The Journey to Coron: Sky Police, Race Drivers, and Life Insights
When the path from a Tel Aviv couch to a Philippine island raises questions about parallel universes and the lives we choose to live
📍Coron, Philippines
It's always like this. That moment right before I leave one place to reach a new one. The moment when I start packing and suddenly remember all the little things that need to be sorted before moving. As if my brain saves this entire "oh crap" list for exactly when I'm already stressed enough. But that's how it is when you travel, right?
It was only on the day of my flight from Manila to Coron that I remembered my data plan had expired. Oh, right, I've been here for over a month already. In Manila, I was connected to the apartment's WiFi like it was oxygen, and now we were parting ways. I embarked on a mission to renew my data plan, and I'll just say it took me a few hours (yes, hours!) because it's a process made up of several complicated steps that probably only a local would understand in seconds. But hey, I succeeded in the end.
It was time to head to the airport, and with that came the rise in my stress levels. I'm always like this with flights – even after hundreds of flights in my life, I still haven't learned to relax. I ordered a Grab and waited impatiently like a little girl heading to an amusement park. Because every trip to the airport for me is the same story – I simply cannot relax until I'm standing at the gate. Only then do I allow myself to breathe.
On the way to the airport, I was in a bubble of urgent tasks: setting up my new SIM (check!), completing check-in (done!), and mostly trying to convince myself that everything would be fine. Arriving at the airport always does this to me – suddenly, I become an organized, efficient, and planned person.
The flight itself went by too quickly, but the pilot must have been a bit tipsy or something because he was literally flying in zigzags. For a moment, I imagined the sky traffic police pulling him over for speeding and making him walk an imaginary straight line in the clouds. "Sir, please step out of your aircraft and recite the alphabet backwards," while a police plane that had been "hiding" behind a cloud swoops in with flashing lights. My imagination runs wild when I'm anxious.
I discovered something about myself – flights are the ultimate time to edit videos. It's a perfect offline task, the kind I always 'hate' doing at other times because it takes so much time and drains my energy, but during a flight? It's the perfect use of time without being connected to oxygen (internet). Suddenly, I feel that the hour that passed was productive, not just sitting and staring at a cloud that looks like an elephant.
The hotel offered airport pickup for 250 pesos, and after consulting with Chat GPT (yes, I ask it everything before arriving at a new place), I understood it was worth it. I expected to land and see someone standing with my name written on a sign, feeling a bit VIP. But exiting the arrivals hall, there was just a crowd of people across the road, shouting like they were at a busy Times Square on New Year's Eve, and one coordinator who asked me which hotel I was going to, then yelled it into his megaphone so the hotel representative could signal me to come over. Not exactly the royal welcome I had imagined.
We waited almost an hour for the minibus to fill up and then zoomed off. The driver started racing against himself, and along the way, I convinced myself it was okay that he was speeding down the steep, winding mountain roads. He does this every day, several times a day, and it must be fine because he's still alive, right? (Or maybe it's his first day because he really looks too young to drive.) All this while I was desperately looking for something to hold onto and couldn't find anything, so I just hugged my bag like it was a life preserver. Maybe I even let out a little roller coaster scream. And maybe I even had a flashback to the luge rides down the hill in Rotorua, but I kept smiling, because it's important to enjoy the journey.
On the way, I saw Coron Island as it truly is, the small moments of real people. I saw a young boy resting in a hammock tied between his juice stand and a wall, I saw a guy loading wooden beams onto a tiny motorcycle and wondered how he managed to tie them up, I saw a whole family sitting in their yard, eating fruit, small children running around, and for a moment I saw myself from a distance.
I saw my van driving along the main road, among these people who live their entire lives on this island, and suddenly I remembered again how lucky I am, that I'm free, that I can allow myself opportunities, and that I have options. Because there are so many who aren't as lucky as I am, and I'm trying not to sound gloomy, nor guilty, but simply full of appreciation for the life I've been given, and for how my life changed completely the moment I chose to listen to my soul.
I always think about that parallel universe where I continue my life path in Israel. Of all the parallel universes, this one bothers me the most, because it was so close to happening. I was so close to giving up on myself, close? I had already given up on myself completely. I'm still surprised that in the end I packed up and flew toward my dream. I constantly think about how easily I could have missed the life I'm living now, and maybe even missed out on an entire lifetime.
I guess that's what I'm truly grateful for, for noticing that I had an opportunity, and for taking it with both hands, without knowing where it would lead me, without really knowing anything.
This inner reflection didn't just come out of nowhere today. Today, before flying from Manila to Coron, I came across the pinned post on my Facebook page again, the one that's been there since I started posting on Facebook, the first text I ever wrote.
This time, unlike other times when I skipped past it to see what's happening in my feed, I stopped and read it, from beginning to end, and I was moved.
I said to myself, "Remember when you wrote this sitting on the couch in your Tel Aviv apartment? Look how far you've come since then!" Suddenly, I realized that two and a half years have passed and I've fulfilled all of my dreams, or rather her dreams, the dreams of that Maya who sat there on the couch. Just as I know that the Maya who reads this post a year from now will say exactly the same thing, and she too will be excited that she fulfilled all my dreams.
Back to Coron. I arrived at the hotel, where the representative looked like I had caught her by surprise, and she wasn't expecting any check-ins today. She unsettled me so much with her look that I double-checked my reservation.
She disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a key to a ground-floor room, very cute (that's what you say about a small room, right?) that was perfectly adequate for me! And it immediately introduced me to the island atmosphere.
In the afternoon, I went out to explore the town, walking around and seeing that I was in the center of everything, exactly as I wanted. I wanted to explore a new place on foot, and I was so happy to have a whole week to get to know this magical island.
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