Rational Insanity

Boracay in my mind

By Bryan Mari Argos

I've never been to Boracay in the past ten years or so. It's not really that I don't want to go there, but because I have seen the best of the place; something almost all of those in this generation will never get to see ever again.

It's summer now and for whatever reason, many will troop to the white shorelines of the island paradise to best enjoy the heat of the sun. Some will go to Boracay simply to bathe in its waters but most have a different agenda - an agenda that was unheard of ten or fifteen years in the past.

The entire island is now riddled with bars, disco houses, lodges, and five star hotels, hence, over and above the usual reason of sun and sand, many go to Boracay nowadays for the gimmicks and the night-outs. Every night there is a party in Boracay, so I've heard, and this has now become the main reason why people go to the place. It is quite disheartening to know that the former attraction of Boracay being its pristine waters and powdery white sand have now taken the backseat so that hotels can flaunt their eternity pools (that I find really redundant in a place where there is a beach), in door sports stadiums (which are terribly out of place in an island where the beach is the best place for a sport), and rowdy bars and posh restaurants. It is even quite ironic that in a place like Boracay where seafood is abundant, native delicacies can shoot up to unbelievably unreasonable prices.

The place has lost its charm already -- at least to those who have witnessed how it was in its virginity. To put it even more lightly, the place has metamorphosed into a place where one spots celebrities, goes for hook-ups, and easily accessible sex. The Romance has gone out of Boracay in exchange for hedonistic pleasures and shallow pleasantries.

Despite these things, and despite the environmental issues that the place had to grapple with only a few years in the past, it still continues to enjoy an unending stream of visitors year in and year out. Most of these visitors come to Boracay hoping to find the virgin paradise that it once was and eventually leave the place feeling that they did not get what they wanted, instead they got much more. Getting more than you bargained for in Boracay is not really what it should be because Boracay is Boracay is Boracay and when you get more than just the pristine waters and the sugary white sand, then it was not Boracay that you experienced, but the dreaded monster that is commercialism.

I still have the perfect Boracay tucked somewhere in my mind. I and my whole family used to go to the place and there was not a single hotel or restaurant in sight. We had to ask the residents to let us stay in their houses for the night for a very small fee. Then there was the simple pleasure of buying seafood from passing vendors and having our hosts cook these for our meals. There was one place though, the only place on the island with a generator -- it was called Happy Home, and there we would enjoy a large mug of fresh mango shake and pancakes with real honey and fresh pineapple on them -- but all that is now a figment of imagination. Gone are the days when we would all walk along the beach at sunrise to another part of the island, and walk back at sunrise and still find the footprints that we left earlier that day, literally. Now, you won't recognize which footprint is yours even just after a few minutes.

Perhaps it's time to really grapple with the reality that I have been robbed of the Boracay I once knew. Perhaps it's about time that I accepted that we have surrendered the Boracay of the old days to the changing of the times. I have only one hope for the place though -- that the stewards who have inherited the place from us, the die-hard romanticists and baby-boomers, would somehow, and in one way or another, keep even just remnants of the place tucked away in the safest corners of their hearts so that when in time, they look at the place with their heart's eye, they can truly say that the sunset is beautiful now, but if could have even been more beautiful without the neon lights and the strobes; they can truly say that the memory of the true Boracay still lives on with the strong and burning hope that one day, their footprints will again become recognizable in the failing light of the sun.

Be rational; be insane... every once in a while! Enjoy your summer!