The trip to Siquijor took a few hours. The ferry is not the most comfortable but I'll find out later that it's definitly not the worst !

Siquijor is known for its faith healers and other witches. Filipinos don't like the place, they're scared of it. But I loved it ! My hostel was right on the beach and even though it was too shallow to swim, the view was amazing and having breakfast by the beach is brilliant !

On my first day I went dive shop hunting. I actually only found one, owned and ran by a dutch guy, Jay, who married a filipina a few years back. We talked for a while. He told me that the temperature of the water was low (25, yes, it's cold !) and that the viz was s*** ! Pretty honest ! So at first I decided not to go. Later that day I went to a restaurant/bar called Treasure Hunt, where Jay, his wife and little girl were. That's also where I met Klaus and Reinhart, a couple of guys from Austria. We ended up planning a couple of dives.

The next day I stayed at the hostel to work on my interview for Toronto when I met this local, a real bulls***er (I found out later) who told me stories about his son being in England probably, with his ex wife, that he hadn't seen him in forever...the kid was a few hundred meters away, with his mum, and the guy knew it. Anyway. I drunk this funny mixture with him, rum, coke and grape flavour tang. His friends joined us, we had lunch (fresh fish on the grill ! Yummy !) and they stayed there and drunk all day. Reinhart and Klaus joined us for the evening. We were going diving the next day.

They were definitly not the best dives of my life. The viz was indeed s*** and the water cold. The first dive (sunken island) could have been better had we stayed a bit longer but a 5th guy had joined in and he was OW with only 7 dives and sucked up his tank in 30 min...the second dive wasn't amazing but at least there were some nice corals.

The guys had told me about Dagsa, this nice restaurant (the bulls***er actually owned part of the land and his ex wife the rest of the land and the restaurant...that's where she was with the kid). I had breakfast there and was about to go on a tour with a scooter I just rented when I met Neil, an english guy from Brighton. He ended up renting a scooter to come with me.

That day I wanted to go a see a healer, for my tendonitis.I had been told that there was this lady by the Cantaboon cave, who could cure bad things.So I went to look for her. I never found her so instead I asked a local family where I could find a good healer.This lady took me to an old guy, whose house was quite remote. After taking my pulse and asking me how long I'd been in pain, he gave a list of ingredients to the lady. 9 of them. As many as the number of months I'd bee in real pain.

It took a good hour to the lady and her husband to find the ingredients. Ingredients that came from the forest, not the chemist ! Later, at Dagsa, I did what the healer told me to do. I washed the roots and barks and asked that they boiled for 15 min in half a litre of water. And I drank the mixture. It tasted funny but not that bad. That and some old coconut oil were meant to heal me. Wait and see.

I left the next day from Siquijor. Neil sort of decided to join me (yeah, ok, I can try that) and he wanted to leave the next day so ok...Because at first I wanted to stay on more day, I didn't feel like I was going to like this guy so much already but I thought ok, I won't spend hours on a bus/ferry or whatever by myself so I thought I'd give it a try.