We’ve been in the Philippines for 3 months now. Since we’ve finally settled we decided to throw a little housewarming party at our new place and invite a bunch of people over to celebrate. We started out the week by heading into town for party supplies. Off to Hypermart in Dumaguete, we loaded up a shopping cart full of Mexican food supplies, and another cart full of beer, rum, gin, and soft drinks. We nearly cleared the shelves of San Miguel. The grand total? About $200. I love how cheap food and beverages are here. Unless you’re wanting specialty items, nearly everything is 50% what we pay back home. Booze and beer is even cheaper with no government taxation like in Canada.
On Wednesday, Andrew & Chantal (friends who we met on the Bias trip) had a birthday party for Chantal’s mother and invited us over for dinner. Chicken adobo and spareribs, with rice and salad. Yumm. Funnily enough, after showing up we pieced together where we had seen them before. When we first came to Dumaguete Kelly had gone to check out a few possible rental places while I was laid up sick in bed. She was talking to a person about seeing a place and when she walked out, Andrew had walked in the door. The next day when I was feeling better, we went to take a look at the place, but it turned out it had rented the day before to Andrew. They had just beaten us to it. It wasn’t furnished, so we likely wouldn’t have taken it, but it’s funny how small a town it is. Here we were having dinner on the front lawn, chatting with the owners who had shown us the place months ago. At Andrews party, we also ran into Greg who had been at a spontaneous party night a month or two back when I was kissing cockroaches. Again, such a small town.
We spent the next 2 days pre-cooking for our party. We invited the whole El Dorado Resort staff and Dive Society to swing by as well as a few long term foreigner friends we’ve made. So we were expecting about 30 people (those who weren’t working that evening) to show up. We hand rolled almost one hundred soft taco shells (they were supposed to be burrito wraps, but we switched flour brands at the last minute and they started to shrink as soon as I stopped rolling them… Too much gluten?), and made big batches of pulled pork, chicken, ground beef, and refried beans. Kelly made 3 different salsas, and Spanish rice.
Needless to say, the party was a big hit. All the dive shop boys came by, and while they didn’t all understand the concept of a taco (most just piled up a plate of fixins)… it was a hilarious time with plenty of dancing and jokes. Later in the evening, more of the resort staff showed up after work and “Chef” even asked me how to make taco wraps, so they must have turned out okay. We partied on until one in the morning, then leaving the damage assessment for the next morning, headed to bed.
Yesterday was cleanup and recovery. All in all, it wasn’t too bad of a scene after a little garbage detail and mopping, but we were paying the price for drinking cheap Tanduay rum the night before. I spent most of the day laying in the hammock one of the Swiss dive instructors brought us for a housewarming gift and Kelly laid in bed all day watching movies.
Since recovering we’ve vowed to do things differently next time. No cooking. Making those taco wraps by hand was excrutiatingly difficult with the heat and all the hand rolling with a wine bottle. Andrew suggested that the next time we hire one of the kebab street vendors to come by and cook all night long. 5P for each kebab. Sounds like a plan to me!
Posted by: Shim
