September 27, 2025
On 9/24/25 twelve of us took a Van, Plane, Tricycle, Speedboat and a 2nd Van, to get to this idyllic beach getaway, it was relatively quick and a fun adventure, but we had some hiccups!
We lost Memo and Susan from group at the Clark Airport! Unfortunately, they had booked the wrong date for the flight and the plane was full. With no other options, they sadly had no other choice, than to go back to the SHIP. They were supposed to be in the speed boat with Bosco & I and also at our Resort. Next, tides at our resort were off, so we couldn't arrive by boat as planned, so we had to do the 2nd van. Once settled the10 of us united for a lovely beach dinner at Beach House Resort, a five minute walk from our resort. We played a lively game of Catch Phrase after dinner and David the Resort owner gave us some of the island's history.
Below is a glimpse of The Lanas Beach Resort. We had the nicest of 4 rooms they rent out, the beach front cottage.And enjoyed our first full day lounging in the sun and relaxing. The staff were so accommodating and friendly.
At breakfast we met this interesting trio from Saudi Arabia - 3 friends, all with different engineering backgrounds, who were using their yearly vacation allotment, of 30 days to travel around south east Asia. They have enjoyed doing this before and were excited to see as much as they could. They were staying at a villa down the road and were taking an island tour after breakfast on motor scooters. We exchanged info and they wanted to follow along with my blog, to see where we went next! We really enjoyed chatting with them.
Ladies they are all single, well mannered, personable and ready to mingle!
Meet (L to R) Mohammed Alrigi, Nawat Almazroi and Khalid Alhajry
Things began to change late the night, of the 25th. We knew we were on the outer edge of
Thypoon Opong and our Ship was leaving
Manila
earlier then planned, to avoid the bad weather forecasted to hit there. Somewhere in the morning hours of the 26th,
Opong
turned and made a beeline for our small island. What we experienced that night was a lot of wind and rain; we awoke to a power outage and pounding wind and rain around 7 am. Our beach front windows & sliding door sills could not keep up with draining. The wind gust rattled the frames so much, that water was seeping in all over our floor. We tried battling with towels, but it was too much. The Resort came to check on us and quickly moved us, to the room Memo and Susan, were supposed to be in and that was set back further from the beach. The whole island was without power for most of the day, but they had emergency generators for essentials. The Typhoon hit our island around 1pm, it sank 2 boats, but we have not heard of any other major damage. We had breakfast, chatted with staff about other storms and played
Phase Ten, to pass the time. By four p.m. the worst was over, the mayor stopped by to make sure all ok and we hosted the rest of our gang from Beach House, at our Resort for dinner.
Counterclockwise around the table is Bosco, Gary, Christy, Lori, Kim , Phil Ben, Ed , Sue and Me. Below are photos from the storm
