Sadly, I got sick this week and could only work Monday and Tuesday. Those two days, I spent drafting a DOST-FNRI’s food and nutrition research article. On Wednesday morning I was showing minor cold symptoms but felt very fatigued. Therefore, I messaged the OTJ supervisor, Ma’am Josie to inquire about office protocols if you’re showing symptoms. She advised me to come into the office and head straight to the nurse’s office. The nurse gave me medication and sent me home to rest. She told me not to come back into the office until I was twenty-four hours symptom-free.
I spent the next three days at Siena resting. I did not leave the condo for two days straight besides grabbing my food panda orders. By the end of every day, I felt like my symptoms were nearly gone but by every morning I either got new symptoms or it worsened a tad. By Saturday (the 23rd) morning, I felt like my sore throat was entirely gone and all I had was a slight sinus issue so Sarah and I decided to go to Calatagan, Batangas.
We had originally planned to go to Calatagan on Thursday for a day trip to the beach but getting sick put a halt to our plans. Saturday we were still on the fence about going since I woke up in the late morning so after talking to our coworker friend Dars, we decided to head to Calatagan in the earlier afternoon. It was a bit of a spontaneous trip for him to decide that morning to join us. It took us two jeepney rides and a bus ride to get to Calatagan.
There was a lot of time spent on traveling that I didn’t account for (a total of around seven hours). We met Dars at the jeepney terminal at around one and got on a jeepney bound for Pasay. We got off near MRT and took another jeepney to LRT. The first bus station didn’t have a bus bound for Calatagan so we walked to another bus station. The bus comes hourly so we had to wait about half an hour. I’m from a small city, therefor I don’t have much experience with public transportation, especially buses. Which made the bus system seem interesting to me.
There was a staff person that accompanied the bus driver who went up and down the bus to hand everyone their ticket and collected the bus fare. The bus wasn’t like a big city public bus, it was more similar to one of those travel buses with only seats, no hand straps or bars to hold on to. This is why I was surprised that even though the seats were filled, people still hopped on the bus and stood in the aisle (and held onto the above-seat luggage department). I kinda liked how the street vendors would hop on the bus occasionally and carry their portable containers of snacks and drinks to sell to the bus riders. Made the five-hour bus ride more comfortable and helped me fight my dehydration.
We stayed at Sunrise cove for the night. Sunrise cove had this rustic nature vibe; it was located right next to the beach, far from the city. When we got there at night you could see so many stars, it was the first time I had ever seen that many stars in the Philippines since Siena is located in a pretty populated area. Dars told me it was the first time he had ever seen a sky like the one we saw.
On Sunday (the 24th), everyone was up by 4:30 am since we planned to watch the sunrise on the beach. We ate both breakfast and lunch at Sunrise cove before going on a boat ride. We were planning to go to starfish island but we couldn’t go because it was low tide, instead, the boat men let us snorkel for an hour.
I’m not a strong swimmer but I felt pretty confident in snorkeling without a life vest even though the water was fifteen feet deep. It was really easy to float (/wade) in the area we were in. Sarah told me that maybe it was due to the salt in the water. After snorkeling the boatmen took us near our resort and we pretty much spent the later half of the afternoon traveling back to Siena.
