Camiguin

Camiguin now. Was it just yesterday we left Anda? Seems a lifetime ago.

Tomorrow I turn 30. It's dreadful to think I will have been alive for three decades. My father: six. He must say to himself sometimes, I'm 60 now, and I still have to worry about my 30-year-old daughter. But I can't let myself think about that.

We rented a motorbike today. It was the first time Chris had ever driven one and only the fourth or fifth time I'd ever ridden one, always in a foreign country. I burned my leg badly on the tailpipe. It's a sick-looking grayish purple but seems much better than it did at first. Afterwards I was afraid of the damned vehicle, but of course I had to get on again.

We were cheerful tonight, eating margherita pizza and spaghetti frutti di mare at Luna's Ristorante. The food was surprisingly good and not over-salted as it is at many other places in the Philippines. Of course we had to pay more. I keep telling Chris we ought to go to Italy if he's going to be craving pizza all year.

It's awful to have finished my books too early, to have nothing to read, nothing with which to beat away the night. Instead I listen to the incomprehensible voices of the French backpackers next door. Two young men: friends, most likely--they don't seem like lovers. They said they will keep traveling until they run out of money. I don't bother to ask, And then what? It's not a question travelers enjoy answering. One of them rode the Trans-Siberian railroad recently. He told us to take second class because third class was too lonely. I believe him. Riding on trains for thousands of miles. It seems quiet, but it's probably actually pretty noisy. But the kind of noise that keeps you out.