Da Trip Page 22

Turned out it was the police constable for that district. We talked about how much land cost and how it was to live there on the island. He offered a tour as it was his day off and we followed him to see houses and beach property for sale. He invited us for lunch at his house. A nice cement house with lot of bedrooms. He later introduced us to others who showed us more land and beaches for sale on the island. It seems that some famous people including a Philippine senator and a big name Karate guy Mike Stone who married a Filipina have houses on the beach in Panglao. We stayed in Luna beach resort and found we were the only ones in our hotel. How much? 1000 peso per night no Maricel haggled and got it down to 500. Ok. It seems that about 3 years ago everything stopped. No more tourists except divers and a few here and there like us. The whole place was empty, only a few divers and their relatives eating at the local restaurants. We were introduced to others who showed us more property on the beach and after 3 days of looking I was impressed. It seemed like the only place so far that I would consider living. I met a few foreigners living there, an Australian couple both Australian. The other couples the wives were Filipinas. Those couples were Louie and Ann with their two daughters, Udey who was an engineer and had his office there and flew all over Europe solving problems and Ronny from Switzerland. All had been there for over 7 years. I was the only American but for courtesy every-one spoke English. They all had nicely expensive looking houses on the beach and dug in to stay. No one had any major complaints and it seemed very cheap to live there year round. We made friends and drank soda and beer talking about all sorts of things. Next day I was shown some nice beach property for $3 and $5 thousand US.
To be continued: page 22