Pink Bohol, Part Two

Panglao Island is connected to the mainland by two land bridges. The whole island is a beach lover’s paradise, with resorts one after the other on all sides. Bohol Beach Club may have the best-looking beach front, but for me the more famous strip of beach is Alona Beach.

Mini-trivia: yes, it was named after Alona Alegre, a Filipina actress who shot a movie with Fernando Poe, Jr. on that particular beach back in the 60s. This strip is also the most happening place on Panglao Island, with rows and rows of resorts, restos and recreational pubs. Because here is where you’ll find most of the foreigners who visit Bohol to enjoy the beaches and go diving or snorkeling.

I was able to see the nightlife along Alona Beach for the first time ever on this trip. At around dinnertime most of the establishments place chairs and tables along the beachfront, and they display lots of fresh seafood for you to choose and have their kitchen cook it in any way you like. By around 8-9pm, the same establishments morph into bars, and the music shifts from an easy tempo to a more driving beat (here, rock and roll is still king). There is a bar with a disco ball and lots of blinking lights, but they also have a game area, and the crowd that particular night (Tuesday) was quite straight.

I sadly realized: there’s no decidedly, purposefully gay-friendly bar here!

So I brainstormed with Onai and his friends to come up with the very first ever gay-friendly bar along Alona Beach: the Pink Tarsier!

The music will be all-dance, with some trance house on slow days and techno-house on weekends. All the bartenders will be cross-dressers, and the waiters will have to be good-looking hunks. Every top-of-the-hour, the cross-dressers will stop bartending and break into a lip-synch number.

We’ll have cocktails named Kahlua Hills, Bakla Yon Church (with a mix of mompo), Peanutty Kisses, and of course the house specialty Pink Tarsier, a concoction so powerful, one shot and you’ll be clinging on to the nearest person available. All cocktail drinks come with a cute, cuddly pink tarsier stuffed toy hanging on to the straw—no tiny umbrellas allowed.

All the employees will wear Pink Tarsier t-shirts, with different themes per night. On Madonna night, the t-shirts will have Madonna song titles: Express Yourself, Papa Don’t Preach, Material Girl, Give It 2 Me. On Abba nights, it’ll be Abba song titles: Mamma Mia!, Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight, Take A Chance On Me, Knowing Me Knowing You, Does Your Mother Know, Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All—and so forth and so on.

There will even be a massage parlor (with extra service) on the side. It can provide extra income to the waiters during off-peak seasons.

It’ll be the liveliest, most colorful bar in the whole of Panglao! (That is, unless the Archdiocese of Tagbilaran and the conservatives of Bohol gang up on us and close us down!)

P.S. – I told you, my being here with the family has made me quite wholesome, hehehe.