Let me be clear: I didn’t mean to get stranded.
It started like any other overconfident solo travel decision—booking a boat to a tiny, lesser-known island off the coast of Palawan that I’d read about in a barely-translated blog post titled “Secret Paradise.” The article claimed that the beach had “no signal, no shops, and barely any people.”
Sounded perfect.
And it was… until the boat didn’t come back.
The Smooth Start (Before Everything Got Weird)
The first few hours were dreamy. I had the whole beach to myself. White sand. Palm trees. Turquoise water that made you question whether your eyes had been lying to you your entire life.
I swam. I journaled. I ate a peanut butter sandwich under the shade of a palm tree like some kind of enlightened castaway. A dog—whose name I decided was “Captain Noodles”—showed up out of nowhere and kept me company.
I felt invincible. “This,” I thought, “is peak solo travel energy.”
Then came the wind.
And the rain.
And the realization that my boat wasn’t coming back that day.
The Rainstorm, the Hermit Crab, and My Emotional Spiral
It’s amazing how fast your inner peace crumbles when you’re wet, cold, and your phone is dead. I built a makeshift shelter out of banana leaves and driftwood, which collapsed three times before I gave up and just sat under a tree with Captain Noodles, who seemed to enjoy my suffering.
I shared half of my last granola bar with him. He didn’t thank me.
Around 9 PM, I tried to sleep, but a hermit crab crawled into my sock, and I nearly screamed loud enough to wake the dead (or at least the local fisherman who still hadn’t returned).
The Most Beautiful Morning of My Life (No Lie)
Somewhere between “I’m going to die here” and “maybe I’ll just live here forever,” I fell asleep. When I woke up, the storm was gone.
The sun rose in slow motion. Mist curled off the waves. The air was warm again. I made coffee with my emergency single-serve packet and boiled seawater (probably not safe, don’t do that), and watched the world wake up from my accidental campsite.
There were no sounds but the wind in the trees and the soft waves.
I felt completely, profoundly at peace. Again.
Rescue by Fisherman, Judgment by Grandma
Around noon, a tiny boat appeared on the horizon. A local fisherman spotted my frantic waving and took me back to the mainland. I offered him money. He refused.
“Just don’t go to islands alone without a plan,” he said, shaking his head.
When I arrived back in town, a kind grandmother from my guesthouse wrapped me in a towel and scolded me in three languages.
Fair.