FANTASY ISLAND REDUX
Fantasy Island for a month. How does that sound? Especially in January? What follows is a show&tell overview, and you can judge for yourself. Well, actually the pictures are all pure scenic perfectness, only interrupted by human interest views, you know a cow or a crab or some cool kids.
There’s a sweet little restaurant called Miley’s high up a hill; only good bread or butter (of any kind) I’ve had for 31 days! It’s like being in a rehab center for the seriously addicted…and the only people who fully understand my trauma are my Norwegian cousins. (Yes, Arne and Tone?)
Like Norway, Busuanga is so geographically gorgeous, you eventually long for a stretch of brown prairie with a dilapidated gas station as a break in ‘stunning.’ But as with all fantasies, behind the palm orchard or over the green mountain or up around the bend of the deep blue sea, there’s occasionally the tiniest of colorful or serious flaws. (For example: politicians or too much traffic)
About food. I am a bad-eater. Not sure that’s a formal description, but apparently since birth, I’ve been what mom referred to as picky. Loving bread (good) and butter (French, New Zealand, or finest of all, Byglandsfjord) as I do, I nevertheless do not even eat heartily when in Paris. So you might imagine on a fairly remote island in Southeast Asia, I would not exactly thrive. That’s not quite true; I eat plenty of wholesome things to stay at least as healthy as normal, if not more so. As you can see in various food pics, the choices are absolutely fine. In fact, the soup dish, called Sinigang, is one of the things I quite like. It’s comprised of vegetables including green beans, eggplant, okra, tomato, daikon radish and pork, shrimp, or fish. Tamarind gives it a pleasant sharpness that’s unusual to me and most appealing.
There are the little dinner rolls, soft and slightly sweet, called pandesal and adobo, a kind of meat stew, which is rich in garlic, bay leaf, peppercorns, and further flavored with soy sauce and vinegar. And the most luscious of all fruits: mango and papaya. Finally and most fortunately, for bad-eaters like me: spam. Loved throughout the Pacific islands, it’s made of animal parts that probably should be left on the butchery floor, heavily salted, and fried to a crisp to be just right. For me.
So even though I’m not a huge fan of Filipino food, I can exist without too much anguish in a place with spam and mangoes. I am occasionally shunned by the foodies of the family.
I am happy to see you are eating more than bread and butter. I agree, nothing like good bread and excellent butter. Beautiful photo opportunities. Turn your internet off and pretend everything is ok. The outrage against the orange one is palapable. Stay there if you can. After social security is gone you can eat mangoes, and spam. Tom