Thursday, 3/10
The moon is a Cheshire cat's grin in the sky tonight, bright against the black sky. The stars - well, they exist. Frankly, sometimes I forget, having grown too accustomed to city-living and nightlights. It has been a long time since I've seen so many stars, so bright.
Tonight, D and I are in Coron, Palawan, one of the many islands of the Philippines. It is a mountainous beach town, limestone mountains right up agains the ocean. It reminds me a lot of Nha Trang, actually, but less commercial and packed with tourists. Here, it is still rural countryside, quiet that is broken only by a cacophony of barking dogs and crowing roosters. (Here, the roosters alert you to whatever hour they please. On a side note, cock fighting remains legal in the Philippines, according to D.)
We've come far from the chaos of Manila. When I arrived at Clark Airport yesterday and took an hour and a half bus ride down into Manila, the guy sitting next to me and I made friends and held a number of interesting conversations about Asia, America, culture, internationalism, and a number of other things. One thing I mentioned was that all Asian countryside (through which we were passing at the time) look a little bit the same, and all Asian cities look a little bit the same as well. Manila reminded me a lot of Ho Chi Minh City with its packed streets and endless honking, the people milling carelessly through the jammed cars and motorbikes to cross where they could, like water stubbornly finding its way around a barrier of rocks. The tricycles (motocycles with a side-attached carrier seat) reminded me of the tuktuks in Cambodia (motorcycles with the carrier seat attached behind). But Manila definitely has a personality of its own: loud, poor, busy, struggling, thriving, shopping. Manila is composed of shopping malls everywhere you look, boasting the third and fourth largest malls in the world (behind the largest in Edmonton, Canada and the second-largest in Minnesota, I think).
I met M at Megamall yesterday and we chatted, had dinner, then met up with D, who took me to a friend's house to crash together for the night.
There are street boys on every busy corner, hailing taxis for anyone looking for them for a few pesos - as much as they can get. There are children everywhere, said D, because of the war the Catholic Church (so influential in a country that is overwhelmingly Catholic) wages against the reproductive health system. Condoms? For shame. It was fascinating to see how many people were actively Catholic yesterday, as it was Ash Wednesday and so many people passed by wearing ash crosses on their forehead. And so many more, without their crosses, still consider themselves Catholic. It was, to me, a sort of comparative exercise to Cambodia, where the people were overwhelmingly Buddhist with some Hindu influences. In so many ways we are the same, but in so many ways we are different.
Manila's public transit is a nightmare. The roads are jam-packed at all hours of the day, as are the trains. I have never retrospectively appreciated Singapore's MRTs as much; I will never again compare you to Seoul's and find you lacking! But we survived the MRTs, the trikes, the jeeps, the buses, the cabs (I've basically been on all forms of public transit in the Philippines within the first 24 hours), and made it to the airport to catch a short 40-minute flight to Coron.
We arrived around 1pm, checked in to our hotel, got lunch (chicken adobo, of course I will have pictures ltaer), and started on our city tour. We saw the harbor, the city center, and the cashew harvest factory - cashews are a major export here, a wealth that grows on trees. Plus, they are delicious. We trekked Mount Tapyas, which was really just a 726 step stair climb (or exercise in effusive sweating), and then, after we took a gazillion pictures to prove our success, made it back down to head to the hot springs. Natural salt-water hot springs surroundedby a mangrove forest - it was amazing to soak there after that mountain stair climb.
We soaked, we came back, we showered, we got dinner. We hit up a close-by Western bistro in our exhaustion which can be summed up thus:
1. 50 peso rum and coke - that is approximately $1. Did I get some? You bet I did.
2. SURPRISE MUSHROOOMS IN MY SPAGHETTI MEAT SAUCE. WORST SURPRISE EVER. :(((
Friday, 3/11
I have spent my time in the Philippines doing two things in particular: climbing up a lot of stairs and snorkeling.
Oh, and surviving death!
Well, this is only partly a joke in reference to the tsunami that was supposed to hit the Philippines, but it is morbid and in bad taste, so really it is not entirely a joke. We were lucky to be on the opposite side of the Philippines from where the tsuanami was supposed to hit, so despite being out on the water (in the water) all day, we saw nothing out of the ordinary and are totally safe and sound. D's boyfriend freaked out at her via text a bit, and I had a few people check in with me over email and FB, but all is well.
The other bit of death-defying mostly entailed almost but not quite drowning a few times while snorkeling today. Honestly, we spent more time in the water that out of it and it was for the most part a lot of fun. Every other time I've gone snorkeling, they've given us life jackets or life savers, but I suppose they are not mandatory...as we were not given them today. We survived, though!
In the morning we started our island-hopping tour with a tiny private boat - it was just the two of us, our tour guide, our boat captain and his (I guess) first mate.
It was like the Vietnam island-hopping trip except with much fewere people and with much more time in the water. I felt like I'd been brined, honestly.
We hit the Twin Lagoons first, which are connected with a tiny hole you swim under, only accessible during low tide.
There was a lot of beautiful coral and fish there and it was very quiet. Later we hit a different island, had a delicious spread for lunch (grouper fish, eggplant salsa, grilled pork chops, steamed crab), and lazed around a bit recovering. Afterwards we snorkeled some more, except this time we hit open water, and discovered the difficulties of snorkeling against a current determined to push you away from wherever you're going. For instance, your boat.
A third snorkeling site to see Skeleton Wreck, which was a Japanese ship that had been sunk during WWII; it was covered in coral and barnacles and seaweed. I really wish we had had an underwater camera...
A fourth snorkeling site, and then we turned to another island to make a steep hike up a mountain. This is the view from the top.
We went back down the other side of the mountain and found a lake! 80% freshwater Not so much to look at underwater here except rocks, though there were also shrimp wandering around and that nibbled at my feet and arms when I sat still long enough. A strange tickling sensation. It was cool seeing wild shrimp though (for lack of a better term); I thought of those paintings by Qi Shi and felt at once so cultured and so Chinese. It was a weird moment.
We hiked back up and down the mountain to return to our boat, then spent the last hour of our trip lazing at a tiny beach while D texted with her boyfriend to reassure him that, no, we were not about to be killed by tsunami, seriously. Our tour guide and boat captain were unfazed throughout the whole ordeal in any case. What a catastrophe in Japan though, that earthquake. I hope rescue and recovery go well and that people stay as safe as possible.
Back to the hotel for showers and dinner. We ate at a bamboo grill and had pork sisig, which is chopped up bits of pork face, pork snout, and pork brains! It was actually delicious.
Saturday, 3/12
No big news today and no pics to accompany. D and I crashed hard at 10 last night and woke up around 8 - a beautiful ten hours of sleep. We had breakfast at our hostel and then wandered into town for some coffee. Mmm, cafe mocha. We wandered back to our hostel to pack and check out and hit the airport around 11, since it requires about a forty-five minute drive. However, once we arrived at the airport, we discovered our 2 o'clock flight had been pushed back to 4, because the first flight was delayed and the airline/airport was so tiny that it only had one plane. So we sat and we waited and ate some cookies for lunch.
The flight was super quick - forty minutes and we were back to Manila. Essentially it went up, cruised for approximately fifteen minutes, and went back down. By this time we were starving for an early dinner, so we headed to a Japanese restaurant that D and her boyfriend frequent, and met up with her boyfriend M there. Food? Delicious. I love maki rolls, okay. I don't think I've had sushi since coming abroad, actually. I will have pics of our delicious foods later up on FB. Also miso soup, mm.
So the story of my Saturday night was a long bus ride from Megamall to Clark Airport around 9pm, meaning I arrived at the airport before midnight, when my flight leaves at 7:40am... (The morning bus doesn't leave until 7, and since it takes approximately two hours to get to the airport, I cannot take that one.)
Little are my life complaints though, after seeing the news this morning doing its full report of the impact of the earthquake tsunami (and resulting nuclear power plant issues) in Japan.
Sunday, 3/13
I am back in Singapore and I really don't want to talk about it. Let me shower and pass out, please and thank you.
Thank you D for making my Philippines trip as lovely as it was. ♥
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