New Year in Boracay

Boracay was somewhat as expected, only multiplied several times.
The main attraction is White Beach, a several kilometers long waterfront with hundreds of restaurants on it. And thousands of tourists, too, that's what Boracay is all about. Local living takes mostly place on the other 7100 islands that make up the Philippines.
The beach itself is great as far as tourist beaches go, any beverage, massage, snack, complete meal or a shiny 10€ Breitling watch will be served to your beach chair with a smile. Genuine or fake, hard to tell, but anyway much more than one gets in almost any other country. But sooner or later the mostly excellent seafood will give you food poisoning, 2 out of 5 of us got it this time. So make sure you smell the lapu-lapu you selected for your dinner before it goes to the grill.
So Boracay is not for those who seek to get away from it all, unless their away means being in the midst of thousands of other away-getters. Still, it is a relaxed place, where things tae time to happen and not much can be gained by trying to hurry things up. The adjustment to relaxed timetables started already on the way to the island. We were uncustomary well in time in the airport (minivan - ferry - couple of taxis) only to find out that the flight was not only delayed by 4 hrs but also rerouted to a different town. This however gave us some time to add some well deserved shut-eye to the one hour we managed to get the previous night after finishing the going-away party and before leaving the delightful Tropical Villas, Panglao.
At the time of writing, we're already left Boracay behind, as well as our friend Mr Must-1, who joined us on New Year's Eve. He'll join us later again in Hong Kong. Sickeningly brown, no doubt. And then the well fueled and loudly argumented late-night debates of the future, past and present of Mother Russia are likely to continue. Hopefully they wont get us thrown out of a hotel the second time, though.
The transition to this brand new, still unspoiled and innocent decade was spent on board a partying boat in front of the White Beach. The fireworks were quite spectacular, even if the wine was not.
So the next destination is Hong Kong. ETA 15 minutes.