Party’s over. Today, the Philippines’ popular beach destination Boracay is officially closed to tourists. But in true Bora fashion, residents said goodbye with countdown parties at some of the island’s famous bars.
The scene was like a New Year’s Eve party, complete with fireworks before midnight, said Paul Benzi Florendo, a freelance photographer living in Boracay.
“Some people were getting emotional pero (but), like it was really like positive, hopeful,” he said.
The emotion can be seen in this 3-minute clip of residents and tourists singing Semisonic’s Closing Time in Club Paraw.
WATCH: Tourists partying at a club in Boracay sing the iconic song “Closing Time” by American rock band Semisonic as the clock strikes 12 midnight of April26, 2018, signalling the start of the six-month closure of the famed tourist destination. Fernando G.Sepe Jr., ABS-CBN News pic.twitter.com/23IttXILd4
— ABS-CBN News (@ABSCBNNews) April 25, 2018
Like all good parties, festivities ended at about 3am. Now, though, Boracay is like a “ghost town,” Florendo said.
According to him, there are still a few foreign tourists trying to take advantage of the more peaceful island, but that there are noticeably fewer people.
“There’s no people; you can see army choppers passing by,” he said.
These choppers come with the heightened security in Boracay, where police holding assault rifles man entry points.
AFP reported that about 600 policemen were deployed to the island. Some even performed drills in front of tourists — the government’s way of preparing for possible unrest from any locals not in favor of the six-month shutdown.
Florendo also noticed that the government seems to have already started demolishing establishments and widening roads. “You can hear the tractors and all the heavy machines,” he said.
Still, the future remains unclear for the thousands of people who stand to lose their homes and jobs.
Yesterday, Boracay’s mayor said that the local government was still finalizing the financial aid to be given to 7,000 families whose homes are set to be demolished because they are illegally occupying wetlands and forestlands.
Since most businesses in Boracay are dependent on tourists, roughly 30,000 people could also lose their jobs, which is why many have decided to go back to their home provinces.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development has started to give out transportation allowances to those who want to go home but in a report on Rappler, some workers said that what they were given was not enough.
President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Boracay’s closure last month to solve the island’s longstanding environmental problems, following a proposal from departments of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Tourism (DOT), and Interior and Local Government (DILG).
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