left a few more times, and I started thinking really dark thoughts. I was getting scared.
We’re about to be robbed, maybe even killed, I thought. What would stop an impoverished, desperate person from such a path to material gain? What could be easier than preying on tourists, luring the occasional foolishly incautious one into a dark place, and robbing them? Killing wouldn’t be a good idea for them, I thought with some relief as I attempted to apply logic to quell my emotions, it wouldn’t be necessary and would bring too much heat for future operations. I looked back to see how many people were involved, there was just Ramil in front and a boy behind. They’re leading us to a spot where others will set upon us, I though. Carrying the weight of my bag was becoming very uncomfortable, its oppressiveness adding to the darkness of my thoughts.
But then we emerged from the warren onto a concrete quay, and several boats were in the waters some distance away. Wait here, Ramil said. Two others had joined the boy, and there seemed to be some boys already on the pier further down. My anxiety level went down slightly, and then further as I realized I had to reassure the two women. And as we waited, my fear decreased a little more—nothing had happened yet. After about 15 minutes, Ramil came back and said he couldn’t find the captain.
“Let’s go to another boat,” he said. “How far do we have to go?” I asked, a little tired already from the exertion of carrying my luggage over uneven pathways. “Just back,” he said, “then we’ll take a trike.” We started retracing our steps back to the street. At one point I stepped onto a piece of wood I thought had been laid down over mud. My foot went trough the rotten plywood, into a hole up to my knee with a big splash. I fell to the left and downwards against the wall as my leg went down, and I felt the pain of flesh scraping away on my arm. A fetid stink arose from the water-filled pit as I pulled my leg out. Except for my arm, I didn’t feel like I had hurt anything, but I was most unhappy about dipping my leg in the stinking water, and my sandal was filled with something gritty—but I didn’t want to touch it. It was too dark to see anything anyhow, and I just didn’t want to know what I had stepped into.
Zeny pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of her bags and applied it to my arm, stinging a dime-sized area of raw flesh. Ramil showed a little concern too, which was reassuring—I felt less like a potential victim for a few moments.
We emerged from the maze onto the street, got into two trikes with our bags, and took off. But when we pulled off the road into a field, I started worrying again. We drove off across the muddy expanse, apparently towards an industrial facility, a refinery or power plant. A few drops of rain floated behind the windshield. Visions of the gangster movies came into my head, we’re being taken to a deserted place to be robbed or killed. The trike got stuck in the mud, and the boy on the back hopped of and pushed it free, as the bottom of the sidecar scraped on some rocks with a horrible screech. We headed towards the lit-up smokestacks, then turned towards the water.
We came up to the water, and drove along what appeared to be a muddy, rocky beach on the left, with a few boats up on land. When I looked to the right, I noticed dim yellow lights flickering—cloth wicks set in bottles of kerosene and lit. Peering into the darkness beyond, I saw squalid structures that seemed to be pieced together from disparate components, the dilapidated huts of squatters, with people sitting out front.
Finally, we emerged onto a concrete walkway along the water, with a steep embankment of large rocks leading down to the water. After driving a short distance, we stopped at a moored boat. This one was completely open, with no cover to provide shelter from the raindrops that had been tickling us intermittently all evening. Getting out of the trikes, we noticed that another trike had joined us, carrying a Filipino man and two women. Now I was starting to feel better, surely we were not going to be victims. Carefully, I clambered down the treacherous rocky slope to wash off my fouled leg in the cool waters and get the gritty feeling out of my sandal.
But Ramil still could not produce a captain, and after ten minutes, we reboarded the trikes and drove a few hundred meters further down the concrete pathway. Here, we stopped in front of a larger boat that had a canvas cover stretched over a pole along most of the length of the open hull. Like all the boats we had seen, this one was hardly more than a big canoe with bamboo outrigger pontoons. But at least there was shelter from the intermittent raindrops, threatening more at any moment, and the boat WAS larger. It actually had three planks across the middle to provide seating for six.
The captain arrived, and we all clambered aboard, helped by the boys who had seemed a threat not long before—now they were all smiling, having actually earned their commissions. Once we were all safely on board, Ramil came aboard and asked for the money. I gave him 3,000 pesos and asked for my change. He smiled and said, “Christmas present!” but I was not in such a festive mood, having just realized that I was going to get taken for an extra 300 pesos. “We go to Portofino Hotel for sure?” I asked, looking for extra assurance for my extra 300 pesos, and he nodded. Later, we found out that the three Filpinos had paid 500 pesos apiece. Who knows what the captain actually got.
Ramil disembarked, and we set out across the dark waters. After about ten minutes, the sky seemed lighter, and I noticed that the Filipinos had moved back out from under the cover, onto the stern in front of the captain. I ventured out onto the bow, holding onto the post to which the horizontal support for the canvas cover was lashed. The boat seemed primitive, but the lashing was polypropylene fiber—a thick version of the kind that looks like thread but cuts your fingers if you try to break it. The pontoons were also lashed with modern plastic.
The bow was rocking up and down as it plowed through the swells of the open channel, and soon my girlfriend joined me there. She squealed with delight as the boat went up particularly high on a swell, and squealed again as the spray hit her leg. The captain cut back the motor a bit, as the swells were giving us an E-ticket ride, but I felt no sense of danger in our fragile craft as the lights along the shoreline receded into the distance—and the lights in front of us stayed tiny and distant, unchanging as we drove forward.
The sky started clearing before long, and as the lights of Batangas merged into one bright spot on the horizon, the sky became brighter. Soon, we caught a glimpse of the moon through an opening in the clouds, and she began demurely revealing more of herself as wisps of clouds danced underneath, and finally, as the clouds yielded to her splendor, the full moon beamed down on us.
Now we were at peace with the world. The uneven thickness of the clouds covering much of the sky, illuminated to different shades by the bright moon above, presented an awesome display of nature’s beauty. And rocking gently on the bow of the ship, feeling a light salt spray now and then as we breached a larger swell, we enjoyed one of those sublime moments of contentment that lasted and lasted. At least, until we landed.
About an hour and a half into the trip, the lights in front of us started spreading out, and a green arc of light stood out. Soon, the arc separated into letters—“Garden of Eden,” and we were heading straight for the mythical place. Boats were moored throughout the little bay that we were sailing into; most were outriggers like ours, some larger, a few smaller. We could only see a couple of boats that didn’t have outriggers.
We approached a narrow beach in front of the Garden of Eden, and could see that it was a restaurant. The one boy who had stayed on the boat as crew hopped into the water with a rope attached to the boat, and guided us up to a concrete landing next to the beach. The three passengers came up onto the bow and stepped off the gently rocking boat onto the concrete, and then climbed a three-foot stone wall topped with a four-foot post-and-crossbar fence, handing their luggage up from below. The captain seemed to expect us to get off, so I said we were going to Portofino, would he take us there.
He told us that we should get off here, and walk to Portofino along the pathway there. Apparently, it was some distance away. I told him we had paid to be taken to Portofino, and refused to get off the boat. Reluctantly, after some discussion in Tagalog with my girlfriend and her auntie, he shoved off and headed out into the bay.
Then he turned back, and told us it was too dangerous to go to Portofino, we would have to get out at Garden of Eden and walk along the path. When we pulled up to the concrete landing, I sensed that further discussion would be useless, and maybe create more problems. Ramil was not around to confirm our charter, and anyway, who knows what he actually told the captain.
The boy helped us onto the landing with our luggage, then hopped back onto the boat as he shoved it off. As he pushed it away from the beach with a pole, the next chapter in our saga was just beginning.
After I climbed the wall and the fence, Teresa handed up our luggage. I pulled it over the fence, squeezing between the chairs of some surprised diners, who were no doubt wondering about this second invasion of the hour. Then Teresa and Zeny clambered over the fence with my help.
I went to the counter at the restaurant and asked where we could get a trike or taxi to Portofino. The clerk shook her head and said “No taxi.” She didn’t speak English very well, so Teresa spoke with her and found out that the way to Portofino was along a walkway and there was no road to the hotel. The clerk was not cooperative about calling the hotel, or even providing its phone number, but told us it was about a kilometer down along the path.
With a sigh, I resigned myself to walking the distance to the hotel—but I was not prepared for what that involved. Perhaps the first sign was a speed bump, incongruously installed on a narrow pedestrian path. It definitely prevented my roller suitcase from exceeding the speed limit there, and trying to dodge the puddles along the way kept our speed respectable further along. As we continued, the concrete walkway became uneven as it turned around corners, passing though the west half of the Sabang business area, and then into what seemed like a more residential area after we went through the Atlantis Resort, on both sides of the pathway.
Soon, we had to cross a dark muddy area, emerging along the sea where the walkway narrowed—then it ended. I was already carrying my heavy bag, so walking along the sand was not much more of a problem. A few hundred yards along, a few steps led up to a paved walkway that wound around the point separating Sabang from La Laguna. And the tide had come in, waves were crashing up along the side of the walkway, and spilling onto it. Then a big one came in, and splashed our legs, soaking the lower half of our pants.
I pulled my bag up onto my shoulder, praying that water had not penetrated through to my computer. Around the point, the walkway ended again, and we walked along the sand. It seemed like we had walked at least a mile. We went past a few hotels and some residential-looking buildings, a little store. The beach narrowed, and soon disappeared under the surf, which was pounding up against the very steps of the buildings. We were knee-deep as the waves came in at one point, trying to hold our bags high enough to keep them from the brunt of the splashing of the surf. The water receded to cover only our ankles, then swelled up to our knees as we passed several sets of steps leading to porches several feet above the high-water mark.
Mercifully, we saw “Portofino” at the base of the next stairs, and scrambled up them. At last! we were safe.
We walked along the pathway into the hotel, to the desk. The clerk was expecting us, apparently the travel agency had called to inform the hotel we were delayed—and, it was a small, friendly place, where the staff seemed to know the guests. Check-in was easy, and we went up the stairs to a nice suite.
Our great travel agent had booked the hotel for two people, so the suite wasn’t ready for three: only two towels, and no sheets for the convertible couch/bed in the living room. I went back down do arrange for the additional items, only to find that the desk was closed. The clerk had stayed later than normal to await us, and left as soon as we checked in; the desk usually shut down at 9, and it was almost 10 PM. A man was going around to lock up, and I prevailed upon him to help us. I followed him for about five minutes while he looked for keys to open different doors and closets until he found what we needed.
While I was doing that, the girls had unpacked partially, and spread out the wet stuff to dry out. My computer was OK, but my diving magazines were soaked (fortunately, they dried out to be usable if crinkled, somehow the glossy paper pages didn’t stick together very much). The damage was not too bad, fortunately—our clothing was wet, but water had only gotten into one bag and dampened some garments there. We took quick showers, and dressed properly to brave the surf again.
We hadn’t eaten in many hours, but Portofino had nothing to offer—the whole place was now closed up, and there were no snack machines around (or anywhere on the island, I suspect). So we plunged back into the pounding surf to find a restaurant down the beach towards town—there was nothing the other way. A hundred yards down the beach was a hotel with a restaurant, we decided that if it had food and was open it was good enough for us, so we stopped there. I thought the food was very tasty, but we were sufficiently starving that almost anything would have tasted good.
It was midnight by the time we finished, so we just went back to the hotel, washed off a little better, and started to enjoy each other before going to sleep. But Teresa still had that pain in her belly, and it lasted during the whole trip, so I couldn’t ball her. I was really glad I had brought Zeny along. Still, Teresa was an enthusiastic participant when possible, so I still had great threesomes (as well as twosomes and a foursome, on subsequent nights).
In the morning, I went down to the SCUBA shop, and spent the day studying for my Advanced Open Water certification, and actually diving. The weather was overcast, so the girls walked along the beach and otherwise amused themselves. The weather wasn’t sunny for more than a few minutes at a time during the 3½ days we were there, and they walked the beaches, wandered around town (I gave them a little spending money), or stayed in the room and watched TV. Here are some pictures on the balcony and in the unit; the last picture is Zeny on the banca on the way home.
Photos: Teresa 32 33
Photos: Zeny 34 35 36 37 38 39
The next night, we went into town. At about 7, the tide had not come in yet, so we didn’t have to walk through the surf to get into town. We had dinner at Garden of Eden, which was OK but not great. Then we started to explore the nightlife scene.
There are a half-dozen “discos” in Sabang. They are actually just gogo bars, with some of the girls putting on a show, mostly featuring a lot of splits and gyrations. Most of the girls were average and danced with varying degrees of listlessness—but some of them, both the girls and their individual routines, were of Angelwitch (Bangkok) quality. The common arrangement was for one or a few, maybe half a dozen, girls at a time to dance on stage, with shift changes every few songs, and quite a few shifts of girls. The dancers sat around or mixed with the clients between their shifts.
Quality of looks seemed comparable to Angeles, with a some 8s and maybe a few 9s among mostly less desirable (IMHO) girls. I was surprised at the prices. The barfines were 2,000 pesos (“1,000 to the bar, 1,000 to the lady” the mamasans explained), and lady drinks are 200 to 250 pesos (or more for some). Unfortunately, I didn’t make notes on the different discos, but they are easy to find, as Sabang is tiny with discos situated along one pathway a short distance apart; the two biggest ones are across from each other. We didn’t get into Puerto Galera itself, so I have no idea what’s there.
That night, when we walked into the first disco, a very attractive spinner named Haidi was executing very impressive moves on stage (like jumping up, and landing in a full split). We went to several discos, but I was too tired to take home a third girl that night. The next night, we looked around a few discos and I found a stunner. But she could only do short time, she said she had a date at midnight. I asked her if she was available the next night, and she said she was. But when we came back the following night at 9, she was already with somebody. Damn, she was the best-looking girl we saw the whole time. Apparently others thought so too.
The best restaurant we found was Cap’n Gregg’s (a little hard to find, but worth it), and we ate there the last two nights. Anyway, the third night we did the circuit of the few discos without seeing anyone that caught our eyes. It was getting late when Teresa invited Apple over for a drink, and she seemed very nice, acceptable for the night. Teresa seemed to be happy with her, and Zeny was always agreeable to everything, so we barfined her, and headed back to the hotel—walking through the surf at the tail end of the journey. Along the way, I discovered that Teresa couldn’t talk with Apple; although they were both from the same province, Apple spoke a different language, and only a few words of English or Tagalog. Well, there are some things you don’t need language for, and Apple didn’t need language.
Photo: Apple (previously posted)
Photos: Apple 40 41 42
The last night, after loosing out on the stunner, I spotted Haidi, and she was available, so we barfined her—she was one of the better-looking girls in town, and seemed personable. She was 22, and had been working on Roxas in Manila before coming to Sabang. And she was indeed very sweet, although she was not comfortable with the orgy scene. So after getting me very hot indeed, Teresa and Zeny left me alone with Haidi, and she started being very affectionate in private. Too bad we couldn’t all be friends.
She said she had finished her perios three days ago, but wanted me to wear a condom. I told her she couldn’t possibly get pregnant, but that failed to convince her. So I promised her I wouldn’t come inside her. Then, Whoops! I couldn’t help myself. I suppose I could have claimed I hadn’t come yet (although it was pretty obvious, I’m a screamer), but I ‘fessed up, and Haidi freaked out. It took me a while to calm her down, but I finally did. We went out into the other room, where Teresa and Zeny were watching TV, and socialized. After a while, she had forgiven me.
Photo: Haidi (previously posted)
Photo: Haidi & Teresa 43
Photos: Haidi 44 45 46 47 48
Haidi slept curled up with me in the bed, while Teresa and Zeny slept on the couch/bed in the living room. She woke me up early to leave, but refused me a quick session before she left. I tipped her anyway because I felt so bad about upsetting her so much the night before, and went back to sleep since we weren’t leaving until after noon.
Zeny came into the bedroom later and woke me up with her excellent oral skills. After breakfast, we packed and took a small banca from in front of the hotel to the pier in Puerto Galera, where we could catch the ferry to Batangas. It was a lovely little ride, much nicer than the first one, as we went around the “horn” to the main town.
The waterfront was crawling with touts, but we avoided them by ducking into a restaurant to get some lunch before we sailed. I went into a general store and bought a few snacks for the trip, and soon it was time to sail. The ferry was a real boat, metal hulled, no outriggers. The trip was easy, despite a TV blaring something in Tagalog right in my face (I had taken a front seat, not aware that the TV would be so loud).
Here is the boat (“Puerto Galera”), with some of the outriggers I mentioned in the foreground:
When we got to the pier in Batangas, Irwin was there to meet us, and drive us back to Angeles. Zeny got off in Manila to go see her sister, and Teresa went over to her cousin's for the night.
