Ilo Ilo, Philippines
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Time for our second festival and after arriving at our lovely hotel (booked it at the last minute but was about 3-4 star so posh for us) we ordered room service as we were so knackered after a 6 hour bus ride. The food tasted great but as I found out about 4 hours later was not so fresh as I was hit again with more food poisoning. This was the worse case though. I was able to watch parts of the festival from a window in the lobby area on our floor but resorted to watching most of it on the TV. Damo headed out the last night and took some photos and video for me but when he failed to come home at midnight I started to panic. He went out about 4pm and said he would grab some dinner and come home soon after. Of course he got invited to drinks with some locals (apparently one of them got slapped across his face when his girlfriend arrived as he was supposed to be spending time with her but was drinking with the boys instead - glad to see relationships in different cultures are the same!) and didn't look at his watch until after midnight. Luckily for him I was still sick the next day so our early morning flight to Cebu was rescheduled for the next day.
Damo also said that there was a bit of a commotion during the festival when some guy ran through the crowd covered in blood. He thinks he had been beaten up and just wanted some help but all he did was cause a panic and no-one wanted to go anywhere near him!
