Boracay

Blessed with fine white sand beaches, Boracay is a place where people from everywhere find peace and tranquility. Walking through its long beaches is fun for the eyes, mouth and ears. There are a variety of activities here: diving, snorkeling and feeding the fish, kite surfing, kayaking, visiting the islands of Crystal Cove, Magical Island, etc. And for night-owls there are plenty of bars around the island where you can see live music and mixtures of the country's best-known DJs. I came back after three years to this sublime and charming place, I find it changed by the "invasion" of tourists but

Boracay lies limp, fragile like a soggy French-fry.

The moccasin-shaped island sits just two kilometers from Panay Island in the Philippines’ western Visayas.

Traditional bancas – wooden Flipino boats with outriggers designed for increased stability – line the pier waiting to ship truckloads of tourists over to the seductive sliver of sand.

I have arrived in the rainy season and venomous clouds have amassed over Panay and look ready to strike little Boracay, only seven kilometers long and one kilometer wide.

A motorized rickshaw drives me from Boracay’s harbor to my hotel. For a minuscule island, the traffic is intense. Exhaust fumes billow from parked vans and motorbikes; horns wail as piggish-coloured tourists dart across the island’s only road. Filipinos bustle about trying to get on with their day. Of all the photos I had seen of Boracay’s palm-fringed, chalk-white beaches, none of them showed what transpired on the other side: Raw life. Unlike other idyllic isles, Boracay seems a functioning albeit chaotic place but, perhaps, on its last legs.

My trip to Boracay was an unforgettable experience. Landing at the small airport which was lost at sea, you see immediately how they people will do anything to please you, how you are led to your accommodation on another small island that is in front of your eyes ... The people who live there welcome in visitors, even when they live with little, in small half-built houses sometimes. Tourism is everything to Boracay. But tourism doesn't invade into everything, it still keeps a respectable balance with the environment so that the magic of this place is never lost. There the sun rises long before it does in the other places I visited and the days seem to always start a few hours earlier than planned.