The sleepless night.

The night before I got little sleep staying at the Bates motel in the jungle and now this.


After we left her brothers house in Laguna we took a long bus ride to Bulacan made even longer because of the traffic. Manila's traffic is bad but its almost as crazy miles from the city as well. I never thought we would get out of it. We were driving to Bulacan to stay at Ruths friends house for the night.

Her friend, at least to me it seemed, lives more in the country. I smelled farm animals and the houses seem a bit further apart.

Ruth’s friends were extremely friendly and immediately accepted me into their house. For supper they made pork adobo and another dish, some kind of chicken, and of course rice. The adobo was delicious, the chicken OK.

The family has a little convenience store. You don't come inside you just go up to the window. I sat with the husband and his friend and talked away about everything. I felt right at home.

They gave Ruth and I a room to stay in with no door. (its not the situation you think) Termites got to the door and it was never replaced. We turned in early as we had a plane to catch at 5 am.

Ruth asked are you are going to sleep with no shirt? I said in this heat, yes. I slept under the window. The winds from the tail of the typhoon kept the curtain flapping on me plus I got chilled. I woke and put a shirt on. Well guess what? Ruth was warm and turned on the fan. The one time on this whole trip I was cold, and she wasn't.

Besides the curtain and being chilled, something kept biting me. If that's not bad enough the noise, the nonstop noise, noise and more noise on top of noise. Roosters, an occasional motor bike and dogs barking, dogs squealing, dogs growling.

At one point it got so bad I thought the house was surrounded by troops and there were coming for me.

Ruth woke and I asked what is going on??? Those are guard dogs.
We got up at 4, I hardly slept.

I asked Ruths friend what all the barking was about? She said barking? YES barking and just about nonstop. She said OH we didn't hear it. I thought to myself guard dogs, what good are guard dogs if you sleep through their warning.