I
have a fair share of terrible things I did in the past, and clearly, my karma’s out of
balance — have some counterpart terrible encounters and come across a pile of dreadful things especially during adventure times; or simply, murdered my getaways.
Unlike many travelers, I usually do not prefer tour packages in lieu of comfortable and hassle-free trips. More often than not, doing DIYs easily equate to things not going according to plans. But some disasters complicatedly make things reach the highest entropy point utterly causing tours downright nuts. Case in point, that long road trip to Baler, Aurora.
After
a long ride from the busy streets of Cubao all the way to that hapless place
called Cabanatuan in Nueva Ecija, I immediately jumped out of the bus and
wandered around looking for that life-saving final bus bound to Baler Aurora.
It was a little over 10pm otherwise known as death hour: one, the
last ride off to my destination does not go beyond that mark, two, my phone’s nearing empty charge, and three, my internal organs were heavily throwing their profanities on me already since I skipped that meal of the day called dinner in hope of saving some extra
time and catch that final ride.
To
recap, I did miss the all-important last-trip bus. And all I could do was wait
until 3 or 4 AM the following day for the next one. So I opted to 7eleven the free time and recharge my phone & myself, anticipating the long waiting game ahead amidst the dark night. Half
an hour has passed and I already wholeheartedly accepted my hopeless fate of spending the rest of the night on the streets.
In no time, I found myself
lurking those lonely Cabanatuan roads gulping a can of San Mig Light, after a can,
after another can, and another can. Because basically, it was all I can. It was just too hard to kill time during that time. Wasn't good at waiting, I am.
The
clock had just struck midnight and I was still facing the blankness of the
night when my senses felt that sullen urge to momentarily escape the trap I
got myself caught into by indulging on balut marathon. Being the Aquarian that I am, I don't have the energy to make pleasant conversations with
anyone at that time, but this sidewalk vendor was too
persistent to force some exchange of words, for some goddamn reason I have
no idea about, on topics I don’t effin care about.
That which turned out to my advantage later, when he dropped that magic word of a bomb putting end to my bus-ride dilemma. He said there was this other bus bound
to Casiguran, which regularly drops by Baler, which turned out true. The moral of the story: kids, avoid playing the Aquarius card all the time.
While that night was still quite young, it turned out dark and full of terrors' as well.
