Stories from Boracay, Philippines, the Dark Side

This story actually dates back to 2014. I was spending a few months on this small touristic island in the Philippines. I was doing some research for a University Project.

See Boracay was kind of a special case in the world of tourism. Tourism exploded so rapidly here, it made me curious what impact this had on the local population. Did their lives improve or not?

In the 1970s this island, which is 48 times smaller than another popular tourist destination Ibiza, only had a handful of very brave backpacking tourists. in 2014 this island housed the same amount of tourists a day as Ibiza despite being 48 times smaller. Besides the presence of a vast number of tourists, the local residents grew from around 500 to 18.000 (mostly laborers and fortune seekers from other parts of the Philippines).

All in all an interesting case to find out what happened to the livelihoods of the 500 people and their descendants who already resided on the island before the tourist boom.

Interviews and the Dark Side of Tourism

You can imagine that this increase in tourism brought along tons of ways to earn money. In most parts of the Philippines at this time it was not easy to make a living. This meant that Boracay attracted Filipinos from all over the Philippines to find a job on Paradise Island.

Because competition for a job is high, employers can pay relatively low wages and demand high qualifications. Most people I had met that worked relatively simple jobs such as a cashier in a hotel or restaurant or even a waitress had completed university studies. The lack of jobs in the country leads to a pool of highly skilled workers to choose from.

This is important because it explains why so many people that do not have a finished college degree struggle to find a regular job. Many people try to make a living by fishing, selling homemade jewelry, or being the middlemen for island hopping tours. No sales means no income. And since most of these people live from day to day, no income sometimes means no food that day.

This is where the dark side of tourism comes around the corner, making money in an illegal and illicit way.

A Day at the Beach; Prostitution

One day I was strolling the beach interviewing some tourists as well as what I imagined to be local people or at least none tourists. I came across three Filipinos. One guy and two girls in their late 20’s early 30’s.

I asked them whether I could interview them and they said it was okay. They told me they were actually from Tacloban, another area in the Philippines where just a few days earlier a Typhoon had destroyed their houses and everything they had. They came to Boracay to earn money and find their luck.

One of the girls was in a relationship with the guy and the other girl was her friend. The couple was trying to find a regular job at a bar or staff at a hotel. Many hotels have staff housing, so if you can get a job at least you have a roof over your head at night.

The other girl was hesitant at first to share but after spending about an hour with them on the beach talking she opened up. She told me she was here to prostitute herself. So far she had been here for two days and even though she had not been able to get cash for her sexual services, she had been taken out for dinners and taken to hotel rooms in the previous nights before.

Chill Time

Since the conversations were kind of flowing naturally and since we were also of similar age I decided to hang out with them a little longer. Even after the official interview was over. Most valuable information during my research I usually got anyway during unofficial interviews also known as drinking together.

I spent a good few hours with them on the beach, we had a few drinks and swam in the shallow part of the ocean. The girls were having great fun burying the guy on the beach. Using the famous white sand of Boracay they created the shape of a female body. Only the guy’s head was still above the sand.

After a few hours, it was time for me to go home. I had a dinner appointment with one of my friends in one of the local bamboo houses. We said our goodbyes and wished each other a great evening ahead.

Next Day Shock

The next late morning I was going for a stroll along the beach. I wanted to score some of the fresh ready peeled mangoes they were selling. Despite there being roughly 35.000 people a day on Boracay, it is still a small place. I found this out this particular morning because I quickly ran into one of the friends I had made the previous day.

It was the single girl from the day before. She was alone and looked a bit sad. I asked her where her other friends were and she sighed and struggled to say something. I asked her if I could buy her a fruit juice and we sat down on the beach under a palm tree.

She told me that the couple had gotten into a fight. After they said goodbye to me, they continued drinking. Later that evening the girl accused her boyfriend of looking at other women and she got in a complete rage. She grabbed a knife and stabbed her boyfriend several times. The guy unfortunately did not survive and the girl was now in jail.

Emotional Shock

Hearing a story in which a girlfriend kills her boyfriend with a knife is already quite shocking on its own. The realization that perhaps 18 hours earlier I was hanging out with them on the beach made it feel so unreal to me.

It was my first, but certainly not my last experience with the fragility of life on Boracay. Of course, it is true life is fragile everywhere, perhaps more than we like to think. But here in Boracay, it felt to me that real severe violence is closer than I ever experienced in my life before.

The reality here is that violence is part of everyday life, slaughtering your own fish, octopus, chicken, or pig. Could this presence of everyday violence mean that also the use of violence against another human is just a little step closer compared to societies where this everyday violence is less present, hidden away in slaughterhouses?

After the fruit juice was finished the girl said she had to go. I never saw her anymore after that.