Wednesday 31st March

Mandy’s been looking after two tiny kittens that have been sleeping just outside the girl’s house looking perilously close to death. I’ve called them Podgy and Fatso due to their boney frames and the names seem to have stuck. Podgy’s the smaller of the two. When she was found, her pipe cleaner tale was so matted and frail that it didn’t move. Mandy’s such an animal lover that she was never going to let them go without help. Over the past few days fussed over them and fed them leftovers from the table. Yesterday she even bought cat biscuits.

The girls have gradually cottoned on to all the mothering. Initially they weren’t too fussed about the pair. Rachel says there are plenty of Podgy and Fatso’s that never quite make it in the heat. But this morning around a dozen of the little ones were taking it in turns to hold the kittens, which by now were wrapped in little blankets. The smaller of the two was still lifeless enough to be unable to do much about it. Fatso is already getting enough strength to get a bit frustrated by all the fussing. His meaow has progressed significantly, to the point that it interrupts meals.

Cats aside, we spent most of the day at a local tourist resort, soaking up some sun as a treat for a day off. The White Rock Hotel is beautifully set in a particularly tranquil cove of Subic Bay. The facilities include several swimming pools with waterslides and wave machines, a banana boat and canoes, and plenty of space to lap up the sun. It’s totally let-down by its staff, who have little enthusiasm for their visitors. We’d briefly visited on Sunday to have a look around and established that it would be 500 pesos each to get in. But this morning, the woman on the gate insisted that we’d have to pay a further 4,000 pesos between us to hire a cottage for the day. We objected and I asked to see the duty manager. He insisted that the fee was mandatory, given the size of our group, despite the fee appearing as point number 8 on the ‘optional extras’ section of the charge board. He said they were busy. We ended up paying. Once inside, the cottage turned out to be a pagoda. The drinks orders that we were told could be made on the beach had to be made inside, the wine had run out (except for the most expensive varieties) and the staff couldn’t work out which tills were working.

Aside from all of that, I’ve actually had a lovely day, swimming in the sea, flying down slides and soaking up the sun. Lynne told me I looked radioactive this evening. Despite reapplying the factor 30 over and over again, my shoulders and neck are feeling the effects this evening. Hopefully it won’t cause too much pain for too long.