Among those passengers was a far higher proportion of Caucasians than one would expect in a somewhat remote provincial town, and it seemed reasonable to guess that they were headed for the hotels along the beach. Most of them acted as if they’d been here before and knew where they were going. These headed, not surprisingly, for the larger buses idling before the terminal. The smaller vehicles—colorful, largely homemade van/bus hybrids—drew a clientele consisting exclusively of Filipinos. Csongor overheard a white man speaking in English as he shouldered his way across a current of passengers toward a bus, and so caught up with him and asked him whether that bus was going to the hotel district. The man turned and looked him up and down carefully, then informed him, none too warmly, that it was so. Csongor nodded back to Marlon, who stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd, and Marlon relayed the news to Yuxia, who was lost in it, and they followed Csongor up the stairs and onto the bus.