The Birthday

3 weeks before Josh's birthday, he mentioned that aside from me bringing food to his school so that he could celebrate with his classmates, if he could also have a weekend party for family and friends. I did consider it but after talking with the hubby, we decided to ask Josh if he would want to go on an out of town family trip just like what we did for his 5th birthday.

Josh agreed. And so we decided to go to the province of Ilocos, around 4 hours away from our city.

So we left at around 4am on February 23rd and arrived in Ilocos around 9am, just in time to have breakfast. And since the province is known for its longganisa (sausage) and bagnet (deep fried pork), we decided to hunt around for a good restaurant which served that. Apparently almost all restaurants and cafe's had it.

When the Spaniards conquered the Philippines in 1521, they stayed for 300 years and Ilocos is one of the few provinces in the country which was able to preserve the Spanish heritage left by the Spaniards many of years ago.

There was a whole street made of cobble stone, the town center still had their old Spanish style building and houses and they did have their traditional mode of transportation called the kalesa.

After eating, we decided to drive a bit up north (45 minutes away) to check in at a beach resort.

It was a beautiful resort with a nice pool and a nice beach. The kids basically swam for the rest of the day while I basked in the sun and dipped in the water a few times. We all had dinner by the pool while watching a mini cincert sponsored by the resort. Around 10 in the evening we all went inside the room, laid down and eventually all fell asleep.
The next day was Josh's birthday.

Throughout the night, Dash was very restless, I figured it was because of the hubby's (VERY) loud snoring. We all woke up and decided to take an early morning walk along the beach.

Little did I know what was in store for us.

Right after breakfast, I decided to pay the bill of the food that we ate, when I checked my wallet- it was empty. I panicked. I asked if anyone touched my wallet because at 9:30PM of the night before, I paid the food bill again and my money was complete. Nobody touched my wallet. I immediately called for the manager to report the loss. They frisked their employees and checked the locker room of the employees, no sign of the money. The husband searched our hotel room making sure the money was not misplaced (because it could have been possible that my 1 year old played with my wallet as he always does). Money nowhere to be found. I could not help but raise my voice at the manager because the amount of money lost was a significant amount.

We were clueless. The husband asked me where I left my wallet before I slept and I said I put it on the dresser beside the window. When hubby raised the very heavy curtains of the window, we saw that one window was open and when we peeped outside, you could see footprints on the sand.

So we guessed that sometime during the night, when we were all asleep, the robber was able to open one of the windows and probably saw my wallet and got the money.

We called for the police. To tell you frankly, they were not of much help at all. And instead of being empathic, they wanted to insinuate that it could have been because of our carelessness. To that I immediately objected. I said, if I lost anything outside our room, I would probably accept that it could have been out of my sheer negligence but to lose something that was INSIDE our room just means that they have a problem with their security. That we the guests, trusted that the resort did have the appropriate security measures to ensure that their guests were well taken cared of.

To cut the long story short, the money was not recovered. We would have wanted to stay another night, as that was the original plan but the husband and I were so pissed off. But then it would not be fair to the kids if we would allow that incident to affect the whole trip. So we decided to check out and drive down to La Union, another coastal town with beaches.

Talking with hubby, we said that probably there was someone who needed the money more than we did, in a way, we were able to help someone. Difficult to accept, but then what else could we do.

The kids had a blast swimming some more and the next day, we were all ready to come home.