It was 4am, the sun was still a long time from rising, and rain was falling when I woke up to make breakfast with the one other guy in the group. We were in Balinak, Ligao, Bikol, a town at the end of the road—literally.
The single paved lane wove around the rolling hills of the land around Mt. Mayon, it ended at the basketball court of Balinak, a simple village that still consisted of many nipa hut homes, a village with a sad recent story.