11 Things I Learned in the Philippines
1) Dogs can double as motion detectors. If you strategically place dogs on short leashes all around your property you will be alerted day or night to anything that my move around your property, be it the wind or a human being. And when one dog barks, all dogs bark.
2) Roosters do not only crow in the morning and if they’re close to each other they like to have conversations in the middle of the night. So, turns out, roosters are not the alarm clocks I thought they were. Their crowing occurs throughout the day and night and other roosters like to echo the calls of their brethren and this can go on for say…I dunno, a few hours at a time.
3) Karaoke is the BEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN. Regardless of your economic situation, everyone should possess some type of Karaoke set up. And it isn’t just for fun, you better be god damn good. It’s a fricken sport.
4) Being quiet is unheard of. You want to karaoke till 3am with music blasting so that people 3 blocks away can hear it clear as a bell, that is completely ok. You just better be good at it.
5) Yellow lines in the middle of the road are just that, yellow lines in the middle of the road. If you want to go over that line in order to get around someone, that’s completely cool as long as you honk your horn and maybe flash your high beams a little bit.
6) Regardless of how cute or destitute a child who is singing Christmas carols may appear…never ever give him money, because then he’ll tell his friends and you’ll be swarmed by little children all singing which makes you feel like a rock star until you realize that they’re not going away.
7) White people are the Pied Piper’s of Filipino children. If there are ever too many children in one area in the Philippines , bring in a white guy and he’ll lead them all right outta there.
9) A man in his 20s must eat at all times, because he can never truly be full.
10) No place will ever be as dangerous as parents make it out to be.
11) The most important one. What Grandpa says GOES. And not like, ok Grandpa, I’ll get around to it. No no, Grandpa says it’s 3am, we’re eating dinner now, everyone gets up and eats dinner. Grandpa says, take Maureen to the beach, it doesn’t matter if it’s raining or snowing or a typhoon is going on, we’re all going to the beach A-SAP. The amount of respect shown to Mo’s Grandfather was out of this world. He had 2 people (caregivers) taking care of him always, helping him to the washroom, sleeping in his room, making his dinner (along with everyone else’s) and yet, he was the MAN!
So, here we go, pretty much a month after the fact I’ll try to recollect all that happened. I have been giving a shortened version of this story in all of my classes. Today alone I’ll talk about my winter vacation 4 times. I don’t know what I’d ever do if I didn’t go away for Golden Week or Christmas.
So, we left Fukushima at 10:30 on the bus bound for Narita Airport (5 hours). After that we waited in Narita for a few hours and then took the 5 hour flight to Manila . I have to say, 5 hours ain’t that bad of a flight time. We landed in Manila and honestly, from what Mo’s parents had told us I was ready for the worst, seriously. I thought that people were gonna be trying to grab my bag from off my back and steal my money as soon as I walked out the door. Surprise surprise, it wasn’t like that at all. The airport was a bit confusing and a guy tried to talk us into taking a shuttle to the domestic flight terminal, but other than that, it was fine. We eventually found the shuttle stop and took it to the domestic terminal. Ah, I should bring up that it was about 11pm at this point. So, we get to the domestic terminal after a 5 minute shuttle ride. Terminal 2, the one we didn’t fly into looked awesome by the way. The domestic terminal on the other hand….was a bit sketchy. We got off the shuttle and were told immediately that the Terminal didn’t open for another 3 hours and our flight wasn’t for another 6. So, we were kinda lost with what to do. There were security guards outside the terminal doors checking people’s tickets and letting them in, but we weren’t sure if we wanted to go in. Instead we walked over to a waiting area (outside) that was FULL of Filipinos (which would probably be the case at any Philippines Domestic Airport . The only difference was that I was the ONLY foreigner. This is when I first experienced the Filipino stare that would follow me throughout my time there and only get worse. Manila is an “international” city but you wouldn’t be able to tell the way these people were staring. It was completely different from the way the Japanese stare at foreigners. It was more like a curious stare, but it was also an UNENDING stare. Seriously, people were staring at me for like 30 minutes straight at some points.
Anyway, we got drinks (they didn’t sell beer, which was a bit of a shock till I realized, oh ya, not in Japan ) and kinda hung out…on a curb inside this little fenced off waiting area. Keep in mind that at this point I’m still waiting to get jumped or for a security guard to try to arrest me in hopes of me bribing him to let me go. The waiting area was definitely the first full on Filipino experience. The seats, made of plastic looked like they had come from a nuclear test site. Some of them didn’t have backs, while others didn’t have seats and others looked like they had been melted or warped from an explosion. The 2 guys and one girl behind the snack stand in the waiting area taught me some Tagalog (sp?) basically Filipino, just 1, 2, 3 and thanks, which I promptly forgot cuz we had been up for so long. After about an hour of sitting around, we decided, hey, why don’t we actually go in the airport, so, we grabbed our stuff and headed over. They checked our tickets and passports and let us in the door. We walked in and immediately there were x-ray machines and metal detectors manned by a few people. Our bags were x-rayed and then we went through the metal detectors. We weren’t told to remove things from our pockets or take anything off. So the metal detectors obviously went off. The guy approached me and I went to take off my belt, watch, shoes, etc but he stopped me, patted my pockets which were full of things and then said, ok you’re good. WHAT? We continue on around the corner to find…people just laid out sleeping everywhere. No stores, no shops, no nothing. Just people, sitting on the floor with their bags and staring at me like I had 3 heads. Upon the realization that there was nothing to do, nowhere to buy anything and nowhere to sit we turned around and walked out a door that led us back outside. Back to waiting. At about 2am we ran into 5 girls from Fukushima who were also heading to Cebu , although they were on the 6:30am plane, not the 4:50am one like us. So, we all sat around in the post nuclear war waiting zone for a bit, played cards, talked, whatever we could think of to pass the time. At about 3:30am we went into the airport, checked in and had to go through not only the first metal detector but a 2nd one (this one was the real deal). They boarded the plane at 4:20am, we had to walk out onto the tarmac and get on the plane there, I’ve only done that about 3 times, so it was cool. The plane then proceeded to wait for about 40 minutes because we were waiting for 2 people. When’s the last time you heard of a plane waiting for 2 people for 40 minutes? We amazingly arrived only 15 or 20 minutes after our scheduled landing time.
The airport in Cebu was nice, but after being up for 20 odd hours I was a bit wiped and just wanted sleep. While waiting for our bags to come out, a random guy comes up behind the group of people waiting and starts saying, “Maureen.” Turns out, Uncle Trafon knows this guy and has sent him in to get us and he tells us he’ll get our bags. Gooo connections! We head outside, meet up with Mo’s Aunt and Uncle, they go get the car, random guy comes out with our bags and BAM we’re off. After about an hour drive we arrived in San Fernando . The house was really nice and the entire family was awake when we got there despite it only being about 7:30 or 8am. We had a bit of coffee and talked with Mo’s Grandfather a bit. This is where the Filipino hospitality kicked in. I think I was offered coffee, tea, eggs, toast, a sandwich, chicken, bread and jam, juice, water, pretty much anything you could possibly want, about, oh maybe 8 or 9 times in the first 10 minutes I was there.
Eventually we went for a nap, which was much needed and had to force ourselves to get up around 1pm. Once again, I was offered every type of food and drink on the face of the planet. This was the first time I actually got to check out my surroundings, there was a sea turtle just chilling in a little like, concrete bathtub/pond thingy just to the side of the house. There were 5 dogs along with a bunch of puppies, and chickens and roosters. All of these things were pretty common at every house I learned later on. I met Mo’s cousins Iris, Dun Dun, and Tata (the last 2 are nicknames) I don’t think I ever actually learned Dun Dun’s real name, but Tata’s was Trini (like tree knee). Ta-ta, said with like a T and D sound together so kinda like Tda Tda, don’t worry if you can’t get it, I didn’t the entire time I was there, was kinda like our tour guide for the entire trip. Our first day he took us down to the pier on the ocean and we had beers. This is where the video and the pics of the swarms of little kids come from. Those kids were nuts. The Filipino stare at this point was in FULL EFFECT. The entire walk to the pier, through the church courtyard and down the “main” street was filled with wide eyed Filipinos just staring. Again, a reminder, I’m still under the impression that I’m on the highway to the danger zone, danger zone. Don’t tell me that after you read that you didn’t read it again and sing the song a little in your head, cuz even after writing it I did. So, we went down to the pier and I was shouted out the whole way by little kids…not like menacing shouts, Filipinos just say HEY! a lot. I waved, said hello, a regular rock star. So after obtaining beers, big beers, like big big beer bottles, that were pop top we went down to the pier. Tata then proceeded to pop the tops off of the bottles using…uhh….the other caps on the other bottles. WHAT? I thought doing it with a lighter was tricky. Over our time in the Philippines I saw people open these bottles with their teeth, lighters, other bottles and SPOONS. K, by other people I mean Tata for all of them except the teeth one, that was some girl who worked at the resort we stayed at. WEIRD! Anyway, soon enough I was the Pied Piper of kids in San Fernando . Now, I was informed that these were the poorest of all the kids and they did seem it a bit. Just a huge horde of kids running around on a pier, not an adult in sight, well there were adults but they clearly weren’t their parents or anything. We sat down on the pier and had a nice little chat, with about 30 kids in a semi circle around us, like it was story time. Tata tried to make them go away, but that was not happening, not with an attraction such as myself! He did manage to make them move back and give us about 3 feet of space. Now, I haven’t brought it up, but these children at this point, after following me and sitting around me, had said NOTHING. Just stares. Eventually I started talking to them and they were alright kids, who after getting over the whole fear of talking to me were pretty cool. They all spoke at least some English as it’s the language that all of their schooling is conducted in (nice change to actually be able to communicate with kids). Now, I made a mistake at this point and brought out my camera. It was as if I just brought out the most amazing thing in the entire world. These kids were ALL OVER IT. When I tried to take a picture they would either fight with each other to be in it or rush the camera. It was insane. I had to resort to guerilla picture taking tactics. Keep it in my pocket, turn it on and then quickly snap a pic while they weren’t paying attention and then jam it back down into my pocket like nothing had happened. I did take a few videos too, that I have yet to put up on youtube, I think.
(Sidebar: can you believe I’m not even through the first day and I’m already on page 4, I promise the whole thing won’t be like this)
We headed back to the house just after dark and had dinner. It was just waiting on the table for us. I felt bad this first time but it soon became a pattern. Breakfast waiting on the table when we got up, lunch on the table, dinner just sitting on the table every single day. And Grandpa’s caregivers were always there to bring water and anything else to the table without us asking or anything.
So after dinner, we headed with Dun-Dun and Tata to Naga city. Between Cebu and San Fernando . There we went to a public park and obviously drank some more beers. This is where I made the mistake of giving a little kid who was caroling, shaking a plastic bottle that he had filled with rocks 5 pesos. As I brought it out of my pocket you should have heard Dun-Dun and Tata start screaming NO NO NO NO!!! I popped it in his hand and he was gone. I turned and was like, what? He was standing right beside me for like 5 minutes. I figured, hey, why not. They explained that the kids were sent out by their parents to make money and that more kids would now come. Sure enough, more kids came. I’m betting the kid went back to his buddies and was like, haha, white guy over there, get him!! There was a Christmas pageant like thing going on where kids from the local schools were dancing so we watched for a little while. Eventually we moved to a little bar on the corner of the park. They, OBVIOUSLY had karaoke set up. One thing I realized, ALL FILIPINOS can SING! They are ALL GOOD. Karaoke is not something for fun, it’s a SPORT. You have your arsenal of songs you can sing and you sing them all. Karaoke in the Philippines is a lot like back home. Not in a room with just your group of friends that you’ve decided are good enough friends that they can hear you sing, like in Japan . The only difference from the Canadian style was the rankings…oh yes, RANKINGS. As you sang a little number went up and down dependant on how good your voice was and at the end you got a rank. I didn’t see one lower than 85, that is until I did it the next night. 55, OH YA!!
After Karaoke, it was decided we were going to Cebu . That’s when the car broke down. But it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Dun-Dun stayed with the car and they called Uncle Trafon and Tata took us into Cebu in a cab to some little outside billiards bar. It was pretty sweet, we drank and talked, etc etc. Afterwards we took a cab back to the broken down car, met Dun-Dun and uncle Trafon and then you know, they just towed the broken down little Honda back to the house using…the other little Honda…no biggie. LOL.
K, it’s been a week since I started this thing and this is the first time I’ve come back to it, so I’m gonna try to speed up this story a bit.
Christmas Eve was the next day, we spent it kinda just hanging out, being hungover and Tata took us around San Fernando and introduced us to pretty much everyone in the town and told us how they were somehow related to her or knew her Mom from “back in the day.” Christmas Eve, obviously was a big dinner and then…umm….KARAOKE! All night. Mo, obviously was all about taking pictures and video of other people singing but refused to sing herself, who does that. So Tata and I rocked out for most of the night.
Christmas Day was once again, a lot of the same, eating all day, go meet relatives, this time all the ones right around the house. It was kinda strange when I realized that the neighbours to both sides of the house were somehow related to Uncle Trafon. This is how it worked. Iris (Uncle Trafon’s daughter, Mo’s cousin) lived in a little house at the front of the main property, then the next door neighbours on both sides were cousins or something like that. And as we went behind the main house of the neighbours little tiny houses were all over the place, literally like 2 meters from each other and maybe 5 meters from the main house, and they were all somehow related to people that lives in the main houses. Cousins, Parents, Brothers, Sisters, all lived within a 3 second walk of each other, the further we got away from the main house the further we got away from Mo’s actual family and the more and more extended it became. So strange, but cool in a way. Could you see living beside all of your relatives like that though? Wanna talk to your 3rd cousin twice removed, walk over 2 houses and then the 3rd house behind the main one is his. WHAT? We then took a little walk to go and see one of mo’s aunts (?). She wasn’t home but across the street were some of Tata’s friends at what kinda looked like a house but kinda looked like an outdoor bar. I dunno. We ended up hanging out there and drinking, it was really cool. Although I think we stayed a bit too late, cuz Mo’s Grandpa was a bit upset that we hadn’t come back a bit earlier, as we missed dinner…whoops. On the plus, I had the BEST Filipino food at the place we were at. No clue what it was, but it was GOOOODD. After we returned, obviously….karaoke ensued. Then Tata was going out and brought me along to meet some of his friends, leaving the ladies behind. We went on a bike this time, which after all the beer I drank was a bit strange. Flying through the darkness, hammered on the back of a little motorcycle. Not gonna lie, I was hanging on for dear life. At one point we had Tata’s buddy on the back, first time I’ve ever been on a bike with 3 people on it, not as uncomfortable as you might think. After a few beers in a few different spots, we went back to more….karaoke.
Boxing Day, the ENTIRE FAMILY took us into a big mall in Cebu . I know you’re thinking…a mall, seriously…why would you go to a mall. Well, my non-living-in-Japan friend, there are no malls in Japan . There are big department stores, think a mall but it’s all the bay, or sears or whatever. Not that much fun. So yes, a mall. It was great. The entire family came with us as I said, that means, 3 nieces, 2 cousins, an uncle and an aunt as well as, well, I don’t know who she was, but she was somehow related. Before hitting the mall we went to San Pedro Fort. The only touristy/historical thing we did for the entire trip. It’s easy to see that Mo and I were a bit starved for this kinda stuff when looking at our pics cuz we just went nuts. Tata brought us in and showed us everything, once again acting as our own personal tour guide. Giving us the history of everything, telling us about who discovered Cebu Island , the Spanish, everything you could think of, he was really good at it too. The mall like I said, great, we bought things but not too much. Although I felt kinda bad cuz you know, the family was waiting for us the whole time, but they had insisted on everyone coming with us. We went home and then decided that we would probably leave for a resort on the 28th. We quickly learned that the whole “it’ll be easy to find a nice place, cheap at any time” strategy that we figured would work was probably not the best idea. Prior to leaving, Mo didn’t want to put an end time on time with her grandfather, so…we didn’t book anything. Well turns out…um, Cebu Island , PRETTY popular. Every resort, other than the $500 a night resort on the beach was FULL. So, we looked into a few other and eventually Mo’s Dad pointed us to ALTA Cebu Resort or something to that effect. Like 80 bux a night, had a pool, and after looking for so long and coming up with nothing, we decided screw it, we were in. We booked it from the 28th to the 2nd so that we could come back and Mo could spend a night with her grandfather before we left on the 4th. The resort was nice enough. No phones in the rooms, the service was..umm…at times non-existent BUT there were hot showers. So…not too bad. We pretty much did nothing but hang out by the pool, drink beer and read. Sometimes we watched ENGLISH TV, yet another amazing thing the Philippines had on offer. New Years Eve there was a little “event” I guess. Tables by the pool, fireworks, a Philippino band, a meal, it was nice. While at this hotel we met a German guy and his family, who live in Taipei . They were really nice as well as 4 French university students who were doing a semester at a university in Taiwan . They were around our age, so we kinda hung out with them a bit. New Years Eve, at midnight the Frenchman at myself all jumped in the pool. That cleared out the area pretty quick, as directly after midnight the pool area was completely cleared away and people were told to go to some other bar on the resort. We decided…umm, no and swam around in the pool for quite awhile actually, eventually bringing one of the plastic tables and all the chairs into the pool to do a toast with champagne. Mo eventually got in the pool despite her initial shyness. All in all it was a really good new years.
On the 2nd we were picked up by Mo’s Uncle and driven back to San Fernando . In hindsight, we should have probably just stayed at the resort as it was a 10 minute drive from the airport and our flight was at like 4:45 in the morning. But, like I said, we didn’t exactly have the best plan of attack for this entire adventure.
Our last night in San Fernando (the 2nd, the 3rd doesn’t really count) was spent hanging out with Mo’s family for most of the day and then at night once again, a journey through Filipino culture with Tata. And we ended up taking every type of public transportation available. We left the house and took a tricycle taxi to his friend’s house. This was a motorcycle with a strange sidecar like thing. Mo and I sat in the back and Tata rode on the back of the bike. At Tata’s friend’s house and we drank, obviously. After that we decided we were going to Naga. And instead of driving we would take public transport. I was totally stoked for this. There are no actual buses, well maybe I should say there are no actual bus stops. Vans and full out buses are painted all kinds of crazy and just drive down the street until they’re flagged down. They go between one city and another and stop whenever asked to. So, to Naga we got in a van…this was after I was made to stand further off the road, cuz strangely enough, with a white guy standing there, some vans just passed us right by…hmm strange eh. Anyway, we got into this van, eventually. So, the van was pretty much a truck that had benches put in the back and a roof over top. There was a steel bar on the roof right down the center of the van and when you want to stop you tap it with a coin and the driver pulls over. You pay and VOILA, that’s public transport. Reading that back to myself it doesn’t seem that interesting but I was totally stoked while we were doing it. Anyway, in Naga, once again, we ended up at the big park, got beers and had a bunch of food. After drinking and eating a significant amount the place closed and where did we go from there? Oh ya, karaoke. We walked about 3 minutes out of the park and in a parking lot there were some tables and chairs set up with a tv/karaoke machine up on a curb. This was a bar. We then drank more and sang karaoke, and when I say we, I mean, everyone except for Mo. This was when I got to try Ba-rot, or Ba-lot, I dunno, anyway, it’s a Filipino delicacy that everyone had told me to try, cuz it’s that gross. So, when Tata asked me if I wanted it, I replied YES! Eventually a dude, on a bike with a Styrofoam container on the back of it was called over. Can you say shady? Anyway, said dude, pulls out an egg from the Styrofoam container. This is a duck egg. A duck egg? You’re thinking…yes a duck egg, but these are special duck eggs cuz they have a duck embryo inside and they’re not cooked. OH YA! So, the top of the egg was cracked off to make it almost like a glass. Then Tata put a bit of salt on the top handed it to me and said, just do it like a shot. So, BAM, I did it. It wasn’t too bad, but I feel like the fact that I was pretty drunk helped out with that. I do have to say that duck embryo is crunchier than I thought it would be. I declined when asked if I wanted another. Anyway, after hours of continuous drinking and talking and Mo berating me for being a “white guy” and ruining the “wa” (Japanese word for harmony”) of the “Filipino” group we eventually headed back. This time we took a full out bus, not a school bus, but like a greyhound bus, all multi-coloured with graphics all over it. It was pretty much the same deal as the van but I don’t remember there being a bar. And instead of giving money to the driver, you just hand it up to the front through the multitudes of people aboard.
The last full day we spent in the Philippines , Mo and I hung out with Grandpa quite a bit, even though it was intensely difficult for me to understand what was going on. We just took it easy and hung out around the house. Went to bed around 8 or so and I was obviously up around 1 even though we weren’t supposed to leave until 2:30am. I freak out when I have to fly. We made our plane in Cebu, no problem, then waited in Manila for an hour or 2. 5 hour flight back to Narita and then we did a little stop off in Akihabara to pick up a few things in Tokyo . After that we got home around 7pm or so, went to bed and then left at about 9:30am the next morning for 2 solid days of snowboarding!! AWESOME!
Closing remarks: Just to get this straight, to get through the first day took 5 pages and the 12 days after that only took me 3. Hmmm, strange. Anway, hope you enjoyed the read and that there weren’t too many grammatical and spelling errors, cuz like I’m gonna proof read a blog.
Brent
