Fine Dining

Our trip to the Philippines was really an experience in how little things could go wrong in insignificant but still annoying ways. Let's take food poisoning. I have been all over the world--to Africa and far less developed parts of Asia--only to deal with minor digestive unrest. I've eaten at street vendors and night markets and not thought twice about trying high-risk culinary ‘delights’, in their various shapes and smells.

So what I didn't expect was that I should have suspected the cuisine at a high end El Nido Italian restaurant. The reviews were remarkable: '#1 on Tripadvisor!'; 'Oh my goodness, the best meal of our trip!' overheard by an American couple; 'book a table in advance!' by our hotelier.
In this way we went and were greeted with romantic candlelight, garlicky smells wafting in the seaside breeze and views overlooking the ocean. The chairs were comfy and the menu vast so we indulged in a shared starter followed by pizza for Paul and seafood spaghetti for me. Perhaps I was feeling arrogant; ordering mussels was nothing new to me since my Mussels in Brussels experience.

Perhaps I was feeling more grown up, more mature (pronounced matoor, obviously) because I didn’t, not even for a second, question the quality, reliability or constitution of the clams and mussels that adorned my dinner plate. Paul and I ate our meals with gusto, had a few grown up drinks and reveled in that holiday feeling of contentedness.

We eventually made our way down the stairs to retrieve our shoes from the shoe depository, a discreet set of boxes housing myriad flip flops, sandals and the odd pair of Crocs. I get nervous about leaving my shoes in communal places—they may not be expensive but I grow rather fond of my footwear.

Happily, I retrieved my black strappy sandals and made ready to food-sleepwalk home. Paul wasn’t so lucky. I’d like to believe it was a genuine case of mistaken identity but his 3-year-old, £5 Pepsi brand, bought at TK Maxx in Cambridge the weekend he fell off a punt into the River Cam flip flops were MIA. There was no good reason to steal these flops—they were crappy, albeit sentimental. The initial shock turned into slight but genuine devastation; Paul’s the romantic in our relationship and the shoes were a memory.

Barefoot and demanding I carry him, Paul eventually made it to the one remaining open shop that sold shoes. He swapped a small wad of cash for a black pair of Havianas and I teased him the rest of the way home.

Perhaps I messed with karma too much; perhaps I did not heed omens because at 4am I woke up with an abrupt lurch. Generally, 4am was our wakeup call from the roosters that lived downstairs. But this cock-a-doodle-dooing was not coming from outside the window.

Without being too graphic, I clenched and ran. For the next twelve hours, I lived in a ball on the bathroom floor. I had it all—the sweats, the cramps, the rapid alternating floor to seat movement. Frustratingly, one of the world’s most beautiful beaches was waiting just moments away. The sun shone, the birds sang and I erupted and erupted and erupted. The hotel staff wanted to come in and clean—I warded them off. Paul tried to force feed me Gatorade—I tried. But the spasms continued well into the afternoon.

I emerged from my Vesuvian hell around sunset feeling thin and weak and sad. Food poisoning is bad anywhere, this is a fact. But I’d missed a day in stunning El Nido because of what, half a dozen mollusks? Powerful bastards.

To get this straight: Fancy El Nido Italian: 2; Jen and Paul: 0. Lose, lose altogether. Until that night's sunset, I suppose:

 

My advice? Become a vegan.