What is it?

You may well ask. For this, my friend, is an inflatable waterpark.

Occupying 5000 square metres of apple-green Astroturf in the middle of nowheresville, Luzon, EK Biki comes complete with dangling sharks, inflatable dragon slides, slightly forlorn clownfish and, weirdly, an Olympic-sized paddling pool.

All, like the giant hamster’s wheel and spinning top on which Z spent many happy minutes scrambling, entirely blow-up.

To add a further note of the bizarre, it caters entirely for non-swimmers.

How on earth did we discover this hidden treasure?

Well, there’s a sorry tale…

Saturday morning didn’t get off to the best of starts. Z’s go-karting date with a friend, tentatively arranged via email, did not materialize.

So, to make up for it, I suggested we visit the Enchanted Kingdom, a theme park 30km outside of Manila with a triple loop rollercoaster, an ATV track, karting track, log flume, a Spaceport, plus sundry other delights.

This being Manila, of course, 30 kilometres translates as three hours. Yet, after a taxi to the bus station, a bus to Santa Rosa, a walk, and a tricycle ride, we arrived at the hallowed gates of the Kingdom.

Only to find it shut.

On a Saturday.

Enchanted?

I am amazed Z didn’t cry.

I certainly felt like it.

And I’m supposed to be the adult here.

“Yes,” said the chap on the door. “It is closed for a private event. Smart communications,” he added, with a note of quiet pride that a corporation that size should have picked the Enchanted Kingdom for its annual jolly.

“Ah,” I say, looking warily at Z, now facing his second big disappointment before lunch on a Saturday. “Is there anything else to do in Santa Rosa?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate.

I guess the closest equivalent to Santa Rosa in England would be Slough (where The Office was set). Only smaller. And with more junk food and mechanics. But, of course, with much better weather and mountains in the distance.

“Yes!” says the chap, beaming. “We have a waterpark next door.”

My relief knows no bounds. I nearly hug him.

We wander off. Walk past the entrance to the waterpark (we were looking, as one does, for high towers of slides spiraling through the air). He – and he really is a lovely guy — chases after us, redirects us, escorts us to the door and explains the procedures.

I recognize the surreal vista instantly, from a photo in a listings magazine I had looked at and dismissed as clearly rubbish. Z, on the other hand, seems positively enthused.

We enter. We have no swimwear.

I purchase:

One bikini. Polka dotted.

Z’s verdict? “I think it’s nice. You look a lot less fat in that than you do in your swimsuit. I think the swimsuit does something funny to your tummy.”

One pair of swimshorts. Age 9. (My verdict? Very cute.)

Two black lurex swimming caps. (Compliant with regulations. But make us look like members of a sect on the CIA hitlist.)

One sachet of runny sunblock. $1.50, since you asked.

Two tickets.

I contemplate buying some floral shorts to wear over my swimwear, to comply with local standards of modesty. But we’ve just spent almost a whole day’s budget. Plus Z thinks I’ll regret it.

Now, to be fair to the waterpark, had it been, say 20 minutes, or 40 minutes, even, away from where we were staying, it would have been a really pleasant afternoon out. And with a staff-guest ratio of more than 1:1, queuing was certainly not an issue.

Within seconds, Z was well away. Racing down the bouncy slides. Entering the water with a vigorous splash. Rolling in the giant hamster wheels and cackling.

OK! I think. I’ll get into the spirit of this.

I join Z in the dragon pool and attempt a swim. The water is no higher, at any point, than his waist. That’s my lower thighs.

Now, I know that many working class Filipinas (and probably their menfolk too) can’t swim. But, all the same, one would think that a waterpark might contain a place where one could indulge should one wish.

Not this one…

Z invites me onto the Octopus slide and scrambles up. I note that none of the Pinay moms are sliding with their kids. Even the dads, in fact, are just hoiking them up and letting them go.

Due to the gap between the slide and the water, I require a leg-up from one of the attendants.

This is, both literally and metaphorically, bruising for both sides.

I weigh over 60 kilos. My assistant weighs, I would say, about 50 kilos. I am 5’7”. He is maybe 5’3”.

He genuflects. Offers me his knee. Not wishing to appear rude, but having a good idea of the likely outcome, I stand on it, gingerly, one of my legs on one of his.

The poor guy’s leg gives way under the unexpected weight.

I fall into the water, with a polite “ooh, silly, silly, fat, fat me” giggle, not to impute his masculinity. It being knee high, I hit the bottom. Not pleasant.

I notice Z gesturing from the top of the slide.

Assistant and I try again, and, with some really heinous wriggling, I achieve the inflatable steps. They are designed for kids. I have to force my way between the inflatable sides.

Even before I whiz off the slide at impressive speed and hit the bottom of the paddling pool with an equally impressive crunch, I am realizing that this park is not for me.

Exiting my second slide, I hit the floor feet first. Now, that hurts.

On the third, I catch a finger. That really hurts.

On inspection, all joints are working, but I take this as my final warning that sliding at velocity into knee-high water is NOT A GOOD IDEA.

We have some fun with the inflatables. Although, again, when scaling a giant wobbly model of Uranus the knowledge that the water on which it is floating won’t worry the metre measure does not induce confidence.

Z, as any child would do, swings off the side, yodeling, raised six or seven feet above the surface of the water. I yell at him to put his feet down, and explain that falling from that height into shallow water is NOT A GOOD IDEA.

Nobody else is yelling at their children. Although, to be fair, nobody else’s child has asked the attendants to bring in the most lethal inflatables the park has to offer, then swung off them at heights way above the surface.

I give up. Retreat to our personal marquee. Explain to Z why I am giving up.

“Well, I hit the bottom, too, Mum,” he says.

“I know you hit the bottom, sweetheart,” I say. “But I weigh more than twice what you do and when I hit the bottom it hurt.”

Knowing full well how pathetic it sounds, I continue, “I hurt my finger on the last one, and I’m worried I could break an ankle.”

The boy is not impressed. I don’t blame him.

I haz cheezburger. I figure I deserve it.

I push Z around the Olympic pool in the hamster’s wheel.

Eventually, we agree that we have juiced the place, and head for home. Well, Manila. Thirty kilometres and three hours away.

In the way of days that start badly, Saturday continues badly. At the bus station, we pick up a jeep for Remedios. Are dropped on Remedios Street, not Remedios Circle. Get lost (I have left our map behind). Pass cross-streets which I can’t orient on an East-West axis but to understand that they are THE WRONG WAY.

At an especially unappealing petrol station, we are picked up by a “good Samaritan” cab driver who takes us on a pricey magical mystery tour, which even I can tell is TOTALLY the wrong way.

Though, without a map, all I can do is squeak, “Quirino?! No, no, no. Why are we going from Ocampo to Quirino?! We go to Adriatico near Remedios Circle. That way!!!! You know Adriatico?! You know Remedios Circle?!” while the guy pretends not to speak English.

Note for tourists. If you don’t look Filipino, are not hailing a cab, and a driver stops for you just because you’re looking lost, he is going to screw you into next week. Just like they do in London. If you’re forrun…

We go for dinner at Zamboanga, where I have been meaning to go for a while. It specializes in seafood. I knew it for Mindanao cuisine. Z chooses to hate seafood.

It’s expensive. We are both in a vile mood. The floor show does not significantly improve it. Although Z decides he likes mussels.

At one point he utters the baleful line, “It’s a good thing neither of us is telepathic. Otherwise, you’d know what I’m thinking.”

To cut to the chase, as a single parent, single child family travelling longterm one really does have to communicate. We talk about why we are in a vile mood, and with whom.

We agree the only people we have to be cross with about our crappy day is each other, which isn’t fair on either of us. We further agree to improve matters with Toblerone and a film.

We go to the Seven-Eleven. Buy Toblerone. One large bar each: white for me, fruit and nut for him. Retreat to our hotel and watch X-Men on the laptop, with Toby the Toblerone soft toy on standby. It’s, actually, a very nice end to a rather disappointing day.

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An island within a lake, within an island, within a lake, within an island in the South China Sea.

We have heard about Mount Mayon. A few hundred kilometres north of here, on the island of Luzon, the Philippines, it’s been sufficiently active for folk to be evacuated, with vulcanologists on red alert.

“Mount Mayon is Alert Level Five, now, but going to stage 1,” he says. “And they say that Taal Volcano is Mount Mayon’s daughter. When Mount Mayon acts, the Taal Volcano follows. They are connected, below the ground. Taal erupts, they say, every two years.”

We are staying in Talisay, Granny, Grandpa, Z and me, in a little resort on the shores of Lake Taal. Electioneering — and, my god, they do this stuff well in the Philippines — is in full swing.

Our host, after seventeen years as Vice-Mayor, is standing for Mayor, and tricycles and jeepneys clad in lurid orange posters to and fro, blasting out his personalised theme song, with all the insane catchiness of late-90s Kylie but production values exponentially lower. It is amazing what you can do with an early-80s keyboard and the theme “Luis Malabanan…. more police”.

April the eighth is, eek, my thirty-sixth birthday. And so, we are climbing the volcano.

It has started well. Z was making shell art the other day, with the shells we had gathered on Gaspar Island, and without even knowing it was my birthday had made me this.

Surprise!

We take a bangka out across the lake, which was dry land until 1965, though now the weedy waters, where cages of ten thousand fish float on the surface like so many beads, cover drowned churches, villages and fields, to the ashy shores of the volcano.

And we climb. The standard tourist deal is to ascend the slope on horseback, but this sort of pre-programmed donkey ride is mine and Z’s idea of hell. I realise, a few paces in, that this sort of 4.5km ascent is Granny’s, too.

We progress, trailed by a man on a horse whose sales pitch taps at us like a deathwatch beetle. Z is his initial target. “Baby!!! You want to take a horse?”

Z turns to him. “I am not a baby,” he says, in true Patrick McGoohan style. “I am a boy. And I don’t want to ride a horse. I’ll walk.”

Even the man on the horse is impressed enough to turn his sales pitch to, “Boy! You want a horse?”

The views, as we ascend, are dazzling. Mountains, framed by water, framed by mountains, framed by water. Farmlands spilling away. Necklaces of fish farms. An entirely illogical landscape.

Or, as Michael has it, “It is an island, within a lake, within an island, within a lake, within an island.”

Z proving resistant, the chap with the horse turns his attentions to Granny. “Ma’am! You are tired? You want to take a horse?”

The psychological warfare is having some effect. Granny is concerned that she will slow us down. It is a relatively hot day. I realise, having been through something of the same ego-destructive helpfulness myself, that this is her idea of hell.

She isn’t unfit. But her caballero stalker certainly makes her feel that way.

We are winding up past scalded banana plantations, through shallow channels of striated red and white stone, over layers of volcanic grit and dust, heading towards the Spanish Trail, so called because the lava flow it runs across burst from Taal Volcano during the eruption of 1911. It is unlike any lava flow that Z or I have seen.

Granny, Grandpa and I reminisce about the time we climbed Vesuvius when I was near Z’s age. Z is hoping for white-hot rocks like the ones he scattered water on, on Volcan Pacaya, Guatemala, when he was only four.

“You see the fish farms?” Michael asks. I nod.

“In every cage they have ten thousand tilapia,” he says. “Ten thousand in every cage.”

As I scan the lake, its jagged, low-rise mountain edges, its ripples like the sea, the neat rectangular outlines of the cages like the edges of submerged matchboxes, my head spins through zeroes and ends up with environmental hell.

Quite literally 10 metres short of the 2km mark, where the Spanish Trail takes the gradient down to flat, kites circle over scalded farmlands, and we have covered almost half our lateral distance and 90% of the height, the ratatat salesmanship of the Deathwatch horseman achieves his main objective. Granny cuts a deal, ascends the “horse” and rides, in considerable discomfort, upwards.

Grandpa storms ahead. At over 60, he strikes a pace that I’d find hard to match.

Z and I amble on behind, with Michael. We hit the first sulphur vents, where acrid steam issues from the crumbled rock, turning the soil damp and brown. We test the temperature. Z gobs on the soil. It bubbles, slowly. We watch a while. At his insistence, I throw half our drinking water on the soil. It bubbles. Eventually.

I see a teachable moment.

Unfortunately, I am endeavouring to teach Z science.

“You see the green around that vent?” I say. “The sulphur has turned to copper sulphate.”

“No,” Z says. “Copper sulphate’s blue.”

“Ah,” I say. “You’re right. But you notice how damp the soil is?”

“Yes,” he says.

“What does that tell you about the sulphur?”

“It’s dissolved in steam,” he says, refraining from rolling his eyes at my stupidity. “There’s water vapour and sulphur.”

At the end of the Spanish Trail, we ascend through dazzling miniature canyons, striped like sweeties, head-height or so, punctuated with virulent gusts of steam, the sky a shocking blue.

Stairs, hastily assembled from bags that housed tilapia “growth pellets” and “finishing pellets” packed with volcanic dust, lead up to the crater’s edge.

The view, all four of us agree, vaut le voyage. A deep green crater lake, vulcanologists taking measurements on the edge, white puffs of underwater smoke bubbling under, crusts of gold and white around the edge, with a miniature island in the centre. In front, a crater lake. Around us, a deluged caldera. And in the crater lake, the cutest little volcanic island which will, no doubt, in a century or so, produce its own eruption.

It’s amazing. Gobsmacking. Z climbs everything in sight.

On our return, Granny rejects the horse. She and I walk on ahead with Michael, as Z initiates Grandpa into the science of volcanoes. We learn, to my horror, that Michael is eighteen, AKA half my age. Guiding is a holiday job for him, and tomorrow he will campaign for uncle Malabanan.

“He is tired,” Michael says, looking back at Z, in his outsize straw hat.

Even from this distance, I can see Z’s mouth moving. And moving. And moving. And moving some more. “I don’t think he’s tired,” I say. “He’s talking non-stop.”

“I wish I wasn’t so unfit,” says Granny.

“You’re not,” I say. “You just walked almost 7km in the heat, over tough ground, a lot of it uphill, in crap shoes. That’s honestly not unfit.”

Grandpa and Z arrive. “You really are unfit,” G says.

We take the bangka back. At this time every afternoon, the wind comes off the South China Sea and whips the lake up like the sea.

We bounce over waves, churn up gusts of spray. Z occupies the prow and whoops like a child on a rollercoaster each time we strike a white horse. And so do I. It’s a great birthday, really good.

Thanks to Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Fridays

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