Competition in Boracay, Philippines

40 people from Singapore, training on different dragon baot teams, got together to form the Singapore Barbarians. 20 of us were from the Canadian team (only 4 Canadians, though!), peeps from the Australian, British and Irish team as well as a couple from a local team (SPC). This promised to be a great trip. People that participated the year before kept on raving about how cool it was to race in the clear water of Boracay, with the sun and the beach, the crowd standing in the water while small waves lapped their ankles....

Well this was by far the worse trip I've ever been on: the travel agent screwed up every step of the way, we got hit by a typhoon and I got sick (probably because I was stuck in the continuous rain for 2 days).

We arrived at the beach at 6:15, the morning of the 250meter races. The wind was strong and the waves were way too high. We have to race following the shore line, but with the waves, we would have had more than one boat capsize. We waited for an hour to be told races would take part on the other side of the island at 10:00. We went back to bed!

At 10, there were more delays (boats weren't there, it was raining and some teams had not found the race site yet). We finally started racing around 12:30. The waves weren't too bad, but the rain reduced visibility so much that we couldn't see the finish line from the start! The races took so long and the tide was moving out. They had to move the starting/finishing lines to deeper waters. We had the women's fastest time on the water, but we had gone first, when there was loads of water under the boat (so the boats were faster early on). No semi-finals or finals on that day. We didn't know if they would just use the times. This would garanty our women's team the gold.

We walked in the rain to get to dinner. Mid way through our first drink, chairs are flying all over the place, the restaurant's walls looses pieces.... The typhoon is at it's full! We still sat and enjoyed our dinner, but the winds were so strong that it was hard to hear the conversation. Walking home was scary! When we woke up the next morning, there were trees on the ground everywhere, but the race was still on.

We did the 250m semi-finals and finals. It took forever! Our women's boat finished 3rd. Then we proceeded with the 500meter races. Hey, I already have a medal, so can I please just go back to bed?? It was decided that the winners of each heat would moved to the finals AND possibly the fastest of all the second place finishes. While boats would paddle out to the start line, they would just disapear into the rain after a few minutes...

We finished second. Shoot! We were done but still needed to stand in the rain for a few more hours to encourage the others. I packed my stuff away and went back in the rain to take pictures. The tide went out again and the water was so low that our men's boat, during the race, had to jump out of the boat to push it along!!! Needless to say they finished last... Guess what? Out of all the teams, we had the 2nd fastest time, so we ended up with the silver!

After being outside all day, you would want a nice, hot shower, wouldn't you? Well, our hotel's water heaters were kitted up with solar power... Cold showers all around :-(

Major party followed. That was good fun. Even during the race, we had a few cool moments: the local team took drums out and everybody started dancing. Experiencing my first typhoon was quite memorable, too (but i could have done without!)

A few pics:

Drummers brought a bit of sunshine to our wet day.

The Singapore Barbarian team (I'm in purple and PINK on the left).

Women's 500 meter boat: silver medal!!!