Another trip was necessary to Iloilo to go and check out possible accommodation and premises for an office. This time, having done the trip before there wasn't the anticipation of what might be seen or discovered. Added to which the weather was grey and rather dull so the drive across the island of Negros was very uneventful and there weren't many photographic opportunities.
In Iloilo I'd booked into a hotel located in an area called Smallville, which was an district we'd seen during our last visit. Smallville is completely unique in that it consists of a small area of modern bars, restaurants and cafes like I've never seen in the Philippines. In the event it wasn't such a great idea staying in the middle of this district as the surrounding bars had live music playing outside until 3:00am and to say the noise was intrusive in the hotel room is a complete understatement. I may as well been staying in the bar itself. Philippines build quality means that the windows rattling loose in the frames provide no sound insulation whatsoever and the in-wall aircon unit meant that there may as well been a big hole in the wall (which there was!).
Looking at potential houses and offices was the usual pain and disappointment. There is very little concept of western build quality or comfort. At one potential office rental the landlord, a pervy looking mass murderer type, told me that he had some accommodation attached to the office I might be interested renting. What they consisted of was some dirty, dusty plywood shacks with filthy mattresses covered in ominous dark stains. He obviously thought it was the Ritz. I'd rather sleep on the streets.
We wanted to rent the office for 6 months. He said he wanted a minimum of 1 year and so there was a impasse. What I don't understand is he'd rather leave his property empty (and clearly they'd been empty for some time and he had several units) rather than rent it for 6 months at what was good rates for the area.
In the end we left Iloilo without having secured anything, which was disappointing.
On Saturday morning we were up early at 3:30pm to catch the first ferry at 5:00am from Iloilo to Bacolod. However, when we arrived at the ferry terminal it was chock-a-block with vehicles. My driver came back to me and said that the first ferry was fully booked and the next one, at 11:00am was likely to be fully booked too, so I hunkered down for the long wait and enviously watched all the other vehicles loading on to the ferry. Just as the last vehicles were boarding and I was adjusting the car seat for some sleep my driver suddenly started getting all excited saying there might be a spare space on the ferry. I have no idea how he knew this as the quay side was still full of vehicles, but as I was re-adjusting the car seat he was driving towards the ferry. There was one tiny space that didn't look big enough for a large 4x4 but with certain amount of vehicle manoeuvring we were on board, although it didn't look as though they would be able to close the bow doors and I had visions of the ferry becoming a repeat of the Herald of Free Enterprise. However, the space was (thankfully) deceptive and the doors were closed and we were off.
To cross Negros we decided to take an alternative route, passing to the south of the volcano, Kanlaon. This was mostly on unpaved roads and it was interesting the see the remote and isolated villages located on the side of the volcano and to see the faces of kids that had probably never seen a westerner before. I was hoping to get some good views of the volcano but for the whole time it was shrouded in low cloud.
The ferry trip from San Carlos back to Toledo was routine until we were a mile or so from the Toledo terminal. I was sitting down near the rail when I spotted a group of a dozen or so dolphins leaping from the water just off the bow of the ferry. Extremely excited at this sighting I jump up with my camera but by the time I'd switched it on and run round to the starboard side of the ferry where the dolphins were headed they were out of sight. What I found astounding about this was that the locals stood at the rail didn't bat an eyelid at this sighting. Was this because sightings are so common that it's no longer an event for them or was it that they just didn't care or have an interest?
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