I wake up around 10:30am or so and head straight out the door without taking a shower. I stagger into the café across the street and introduce myself to the table with the tanned bamboo legs in the patio with the palm frond roof. It takes exactly fourteen minutes for my order of scrambled eggs with cheese, beef tapas, and a plate of the day’s fresh fruit (usually mango and watermelon slices) to arrive at my table. I sip on weak coffee as I read the paper on my iPad and watch the local kids harass the stray dogs in the street.

After breakfast, I grab my book, a beach towel, and make my way to the beach. I find a spot on the ivory sands to set up base camp for the day, away from the swarms of Korean newlyweds, European retirees with girlfriends young enough to be their grandchildren, and the insufferably loud Australian kids on winter break.

I take lunch at a local Filipino restaurant. There’s nothing particular extraordinary about Filipino cuisine, but I’ve developed a taste for the national dish, chicken and pork adobo. There’s a convenience store next door. It’s not really a store. It’s more like the facade of a thatched hut converted into a dry goods stand. I grab enough San Miguels to obtain a respectable level of intoxication. Back at my spot on the beach I drink my beers until sunset, when the sky above Boracay catches on fire.

The next day, I do the same thing.