E-mail me!  I love to hear from people who have dropped by the site!

Dispatch # 2: Pages from a Hot Island. Manila, Northern Luzon, Manila Yet Again.

Introductory Notes

Travelogues

• March 30 to April 4th, Manila
• April 5th to April 12th, Northern Luzon
• April 12th to April 16th, Manila Again
• April 17th, Preparing to go South

Observations

1. Philippines Government in Action
2. On Philippine Food
3. General Notes
4. John's Travel Wisdoms

Supplemental Pictures

• Sagada
• Mt. Pinatubo

Introductory Notes

Frustration and exhilaration come hand-in-hand. Often I am at one extreme or the other. Constantly being inundated by crowds, lines and people trying to take you for a few bucks gets under my skin like a bad rash. But those moments when you meet an friendly or interesting person, see a beautiful site, or when you are seeing something totally new and different are so magical that they make up for it--and then some.

I am truly amazed at the cultural differences. I finally feel I am starting to "get" some of the ground rules. But it’s hard. Every day there is something that catches me by surprise or I discover a new way to misunderstand or be misunderstood. But in the last few days I have developed a new sense for some of the motivators and have a better understanding of how behaviors that seem to me to be totally at odds with one another make sense when looked at from a different perspective.

But I am learning more and more every day. I am meeting lots of interesting people and seeing so much. It’s kind of a Zen experience. Every sense is highlighted. Everything you observe, you see at with a new perspective. You can’t tune out and lose yourself in your little world, the newness, the chaos, the excitement forces you to stay present all the time. You can’t help but get sucked into and fully involved in the weirdness, chaos, beauty and danger of your new surroundings.

And living on a shoestring itself is an experience. You have to minimize possessions and maximize value. In some places it’s easy to live cheap with minimal effort. In many places, the cards are stacked against you--if you're a white guy. As above, you have to focus on what you do and how you do it to keep from bleeding money. And there are lots of folks who would love to help you part with your money as fast as possible. Being thrifty becomes a full time job.

March 30 – April 4th, Manila

As grotesque as Manila is in many ways, I still enjoy time here. Being somewhat bored with the tourist area and getting bolder in my newly acquired skills using the jeepney and trishaw, I decided to explore a bit more of Manila.

I am always afraid of getting into a bad neighborhood, but after a while I realized that a third world country IS a bad neighborhood. The best bet is to just be careful and not let The Fear show. I have found that with a little with a little bluff, bluster and pretending to know the ropes, people are less likely to try and take advantage of "a stupid foreigner."

So I took the LRT (Manila's mass transit rail) up to Kaloocan City. There wasn't much to see. More stalls on the street hawking fruits, candies, cigarettes and foods. The food was different though, less touristy.

The food stalls in Manila are wonderful--and sometimes scary. The bigger places are more like a restaurant, with seating and a counter where you can look over the specials of the day and pick what you want. The smaller places are carts with two propane stoves that crowd the sidewalks near office buildings at lunch hour. The usual fare is a couple of stews and curries (your choice of meats: chicken, pork, or other indiscernible meat-like animal parts), two or three types of fried fish. Two entrée dishes and a plate of rice usually set you back around 65 Pesos, or US$2.60.

Other then the food stalls, Caloocan had a mall. Not like Woodfield or Watertower Place, but a four story air-con building with about 200 ten by ten foot stalls, each selling purses, shoes, pants, T-shirts, cell phones and all sorts of cheap crap. Walking through any large public place is always strange for me, but off the tourist path, I got more then the usual attention. Every few feet I would get a good natured shout of "hey Joe" and lots of giggles from young girls. I found that the best attitude is just to keep walking with a big grin, sharing in the general sense of amusement that they seem to have over seeing a big white guy.

Friday I took a Jeepney up to the Divisiora Market. Here, the streets and sidewalks are crammed with stalls selling every conceivable thing: dishes, pots and pans, brooms, clothes, sunglasses, shoes, fruits, unrefrigerated meats and fishes (don’t walk by there in the late afternoon, the stench is unbearable), fruits, flowers, hardware, concrete mix, candies, film, fried pork fat, halo-halo (shaved ice with coconut milk, and colorful fruits, vegetables and beans mixed in, it is eaten as a desert or a snack), watches, hats and anything else you can imagine and a few things you couldn’t. Like tiny fried whole birds on a stick. Yummy I am sure, but I couldn’t stomach eating it. It’s horribly noisy and crowded, people shouting, pushing and shoving, Jeepneys and trishaws plowing through the crowds, kids playing, running, crying, sleeping. It’s a wonderful, colorful site.

But after a few days of the heat, smog, grime chaos and crowds, it was time to head out. Time to get out into the country.

April 5th to April 11th: Northern Luzon.

The next loop through the Philippines was to take me through northern Luzon (the main isle of the Philippines, the island Manila is on).

I started out on Saturday morning, April 5th, and headed for Angeles City, an hour and a half north of Manila.

After arriving in Angeles at the bus terminal, I hired a motorcycle trishaw to take me to the hotel. I asked the young Filipino driver if he new the Premiere Hotel, which he assured me, yes, he did, so off we went. After a half hour of driving aimlessly up and don’t MacArthur Road, me getting out and showing him the location on the map, me pointing out streets he should take and him not taking them, and, finally, the realization that not only did he not know where the hotel was, he didn’t understand a word of English. He just said "yes" whenever I spoke to him or gestured at him. So, finally, I asked him if he thought that canned sardines were the greatest thing (and yes, he did think so) and jumped out of the trishaw and said "OK, here is good." He demanded 100 Pesos. If he had actually got me to the hotel, it should have run about 20 pesos. So I said "Yes," handed him 20 pesos and walked away.

I found another trishaw driver and changed tactics. "Do you know where the Premiere Hotel is?" I asked. "Yes sir," he replied. "Just down Fields street by Malabanses. Would you like me to take you there?" That was my man. I told him I’d give him 10 pesos. He demanded 50. We settled for 30. I was so excited that her new where the hotel was that I didn’t care. I made it there in 5 minutes.

Angeles has quite a reputation. It is the home of the former Clark Air Force Base, abandoned by the US in 1991 after a series of tense negotiations with the Philippine government capped by the explosion of Mt. Pinatubo that covered the base in almost two feet of ash, and the subsequent pillaging of the base when the staff was removed for safety reasons. (Somebody told me that within 24 hours all the furniture, air-conditioning, plumbing and windows had been pilfered from hundreds of buildings on and near the base and were shipped all over the Philippines to be sold on the black market.).

But Angeles’ reputation was for another legacy the US base left behind: a booming trade in girlie bars and prostitution. Angeles, in it’s heyday, had a reported 500 girlie bars and thousands of inexpensive prostitutes plying their trade. Originally the industry just serviced the Clark AFB staff, but as it’s reputation grew, it became a favorite furlough spot for US Military personnel from allover Asia, and finally it started to attract non-military tourists from America, Korea, Japan and Europe just for the wild nightlife and the girls

Well, if you were hoping for a personal account of the sex scene there, I am sorry to disappoint you. I didn’t go to one girlie bar. I didn’t pick up a prostitute. I went there to climb through the canyons and destruction left by Mt. Pinatubo. But in case you are interested, a few folks I talked to have told the Angeles scene has peaked and declined, but is still very active, though prices have gone up and the number and quality of the bars have gone down. And I will repeat: I know this only from hearsay (got that Mom?).

On Sunday morning, I woke up at 6:00 am to go on a trekking tour of Mt. Pinatubo. We left at 7:00 am with Ben, our German trek guide and took a Jeepney a few miles out of town to a river canyon that lead up towards Mt. Pinatubo.

To get to Mt. Pinatubo we took a Jeepney around Clark Air Force Base and up into the foothills. There were hundreds of well-built cinderblock houses that had been abandoned after the eruption. Ben, our German tour guide, said that as soon as the USAF personnel were evacuated prior to the eruption, the locals raided the houses and removed everything: stoves, furnaces, pipes, windows—whatever they could peel away. Some of the houses still had piles of ash on the roofs that were already sporting tracts of weeds and shrubs.

A few miles out of town, we stopped and climbed out of the Jeepney. From the road, we took a path covered in a fine gray powdery ash (you sunk four inches with every step) down into a canyon. The canyon was like a moonscape; everything was barren and gray. A small stream meandered through the rock and ash, eroding deep channels into the soft, new earth. Nothing grew in the canyon floor, the sides were covered in scraggly grasses, clinging to the loose ash soil.

As we walked along the stream bed, the canyon walls grew more sheer, 60 foot walls of ash, sand and rock that had been spewed form the volcano and washed down the valley. We walked for hours through steep canyons and climbed waterfalls, dusty paths and rocky conglomerates, stopping at a lookout point to see the peak of Pinatubo in the distance. We walked back down into the canyon and headed in deeper, stopping by a fresh cold-water spring to refill on water, a hot water spring and up into a dead-end canyon with walls of ash rising 120 feet or more. As we stood below, a small section of wall gave way sending up a large plume of dust.

As desolate as it was, it was amazingly beautiful. Somehow, the gray barrenness and the juxtaposition of the blue shy and occasion lush tropical foliage that had managed to take hold where breathtaking. It painted a picture of desolation and renewal.

The hike was long (seven and a half hours) and fairly arduous. It was hot, the sun was intense and there was this fine talcum-power dust that got into everything: your eyes, nose, throat and made it raw. By 2:00pm I was ready to go home.

On Monday morning I left for Baguio, one of the larger cities on Luzon and well known here for it’s cool mountain climate. Instead of getting a ticket for the air-com bus, I decided to take the "regular" public bus. And that’s when it got to be surreal. Have you ever seen a movie where there is a bus in s third-world country and there are a million people crammed it along with vegetables, bags of rice, boxes of nails, and crates of chickens? Well, that was the bus I took. The seats were nothing more then padded benches. The suspension of the bus was non existent. The heat was intense.

For the next seven hours we rattled, lurched, heaved, sweated, and clucked our way along to Baguio. Twice we stopped at roadside stands to get drinks or a meal. Every hour or so the bus driver stopped to let a dozen passengers off to pee in the brush by the side of the road. Every few minutes we stopped to load or unload more people, supplies and chickens. The radio blared the whole way and, very surprisingly to me, they played country music. Randy Travis and Alabama.

For three hours the bus ride was cute. For the next three it was tolerable, but growing a bit irritating. For the last hour it was tiresome. My ass and legs hurt from the crummy seats, my back was killing me from lurching and swaying and the little kids puking all around were making a foul stench that was starting to get to me.

Somehow, we finally made it to Baguio. I found a room at the Baguio Goodwill Hotel (inappropriately named for it’s surly staff), dropped off my stuff, grabbed a meal and since it had started to rain, I decided to just go to sleep.

In the middle of the night I woke with a start and laid in bed for a second trying to figure out what it was that woke me. I realized after a second the room was gently swaying back and forth. A tremor, a slight earthquake. Nothing big, just a little swaying. I laid there, not able to panic, but just enjoying the gentle rocking. After a few seconds it stopped and in a minute I was asleep again.

Baguio was nice, but a tad unfriendly. The city was high in the mountains (lush, wet, cool-climate rainforest-covered mountains) and the temperature was a good 15 degrees cooler then Manila. It was nice to turn off the sweat glands for a while. I spent the next day just walking around the city. It was definitely cleaner and more middle class then Manila. It is set in the hills, with little town centers on hilltops connected by winding roads to more little town centers.

One of Baguio’s claim’s to fame was that the Central city was designed by Daniel Burnham, the chief city planner for Chicago. I have found that I take a small delight in little references to Chicago. It’s nice to hear the city mentioned every now and then.

The next morning, I wandered through the Baguio market. It was a bizarre place. There were endless corridors that went past all sorts of fruit stands, meat markets, fish sellers, clothing stores, dry goods, candy vendors, peanuts roasters etc. It wound and wove through corridors barley illuminated with 25 watt bulbs, like some giant intestine for the city. Hundreds of people squeezed through impossibly narrow corridors and piles of goods that spilled out of the stalls and spread almost across the walkway. Women with baskets of fruit on their head danced neatly around old men crouched to inspect baskets of dried fish. Kids stumbled blindly in between people’s feet while girls shoed flies from the tables of meat with pom-pom covered wands as the smell of rotting meat rose to greet you.

The prettiest place I found was the Baguio Botanical Gardens. I arrived there just as a soft drizzle started to turn into a pouring rain (Baguio, being in the mountains is a far wetter climate, with rain expected almost every day around 4:00 PM). I wandered around for a while through the lush gardens. The gardener had cleared some underbrush and started a fire just before the rain had started. The burning foliage smelled like incense. As the rain grew stronger I stood in a pavilion with a few Filipinos. When the rain abated some and I grabbed a Jeepney back to the town center.

Overall, I was not thrilled with Baguio. It lacked the same friendliness that other parts of the Philippines had. So after one day, I headed for Sagada, a small village in the remote Mountain Provinces, famous for their beautiful scenery and the coffins that hang from the cliffs and are piled in the caves.

If the bus ride from Angeles to Baguio was bizarre and tiresome, the ride from Baguio to Sagada was insane and excruciating. And there was more Randy Travis music. Different bus, different company, same damn tape. Over and over.

The bus lurched, darted, shook and heaved up and down hills along a two way cement road. Not as bad as I thought. There we crazy hairpin turns and steep drops, but the roads were pretty good. Occasionally, there were places where there had been a rock or mud slide and the bus had to go around a pile of dirt on the shoulder , or avoid a spot where the road had eroded and crumbled into the valley below. After passing one eroded spot, I looked back and noticed that the erosion had eaten under the roadway as well. The road that we had just driven over was a barely more then a thin shelf over a few hundred feet of nothing. I know that as a rational person I should have been terrified, but I just laughed. What else could I do?

The cement road turned into a dirt and gravel road, barely a lane and a half wide. The turns got tighter, the road grew bumpier. The bus driver continued to barrel round blind turns, occasionally pulling almost off the road to let another bus or jeepney by. I started to see more and more mud slides and erosion on the road. Every now and then we had to stop while a bulldozer cleared the road or a construction crew repaired a gash. There was an uneasy truce between the road and the mountain. The road asserted it’s right to be there, but the mountain kept reminding it that it was only there by it’s good graces, and could be taken away at any minute. I switched my seat with the girl beside the window. I wanted to see out, she was terrified every time we passed a tight spot in the road and had to ride with the wheels hanging off the edge of the road. It worked out for both of us.

One major disappointment was the houses. Traditionally, houses were bamboo and thatch. However, due to improved roads and transportation, new building materials had taken over. Almost every structure was now made of either wood frame with a sheet metal covering or concrete & rebar frame filled with cinder block; both of which are horribly ugly. Occasionally, the cinder block buildings were covered in stucco, but it seemed like most people felt that making a structure look good was not necessary. Most of the towns had lost what quaint appeal they had and now looked like slums. Occasionally, in the distant fields, you could still see huts made of thatch and bamboo used for rice storage, but even those were being replaced by sheet metal sheds.

For the next seven hours we lurched, shook, rattled, grunted and wheezed through beautiful mountain scenery. Mountains covered in pines, ferns, banana trees, grasses, vines, moss and lichens; laced with terraced fields for crops. The air was thick with rich smells, the mountain air smelled like good pot fresh out of the bag.

As we got into the Mountain Provinces, rice terraces started to appear. The rice terraces are stunning. Built by hand from stones, they cascade down the mountains wherever there is a stream of water. Each terrace is anywhere from five or six feet to as much as thirty or forty feet wide, depending on how steep the hillside. The rock wall supports the earth the rice paddy grows on, as well as acting as a dam to regulate the flow of water down to the next terrace. So you look upon a rich green rice paddy, a gray lichen-covered rock wall, and a small waterfall that empties into the rice paddy below. This is repeated all the way down the mountain.

After another long bus ride I arrived in Sagada. Sagada is a small town of a few hundred people strung out across a mountain top. Sagada was beautiful. Rock outcroppings, pines, ferns, and reasonably pretty houses.

I found a hotel just off the main square where the bus and Jeepneys left from, called the Guyadan Inn. It had nice clean rooms with good air circulation for only P65 a night ($2.60). What a deal! The shared bath, however, was problematic. Water was not always running, the toilets clogged frequently and there was often a line for the one bathroom that actually had enough room to take a shit or a shower in. But I still liked it. Hell, at $2.60 a night, how can you complain? Hell, for $2.60 you can't even leave a bell boy an insulting tip in a New York City hotel.

It was late. I showered and took a nap, and at 7:00 PM I went out for dinner. The first restaurant I got to was closed. So was the second, third, fifth, eighth… I asked if there was a restaurant open and I was told to go to the Shamrock café, they served food after seven. The Shamrock was packed. There were all of four large tables, two sixty-watt light bulbs and about 20 Filipinos with a handful of tourists mixed in. Everybody was drinking beer and Ginebra (cheap but smooth sugar cane liquor, which, at 25 pesos a pint, is served in cheaper bars everywhere). There was a table with four Filipinos and two Peace Corp volunteers; one of the Filipinos was playing guitar, and the whole café was singing along. I was seated at a table in the back with a couple of Filipinos. The guitar player was very good and so were most of the singers. Everybody was just relaxing and drinking while the guitar player played Crosby Still and Nash and Paul Simon Tunes.

I ate a plate of spaghetti (I was burned out on the standard Filipino options of fried rice, Pork adobo and pancit Canton ) and drank a few beer and struck up a conversation with Wilson, a Filipino who had just returned to Sagada after seven years in Australia. He had a tired, beaten air about him and an overly boastful bravado. Something about him suggested that he might have been run out of town before. It seemed like he was trying to put a spin on his return that made him look unusually important to the community. Unfortunately, it seemed like only the tourists were listening. I was beat form the bus ride and made a hasty retreat from Wilson's company and straight to bed.

The next day was exploring the area around Sagada. There were lots of trails through the hills, valleys, thick rainforest vegetation and rice paddies. The town had recently got some attention from the tourists, but it was still fresh and unspoiled with little commercialization. A guy had made a map of some sites and sold then for 20 cents each. The sites were unmarked and you had to do a little searching to find them. Sometimes the only directions you had were verbal instructions from the local folks: "it’s just over the hill by the cemetery, when you see the big brown rock, you go down to the left and down the canyon."

My first stop, the hanging coffins were very cool. There were several cliffs where, in years no to recently passed, tribesmen had made rough wooden coffins and secured them to the cliffs with wood and fiber. Some, with a dozen caskets to the configurations, where amazingly high up. Others were just a few feet off the ground. During my explorations, I got lost on the path. As I was climbing I noticed a shard of old pottery, then another oddly shaped arc. I picked it up and looked closer, it was a human rib. I looked up and behind a thicket of bushes saw a small burial site that wasn’t on the map. I walked over and there were several coffins at eye level, one had decayed and spilled it’s contents leaving a pile of bones and clothing scraps and a beautiful coffin lid with a salamander carved on the top. I was tempted to take it, but I couldn’t. Finding my way back to the trail I discovered another burial site not on the map. The damn coffins were lashed to every rock face in the valley it seemed!

Looping back through the village, I headed south to the burial caves. Like most of the sites in the city, it wasn’t made for tourists. There was no marking for the trail, other than a break in the fence line and a path leading off the road. The path was very old and had rock steps that appeared to have been built a long time ago. It lead down a steep hillside into a tight, densely forested and very moist canyon, which finally opened up on to a huge gaping cave mouth. The cave was filled with about 80 coffins all stacked on top of each other up the side of two walls. I was amazed, both here and at the hanging coffins at how little disruption had taken place. The cave was almost untouched, with all the coffins still staked neatly and little signs of any outside disturbance. I just sat and looked and wondered what the people who made these coffins and were buried in them were like.

The final trek of the day was up north, through the rice terraces to the small waterfall just outside of town. I rounded a hill and before me was one of the prettiest sites I have ever seen: valleys filled with bright green rice terraces, rimmed with trees, laced with smoking fires of burning rice chaff all bathed in the setting sun. Through the rice paddies wove paths that children walked on to get to the waterfall to bathe and cool off. When I got to the waterfall there were a dozen village kids and a couple Japanese tourists. The local kids were splashing around and hamming it up much to the delight of the Japanese tourists—and myself. On the walk back, I saw an old man, stooped and crooked, haul a load of rich chaff down to his ox and feed him while he cleaned and petted him. It’s moments like that when you know you are in a completely different world.

That night I went to the Shamrock Café again. Wilson was there again. He showed me how to drink Ginebra. You pour a shot into a glass. You slam it. You drink a sip of mineral water as a chaser. And you keep doing that until you are suitable hammered. I shared a few bottles of the stuff with Wilson, a Dutch tourist named Manuel (very Dutch name!) and the two Peace Corp workers I met the night before. I got seriously trashed very early in the evening. But that’s OK. There was a 9:00 curfew for all businesses; they had to have the doors shut and the lights out by 9:00 on the head. So much for partying all night!

April 12th –17th, Manila Again.

The next day I headed back to Manila. 14 hours on the bus was grueling. When I got back, I stopped a the Cowboy Grill (a live music joint near the hotel I was staying at) for a beer or two.

It was crowded, so I was seated at a table with two Filipinos. One of them asked me if I was American. I told him I was. "Awwwllllll-riiiiight! My name Sonny and I love Southern Rock!" We started talking. Sonny was the rhythm guitarist from the band that had just played. Caz, his "compadre" (Sonny’s son’s godfather, which is a big honor in the Philippines) was an animator with Philippine Animation Studios; he did animation for the X-Men cartoons. We talked about everything American. Sonny couldn’t talk enough about America. He had fair English skills, and when conversation lagged, he would just grin and recite lists of southern rock bands: "Allman Brothers!" "Lynyrd Skynyrd!" "Stevie Ray Vaughn!" "Chicago is the blues capital, awwwllll-riiiight!"

Somewhere along the line, Sonny started insisting we go back to my hotel and he was going to get a bottle of Tanduay Rhum for us to drink. He wanted to show me how to drink "Tagatay style." Tagatay was Sonny’s home town. Tagatay style was a lot like Sagada style. You poured a little rhum into the glass, slammed it and followed it with a tiny chaser sip of Coke, then passed the setup on to the next man. Sonny stressed the whole object was to minimize the Coke, "Coke is too expensive, you want to save money for more rhum." Sonny and I polished off a good two thirds of the bottle. Caz started heaving and passed out early on. Sonny started insisting that we were immortal. He certainly seemed to be getting bullet-proof anyway. Sonny gave me his number and told me to come to his next band gig.

April 17th: Preparing to Head South to Palawan and the Visayas

I spent a few days in Manila and now it’s time to head south, through the islands. I am interested in seeing more of the virgin, rural Philippines some great, undiscovered white sand beaches and doing some diving and drinking in cheaper locales.

Observations:

Observation # 1, The Philippines Bureaucracy in Action.

I have gotten a good glimpse of how the bureaucracy works here. I had to get a visa extension--and it taught me a lot.

Actually, I could have had a service do the visa extension for me, but at 100 Pesos (about four bucks), I thought it was to expensive. Besides, I wanted to see that part of the city. So I decided I was going to do it myself.

Trip number one:

I arrive at the Immigration Bureau. A large sign n the front of the building says "No fixers allowed." I have heard about fixers, guys who are connected and can "make things happen" just a little faster. Guess they decided to crack down.

I enter the building, but since I am in shorts and sandals and am escorted out by and armed guard. "No shorts no sandos allowed" he screams and points to a much smaller sign next to the "no fixers allowed sign." A man at the gate offers to get my visa extension for me. (See notes about helpful people below). Aha, a fixer I say "OK, how much?" He rushes me over to a copy machine and starts to copy my passport. I ask "how much?" again. He shoves a stack of paper and a pen in front of me. I reach for the papers and stop short, he looks at me with a puzzled expression. I repeat my question: "how much?" He tells me it costs P1500 and takes one half hour. Normally, a visa extension fee is P510; to get an express visa, (same day service, about 4 hours) it’s P1010 Pesos. P490 to stand in line for me? I tell him no and head home. I will wear long pants and shoes tomorrow and try again.

Trip number two: I return the next day.

I get to the immigration bureau at 10:30 am. I stand in long lines that refer me to longer lines to get more papers to fill out in duplicate. Finally, I get to the window where I drop off my passport. "I am sorry sir, but we close at 12:00 for lunch." I mention that it is only 11:45. The man apologizes and says that the person has already left. Lunch will be over at 1:30, could I please come back then?

Trip number three: I return at 1:30.

I walk up to the line and get to the front in record time. He takes my papers, stamps one and gives it back, places the rest in a pile. That couldn’t have been done before lunch? I look at the receipt. It says come back in 10 days to get my visa. Shit. I guess I can arrange my schedule.

Trip number four: 10 days later.

I walk up to the window. There is no line and instead of rummaging through a pile of paperwork, my visa application is the first one on the stack! I have been approved. Great. "Now go to cashier and pay."

There are seven lines at the cashier section. Four marked "express" and three marked "regular." One line of each is open, the others have people in them, but they have signs that say "closed.". During my hour wait I see the guy who offered to help me the first day make six trips to the closed windows and get his payments processed immediately. I also see him slip the guy a P100 note. I am getting the picture. The line is impossibly slow. Girls with 10 or twenty slips like mine collect more from men who run them in from outside (services too cheap to make bribes?). Listless employees process transactions in between washroom breaks, eating snacks, reading the newspaper and taking bribes. After waiting in line for an hour in 95 degree heat, I get my receipt. I go to get my visa stamped. "I am sorry sir, but you must come back after lunch." His life was sparred only by the bulletproof glass.

Trip number five: One day more.

I got the visa. It’s done. I wonder why I want to stay in the Philippines. I wish I had paid the service P100 to avoid the aggravation. I glare at the fat, happy bastard who wanted to expedite my transaction the first day. I wonder if the Filipino legend that the "Evil Eye" (staring with bad intention) can really cause a person to become ill. I figure it’s worth a shot as I leave.

Observation # 2: On Philippine Food.

Philippine food does not have a reputation for being very special. And a lot of it isn’t. The Philippine diet is fairly bland and monotonous, consisting of fish, pork, chicken noodles and rice. Most of the Filipinos I have met have been perfectly happy to order the same meals over and over again.

But I have had some good food, and some that was just plain interesting. Fried fish is a staple here. A whole fish is deep fried, or gutted and skinned then pan fried. Both are served with a scoop of rice. There are dozens of kinds of fish, but the most popular is Bangus, or Milk Fish. It is quite good. One Bangus is just enough for one person. Fish is also steamed and served in a variety of sauces, including black bean and garlic and "Bicol Express" which is coconut milk and hot peppers. Both are very good.

Chicken and pork are most often served "adobo," which is in a garlic-soy sauce, in a curry, or in a number of other spicy stews: calderetta, asado, singinang etc.

The most common restaurant is the "turo-turo" restaurant. "Turo-turo" means "point." They have a large buffet and you point out what you want to eat. Turo-turo is an adventure, because you never know what that stew is until you get up close. I have accidentally ordered fish heads (actually liked it), some internal organs (not bad, but it grossed me out) and pigs ears (all gristle, I couldn’t take it). But most of the time it is quite good.

Another favorite is "Ihaw-ihaw" or grilled foods. Often just stands on street corners, they will grill a variety of things at your request. Pork shish-kebabs and chicken are great. I tried grilled dried squid, but it was too chewy and, quite frankly, tasted to much like squid. Also popular is pork fat and chicken feet, but I haven’t experienced that yet. One image that I have been carrying around is of a beautiful girl sitting next to an ihaw-ihaw stand, delicately pulling the toes of a chicken foot and in a very dainty and lady-like manner, nibbling them.

One of my most daring attempts at Filipino food was trying "Balut." Balut is a duck egg that has been incubated for a few weeks and has a small chick inside. It is hard boiled. You crack the egg, suck out the juice, remove the shell and eat the rest, chick and all. It’s supposed to make you virile. All it did was make me nauseous. But I didn’t hurl.

Observation #3, General Notes on the Philippines:

Manila is a tropical city and it's fucking hot.

It’s hot here most of the year. April is the start of the "hot, dry" season, temperatures in the 90’s, with reasonable humidity. Then there is also the "cool dry" season, where temperatures are only in the 70’s and 80’s most of the time, and the rainy season, when the temperatures are in the same range, but humidity is near 100% all the time.

And Damn, do I sweat. I have to change my shirt twice a day and I hand wash and line dry clothes daily to keep a stock of clean dry shirts. But from early morning to night time, I am constantly sweating. I drink gallons of water and cans of soda and I still don’t piss. All the liquid that goes in me seeps out through my skin. I have taken to carrying a terrycloth washrag with me to mop up the sweat that rolls down my face. And I am not a total aberration. I see lots of Filipinos doing the same thing. But they can’t sweat as much as I do. Nobody could sweat as much as I do. I sweat rivers and lakes. Thankfully, most nights have been cool and with a fan it actually quite pleasant.

Utilities are not a given.

Manila, and most of the Philippines, suffers from regular brown-outs, power failures and broken water mains. I take a flashlight and a lighter with me in my fanny pack. I have candles in my backpack. The hotels keep barrels of water in the bathrooms in case the water main breaks so you can take shower with a ladle and flush by bucket. Almost every night the lights dim and the fan slows. Every few days the power goes out. Every couple weeks the water is off for a day.

Life amid chaos.

The one thing that has finally gotten to me this is the constant fight against the crowds. Everywhere you go, all times of the day and night there are masses of people. At four in the morning, there are throngs of people on the streets, in the restaurants and in the markets. People walking, talking, driving, selling, standing, 24 hours a day. Jeepneys are packed with people, the streets are so packed with Jeepneys that they can’t move and the air is filled with the honking of horns and exhaust. After a while it starts to bear down on you like a thousand pound weight. Lines everywhere. Crowds everywhere. Traffic everywhere. To top it off, there is no sense of personal space. If there is no room on the Jeepney to sit, people just push in anyway and wedge their ass in between two people who are to crammed in already. If the lines get impossibly long at the checkout counter, people just start pushing forward to get in front. While you stand on the street trying to catch a Jeepney, watching crammed jeepney after crammed jeepney go by, the taxis honk at you to get your attention, beggars poke at you with outstretched hands, prostitutes wink and smile, young met push watches in your face and scream "you like watch?" and little boys gleefully squeal "hey Joe" just to see if they can get your attention. It’s a non-stop assault.

Hey Joe

The preferred greeting for white people is still "hey Joe." I thought that died in Vietnam. But every day on the street it’s "Hey Joe, wanna buy watch?" Hey Joe, wanna meet a nice girl?" Or just "hey Joe" because they want to see if I turn my head.

Personal Space

One thing that has been hard to get used to is the different attitudes towards personal space. Manila is very crowded. People are vying for space all the time: on the sidewalks, in their cars, in bars, in malls, in stores. In the states I am used to right of way being given as a courtesy. Not here. Whether it makes the flow of traffic smoother or not, Filipinos just push on. Is the way too narrow for two? It doesn't matter, just keep pushing. Is there room for another in the jeepney? Just sit down and see who will squeeze over more.

Basketball

Given the fact that the average Filipino is about 5'4", it's surprising that they have adopted Basketball as THE Filipino sport. There are basketball courts everywhere! In crowded markets, in tiny remote villages, in the middle of crumbling buildings; anywhere there is some unused space, somebody has converted it to a basketball court. Filipinos love basketball. They love to play it, they love to watch it. In the hotel I was staying, there was a little old guy who speaks no English, who scrubs the floors with a coconut husk stays after every shift to just sit in the lobby watching the NCAA playoffs on the TV. The NBA results are the lead story in the sports section. Of course, the Filipinos have their own Basketball league, but the teams aren't called "Bulls" or "Hawks," but "Gilbey's Gin" or "Pure Foods Corned Beef." (Pure Foods beat Gibley's Gin. Seems like Gilbey's Gin should have been the more powerful team, huh?) Bulls shirts are a common dress item. I love it.

Observations #4: John’s Travel Wisdoms (?):

Westerners are assumed to be made out of money. And by the standards of SE Asia, we are. It is the sworn duty of certain percentage of the population to get you to part with as much money as possible. Get used to being taken for a chump. Be ready to haggle, argue, threaten, be threatened, walk away, come back, argue some more to get a reasonable price. Be prepared to be assaulted by small armies of salesmen, hostesses, hookers, touts, panhandlers, scam artists, screws, pimps, pickpockets. If a taxi driver quotes you a flat rate fare, ask him to turn the meter on. It’s amazing to see that they know, almost to the peso, how to quote you twice the actual rate!

Look like you know what you are doing. Even if it’s your first time there, don’t admit it. Know a few street names. Have a sun tan. Just don’t look like you are fresh off the plane. Fresh meat gets eaten fast. After being around the block a few times, I have had far fewer people try to take me for a chump.

Watch out for the helpful ones. If there is somebody who is going out of their way to assist you, they are out to take you for a good amount of cash. The friendlier and more insistent in their helpfulness, the more you're going to lose. Friendly men will guide you to rip off taxi’s (70 pesos per kilometer, instead of the normal 4 pesos), sleazy bars with hookers, or give you directions that lead you down side streets where they will rob you. Friendly women are generally hookers, pickpockets or some combination of the two. Most people are good, kind and genuinely friendly, but watch out for those who seem to eager to help.

Everything takes too long. A three mile taxi ride can take an hour in traffic. A visa extension takes five trips to the immigration office and hours waiting in line. (see "bureaucracy" above and "ways to make things happen faster" below). In lieu of computers and general honesty, reams of monotonous paperwork (in duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate) are substituted for everything from plane tickets to credit card purchases in department stores. Long lines often breed an environment where bribes are taken to speed things up, thus inducing people to slow things down further and increase their take-home wage.

There is always a way to make it happen faster. You just have to bribe somebody. At government offices, there may be six lines, and two are officially open. The other two have "closed" signs on them, and a small cadre of shady characters doing deals at those windows. If you want to avoid the line, ask one of the shady characters (or go directly to the window) and ask if there is a "fee" you can pay to speed things up, (you have a bus to catch blah, blah, blah...).. Don’t expect the "fee" to appear on the official receipt.

US$100 bills are magical. A US$100 bills will get you out of all sorts of problems. In a pinch, almost anybody will convert local currency (at a rip-off exchange rate) for $100 bills, from cab drivers to bartenders to restaurants, to friendly men on the street (as noted above, the friendlier they are, the more likely you are to get ripped off). If you have legal problems or need to pay off a menacing official, an $100 bill is always appreciated. $100 bills represent a small fortune to a person in a third world country (roughly a month’s salary), and they can often do far more with hard currency (US$) then they can with their own currency. $100 bills are a lucky charm. Keep a few safely tucked in your money belt.

Visa and Amex debit cards are great. You can get cash advances (at a reasonably good exchange rate), pay for store purchases, food and lodging in most of the big cities. If you are going to the boonies, use your card to do a cash advance in the last big town and take out enough to hold you over. A few travelers checks and them magical US$100 bills will fill in where the credit card leaves off.

Keep lots of small bills and coins handy. Even if they can make change, most taxi drivers, bus driver and waiters will tell you they can’t in hope that: 1) you will just let them keep the change, 2) they will go for change and never come back, or 3) they will give you incorrect change and pretend you gave them a smaller bill. The closer you come to paying the exact amount, the less likely you are to be ripped-off.

Yes doesn’t mean yes, and no doesn’t mean no. Asians are renowned for being indirect. Ask a trishaw driver is he knows where the hotel is and he says yes. Yes meaning either "I know where it is" or "I am ashamed to not know where it is." Ask a person if it is OK to swim in the water and if they say "yes," they mean "yes it is safe " or "no it’s not safe, but I don’t want to be the one to spoil your fun by letting you know there are lots of jellyfish in the water." Tell a hooker or a panhandler "no" and they take that as a sign that you are paying them some minimal attention and they will stick to you like glue. Avoid general yes/no statements. Ask then to tell you the directions to the hotel before you get in the trishaw, ask specifically if there are jellyfish, sharks, snakes, etc. in the water. Never encourage a hooker, tout or panhandler by saying "no." Just ignore them.

Make sure the money is agreed on before you purchase anything. Waiting until the end of a trishaw ride to ask "how much" invites an answer that is 10 times the going rate. You might not avoid getting ripped off by negotiating up front, but at least you know how much you are going to be taken for in advance.

There are often two prices for everything, the price the locals pay and the price charged to foreigners. If you can find out what the locals pay, you can use that to bargain. Befriending a local person can help you save a lot of money—just as long as they aren’t to helpful (see above).

[Dispatch #1: Manila, Puerto Galera] [Dispatch #2 Northern Luzon]
[Dispatch #3: Boat to Coron] [Dispatch #4: Coron]

[The Travelogue]
Indexes: [Philippines] [Hong Kong]

Almost Leaving Manila April 24, 1998

Good Friday Crucifixions, San Fernando Pampanga April 10, 1998

Return To Coron, Palawan, Philippines March-April 1998

Old Travelog Dispatches from the Philippines (1997)

Dispatch #4; The Early Days in Coron

Dispatch #3; The Boat Trip To Coron, Palalwan

Dispatch #2, Northern Luzon and Manila Yet Again.

Dispatch #1, Arrival In the Philippines and Third World Culture Shock