Hi, everyone! Jo here! I know, you’re probably wondering why it’s me instead of Bo but unfortunately she’s just too busy recently to do any blogging, so I volunteered myself… and let me start by saying, this is hard.

How the hell does she do it constantly? Gosh, I’ve already ran outta things to type, imagine that. Fortunately for me, Bo has already arranged the pics for this post so I shall narrate accordingly! Anyway, so at this point we’ve spent our first actual day in Boracay doing absolutely nothing. And, it was awesome, ‘cause when you’re used to the busy working routine, any short break is priceless. We did however come across brochure for a day trip to Ariel’s Point and the main attraction was cliff diving.

OK, rewind to a few trips back, we went island kayaking in Krabi, Thailand, and I always joke that that was probably the biggest test of our relationship. Imagine doing all the kayaking 70% of the time, in rough seas, trying not to crash into cliff walls, all the while dealing with a hysterical, screaming girl. Not good memories, so when we saw cliff diving, I told Bo, no!

Sigh, as usual I couldn’t convince her otherwise, so here goes. We were supposed to meet at Ariel’s Bar in Station 1 at 11am, so we woke up real early, got ready, and headed over. Here’s another view of our hotel, and White Beach, right at our doorstep.

It was an absolutely beautiful day and the water was perfectly warm.

We were a little early so we headed a few doors down the beach to Johnny’s Fruit Shakes for a light breakfast. Pre-eating routine involves camwhoring.

In the Phillipines, they call these shakes, but to us they are known as smoothies, so we were confused at first. Here’s an ice lemon tea shake and it was awesome in the hot weather!

Headed over to Ariel’s Bar to register and take a few more pics while waiting to depart.

We took a traditional wooden boat and the journey would eventually take an hour and a half. When we got onto the boat, they started handing out plastic bags and we were instructed to keep our electronics and valuables in them ‘cause the weather was expected to be a little rough.

WTF, it would turn out to be the most understated thing ever. When we got out to sea, the waves were literally 10-15 feet high and the boat was rocking up and down, in and then over the waves. Holy shit, it was like a roller coaster ride, except with no seat belts to hold you in. Countless sinking ship scenes from numerous movies flashed through my mind like a movie trailer. If you thought being a pirate was glamorous, rubbish that dream. Whenever the boat went over the crest of a wave and started falling, everyone on board was like WOOOAAHHH. No shit, imagine doing that for an hour +.

Thanks to Bega for lending us this awesome waterproof iPhone case! We took many, many, under water pictures, and they turned out great. Here’s an example and head over to Bo’s Instagram feed to check out more pics (@bobostephanie)!

Finally got to Ariel’s Point, which is on another island. I was half dead and suffering from motion sickness, so luckily the weather cleared up a little when we were near.

There were boards at 5 meters, 8 meters, and 15 meters to jump off of. It doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, once you step on the edge and look down, you will be terrified. My heart was racing but I knew I couldn’t think too much about it, so I queued up for the 8 meter plunge. When it was my turn, I just stepped up on the board, ran to the edge and jumped off. Although it was only about 26 feet, it seemed like time completely stopped and I felt like I was in the air for 5 mins. Something like The Matrix. That was the scariest shit ever and I swear if I had thought about it first, I wouldn’t have done it. Immediately I made up my mind that I had reached my limit and I wouldn’t do the 15 meter. Twice as high leh. WTF.

See where the girl in the green bikini is standing? That’s 15 meters!

Then it was Bo’s turn, hahaha. She stepped up on the 5 meter board and she said, “OK, no matter what, I’m going to jump off this damn board!” Then, nothing happened. She walked out to the edge, froze, and walked back. She repeated this process for a good few minutes, and I told her to come down. She decided to do it later.

Here’s a look at the boat we took to the island.

Eventually, Bo tried the 5 meter board again but yet again she hesitated. I told her it was nothing and made a deal with her to jump together. I ended up in the water and she was no where to be seen. Then she decided, OK, gonna jump off from the stairs! Don’t need me to say lah, she didn’t jump again. At this point I gave up and told her lets just walk down to the shore and go kayaking.

She was brave enough to jump off the raft which was probably 0.1 meters high……… Then, this time, afraid of being scolded again, she actually did some rowing.

Pretty shot of the sunset over White Beach. The real story, however, was how we got back here. If you think the trip to Ariel’s Point was bad, the trip back to Boracay was 3X worse. The 2 guides sat in the front row of the boat put on raincoats, life jackets, and goggles. We thought that they were just fooling around but it turned out that we were the fools. It started raining and the waves were even higher than before, so whenever the boat hit a wave, water came splashing in hard. We had to endure this for another hour and a half!

Bo was craving for Korean BBQ (there are numerous Korean food outlets due to the high number of Korean tourists there) so we went back, showered and went out for dinner. I bought this playsuit for her from ASOS a while ago. Neon bag from a Thai designer label from Paragon.

That’s it, gonna hand the blogging duties back to Bo for the next post! Hope I did OK and also that she’ll appreciate it!