We were flying into the Boracay Airport right at sunset, which made for a perfect view out the airplane window of the beautiful little island as we landed. It had been a long travel day from Vietnam. We woke up at 5 am to get to the airport, and had a 4 hour flight to Manila, 3 hour layover, and another 1.5 hour flight to Boracay. Not to mention less than 24 hours ago I had been in the hospital!
We were in Boracay for the Boracay Open – a beach ultimate party tournament hosted every year on this idyllic little island. The tournament had been cancelled since 2020, so this was the first year it was back since COVID shut everything down.
A group of our Kaohsiung Ultimate League friends in Taiwan had formed a Taiwan team that had a bid for the tournament in 2020, but since it was cancelled, a lot of players on the original roster from 3 years ago had since left Taiwan. Thus, we formed a ragtag team of old and new players, all with some sort of connection to Taiwan. Saz & I were super excited to get to Boracay and see a bunch of our friends.
The nearest airport to Boracay is called Caticlan Airport, but it is not actually on the island of Boracay. We landed at the tiny domestic airport, grabbed our luggage and took a trike to the ferry port, and then took the ferry over to Boracay. The whole process is fairly quick, but we had some confusion at the ferry port. Not only do you have to pay for the ferry ticket (50 PHP/person), you also need to pay a Boracay environmental fee (300 PHP/person for foreign tourists) and a terminal fee (150 PHP/person). They don’t roll all of these prices into 1 ticket, you need to go through 3 separate lines in order to get all of your fees paid for. It’s also important to note that Boracay requires a hotel reservation/confirmation from an accredited hotel in order to allow boarding onto the ferry. After we paid for all our fees & showed our hotel reservation, we hopped on the boat and took the 15 minute ferry across to Boracay.
After we arrived at the Boracay port, we hailed down an e-trike to take us a mile up the road to our hostel. We had decided to rent out an 8 person dorm room at Shore Time Dormitel for us and some teammates, but didn’t realise just how far our hostel was from the fields/beaches. It was at least a 25-30 minute walk to the main tournament area – Station 2. Lesson learned for next year – get a hotel right on the beach! We ended up having no issues flagging down e-trikes every day to the fields, but it would still be nice to be walking distance.
That first night, we had a team dinner at 8 by the Beach. It was so good to catch up with all of our friends, and hear stories on what had happened in Taiwan since we left. It was also happy hour with some great buy 1 get 1 cocktail deals! I was still on antibiotics from my stomach infection in Vietnam, so it was going to be a sober party tournament for me! Saz, Jules, Del & I had picked up banana Hawaiian shirts in Hoi An, Vietnam for the team, because our jersey manufacturer had fell through at the last minute. We revealed our surprise team jerseys for everyone – BANANAS!
We had a relatively early night & went back home to get some rest before the first day of playing!
The next morning, our first game was at 8 am so we got to the fields around 7:45 am. It was our first time seeing the beach during the day since being in Boracay, and were truly blown away by the beauty. The white sand beach & bright turquoise water was truly stunning. We were so lucky to be playing here! The palm trees provided some much needed shade for the sidelines, and our team photographer (Saz) did an amazing job capturing some great moments.
The tournament had implemented a few fun rules for this tournament:
- if you dropped the pull trying to do any sort of trick catch it wasn’t a turnover
- an endzone to endzone full field opposite gender huck & score would count as 2 points instead of 1
- the trees lining the fields could play defence (treefence amiright) – if the disc hit a tree and came back in bounds, it still counted as in
We were also playing a 2-2 gender split. We only had 5 girls on the team and over 12 guys, so the ladies got A LOT of playing time. I was just so happy to be feeling so much better after my Vietnam hospitalisation and grateful that I was even able to play at all! A couple days ago I never would’ve imagined I’d be sprinting and jumping in an ultimate tournament.
We had 4 games the first day, and it got progressively hotter and hotter throughout the day. The sun was brutal, and the fields were also slanted down towards the water, so running upfield sometimes required running up a sandy hill. However, we definitely utilised the beautiful ocean to cool down between games (and sometimes between points!) Sideline vibes were great, and everyone had a blast. We got so many compliments on our jerseys, and our team became affectionately known as THE BANANAS.
We played 2 games in the morning, had a tournament sponsored lunch, and 2 games in the afternoon. We ended up losing all 4 games that first day, but we gained notoriety throughout the tournament for our banana shirts (and Del’s beautiful banana dress), so we basically won the tournament!
We all went back to our hotels for a quick shower/siesta, before meeting up for a team dinner at Giuseppes before heading to the tournament party. In hindsight, we probably just picked a bad restaurant to host a 15+ group of rowdy ultimate players, because the vibes at Giuseppes were terrible. It was a family/couples type of establishment, with people wishing to enjoy a quiet dinner. For us, the service was unbelievably slow, they messed up a lot of our orders, and straight up forgot some of the orders as well. We were getting hangrier and grumpier, and trying to pass the time waiting for our food by playing drinking games. We then got told off by the staff for being too loud. Understandable, but maybe if our mouths were filled with food and didn’t need to wait over 2 hours for food we would’ve been quieter.
Post Giuseppes, vibes were at an all time low. We were tired, bored, annoyed, and painfully sober. The prospect of going to the tournament party seemed exhausting. However, a true ultimate player NEVER misses the tournament party (I just made this up). We rallied the troops and headed to the party. We had been promised an open bar, but they only had a jungle juice type drink available as the open bar. Beers and cocktails were an extra charge, AND they charged for water too! The Boracay Open had been really proactive about providing free water at the fields, as well as stressing the importance of hydration in the heat all day, so it was weird that they didn’t offer free water at the party. However, the host team did gift us a bottle of tequila, and that’s basically water, right?
When we first arrived, it was completely dead. We started playing some team drinking games (I had smuggled in a 2 litre bottle of water as my drank of choice because hot girls that get stomach infections and can’t drink must still stay hydrated in the club!!) More and more teams started trickling in, and we decided it was time to start up the dance party. The first DJ was horrible and absolutely could not read the room. He would play a snippet of a banger for about 20 seconds, people would flood to the dance floor, then he would cut to 5 or 6 different long, horrible songs that nobody had ever heard of. It was comical how many people would evacuate the dance floor, and the DJ did not seem to care. He continued his horrible track list, would occasionally play a banger and people would start to dance, to then just ruin the vibe again. We started multiple TAYLOR SWIFT group chants to no avail. Give the people what they want!!!
Luckily, as the night progressed, a new DJ took over who started playing bangers (minus points cuz still no Taylor Swift though). The crowd went wild and the dance floor got packed. We danced the night away!
Day 2 was rough for everyone (except me! sober queen!) – we had another 8 am start time and most people had stayed out very late. The Bananas stumbled up to the fields tired, hungover, and not feeling their best selves. However, we ended up getting our first and only win of the tournament on universe point in that game. We had the tournament lunch, and then played 2 more games in the afternoon. Day 2 was even hotter than day 1, so we spent a lot of sideline time/bye time in the ocean.
After we finished playing, we all headed over to the field where the finals of the Elite Division would be played – Boracay Dragons vs. Boracay Pirates. I have been to a lot of ultimate tournaments in my day, and I can confidently say I’ve never seen ultimate played like this before. The level they were playing at was insane. I didn’t know it was humanly possible to run so fast, jump so high, and dive so far on sand. So many perfect throws, highlight reel level layouts, and insane skys. We had heard from a girl on another team that the Dragons were the top dogs and the Pirates were the underdogs. The Pirates played incredibly the whole game and ended up upsetting the Dragons 15-8. It had been such a fun tournament, and watching the finals was definitely a highlight. We will definitely be back next year!
Our whole team was staying an extra few days, because the Boracay Open falls on the same weekend as Taiwan’s spring break, where Taiwan gets a 4 day weekend. Jules and Del had chartered a party boat on Boracay with some of their friends from Australia a couple days ago, so since everybody was staying an extra day, we decided to do the same for our team. We reached out to a few people to organise the boat charter for the following day. We extended the invite to a couple other teams and got a big group of 30+ people for a 3 pm to sunset party boat the following day.
That next morning, we had a chill beach day and enjoyed the beautiful white sand beaches. In the afternoon, the party boat organisation was a bit chaotic, because we had gotten conflicting information on where to meet/how much it would cost per person etc. Eventually, we rallied the whole gang at the pier, I collected the money and we were on our way.
The boat was so much fun! It had snorkelling gear, nets over the water to lay on, a speaker system, and two different diving boards off the top deck. We spent the afternoon enjoying the beautiful blue waters, swimming and diving off the boat, hanging with friends, and blaring NON STOP TAYLOR SWIFT.
We saw a beautiful sunset on the boat, and headed back to the pier around 7. We were gifted a few bottles of rum from some of the other teams, and enjoyed a final Bananas team dinner. It had been so good to catch up and hang with such a fun group of people, and we already can’t wait for next year!
We’re continuing our adventures with Jules, Del, & Christopher at our next stop: Moalboal, Cebu.