- What Was Boracay Like In 1986?
- Posted by admin on 5 Mar 2010 7:24 pm. Filed under Boracay News.
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The 1986 picture above shows the basketball court at Balabag Plaza with simple stage and quaint church in the background .Below is a 2010 photo taken from the same spot .Notice the stage has been removed,the court itself has been painted with advertisements , and the church has grown in size with it’s beautiful facade of Jesus which unfortunately is hidden behind a tree(but check the last photo of this blog which has a close up shot of the facade).
What was Boracay like back in the year 1986 ? I inevitably get this question from a visitor every night while working at Cocomangas Shooter Bar in the beautiful Philippines. Boracay in 1986 was paradise to perfection with the whitest sand of any beach I’d ever seen on the planet . The quality of the white sand along White Beach had a perfect powdery feel to it like no other beach in Asia or quite possibly the world . The island was a special place in 86 with no cars ,no roads , no telephones ,no Internet,no daily newspapers, and hardly any tourists, just friendly locals.
I recently returned to Canada to visit my sick mom and to help with cleaning out her apartment as she is moving into an independent living facility in Vancouver. While at home my mom gave away all her photo’s which she had accumulated over the years and that’s where i found the old photo’s of Boracay from 1986 , shown above . When I saw the photo’s I remembered how unbelievably beautiful Boracay was and I said to myself , it’s no wonder why I stayed here all these years .Imagine an island with no roads , just white sand trails passing through the villages . It really was a paradise island like you see only in pictures or in a Hollywood movie.
One day in the early 90’s I awoke to dump trucks dumping dirt over top of the beautiful white sand trail which ran in front of Cocomangas. It was a sad day for me as i knew what the future was going to bring , a cement road with tons of traffic .The paradise island of Boracay really started to change when we got electrical power in 1992 . Electricity enabled builders to build faster with power tools and resorts offered better rooms with air conditioning and swimming pools .Commercialism arrived in the mid 90’s and Boracay has never looked back .
To the newcomer , Boracay is still a beautiful paradise island in the Philippines , but to the old timers there’s nothing like the old days …
Yours truly,
John Munro
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