Coral Cay

As Geordie said on a recent email we arrived at Coral Cay Resort on Siquijor two nights ago and are now enjoying our little house on the beach.

It really is a lovely hut. Here's my only whine of the day though - the beach is so so shallow that when the tide goes out it's about 100 yards to the water. And out there the water goes out for yards and yards more, not even up to our knees. Of course the pool was supposed to be our saving but as some of you know, it's under repair. The good news? Word is that they are going to start filling it today! Yay. We will be at Coral Cay for a week and on December 22 move to another resort called Casa de la Playa. That's where we will celebrate Christmas and New Years.

As you can imagine there isn't a lot to do. The island of Siquijor is it's own province in the Philippines, but the coastal road around the island is only 72 km long! Not so big. There are caves inland and this is also an island of magicians. In fact some people in the Philippines refuse to come here for that reason. We have not seen any sign of magic but we may take a tour of the island soon and see what we can find.

Yesterday we walked to the little town 2 km from our resort to check things out. It has a public market down by the beach where people are selling fish and vegetables. On the road we also found a little park which has a natural spring that the townspeople have turned into a swimming hole. The water spills out into a stream which meanders to the beach. Along the stream we found women washing their clothes and children enjoying the cool water. But no - no pictures.

What we are planning to do other than walk is read a lot. Here is a look at some of our reading material and Geordie ensconced in his seat of splendour under the ceiling fan in our living room.

Yesterday while we were at JJ's Resort nearby I found an illegal copy of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol in perfect condition on their bookshelf. I know it's illegal because it's a photocopy. We saw many of these photocopied books while we were in Viet Nam where it seems everyone sells them willy-nilly. Not one to pass up an opportunity I asked if I could have the book and the staff said yes. So I took it back to the resort, finished the last 200 pages of Pillars of the Earth then stayed up till midnight to finish Dan's book, another 500 pages. Gee, I do hope our 25 books are enough to keep us going. (No matter, our own resort has a very large collection of paperbacks to pick from too.)

Back to Dan Brown. I am at least impressed that in his latest book he compresses time even more than in his earlier books. In those the time frame of the book is about 24 hours which is pretty impressive when you realize how far the hero and his lovely helpmate have to travel during that time. But in this book he manages to compress the action into 10 hours - and still manages to get in lots of action. At least he divides the action among several of the characters so that things are happening simultaneously. I wonder if he'll get it down to five hours in the next one. And before you know it he'll be writing "One Minute Mysteries".I think I'll post a few more pictures and let pictures speak louder than words for you. Click on the pictures to see them bigger.

1.Oceanjet ferry to Dumaguete 2. Christmas Decorations 3. Orchids of Siquijor

1. Dancing and Ukelele 2. Nigel and Proney 3. Bablayon Church interior