We were sitting a little askew on a speedboat at full speed, having sailed from a secondary port in Manila. A few minutes earlier the lights and music of the disco surrounded us and whisked us towards the water. The sun had now risen and instead of returning home to the Clark area, we were already looking towards Palawan, an earthly-paradise of islands, lagoons and wooden-huts that emerge like gnomes from the thick vegetation. The water flowed like a silk ribbon under our bodies which, despite the tiredness of the journey from Italy and a night of dancing, we were already itching to discover.