Christmas in the Philippines, 1995

The piece I performed last night at City Voices.

According to the official survey, the Philippines consists of 7107 Islands. Of these roughly 2000 are inhabited although only about 500 are larger than, for the sake of example, Wolverhampton Town Centre. The largest of the islands is Luzon where the capitol city, Manila, is located.
    It is a city of startling contrasts. At one end of Manila's social spectrum there are millionaires who live in palatial mansions while at the other there is the Tondo - a grim slum of a shanty town which runs for mile after hideous mile parallel to the South Superhighway and the railroad tracks, and houses one and a half million people in poverty and filth.
   
    We arrived about a week before Christmas and everywhere saw signs of civic festivity - enormous illuminated stars hanging above the street, multicoloured four-foot wide, flashing snowflakes like the displays on demented slot machines, giant snowmen painted on buildings in a country that has never even seen snow, Santa Clauses and Reindeer by the sleighful.

    The next morning we took a public bus for Batangas, a port in the South of Luzon several hours away along the South Super Highway. The journey took us first past the Tondo. It was a horrible sight that the descriptions in the guide book hadn't prepared me for. The most horrible aspect of this 'city' was the mundanity of the life within it. People in this terrible place went about the normal business of living as if it were any other suburb. Dirty and torn washing fluttered from lines strung between the buildings. People crouched out of doors cooking in pots over fires that burned with a greasy green flame and left oily smoke like a smear in the air. At the back of the huts, rubbish was piled high. At one point there was a break where the road passed over a wide drainage culvert which was perhaps twenty feet deep. It was half filled with the ghastly detritus of slum living. Children were playing in the filth.
    Here and there, though, there were small triumphs of humanity as some of the inhabitants had hung up home-made Christmas decorations that turned gaily in the wind.
The bus route wound on through an endless sequence of almost identical towns, the sort of places that look as if they were made from the debris when all of the real places had been finished. Buildings were jerry-built of wood, concrete and odd pieces of corrugated metal. Business in the towns seemed to consist mainly of Doctors, Dentists and Clinics mixed in with Auto Repair Shops with yards full of rusty gas cylinders. Eventually we reached Batangas.    
    Batangas is point of departure for the ferry to Puerto Galera on Mindoro. To my eye it had the look of having been thrown together hastily about ten minutes ago and of being likely to fall down again in ten minutes time. As the bus made its painfully slow way through the traffic to the harbour there was plenty of time to see it in all its glory. It seemed strange that many of the buildings had painted signs outside advertising courses in Word, Windows, PowerPoint and a host of other familiar computer products.
    At the harbour we boarded the ferry to Puerto Galera. It was a short journey and we were soon approaching our destination through the beautiful Batangas Channel. The harbour itself is filled with bangkas, unseaworthy looking boats resembling canoes stabilised by long bamboo crosspieces ending in struts - parallel - to the hull which lie at the waterline.
    The other ubiquitous form of transport in the islands is the Jeepney, a kind of stretched jeep which looks about as roadworthy as the bangkas look seaworthy. They are garishly painted and usually have religious quotations such as "Have Mercy On Us Miserable Sinners" featured somewhere prominently on them, to further terrify their already frightened passengers. We took one of these vehicles to Encenada Beach, the resort where we were to spend a couple of days before moving on. Inside our uncomfortable ride the roof was decorated with glued on Toblerone packets and empty yoghurt cartons. We bounced up and down the hills hanging on to our seats with dogged determination.
    Encenada was a nice enough place but I'm not really a beach person so I was glad when the time came to move on. We were going to spend a couple of days trekking into and out of the jungle interior of Mindoro. We met our guides, who all looked tiny next to us, on a long curving beach between the ocean and the jungle and started off along an easy broad path that ran into the forest roughly paralleling a river.
Initially it was a pleasant stroll with the forest only sporadically thickening and with many large open areas of rice-paddies. Very occasionally the path became a little narrower and steeper and slick with mud. At about lunchtime we crossed a wide and fast-flowing, though fairly shallow river and paused for a rest break. Through the afternoon there were several more river crossings at faster and deeper fords each time. Eventually, in a clearing we came to a broken down bamboo and palm structure which we were told would be our 'hotel' for the night.
    Some of the guides were already hard at work restoring the shelter. First they rammed four long bamboo corner pieces into the ground, jack-hammering them in with bare hands until they were wedged fast. To these, about ten inches from the ground, they attached four more pieces to form the edges of the floor. Further poles were laid across these forming the floor itself. A similar arrangement but with layers of palm leaves formed the roof. The whole thing was lashed together with tough and fibrous strips of bark, stretched and twisted into a kind of twine. I tried to break a piece and found that it was strong enough to resist my best efforts.
    In one corner of the camp was table and benches also lashed together from pieces of bamboo. This was our dining room. The meal that we ate there was goat stew and chicken soup, both animals having been dispatched with a chainsaw delicacy that failed to distinguish the bone from the meat.
It was already dark and the rain was lashing in at the sides of our makeshift restaurant. After dinner we chose our spots in the shelters, unrolled our sleeping bags and tried to sleep. I found myself dozing in short bursts. The rain kept on getting faster and harder and more and more of it found its way through the roof until all of us were drenched. I lay in an increasingly sodden bag trying not to think about the fact that, allowing for the time difference, my work's Christmas party was now in full swing.   
    About two hours before dawn I had had enough. My sleeping bag was reduced to little more than a soaking sponge and I decide that I would be better sitting in waterproofs in the remains of the dining room.
    When, shortly after the rain had finally stopped, dawn eventually came, creeping in slowly like thick honey spreading on a plate, we ate a breakfast of banana and coconut boiled in coconut milk and served with plates of fried aubergine and then set about retracing yesterday's route to the coast.

It was a couple of days later, the day before Christmas Eve, when we set off in Jeepneys for the point where we would begin main hike of the trip. The track, muddy and deeply rutted, wound up the side of a hill that was not quite big enough to count as a mountain. Days of heavy rain had reduced the traction to nil although our completely bald tyres could probably have accomplished that unaided. In places the road had eroded to the point where the driving surface was narrower than the jeepney's wheelbase leaving parts of the tyre right up against the edge. Once we were mired so deeply in the mud that we had to get out and push. All our efforts accomplished nothing more than getting us dirty. Eventually, after a dozen or more near suicidal runs at it the driver managed to bounce the jeepney round the edge of the worst of it and we could climb back in and continue.
    We left the jeepney to continue on foot at a concrete hut on the hillside that looked for all the world like a bus shelter although no bus could ever have ascended such a road.  Descending a path we joined the edge of a series of rice paddies which eventually became a muddy jungle track that wound up and down, sometimes quite steeply, through closely packed trees. We passed through several villages of thatched huts, to the total indifference of the indigenous population, before arriving at Batad, our overnight stop. Batad was the reason for the trip. Here the mountains rise around the village in the form of a huge natural amphitheatre and are completely covered in the stepped contours of hundreds of rice paddies which are one of the many wonders alluded to as the 'Eighth Wonder of the World".
The village was a couple of dozen buildings spread across both sides of the valley, supplemented by a few more substantial wooden ones, some of which were providing our accommodation - Spartan but comfortable enough.
    I was the first to rise next morning, shortly before dawn, having spent a restless night. I sat alone out on the empty balcony watching dawn through the still heavy rain. It was a peaceful and reflective hour and by the time other people had started to move about I felt calm and content. As everyone emerged from their beds and looked unhappily at the weather, I found myself in a ridiculously cheerful and hearty mood which seemed set to last all day. We ate a simple breakfast and set out.

    The day's walking was tricky. In dry conditions it would have been simple and straightforward but the conditions weren't dry. We climbed up the steep terracing by walking along the stone walls that edged the paddies. The pattern was constant. On one side of us was a six inch drop into a foot of cold and muddy water. On the other was a drop of twenty to thirty feet into similarly cold and muddy water. In between was our path, the top of what amounted to a wall about six inches wide and made slick and dangerous by the rain.
    Finally, after an especially tricky section, we reached Cambulo which is a sizeable town with a large school, its own clinic, several churches, several 'guest houses' and a village square. At the school a spirited, if damp, volleyball game was going on watched by half the village. The town square was an open area surrounded by bamboo benches in a kind of parody of an English Country Village. In this weather there was no-one sitting there. After half an hour of poking around I went back to our 'hotel', dug out some slightly drier clothing and went down for a drink.
    Our accommodation was split between two village houses. The 'dining room', such as it was, was in ours. It was a cramped space - not quite big enough for all of us - necessitating a rapid deepening of friendships as we struggled to fit onto the benches. I squeezed onto a narrow bench near the door with one of the other members of our party, Allison who I had been getting increasingly close to during the trip so far.
    Before dinner had arrived a group of school children did. They stood outside performing a medley of Christmas Carols, endlessly and effortlessly running one into another until our resolve cracked and we paid up. Later I examined one of their school book 'song sheets'. Everything was written down exactly as they had performed it, a single continuous blending of Mary's Boy Child, Good King Wenceslas, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, Silent Night and so on including, bizarrely, Christmas Time In Cambulo.
    During Dinner a second group rehearsed outside but were hampered partly by their inability to agree on a selection and partly by our host who kept chasing them away. Credit to them for perseverance though. They moved further away and stood under a shelter and sang at us from a distance. The guide was trying to give us a talk about local customs but his voice was so quiet that it was too hard to follow him. After about fifteen minutes Allison and I gave up the effort went out and gave some encouragement - and some money - to this second group of singers. We sheltered under the eaves of one of the thatched huts while they sang to us. It was dark and wet and rather cold but standing there together listening to them it seemed like a marvelous enough Christmas Eve to me.

Philippines 1995: Part 21

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

Our last day dawned with the kind of blazing heat that had too often been denied us. Tomorrow morning we would board a plane at five O'clock a.m. that would need a 2 a.m. wake up. The almost unanimous consensus was that it would not be worth going to bed so a very long day stretched out ahead of us. After breakfast there was time to go for a walk in the area around the hotel. The sun was fierce and bright as we left the hotel and kept turning right until we had walked around in a large square and arrived back at our starting point in time to grab bags and take the 10:30 plane to Manila. Once we reached Manila, a little before lunch, there was the question of how to spend the day. After some consideration we decided to walk in the direction of Intramuros and look at some of the sights.
We set off along Mabini Street towards Rizal Park. My attempts to change money, in spite of the hundreds of money changers had been frustrating. Three consecutive shops had refused flat out to accept traveller's cheques or any currency other than dollars. As I had no dollars to change I had had to keep searching. The fourth one agreed to change traveller's cheques but at a rate well below the official one. Their take it or leave it attitude made it plain that I would have no more luck anywhere else so I had taken it, changing the last of my money. I had just about enough to last the day.
Our first 'sight' was Rizal Park which is a large and very crowded park of little interest other than for the huge fountain in the centre of it. Across the busy road there were two smaller parks, each charging a nominal fee, the Chinese Garden and the Japanese Garden. We went first into the Chinese Garden. This was a charmingly laid out garden with a number of Chinese style pagodas. It seemed to be a popular meeting place for young couples who were strolling round hand in hand or sitting together on the numerous benches. We also strolled around for a while. The Japanese Garden was smaller and less interesting. It could be circled inside about two minutes and was a relatively barren place.

We crossed over Burgos street to head towards the entrance to the walled city of Intramuros. On the left as we approached there was an entrance to a small fortification. Inside was a pleasant and deserted garden and steps that led up to the walls and roof. We explored for a few minutes and then went to see Intramuros itself.
Intramuros - "The walled City" is Manila as it once was. The wall was constructed following attacks by China with a moat around it to complete the fortifications. It encircled all of the important houses and churches and only the Spanish and the Mestizos were allowed to live inside.
Much of the walled city was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War but enough of it remains or had been restored to make it worth visiting. The buildings are in a completely different style to anywhere else in Manila, more preposing and elegant. Many of them were decorated for Christmas. One had what appeared to be a set of life size cardboard cut out nativity figures on the flat roof above its doors.

We walked around for a time before heading out of the side gate and into a grim urban area where homeless people seemed to be living on the narrow stretch that separated the main road from what must surely be one of the worlds strangest golf courses, a bizarre narrow grass strip, no more than fifty feet wide, that encircles the walled city where the moat once was.
In the evening we all went out together for a meal. The intention was to go back to the Hong Kong Tea Rooms but they were full and recommended another Restaurant a little way away. This was larger and although the food and service were as good the portions were less generous and we finished the meal without the effort that we had been forced to put in last time.
Afterwards the group split up slightly with by far the largest group of us going on to what was formerly the Manila Hard Rock Cafe but is now called Ten Years After. I had forbodings about the place from the moment we entered. Although the decor was fine, the lighting intimate and the music good solid melodic rock it seemed to me the sort of place where it would be very easy to get ripped off. I was soon proven right. We ordered a round of drinks, predominantly cocktails. I am no expert but my Tequila Sunrise had no perceptible alcohol content, Tequila or otherwise. Others soon started voicing the same opinion. There was only lime juice in the gin and lime. Even the beer seemed to have no actual beer in it. We complained and when that got us nowhere we sorted out the money for the drinks and tried to leave. Of course that was reckoning without the cover charge. I had seen that coming. Of course in view of our satisfaction we refused to pay it and they threatened to call the Police. Out in the street a Policeman did indeed try to stop us but as we were so many and we just ignored him he let it go.
There was nothing for it. It was time to go back to Rosie's, which is what we did. We pooled all of the remaining money and spent it on several pitchers of Margaritas which had an extremely high alcohol content and spent from then until about two O'clock getting quite drunk.
Then, in a flurry of activity, it was all over. Rush back to the hotel, shower and change, rush to the airport, kill a little time in the departure lounge and get on the flight home. The Philippines, like some many other places had gone from being a place to look forward to, to being a place to look back upon.

Philippines 1995: Part 20

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

In order we were woken by the entire dog population of Port Barton in a Hell's Dawn Chorus of barking and howling, the roaring of a motorbike gunning its badly tuned engine, a tinny radio playing Elvis Presley's Wooden Heart and finally a belated cockerel announcing the daybreak which of course started the dogs off again.
The water was off in the shower but working at the standpipe outside which is where I washed before going to breakfast. A few people were going off for a walk to a waterfall in the jungle but mostly we planned to drift around Port Barton doing nothing for the morning. I wandered along the main street, buying bars of chocolate at a tiny but packed general store that sold everything from Paint to T-shirts. Then I cut back to the beach and carried on round. At the point where I needed to cut slightly back inland to a bridge over the river a group of children were playing, climbing on the low branches of a tree that overhung the water.

Across the river the bridge turned into a series of narrow planks on raised platforms. Five feet below it on the smooth sand near invisible crabs scurried to and fro, only visible at all by virtue of their motion and then as flickering ghost like images on the retina rather than something properly seen.
The shoreline became rockier and rockier and among the rocks, washed up by the tide were thousands of sea shells ranging from tiny delicate spirals to massive solid conches weighing several kilos each. In half an hour of beach combing I amassed a pretty good collection. Some of the others were also there, similarly engaged, gathering any odd bit of flotsam that caught their eyes.

In the afternoon we had all booked bangkas to take us island hopping. We sailed past any number of islands, some of them stark and barren rocks standing out from the water, others lush forested hills with trees that swept right down to the water's edge. There were islands where a narrow white ribbon of sand formed the demarcation between azure water and emerald forest and others where the whole island was a single beach. There was a repeated optical illusion where we would sail towards an island convincing us that we were going to land only to find as we approached that it suddenly resolved itself into two separate islands with a narrow channel between them through which we sailed.
Finally we moored at an island where the water was shallow and an idyllic beach threaded along about fifty yards of it. The bottom was smooth and sandy and only became rocky a long way out. Out in the rocks someone saw a sea-snake and as they are poisonous after that we stuck mostly to the shallows. About a hundred yards across the strait there was another similar island. I swam across towards it but the water was so shallow that I could, had I have chosen, have waded the whole way. When I got to it I found it almost identical to the one we had landed on, a little rockier perhaps, a bit less green maybe but more or less the same. I swam back.
Soon we were off to Manta Ray Reef. This is a coral reef off Manta Ray Island. We moored above the reef and those of us who wanted to dived in. The water was not much rougher than at the shore and only about fifteen to twenty feet deep. I duck-dived to look at the coral.
Manta Ray Reef is impressive for the size and scale of the coral but all of it is dead, probably from widespread dynamite fishing. The result is that although there is a lot of it, it all has a flat and dull greenish grey colouring unlike the coral we had seen at Snake Island. All the same there were a great many varieties. The most common were large flat fan like structures about four feet across but there were also volcano shaped formations and brain coral and weird branching growths like frozen lightning bolts.
We swam for about half an hour before struggling back onto the boats and sailing off to German Island where we spent another hour. By the time we returned to Port Barton the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon but there was time for more swimming and lazing on the beach before dinner.
For the first time I started to feel as if the holiday was all over. All that remained was the travelling home.

Philippines 1995: Part 19

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

We waded waist deep, rucksacks held above our heads, out to the bangkas. The water was calm and warm but the rocky bottom was slippery and uneven. Nonetheless the task was accomplished without mishap. The noise from the engine was tremendous and made conversation difficult but there was no sign of yesterday's rain and the sun was bright and hot again. It was a long journey for what felt like a very flimsy craft. I was convinced of their seaworthiness but others seemed less confident. At times when we were out in open water and the waves were high enough to lash over the sides bouncing us about like a Ping-Pong ball, I could see their point of view.
We stopped for lunch at a small island, where puzzled villagers watched us as we gave a repeat performance of yesterday's lunch preparations. They showed the same idle curiosity that the monkeys had, although the monkeys had been unable to sell us bottles of beer which made the villagers a much better audience. Afterwards it was back to the bangkas for part two of the trip. Although we had started early it was already some way into the afternoon by the time we arrived at Port Barton and the Swissipinni Resort. After Sabang I had expected Port Barton to be pretty grim. Instead there was a wonderful surprise waiting for us. Swissipinni consisted of a village of solid, well-built and even luxurious wooden chalets all nicely furnished and all complete with proper showers and toilets. There was a large separate building where the bar and restaurant and even a pool table could be found.

The resort was situated right at the edge of a perfect beach which sloped steeply down into the water making it perfect for swimming. In the restaurant I ordered an egg and cheese sandwich and received what was really a large cheese omelette between two thick slices of home baked bread. After a nap on the beach I went swimming for about an hour. The odd profile of the beach gave a peculiar 'backwards wave' effect to the water so that the waves ricocheted from the sand pulling you first towards the shore and then away from it. It was a peculiar and pleasant sensation. Another nap and then it was time for a shower and a wander to the bar.
Before long Eddie, the resort manager, started laying out the buffet which proved to be an excellent meal although some of the group seemed to be happy with just a liquid dinner.
We sat around in the bar drinking until it was time to go to bed again. There was a vague feeling of time ticking away. Tomorrow would be our last non-travelling day in the Philippines and it felt strange to think that soon we would be going home. I felt as if I had spent my whole life here, as if England was something I had once dreamed about after a heavy supper rather than a reality waiting for my return. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. I didn't even want to consider home.

Philippines 1995: Part 18

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

I opened my eyes. Everyone seemed to be packing up and heading towards the picnic area. We hadn't been there for five minutes had we? Someone was walking toward me echoing the dream that I had been having. (But how could I have been having a dream unless I'd been asleep?) I stood up and brushed the sand from my arms and legs.
"About forty five minutes." she told me when I asked the obvious question. The fragments of my dream flickered past but were gone before I could catch them.
At the picnic table eager monkeys stood watching us from near the sign that listed as rule number one - "Do Not Feed The Animals". I glanced at the other rules and chuckled at rule number seven - "No Nudity Or Public Indecency".
On the table lunch was taking shape. Blocks of cheese were sliced. Cans of tuna fish and a jar of peanut butter were opened. Loaves of bread were unwrapped. It all looked horribly familiar from our trek. Given the number of available ingredients the number of culinary variations was rather limited although Graham's tuna fish and peanut butter sandwich made a valiant attempt at expanding the envelope. Afterwards, mindful of rule number one, we cleared away as well as we could but as soon as we stepped away from the table hordes of monkeys who obviously hadn't read the sign descended on it to salvage whatever scraps they could manage.
Now we had a choice. We could return by bangka to Sabang or walk along a track called the 'Monkey Trail'. The few returning by boat left and the rest of us started up the path. Two steps along it started to rain. Fifty steps later it was back to the kind of downpour we knew and loved. That damned cloud had just been waiting until we were away from shelter. I swear that I could hear it sniggering.
Initially the track led up a series of sturdy wooden staircases that zigzagged steeply up the hillside. We were surrounded by trees that could have been designed by Salvador Dali. Great flat vertical boards formed the roots looking like pieces of chipboard slotted together as props for a stage production of Tarzan of the Apes. At the top of the steps the track levelled out and then gradually rose and fell as we walked through the jungle, the rain increasing in ferocity all the time. Finally another set of steps, this time distinctly rickety looking led down to another beach. We descended them one at a time for safety. Parts of them looked as if one at a time might be one more than they could take but we all reached the beach in perfect safety and then followed it round until a track cut a little way back inland to a broad flat path which ultimately took us back to Sabang and a change of clothes. At Sabang with a final little flourish the rain cloud drifted off to find someone else who had no shelter and the sun came back out.

Philippines 1995: Part 17

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

Quite a few of the group looked very ill after the night's drinking but I felt fine, diving into a plate of eggs as if I hadn't eaten for a week. Today, other than a short bangka ride across the bay, we had no travelling to do. Our itinerary was to visit the underground river then walk back round the coast. The sun was shining and Sabang, whatever its faults, was a marvellously scenic place with a mountain range rising dramatically on all sides of the wide bay and the beach a curving white ribbon between the water and the trees and rocks.
We took three very small bangkas out across the bay. The ride lasted only about thirty five minutes before we rounded a stark headland, that looked like a huge child's building block dropped carelessly at the water's edge, and glided in onto a gorgeous beach.

The sea had eroded under the edge of the headland forming caves and pools and making the whole thing look as if it might topple at any minute into the foaming waves. Twenty yards inland from the waterline the jungle began, dense and luxurious. Curious and unafraid monkeys watched us from the trees. A large lizard padded through the undergrowth, ignoring us completely.
This was the St. Paul's National Park, a beautifully preserved area at the foot of Mt. St. Paul and the home of the primary reason for visiting the area - the Underground River. We approached the entrance to the river along a path through the trees. Several more of the lizards, dark grey and black and up to four or five feet longed incuriously watched our progress. At the river we were instructed to put on life jackets and hard hats before getting into canoes. I sat at the front in charge of the torch which would light our way. Outside in the sunlight it seemed a pale and insipid beam, incapable of illuminating anything but once we had drifted in through the cave mouth it hard a startlingly powerful beam that easily cut the darkness to pick out details on the roof and walls. At first the limestone formations were large but ordinary but further in they became more unusual forming a weird grotesquerie of half familiar shapes.

A dragon's head forty feet long loomed out of the cave wall.

A giant yellow mushroom flowed up out of the water's edge.
A nativity decorated a dark corner on the far side of the cavern.
A mysterious man stood on the top of a slope.
The lights picked out all of these strange apparitions as we were steered past them by the oarsman at the back of the canoe. I flicked the torch towards the roof. There were bats there. Thousands upon thousands of bats. One or two of them squealed and flapped around the cave bouncing their echoes off the natural sculptures but mostly they just hung from the roof, tiny brown bundles like fruit rotting on a dead branch. I wanted to shout, to scare them all into flight, to see the cave filled with their furious motion. Of course I didn't.
We came at last to a large circular cavern which was as far into the system as we could get. The oarsman took the boat around the perimeter and we started back the way we had come. Every twisted formation had a new aspect from this direction as if instead of repeating familiar water we were paddling through a completely new cave.
We drifted back out into daylight and the torch once more died to a mere spark against the brighter beams of the sun. When we had disembarked we went back to the beach where we sat around in the sun. I lay back on the hot sand and closed my eyes for a moment.

Philippines 1995: Part 16

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

The bar which was also where we were supposed to eat was a little further west than our bijou holiday home. It was a two storey bamboo and wood building with the bar downstairs and the restaurant upstairs. The solitary other drinker in the bar was one of our group who had already started getting loaded, a process he was clearly determined to complete. I joined him in a beer. As we stood chatting about his day - he had not come out to the islands with us - others arrived. Some of them weren't happy with their accommodation. One was particularly unhappy, specifically with the spiders who were sharing it with her. We had already discovered on the trek that she was an arachnophobe. I pointed out that of the very few spiders venomous enough to harm humans none of them live in the Philippines and that very large spiders are almost always pretty harmless. She was having none of it. Back in Cambulo she had refused to wash because there was a perfectly innocuous but quite large spider sitting near the tap.

One by one the others drifted in. It rapidly became obvious that the mood was anything but festive. The group from the East End of the village had had a long dark and wet walk along the beach and no-one seemed happy with their beach-side apartments. My ridiculously good mood which had persisted since Batad had so far shown no sign of dissipating. I didn't care about cramped accommodation and non-existent sanitation and eight legged things crawling around in the night. I didn't care about the fact that today had been only the second completely rain free day of the holiday. When those of us who had arrived went up to the meal I didn't even care that the food took forever to arrive and was cold and unpalatable. Holidays always turn me into Mr. Patience. On the other hand the mood was beginning to infect me, not to make me bothered about any of the things that were bothering the others but to irritate me with the complaining - especially from certain quarters. Every now and then I found myself shaking my head at some remark and, once, I realised that my hands were involuntarily making the sort of motions usually associated with strangling chickens. With a conscious effort I lightened up and allowed myself to see the funny side. The remaining members of the group finally arrived adding little to the good cheer but my moment of annoyance had passed and I was back to feeling happy.
For over an hour food arrived in bits and pieces, a small salad here, a seafood chop suey there, a bit of roast fish, a bit more salad. When it had all come and been consumed without enthusiasm we all went wandering down the beach to the East End where the majority of the group were billeted, at Mary's Cottages. Here in a sort of beach-side veranda we broke open the booze and started to get drunk. Down on the beach another group of tourists had a bonfire going and as midnight approached we went to join them. In addition to the booze we had bought some fireworks but they proved to be a serious disappointment, a couple of half hearted sparks and splutters and nothing else.
Nevertheless my good mood had returned and I found that in spite of the chaotic end to the old year, I felt rather optimistic about the new one.

Philippines 1995: Part 15

In theory New Year's Eve was another day of nothing but travel, by Jeepney from Puerto Princessa to Sabang. In practice there was a second choice which most of us opted for. This was to take a shorter Jeepney ride to the coast and hire a bangka to go Island Hopping for the day. The weather was glorious, by far the best day of the trip so far. A blazing sun hung in a completely cloudless sky as our boats bounced across the bright water of Honda Bay with us, dressed only in swimming costumes on top leaving behind a toxic cloud of mixed fumes from sun tan lotion and Deet.
Our first port of call was Snake Island, fortunately named for its shape rather than its inhabitants, which has a small near-shore shallow coral reef with clear warm water. Swimming over it was like flying above an alien planet. Around a crimson volcano of coral a shoal of hundreds of tiny electric blue fish, less than a centimetre each, wheeled and turned with the symmetrical precision of a flock of birds. Deeper, above a mass of bottle green brain coral a black fish fully eight inches long with translucent blue and yellow fins and a scarlet stripe along its spine, circled lazily, surrounded by attending hosts of lesser beauties like courtiers around a princess. In among the rocks several highly aggressive fish protected their territory by head-butting and biting swimmers who dared to approach.

A shimmer in the water, a fish shaped hole in the light, caught my eye. It seemed scarcely more than a flickering optical illusion. I tracked it with my eyes until it resolved itself into a near transparent fish more than four inches long with only a pale hint of a skeleton and a black round eye visible as it moved.
We swam and sunbathed for some time before taking the bangka across to Starfish Island. The Lonely Planet Guide sums this up rather well.
"It is a flat treeless sandbar with a few miserable huts... (and)... a modest rustic restaurant."
Modest is overstating it. The menu boasted any number of things that could be had - canned beans, canned beans and sausage, canned sausage, canned pork and bizarrely an 'egg omelette'. Almost all of them had run out. I had a bowl of cold baked beans and an omelette. Even beer was off.
We strolled about and lounged on the beach until it was time to get the Bangka back to Palawan and face that Jeepney ride to Sabang.
The road, as all roads in the Philippines seemed to be, was a dirt track that twisted its way north and west across the island crossing several creaking wooden bridges on the way. At one point a bridge had collapsed forcing the vehicle down a steep slope to ford the river at its shallow point.
We passed another Jeepney, identical to ours except that it was loaded down with people, dozens of them, clinging to the roof and the back and the sides.
Further along the road another Jeepney was upside down in a ditch.
At Sabang there had been a slight hitch. Our original itinerary had had us arriving on the 30th December, the much revised version had us arriving a day later on New Year's Eve. Somehow the message had failed to get through to Sabang and our erstwhile accommodation at Robert's Cottages was now in the possession of a group of Austrians. Alex had spent the day arranging alternative accommodation but it was scattered along about a mile of the coast which was going to make our New Year celebrations a bit tricky. When we were all there and descended from the Jeepney Alex consulted the list in his hand.
"Okay," he said "The lucky winners of first prize are Bob and Graham, Jenny and Allison. If you'll just follow me."

We hoisted our rucksacks and followed him back through the village, over a plank across a pool and to our accommodation at the Western end of Sabang. There was a tiny hut made mainly of bamboo which had been made into two even tinier huts by the addition of a partition and a second door. The partition stopped well short of the roof where a single light had been installed to service both rooms. Jenny and Allison were in one half of this while Graham and I were to take the other. The light switch was on the girls side.
Our room was about seven foot square with an opening at the back which led into a brick built 'bathroom'. This consisted of an unlit room about five foot by three which did indeed have a 'toilet' which was flushed by ladling water from a large tub with a small bowl. There was also a shower fitting although it appeared to be connected to nothing at all and a quick look around the back of the hut confirmed that there was in fact no plumbing to accompany these luxury fixtures.
The two beds were low wooden pallets with half inch thick mattresses on them. Mosquito nets had been provided although finding convenient places to tie them proved to be challenging, but not quite as challenging as managing to close the 'window' which was something like a Crystal Maze mental game. The window consisted of a square arrangement of slats which tilted up to close and down to open. Gravity guaranteed that down was the default position and the lack of any kind of catch ensured that the default position was the only position. I pushed it shut. Gravity pulled it open. I pushed it shut and taped it with masking tape. Gravity laughed at my feeble efforts and pulled it open again, tossing the tape contemptuously into a corner. I pushed it shut and tried to wedge it with a stone. Gravity sneered, kicked the stone away and pulled it open again. I pushed it shut and wedged one end with the roll of tape and the other with a bottle of paracetamol. Gravity shrugged its shoulders and gave in. Satisfied with a job well done I changed into a long sleeved shirt and trousers and went to the bar for a beer.

Philippines 1995: Part 14

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

Next day, before dawn had even started to lighten the sky, we were off on our travels again. Alone among the group, and I know I shouldn't be smug but I am, I seemed to have anticipated the first problem - the bangka was moored at the same point that it had dropped us off. I stripped off my trousers and T-shirt and pushed them into plastic bags in the top of my rucksack leaving me in just sandals and swimming trunks. Although it was still pre-dawn it was warm enough for it not to bother me that I had to wade out in chest deep water to get to the boat.
The bangka took us to Caticlan where I dried off and changed back into my clothes. Several of the others had also got changes of clothes but I had the bonus of not having to carry any wet ones around for the rest of the day.
Our bus took us back to Kalibo. Unfortunately Kalibo was not where our flight was going from. That was Ilo-Ilo on the south coast of Panay. The problem with Ilo-Ilo was that our bus, a large modern coach, wouldn't take us there because of the condition of the roads. We were forced to split up into two smaller groups in mini-buses. The first bus set off and a couple of minutes later we also set off. After half an hour of driving around, picking up a passenger who seemed to be a friend of the driver and getting some petrol our bus turned a corner and we found ourselves back at Kalibo airport.
The bus bounced and juddered along the washed out and rock strewn road. Eventually we caught up to the other bus which had stopped to wait for us and Alex tried to impress on both drivers a sense of urgency.
Of course we made it in time. In fact we made it with almost five whole minutes to spare. I knew all along there was no reason to get excited.

Puerto Princessa, our destination, is the capital city of Palawan and has about 100,000 inhabitants. Our Hotel, the Airport Hotel, was a very short walk from the arrivals building and only a few minutes after landing we were checked in. The Hotel itself had a surreal taste in decoration with imitation tree trunks in garish colours thrusting their way through the walls. The rooms were comfortable enough if a little basic.
I went for a walk along Rizal Avenue towards the harbour. It was already growing dark and the Christmas decorations were lit. A tree constructed entirely of strands of shimmering lights stood in the centre of Mendoza park surrounded by red lanterns glowing in the trees.

There are quite a number of good places to eat in Puerto Princessa and apart from the good places there are literally hundreds of tiny shacks with names like Elsa's Eaterie or Gladys's Grill which have dubious architectural merit and even more dubious hygienic standards. We had decided to eat in one of the good places, the Trattoria Terrace which boasts a remarkable range of competitively priced international cuisine. What it doesn't boast is polite efficient service. After taking our order and serving three rounds of drinks the chef came out and said that he was not going to serve us. The official story was that there were too many of us wanting too great a variety of food. From his heated exchange with Alex there was obviously more to it than that but we never did find out the real story.
Instead we went down the road to the Kalui Restaurant. This has no menu as such instead serving a choice of two set sea food meals, the exact nature depending on the day's catch. It is decorated in a charming rustic fashion and the service goes beyond smooth to slick. I chose the special menu which worked out to a grand total of about four pounds. A selection of fish dishes including some truly delicious lobster served already cracked open, were brought to the table in succession and were good enough to compensate for the unexpected change of venue.

Philippines 1995: Part 13

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

So, the next day, right after breakfast we hired bikes - rickety and unreliable things with loose chains and suspect breaks - and set off. Given that the island only has one main road we didn't need maps and we knew from our enquiries at the bike shop that we would be able to get lunch along the way.
Along the length of Borocay runs a single partly tarmacced road and we cycled north along this through a sequence of small towns, villages really. Eventually the road turned into a series of quite steep ascents and descents along gravel tracks. On one of the descents I suddenly found myself struggling to hold the bike upright, simultaneously discovered that the brakes had failed, and then even more suddenly found myself sliding along on my side with the bike on top of me. Fortunately the damage was restricted to some minor grazing on my elbow and shoulder and bruised shins where the bike frame had hit me. After that we went more carefully.

Puka Shell Beach is at the extreme northern tip of Borocay and is fine if a little barren. We stayed there for a while but eventually went in search of the smaller better beach that the bike shop owner had told us about. This meant pushing the bikes back up the last steep hill that we had come down and then taking them down another even steeper one. We hoped that it would be worth it. It was. At the bottom was a small beach with boats drawn up on it and a tiny, separate offshore island called Naked Rock.
Instead of going to this though we looked for the flight of steps on the left that we had been told us led to a more beautiful and secluded beach. Once we found it, leaving the bikes behind we went up the uneven stone steps and then down the path to the other side. It did indeed lead to an idyllic and secluded cove where a basket and rope 'dumbwaiter' arrangement delivered drinks from the cliff top bar. We had a couple of glasses of fruit juice and then went exploring among the rocks and beach-combing for shells and coral. After a couple of hours we went back to the other beach (where we were relieved to find the bicycles still there) and over onto Naked Rock. We walked down to the far edge of it and stood on the top of a sheer face watching the water break dramatically against the rocks below. It was like being at the edge of the world.
Somehow the day had sneaked past us unnoticed and when we checked the time we discovered that we would just have time to get the bikes back to the shop before our hire expired. We pushed them up the first steep hill and then rode them back.

Philippines 1995: Part 12

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

Another day another journey. First we took the bus to the domestic airport where we found some keen as mustard airport employees making security checks. I have travelled on many country's internal flights but seen none quite as thorough as these. Every piece of hold luggage was opened and searched. Cabin luggage was also searched and medical kits and toiletry bags subject to close scrutiny. Pockets had to be emptied and the official searching me opened every blade on my penknife.
Once through we quickly boarded the plane where newspapers were handed out with the stern instruction that they would be collected back in before we landed. I glanced through the Manila Bulletin and found an interesting article.
" The fresh wave of bank robberies, kidnap for ransom cases, porch climbing and murder in cold blood at broad daylight has once again dampened efforts to project the Philippines as an ideal tourist destination. As a spokesman for the government put it -
'We have tried desperately to picture and promote the Philippines as a wholesome travel destination but the spate of killings of foreigners and other crimes have done damage to tourism.'"

Reassured, we touched down at Kalibo on the island of Panay where, due to major rebuilding work, the luggage reclaim was a heap in the corner of a field. As we sorted through it I had a growing feeling that something was not quite as it should be. After a while I realised what it was. The sun was shining in the middle of a cloudless sky on a hot dry day. Bemused by this strange and unfamiliar happening we walked across the car park to the bus which took us to Caticlan where a short bangka ride took us over to Borocay. The shallow beach made it necessary to moor some distance of shore and forced us to wade in chest deep holding luggage above our heads. This was no special hardship as the water was calm and warm and the sun was hot enough to dry us off fairly rapidly. Soon we were checking into our cottages at the Summer Place.

Borocay is the sort of place I wouldn't normally go for a holiday. No sir. Not for me mile after mile of gorgeous white beaches, clear warm azure water, beach-side cocktail bars, fresh fish roasting on barbecues. I don't want all that luxury and leisure and lazing about in the sunshine. Give me rain and river crossings, steep treks up rocky mountain paths, sandwiches for lunch and sterilised water tasting of iodine. Give me misery.
Okay I'll admit it - I liked Borocay. The only thing that it could be faulted on at all was that when the sun went down small furry things with sharp pointy teeth could be heard scrambling about under and in the cottages but hey, live and let live, they weren't doing me any harm. Otherwise words like 'tropical' and 'paradise' seem to hang nicely together with 'Borocay'. It had all of the good things I usually travel the Earth to avoid and a whole lot more. Along the beach were every kind of Restaurant your heart could desire, Mexican, Italian, Spanish, Thai and plenty of Filipino Seafood places.
We chose to have dinner in 'Alice In Wonderland's', a fish restaurant where the food was good but the service was slow. After dinner the group split up I went for a moonlight stroll with one of the more attractive single women from the trip. We'd been getting on well and tomorrow were planning to take a bicycle ride to the less populated northern end of the island.
A stroll with a beautiful woman was all that the island had been missing, and now it had that too.

Philippines 1995: Part 11

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

The next day we returned, to Manila, retracing that terrible long journey, arriving with almost no time before dinner. Eleven of us set off to find a Chinese restaurant called the Hong Kong Tea Room which had been recommended to us.
The Hong Kong Tea Room

looked a fairly basic place with no elaborate decor but with a promisingly large number of Chinese eating in it. That is always a good sign. We sat down and ordered one main dish each with lots of rice. Food started to arrive and then kept on arriving. Chinese waiters with more trays of it hovered while others whipped away the dishes from the table the moment that they were empty making room for more. Chicken dishes replaced Prawn dishes replaced Beef dishes replaced Noodle dishes until no-one was sure what they were eating. Finally food stopped coming and a little later we stopped eating. There was still quite a bit of food left on the table but we all agreed that we had made a magnificent attempt.
We left the restaurant and wandered up towards Rosie's. All the way along the street Filipinos tried to tempt us to whichever bar they were touting for. One of them, on being told where we were headed started to cry out
"Rosie's no good. Rosie's closed down now. "
Of course Rosie's was not closed down. In fact it was filled to the point where I felt sure that it would be impossible to seat eleven more. A waiter appeared and somehow guided us through the crowd. As if by magic he insinuated eleven chairs around a table that had appeared and suddenly we were seated. From the drinks menu we ordered pitchers of frozen Margaritas which arrived faster than you could say "Rosie's Aloha Hawaiian Bar and Restaurant".
On the tiny stage a band was belting out soft rock cover versions with enormous enthusiasm and very little skill. The silent TV behind the bar was showing an American football game. Bar girls flitted from one table of drunks and near drunks to the next but left our table alone as it consisted almost completely of couples. Soon the first pitcher was gone and we moved on to our second. When that too was gone we decided that it was time to be back in our hotel.

Philippines 1995: Part 10

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

There was a line full of socks hanging under the overhang of the house and all that Santa had left in any of them was a toe full of dirty water. Breakfast was an unappealing mixture of rice, corned beef and peanut butter. I made do with a couple of slices of bread and some tea. Yesterday I had walked in waterproofs and still got soaked. Today the weather was worse. I decided that as it was warm and wet rather than cold and wet I would use the waterproofs to protect my rucksack and walk in my T-shirt and shorts. After all wet is wet, what difference if I start out that way or finish up that way.

The path led up a section of stone steeps that were steep and tiring and seemed to go on for hours though it was really no more than about twenty five minutes before it eventually flattened out into a dirt track that climbed slowly around the mountain. All the time the rain made everything miserable and the view was non-existent. Instead there was a featureless grey wall of fog that began about twenty feet from wherever you happened to be standing. That kind of walking is monotonous and depressing. You start off optimistically walking around the puddles, progress to fatalistically walking through puddles, briefly raise your spirits by jumping in the puddles and end up wishing you were dead. When it gets really bad you start to wonder if perhaps you are dead and this is the circle of hell reserved for ramblers.
Almost at the summit a sudden cramp pole-axed me and pitched me sideways into a muddy pool. After some very painful stretching exercises I limped painfully down the other side of the hill to a circular structure resembling a cross between a gazebo and a bus shelter where we ate our Christmas lunch of corned beef, cheese and tuna fish sandwiches - an over familiar menu. One of the locals crow-barred the padlock from a shed which turned out to be the village shop and sold us beer and gin.
After lunch a jeepney took us back to Banaue sliding with suicidal abandon down the trail that had so nearly stopped us on the way up. Two more days of rain had made it even worse and it was perhaps just as well that the plastic sides were down preventing us seeing just how dangerous it really was.

In the hotel I showered and changed into dry clothes and suddenly felt human again. After half an hour though I was feeling rain withdrawal so I pulled my wet rain gear back on and went for a walk in Banaue town. Surprisingly as it was both Sunday and Christmas Day there were a number of shops open. There were plenty of shops selling inedible looking food and cheap clothing and one or two selling jewellery and carvings at knockdown prices. The shopkeepers were doing so little trade that they were happy just to stand and chat with little or no expectation of a sale. I poked around looking at the buildings which close to looked a good deal more solid than my passing glance a few days ago had suggested. Afterwards I bought a carving and went back to the hotel for a sleep before dinner.

Philippines 1995: Part 9

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

I was the first to rise next morning, shortly before dawn, having spent a restless night. I sat alone out on the empty balcony watching through the still heavy rain as dawn spread slowly like a bright stain across the grey sky. It was a peaceful and reflective hour and by the time other people had started to move about I felt calm and content. As everyone emerged from their beds and looked unhappily at the weather I found myself in a ridiculously cheerful and hearty mood which seemed set to last all day. We ate a simple breakfast and set out for the walk.
The day's walking was tricky. In dry conditions it would have been simple and straightforward but the conditions were anything but dry. We climbed up the steep terracing by walking along the stone walls that edged the paddies. The pattern was constant. On one side of us was a six inch drop into a foot of cold and muddy water. On the other was a drop of twenty to thirty feet into similarly cold and muddy water. In between was our path, the top of what amounted to a dry stone wall about six inches wide and made slick and dangerous by the rain. Sal suggested that the walk, officially graded as easy to moderate, should be reclassified as moderate to suicidal.
Finally, after an especially tricky section we reached Cambulo which is a sizeable town with a large school, its own clinic, several churches, several 'guest houses' and a village square. There was also a western woman there, a missionary who - Alex told us - disapproved of tourists. The fact that she behaved as if we were invisible even though we were next door to her seemed to bear this out.

I took a walk around the village determined not to let the weather defeat me. At the school a spirited, if damp, volleyball game was going on watched by half the village. The town square was an open area surrounded by bamboo benches in a kind of parody of an English Country Village. In this weather there was no-one sitting there. After half an hour of poking around I went back to our 'hotel', dug out some slightly drier clothing and went down for a drink.
As in Batad our accommodation was split between two village houses. The 'dining room', such as it was, was in ours. It was a cramped space - not quite big enough for all of us - necessitating a rapid deepening of friendships as we struggled to fit onto the benches.
Before dinner had arrived a group of schoolchildren did. These stood outside performing a kind of Jive Bunny medley of Christmas Carols, endlessly and effortlessly running one into another until our resolve cracked and we paid up. Later I examined one of their school book 'song sheets'. Everything was written down exactly as they had performed it, a single continuous blending of Mary's Boy Child, Good King Wenceslas, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, Silent Night and so on including, bizarrely, Christmas Time In Cambulo.

Philippines 1995: Part 8

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

To no-one's great surprise the morning was wet and foggy. After breakfast and the tricky business of negotiating the legendary Filipino check-out efficiency we set off one hour late by Jeepney.
We made a stop in Banaue to buy water but were there too briefly to form more than a rudimentary impression. It was made mostly of the kind of wooden hut that wouldn't tax the huffing and puffing of the worlds most asthmatic big bad wolf. After our few minutes break there we started in earnest.
The track, muddy and deeply rutted, wound up the side of a hill that was not quite big enough to count as a mountain. Days of heavy rain had reduced the traction to nil although our completely bald tyres could probably have accomplished that unaided. In places the road had eroded to the point where the driving surface was narrower than the jeepney's wheel base leaving parts of the tyre right up against the edge. Once we were mired so deeply in the mud that we had to get out and push. All our efforts accomplished nothing more than getting us dirty. Eventually, after a dozen or more near suicidal runs at it the driver managed to bounce the jeepney round the edge of the worst of it and we could climb back in and continue.
We left the jeepney to continue on foot at a concrete hut on the hillside that looked for all the world like a bus shelter although no bus could ever have ascended such a road. Descending down a path we joined the edge of a series of rice paddies which eventually became a muddy jungle track that wound up and down, sometimes quite steeply, through closely packed trees.
We passed through several villages of thatched huts to the total indifference of the indigenous population before arriving at Batad, our overnight stop. Batad was the reason for the trip. Here the mountains rise around the village in the form of a huge natural amphitheatre and are completely covered in the stepped contours of thousands of rice paddies which are one of the many wonders alluded to as the 'Eighth Wonder of the World". In this case perhaps there is more than the usual self-aggrandising to the claim. The village itself was small. A couple of dozen buildings spread across both sides of the valley were supplemented by a few more substantial wooden ones, some of which were providing our accommodation which was Spartan but comfortable enough - though we were billeted four to a room on hard wooden beds. There were even two churches, the Catholic one being an all tin structure with a red painted roof.

It had been raining lightly but steadily all morning but no sooner had we arrived than it was back to the downpour that had plagued the trip so far. It meant that when we had all changed into dry clothes there was nothing to do but sit around on our balcony reading, writing, playing cards or just watching the village life that was going on in spite of the weather. This went on until dinner.
After dinner our local guide answered questions on the traditions of the Ifugao people. Fluent and garrulous he spoke quietly but quite entertainingly struggling to be heard over the sound of the now torrential rain hammering on the roof. I found his description of the convoluted burial rituals fascinating.
There are, he told us, four separate heavens for four separate types of the deceased. There is one for people dying in old age, one for children dead in infancy, one for people who have died of disease or accident and one for those killed in battle. The degree of festivity, the location and orientation of the grave and the time of day of the burial all depend on which of the four you are destined for. For example when an old person dies there is much festivity to celebrate their life. They are buried facing the sunset because they will never see another sunrise. By comparison children are buried without festivity, with only mourning. They are symbolically buried before noon and always away from the home so that their jealous spirit will not harm any other children of the family.
Eventually he ran out of breath at about the same time that we ran out of questions and soon afterwards we all went off to our beds. Outside the rain went on getting fiercer.

Philippines 1995: Part 7

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

One of the problems with holidays with a varied itinerary is that there is inevitably a lot of travelling involved. Friday was a travel day with a vengeance - eleven hours on a bus to Banaue. The original plan had been that we should do it by public bus but thankfully Alex had arranged for us to use our own mini-bus which, while a little cramped, was vastly preferable. Once more I split my time between reading and looking out of the window so that my impressions of the journey are a procession of disjointed and random images.
In one town a crimson Mitsubishi sports car was perched precariously on a rickety wooden platform under a sign announcing that it was the first prize in the town's fiesta raffle.
In another was a four foot high sculpture of two hands holding up a womb and foetus all done in tasteful salmon pink fibreglass like the bizarre emblem of some militant pro-life organisation.
At a rest break in the local equivalent of Joe's Cafe a young girl deftly plucked a catfish from a tank and proceeded to batter its brains out with a rock.
In the same restaurant Ramon, a local tour guide, ordered a Balut. This is a boiled fertilised ready-to-hatch egg, a kind of 'boil in the shell' chicken. He peeled it carefully and showed us the already formed beak and claws before biting eagerly into it. No one could bring themselves to try it.

After a while the villages and towns that we drove through and the fields and rice paddies that separated them took on a depressing uniformity. Wet field - wet field - wet field - Jerry built shacks - concrete school - wet field - wet field - wet field - Jerry built shacks - concrete hospital - wet field - wet field.
On it went for mile after mile.
I remember checking my watch and realising that we had been on the road for barely three hours. Eight more to go.
I fell into a light doze and woke an hour late in a large town that consisted of mile after mile of auto repair shops all building and repairing jeepneys with the occasional sideline in agricultural equipment. A sign told me that it was Cabantuan City. Wherever it was it was clearly important. It had two branches of McDonalds.
We ate lunch in San Jose at a self service restaurant that did a passable impersonation of one of the smaller branches of Little Chef. Then it was back into the bus for more hours of bumpy roads.
Through the afternoon we were in mountainous country which give or take a peasant village or two and the occasional unfamiliar tree could just as easily have been Wales. It even had the Welsh thin grey rain pervading everything.

At length, well after nightfall, we reached the Banaue Hotel, which was large, modern, touristy and almost entirely empty. The lobby was large enough to hold two simultaneous five-a-side football matches and decorated with enough wooden cladding to build a fleet of battleships. There was a choice of set menus for dinner. I went for the Lapu-Lapu which seems to be a generic name for any kind of local white fish. It is one of the most popular dishes in the country.
After Dinner there was an Ifugao Indian 'Cultural Entertainment'. This one seemed marginally more authentic than most in that no attempt had been made to moderate the racket made by banging a stick on a tin drum. I stayed about ten minutes, watching one song and one dance before retiring to the bar for a couple of beers and a game of Pool.

Philippines 1995: Part 6

Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.

I slept very badly, not as badly as the night before but badly enough considering that I was indoors, warm, dry and on a bed. The problem was a combination of a wooden bed, a thin mattress and off-stage noises. First of all it was the Germans next door arguing in voices just loud enough to be able to identify the language but just too quiet to work out the words. Then there were children outside singing songs at about five a.m. Then there was a jeepney struggling noisily down the hill and a little later more noisily back up it.
When we had all got up and had breakfast, we gathered to go and were told that the rain had washed out the road to such an extent that a Jeepney could not get down to fetch us so that it was back onto the bangka to go round to Puerto Galera for the Si-Kat. It looked for a while as if that plan too was doomed. The engine coughed and spluttered and died. Several more attempts produced the same result. A hasty change of battery led to no improvement. Finally however for no apparent reason it lurched into life with the grace of Frankenstein lumbering from the slab and we were under way.

We reached Puerto Galera with no time to spare and hurried aboard the ferry. The crossing was dull in every sense of the word. The weather varied between drizzling and overcast and outright downpour. A Filipino girl, aged about seven, trotted round the deck chatting to the tourists. She talked to me in excellent English and then skipped back to the other end of the boat to have a conversation with the group of Germans who had gone seamlessly from a liquid "Frühstück" to a liquid "Mittagsessen". Her German was as good as her English.
The plan was to meet the bus at Batangas. Of course it wasn't there. An hour and a half later it still wasn't there. While we had been in the jungle Alex had quoted John Ruskin - "there is no such thing as bad weather, only different sorts of good weather". I sat on the deck watching a dredger clearing out the channel and reflecting that perhaps there is no such thing as boring, only different sorts of interesting. Eventually, delayed more than two hours by Batangas eternal traffic jam the bus did arrive and we got underway. After a brief visit to a muddy field which turned out to be the Batangas bus station we headed out onto the main road.
I spent the traffic jam to Manila filling in my diary and writing my impressions of the place and the people with whom I was travelling and watching the unfolding tableau of the Tondo slums. I had read about them in the guide book but they were something else to see. An entire city, made from crude huts thrown together from whatever could be salvaged, followed the line of the road. A bleak and ugly strip like a scene from some post-apocalypse science fiction movie it stretched for miles. Most of the buildings were single storey although here and there one had had a second and seemingly unrelated structure built on top of it. It was separated from the road by a rusty railroad track that I thought at first was derelict but along which I later saw a train slowly labouring. The most horrible aspect of this 'city' was the mundanity of the life within it. People in this terrible place went about the normal business of living as if it were any other suburb. Dirty and torn washing fluttered from lines strung between the buildings. People crouched out of doors cooking in pots over fires that burned with a greasy green flame and left oily smoke like a smear in the air. At the back of the huts rubbish was piled high. At one point there was a break where the road passed over a wide drainage culvert which was perhaps twenty feet deep. It was half filled with the ghastly detritus of slum living. Children were playing in the filth.
Here and there though there were small triumphs of humanity as some of the inhabitants, even here, had hung up home made Christmas decorations that turned gaily in the wind. Occasional billboards advertising Coca Cola or carrying the ubiquitous 'Philippines 2000' slogans mocked their efforts.
Eventually, to my mixed feelings of relief and guilt, we left it behind and soon afterwards were in the more prosperous part of Manila where our hotel was located. There was just enough time to shower and change and watch an episode of Batman on cable television before shooting off to dinner, the shanty town shunted off into some recess of the memory.