I was a little brokenhearted in the summer of 2014. Before springing on a Jam Liner bus in Cubao for a long road trip down south, I posted a rather bitter status on Facebook ("I'm going to the beach and I'll forget about you, b*tch") to let everyone know how sullen I was but of course, nobody cared even if it was a finely crafted line, or so I thought. The beach I was referring to was Cagbalete, an island off Mauban in the province of Quezon.

It was going to be a long bus ride, my travel companions had cautioned but I didn't really mind. I was going to sleep anyway. When you're seated next to someone who had lots of stories to share, sleeping was simply hard to come by. My bus mate and I ended up talking about work and career and everything in between all the way to Lucena. We managed to steal a few minutes of sleep before the bus halted at a quiet terminal in Lucena.

We arrived quite early. Buses bound for Mauban didn't start operating before 5AM. So we waited. It pained us to wait, so we asked around to see if there were other alternative means of getting to Mauban without waiting for the bus. I don't remember how we got the jeepney that was willing to take us to Mauban though I recall sneaking away from the terminal and finding the jeepney parked at a gasoline station. We split the fare with a group of Cagbalete-bound travelers we found at the terminal. Slick.