The Philippines

EDITORIAL NOTE: Over Chinese New Year break – end of January – Mr. Tom met up with a couple friends in the Palawan. Below are a few of his chronicles. 

DAY 1 (Arrival)

The Busuanga runway landed us like when my brother and I slid down stairs on cardboard sheets, except our stairs had a wall at the end and the runway didn’t. It was a fitting ending to my first time on Cebu Pacific, a Philippine budget airline. Cebu embodied a kind of Filipino amiability. Checking in at Hong Kong international, the clerk gave me a sticker, the Cebu logo. 

“Okay sir. Wear this.” 

I didn’t ask questions, I just put it on. 

The sticker is the first step in Cebu’s conscious effort to loosen serious travelers so that by the time they land in the islands, the culture shock isn’t so drastic. The next step was our inflight Cebu Pacific game and giveaway. “It’s not a Cebu flight without it,” our attendants chirped. The game was a simple, “first person to show me a ...” wins a reusable shopping bag with giant smiling cartoon airplane on the side, the Cebu logo. The heads went up, “A game? A game? What?” People started shuffling in their gray-blue seats, prepping their purses and personal items just in case they might have the lucky thing that gets called. We were stocked. 

“Okay, the first item,” the attendant began, “starts with a ‘P’ and ends in and ‘E,’” ... (shuffle, shuffle, shuffle). “I mean a ‘T.’ Starts with a ‘P’ and ends with a ‘T.’” 

“Oh,” we all said, pretending it made a difference ... (shuffle, shuffle)

“A passport. Does anyone have a passport?” Before I could think, I heard, “Oh, and here’s one on the front row, congratulations.” 

If I thought I was a contender I was only fooling myself. I couldn’t compete with Filipinos at their own game. The next two items were cigarettes and lipstick.

The sticker, the game, the runway, were ingenious planning in prepping passengers for island life. And the final step, was a audacious mix of club music and 80s rock ballads that started playing while we taxied to our gate. Cebu knew we needed to get loose if we were going to enjoy ourselves in the second largest archipelago in the world. 

Shaun and Phil, a couple buddies also teaching in Asia, had already perched a place with concrete walls painted like wood and vine. It had electricity for a few hours in the evening.

The sticker. 

The post-flight feeling. *photo by Shaun.

DAY NEXT (rented scooters)

The roads rode faster at night. The world just wide enough to see the dry-jungle growth on both sides of the road, the world confined to a weak-watt scooter headlight. I was doing 40kph on my Honda 150cc scooter, I was doing 90mph on my batmobike. I was getting pumped as my tires bumped over the road laid open like a skinned carcass of blonde clay. The tires hit and spit through the mud puddles and across the gravel ruts and clay veins pargeting our sandal covered feet in road grit. The temperature dropped with the sun, and our tank-tops and shorts let the cool air whisper to our sunburned skin. The jungle was a tunnel, unless we dared look up at Abraham’s vision stretched over us, hoping an unexpected rock didn’t send our tires looking the same direction. The sound of wind and high engine vrum was all we could here as we boogied back to Coron. 

Bridges were the biggest danger. They crept out of the desaturated jungle-dark like monitor lizards threatening our eight-wheeled entourage. Bigger bridges were concrete and metal, smaller ones were wood. Tracking our wheels on rough-weathered 3x10s laid adjacent about a foot wide was tricky in daylight, and risky in nightlight. We became more proficient at crossing as the day progressed, but some bridges were out completely with no signs or warnings, and the only cross was a side route. Our goal was  to NOT do a surprise launch across one of the missing bridges in the dark. 

We knew the road some since we’d drove the same road out, something like 60 kilometers, in the lightime. Our pace got faster as the day went on, after learning what kinds of rock puddle ruts could be taken at what speed, after becoming one with our mechanical animals. 

Frequently, the pack paused to make sure no one got left or lost. At one stop, Pierre was missing. Pierre, or Peter, was a late twenties computer-science Phd. with a skinny build and a ridge-line nose over his black-coffee beard. We met him in the Philippines; he fit right in with our group, a pioneer with a thirst for San Miguel and adventure. Already, he had dropped his bike two times; once in town just after renting, another just after a bridge. We waited in the dark while the low sound of our idling bikes were swallowed by the surrounding vines and open sky. We waited. After roughly ten minutes, a light appeared on the road, and we could hear the high vrum. Three drops for Peter that day. 

The bridges. 

Shaun is ready for the road. 

Phillip is feeling it.

Pierre/Peter strikes a foreign pose. *photo by Shaun.

DAY BEFORE & SAME DAY (Foods)

Mangos and blenders were made for one another, probably in The Garden of Eden, but Asia and cheese happened after The Fall. 

“What is that?” Phil questioned. 

“It’s a Lapu Lapu,” Peter offered. (Lapu Lapu is a local Filipino fish favorite). 

“Yeah, but what’s this on it?” Phil questioned further. 

“Cheese.” Peter answered. 

Phil doesn’t like eating chicken with eggs, and he doesn’t like eating fish with cheese. 

...

The town gets dark at night, darker then Hong Kong. There are only a couple street lights, and the power is usually out anyway. The town shadows buzz with people and the motorcycle taxis and generators buzz too. We walked through the dark to a restaurant run by teenagers. 

Our vegetarian orders arrived after a couple rounds of cards. And our vegetarian meals were full of meat, except for the fries. The fries were a strange gift to humanity, the kind of gift no one wants. The fries had cheese, powdered cheese. A white plate, with pale potato fries, and bright orange powdered cheese. Imagine Kraft powdered cheese, beaten, shamed, and brainwashed until it had lost all sense of identity. It tasted like ground cardboard, with less flavor. The fries also came with ketchup and mayo in a cup, not mixed. Two squirts of red and white in a pale porcelain tea cup.  

...

We discovered mango smoothies. Palawan mangoes are perfectly sweet and their flesh is less stringy than many mangoes around the world. Dried, they are unbeatable, the only possible contender is when they’re blended with ice and milk. They mixed with the unairconditioned humid air like a man and a woman made of the same bone and flesh. And the best part was, they didn’t have any cheese. 

Lapu Lapu on the right. 

Mingling at sunset on Coron peak.