Mushrooms and Summer Days: 2014-09-07

8/18/14, 12:01 AM PDT

If you've ever been at the beach, you probably know what a bad idea it is to wear oversized flip flops while treading on muddy ground. Because of how rigid they are, when you take a step, it'll flick up any mud on the back of your flip flops and launch it onto the back of your legs until you look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Fun fact: One of Pollock's paintings sold for 164 MILLION DOLLARS.

Collectively, these legs are worth 328 million dollars.

So we bought these to make our legs a little cleaner.

This was not my decision to make.

I wore these reluctantly. And for the first fifteen minutes or so, I was absolutely ashamed to be caught in public wearing not just Crocs, but knock-off Crocs.

Yeah, just get it over with, might as well.

But after seeing a couple wearing flip flops, their backs looking like a brown tie-dye painting, I came to accept these Crocs. I mean if it looks stupid but it works, it ain't stupid, right?

Right.

Anyway, today we had lunch at the fancy fancy Shangri-La hotel in Boracay. Look at this place. Seriously, every picture I took made this place look like paradise.

And honestly, it probably is.

I absolutely LOVED the fact that their walkways were bordered with water.

You know it's fancy when fish are spitting in your water.

Beautiful.

There was also a piano in the lobby. So naturally...

Badly, mind you.

We made our way down their mountain (yes, they owned an ENTIRE mountain) to their restaurant. Because we had connections with their General Manager, this was waiting for us when we got down.

I know that

I'm not supposed to

Post food pics but

I couldn't resist.

It was DELICIOUS. And even though I couldn't finish everything (even though I tried to, dear god did I try to), the staff here have a cute little policy on leftover food:

They feed it to the local birds.

"Should we tell them they're eating chicken?" "...Nah."

Here's a few other pictures I got of Shangri-La.

Poolside restaurant, with the beach visible in the background.

"Life's like a box of chocolates..."

Looks relaxing. Was relaxing. Until a spider crawled on my arm.

Poolside again. The edges of their pools turn into waterfalls, which is crazy.

I wasn't kidding when I said they owned a mountain.

Good enough to be a background for Videoke.

Later, we left the hotel and drove to this adventure island place where I got to drive one of these things:

I think they call it a "Mud Go-Kart."

It's actually an ATV, and it's pretty easy to drive considering I didn't crash even though I didn't have my license yet.

Pictured: Me not crashing.

...Actually, I lied, I veered off course and got stuck in a hole while driving it. Eventually, we made it to our destination though: Boracay's highest zipline tower.