New Yorkian Afoot

ROFL

2010-06-17T23:26:00.000-04:00

Oh. My. God. Cheesy, shameless, and hilarious.

And guess what their slogan is?

Shake It

2010-06-17T23:09:00.000-04:00

The shakes on Boracay are pretty delectable.

Mango Shake #1

Mango Shake #2 (urp)

Buko Shake #1

Mango-Melon Shake #1

Banana-Chocolate Shake #1

Avocado Shake #1

Mango-Vanilla Shake #1 + Nutella Shake #1. That Mango-Vanilla combo is the diggity-bomb. I would never have thought of it, but the flavors sing together. I recommend trying to make it at home, these aren't hard. Some ice, mango, milk, dissolved sugar, and vanilla.

10 Courses of Pampangan Bliss

2010-06-04T03:29:00.000-04:00

As any fan of Anthony Bourdain knows, when you want good Pampangan cuisine, you go find Claude Tayag at his home, Bale Dutung.

Claude was Anthony Bourdain's guide in Pampanga when Anthony filmed his Philippines' episode. It was fun hearing a little inside info about Anthony Bourdain's trip from Mary Ann, Claude's vibrant wife and partner. He cooks with quiet style, she hosts with pizazz and knowledge: a dynamic duo. She was dressed in yellow (a Noynoy supporter... or maybe she just likes yellow...), and had a habit of massaging people's shoulders as she stood behind different people, explaining the nuances of our courses. I liked her immediately.

Our beautifully set table. The lights above are made from old carabao yokes.

Apparently, Anthony had plenty of stalkers! She said they were lined up outside the gates when the crew came to Bale Dutung, hoping for a photo of Bourdain. I KNEW we Filipinos are a die-hard bunch of foodies. I asked Mary Ann what Bourdain was like in person. She told me she asked him this: in all the traveling and eating he did, what did he do when he was served a dish he genuinely didn't like in someone's home? His reaction was: when it comes down to showing respect to his host and being honest about not liking the food, he goes with being polite to his host. "All the critique you see on his show, that gets dubbed in later!" she chuckled. "I'm glad he knows to do that much!" I am too, actually. One thing I do like about Anthony Bourdain -- I think he gets it. He gets the culture-food connection in an intelligent way, including the respect for each other that people can share over a meal. It comes through in his show.

There's not going to be much further narrative to this post. It was a case of: We came. We ate. We ate lechon 5 ways. We ate some some.

We started out with homemade sauces that we just tasted on crackers: taba ng talangka (crab fat), pesto, and buro (fermented rice).

Then an amuse bouche: cold crunchy noodles with vegetables slivers in a light dressing.

Course 1 -- Ensaladang Pakó / Fiddlehead fern salad with tomato and quail egg. This is a dish that is very popular with Pampangans, but is the sort of food considered too "low brow" for important guests, since fiddlehead ferns grow freely in the wild in the Philippines (I've had fresh fiddlehead fern "pizza" on Camiguin). Like many homey Pinoy dishes (like monggo), it isn't eaten much by visitors or on special occasions. Kudos to Claude for serving it to Anthony Bourdain when he visited, because it's the sort of dish that would get an artisinal premium price in New York.

Course 2: Piniritong Lumpiang Ubod / fried veggie lumpia

Course 3: Inasal na Manok at Talangka Rice / grilled chicken with crabfat rice. Chicken inasal is not a typical Pampangan dish, it's from Bacolod.

Course 4: Talangka Sushi / crabfat sushi. I could have popped these all day. A bit of rice wrapped in seaweed, topped with a dollop of Claude's super awesome homemade crabfat.

Course 5: Hito at Balobalo Sushi / fried catfish rolled in mustard leaf. I don't think that description matches a translation of the dish name in Tagalog, but it wasn't raw sushi in the roll.

Course 6: Balat ng Lechon at Liver Sauce / crunchy delectable yummy pig skin with sweet liver sauce. Here began our shameless descent into porkdom. This was actually a collapsed lechon skin, which Claude refried to make crispy. He felt so bad about that that after we finished dessert, he produced another lechon and gave us this course again! So we could taste the proper crispy quality of the thing. Oy.

Course 7: Fried Lechon Flakes Binalot sa Tortilla / crispy lechon flake tacos, essentially. We had fresh basil and cilantro going on in these babies. I don't know how Pinoy this was, but it didn't matter, this was my favorite course. So good.

Course 8: Sinigang na Lechon / sour tamarind soup with roasted pork. This was a wonderful, flavor-packed version of sinigang.

Course 9: Ribs with roasted eggplant and quail egg (not my favorite)

Course 10: Carved pork with potatoes, carrots, and green beans. This dish was a nod to the West. Mary Ann explained that in Asia, there is no tradition of carved meats. That is a Western thing. This piece of pork was further cooked in an Asian style sauce, but the sides are Western. And this is one of those things that shows the measure of a truly artistic cook -- there is no twist to the sides, which are very simple vegetables. But I can tell you that they were cooked PERFECTLY. And that makes eating something as simple as green beans a pleasure, to truly experience the flavor and snappy texture they have when cooked just so.

Dessert: Halo-Halo. Everything was homemade, not out of a jar. It made a big difference in the flavor of the beans, corn, and macapuno.

We got to walk around the Tayag home afterwards. Claude is a remarkable person. He is an artist as well as a chef. He built his entire home from reclaimed materials, or things that he made himself. It's beautiful. He recently had an exhibit of his sculpture at the Ayala Museum. And he's a very humble, gentle personality. Swooning over a mouthful of one of his lechon dishes, I told him: "Claude. You're a genuis! Genius!" and he said, "It's just lechon!"

This is him hamming it up with all the cameras our group gave him for the inevitable multiple group portraits:

Some shots around the Tayag home. The ground floor is totally open, given the humid tropical climate, with misters around the edges. The second floor of their home is the floor of an old bowling alley, their chest of drawers a repurposed medicine chest, and various old Philippine knickknacks and tools like the old-style Sorbetes cart (ice cream handtruck).

This tour was with Ultimate Philippines, a group of 4 Pinoy travel bloggers giving tours. It was pricey -- P4,500 (US $100) -- but it included all costs for the day, including a whole massive Pampangan breakfast, snacks, transport from Manila, the 5-hour meal at Bale Dutung, and... did I mention more snacks? This appeared at the end of our mad eating adventure. It's like an inverted brazo de mercedes, a nice spongy cake with sweet cream on top. Lordy.

Checkout fellow eater Lauren's expression when she realized we had a big dessert tray coming after all that food!

You can visit Ultimate Philippines' site for their tour info here.

Out of Order: Boracay Snapshot

2010-06-04T03:09:00.000-04:00

I'm still behind on my blog, since I'm now in Boracay and missing several posts, but in the meantime, this is my life right now.

And Naomi has something to say to you all:

Walking Through Binondo

2010-06-03T01:46:00.000-04:00

I wasn't able to arrange a walking tour of Manila's Chinatown while I was there, but I snagged a copy of Ivan Man Dy's DIY walking tour map, "The Big Binondo Food Wok" at the Ayala Museum and gave it a go alone. I think I would have gotten more out of it with a guide, so if you have a chance book Ivan for a tour through www.oldmanilawalks.com.

I stopped by Binondo Church, first.

I lit a candle for my mom, on the right.

Let me tell you there is a whole lotta hopia going on in these parts.

Binondo is the world's oldest Chinatown (about 400 years old). It's chaotic, smelly, and filled with lots of cheap eating opportunities. Which is pretty much already my image of Chinatowns based on the ones in New York, but this Chinatown is even more difficult to navigate. The sidewalks are tiny or non-existent (probably a throwback to the time it was built, when you might have just walked in the street) and the area is filled with vendors and beggars. Plenty of pedicabs will take you where you want to go though. It's got a more aggressive energy than I've experienced in the rest of Manila. I don't mean it's dangerous, I just mean I felt more attitude thereabouts than in the rest of the city.

I couldn't figure out if I was being hit on or if these guys were just trying to hustle a pedicab ride to me, but it's the only time I've gotten a fairly constant stream of pssst and hoy when I go walking by.

I told that to my friend Diosa, who works in Binondo. She said that whenever she and her coworkers are feeling depressed about their appearance, they just go for a walk in Binondo and that'll make them feel very beautiful!

Diosa is a teacher. Her students are all Chinese kids learning English, and are about 5 years old. I asked if they were cute, and she said, "Yes, for the first 30 minutes." I got to each lunch and hang with the teachers, which was really fun.

Diosa is on the left.

Lunch was a yummy assortment of snacks. The ube hopia was my contribution, the rest was a big pile of dumplings, buko tarts someone brought from Tagaytay, a little rice + chicken stew, and corn coffee from Bohol (Diosa had some from her last trip there).

Afterwards, I walked to the LRT to take the train, going along Escolta Street. I wish so much that the architecture in these parts had been better preserved. This section is truly OLD Manila, and it retains some of the interesting cultural markers of the past in the buildings there.

If you can enlarge the image below, there's big images set along the street of what Escolta used to look like back in the day (I guess in the 50s). It was a major shopping street in Manila, and I love how elegant the scenes are in these pictures.

The Height of a Hero

2010-05-29T08:43:00.000-04:00

The Ayala Museum tweaked the environmental design of the diaspora of Philippine History exhibition, which falls somewhere between informative and slightly cheesy. They've added a nice graphic designerly element that I like a lot: the height of famous figures in Philippine history.

Mr. Jose Rizal was apparently just 5'2".

I don't remember but I think the tall one is Quezon here.

And of course Ninoy and Cory.

Just Wrong

2010-05-29T08:42:00.000-04:00

Crossroads of Civilization

2010-05-29T08:34:00.000-04:00

Back in Manila, I had a very Filipino meal and dessert ... at Chili's and Starbucks. It just happened. And no, that tidbit of information is not the reason for this post title. People. REALLY now.

There's a gorgeous show at the Ayala Musuem going on now. If you're in Manila, don't miss the opportunity to see it, it's impressive. Textiles, Ceramics, Gold: it's a 3-part look at the rich cultural interactions that have been going on the Philippines for over 1,000 years.

The star of the show is the extensive collection of gold jewelry, all forged about 800-1,100 years ago throughout the Philippine islands (well before Magellan "discovered" these islands).

The textiles on display (about 100 years old) are an aesthetic snapshot of the cultural collisions stratified into the wardrobe of priveleged Philippine society just before the revolt against the Spanish, in the late 1800s. The ceramics are specifically a clue to China's consistent trading presence in the Philippines. To me, they were the least interesting of the three exhibits.

As the oldest and most surprising, the exhibit of pre-hispanic Philippine gold stayed with my mind the most. The detail work in these pieces that are somewhere around 900 years old is stunning. The anthropological information also touched me. It's hard to explain if you haven't experienced being in a position of having to explain yourself and push for respect as a base-line.

It's frustrating to me, to think of all the things we Filipinos don't know about our own rich cultural stamp. What I see happening is that others (and sometimes the other is ourselves) fill in the blanks with mis-knowledge about our basic identity. For example, the tendency among people around the world to view the Philippines as "Oh! Former Spanish Colony!". People grasp the Spanish colonial thing much faster than they can understand a rich interactive hodgepodge of Asian cross-influences.

The first is a flat perspective, marking the Philippines as something derived from one source (a source located on the other side of the world from the Philippines, which leaves a whole lot of influence holes open). The other is far more expansive and complex, and gets closer to the truth. Most people don't know that even at it's height, the Spanish colonization of the Philippines (outside of Manila) was more administrative than anything else, with large swatches of the Philippines uninfluenced by Spain's religion, food, or social order (think Mindanao or the Cordilleras). So things like the wide presence of Spanish surnames in the Philippines are misunderstood by the world at large -- that has more to do with the wily, fair-skinned Chinese-Filipinos disguising themselves in the cloak of powerful Spanish-sounding names than it does with actual Spanish blood being passed down. Your average Juan is actually a Ling. But people don't like complexity or open-ended answers, they're not as memorable as the short ones.

Okay, personal soapbox rant over. I just love that these pieces point to a diverse life in these lands. These really are beautiful so stay with me.

*********
GOLD

Diadem. The head is the center of spiritual power.

Chastity covers.

The detail work on this belt is beautiful.

Unfortunately, I got busted taking pictures before I could photograph the centerpiece of the show, which was a massive gold body chain with fine filigree work. It was worn draped around the torso, hanging on the right shoulder. That indicates a link to India's culture -- high-caste Brahmins wore similar items to indicate their social standing. The damn thing weighs almost 9 pounds. At the time, India had a name for this part of the world as something like "the land of gold" -- indicating Southeast Asia. About 1,000 years ago, Indians were traveling to the Malaysian peninsula, Vietnam, Indonesia, Luzon and Mindanao, looking to trade goods for gold.

Another cultural marker pointing to India's cross-influence in the Philippines are the "garuda"-like figures which appear in some gold pieces (these are bird-like creatures from Hindu mythology).

Other tidbits I gleaned: Butuan was a rich trading port back in the day. In the 10th century it had direct contact with the Champa kingdom of Vietnam. In the 11th century it was the first Philippine "state" to establish diplomatic relations with China. A number of death face-masks made out of pounded gold were in the show, which were mostly found in Butuan. Many of these gold objects were buried with their owners.

The show also indicates the stratified nature of pre-hispanic Philippine society. The upper-crust showed off their bling bling, even back then. When Magellan and crew landed in Las Islas Filipinas, they were stunned -- and made envious -- by the display of gold the indigenous people wore. I am guessing they didn't handle the internal contradictions so well that arose with feeling jealous of "primitive" people.

Another interesting link to South Asia (India): the sanskrit-like writing of the Laguna copperplate (forged in about 900 AD).

It's a document formalizing a debt-forgiveness of a man named Namwran.

*********
TEXTILES

A Frenchman living in the Manila in the late-1800s collected a number of garments that the high-society "ilustrados" (Spanish mestizos) and the Chinese-Filipinos wore. He ended up selling them to a Dutch museum, and they have remained untouched, in boxes for a long time. A Filipina doing her Ph.D. discovered them in the 1990s, and has been working in partnerships with various organizations to bring these beautiful pieces to Manila for a proper exhibition. These validate the accuracy of watercolor portraits of the Philippine upper classes of the time, which show a beautiful hodge-podge of cultures encapsulated in their clothing -- European hats, Chinese silks, translucent baros made of local fibers and covered with fine embroidery, bright Southeast Asian style checkered textiles.

*********
CERAMICS

The mostly Chinese-ceramics collection is extensive, but I think it surprised me the least. So it's just my personal bias, but I didn't take pictures of many of the pieces, I just wasn't interested.

Here's the one example I snapped. These are some creepy-looking Buddha statues from the 1700s:

Cute Little Cafe

2010-05-29T08:29:00.001-04:00

Some shots of sweet little cafe I found on National Road, in Batanes, just a couple minutes walk north of the Batanes Seaside Resort: Zantan's Cafe.

It's nothing fancy. It just feels comfy and calm inside and has some decent inexpensive food. It's also the only spot in Basco I found that has a little English reading library (the owner's own collection). I gave him one of my books I'd finished and he just lit up, smiling: "no one's done that before."

It's run by a Scottish-Filipina couple. The coffee is all local (Filipino) drip coffe, and the burgers are yummy. Want camote fries with that?

Zantan's Cafe (with outside halo-halo stand)
on National Road, just off Abad St., Basco
Hours are roughly 7:30 am - 9 pm (and I do mean roughly)

Racuh a Payaman

2010-05-29T08:26:00.000-04:00

Ack, so far behind in my blogging posts....

One more ridiculously pretty Batanes landscape post. There's an area called "Racuh a Payaman" that is just a lovely area to walk around for the views. Tourists have dubbed it "Marlborough Country". It's common farmland, so it's an area of open green hills, views to both the China Sea and the Pacific Ocean on either side of Batanes, and a handful of animals dotting the landscape. Loveliness. Just watch out for the goat/horse/cow patties.

Basco's Vice-Mayor is a serious person (left). Jewels, fellow traveller, is on the right.

A film crew showed up my 3rd day in Batanes. This place draws a lot of artists, photographers and filmmakers (not hard to see why). They ended up in Racuh a Payaman the same time as me, and actually sent word requesting I sit behind a rock as they filmed! Grrr. If I'm grumpy it's because the same film crew kicked me out of the Batanes Seaside Annex and the Pension Ivatan's outside seating one lunchtime. Humph.

I got a shot of these 2 kids in the cast though, which is a cool picture:

Halo-Halo and Me

2010-05-27T13:10:00.001-04:00

The Fishing Village of Diura

2010-05-27T12:04:00.001-04:00

This is the sort of place Batanes is.

Jewels, a fellow traveller, reached out to a family friend in Basco, Ms. Ann Viola. We had some questions about the fishing village we were taking a trike to (Diura). Ann decided she wouldn't just answer questions, but she'd take us around Diura herself that afternoon.

Did I mention Ann is the Vice-Mayor of Basco?

What a treat! She's really knowledgeable about all sorts of things, and just has a wonderful energy.

The village of Diura is only lived in March to June. They fish by hand, and with traditional methods, no metal hooks. Like other communities on Batanes, they practice bayanihan (a spirit of community) to accomplish large tasks, like thatching a roof or planting trees. Ann says it is an advantage people here have: basically, it means free labor. Granted, you will do the same for your neighbor when asked, but no one has to consider costs for labor. People here are also very resourceful, making a few natural products function as several different things (i.e. the cogon grass used to thatch roofs is also used as a tie for bunches of vegetables sold at sari-sari stores).

Some shots from the village:

Monica's is one place that will rent you a room if you want to stay overnight.

The beach is full of rocks.

A high school group went in the water anyway, playing tag in all their clothes, but the rocks are actually sharp and you could get cut up if a wave slams you into one. I went out carefully.

A pineapple plant along the steep hill, bearing small fruit.

A papaya tree growing near the path.

Ann whipped out a knife, plucked a giant leaf for a plate, and: instant merienda.

I don't even like papaya, but this was pretty good.

Night Church

2010-05-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

Basco's church on Sunday night. It was a warm night with half the town milling around after the service on the grass outside, reminded me of my childhood.

Surf Boys

2010-05-27T11:26:00.000-04:00

I saw these little boys down at the dock in Basco. They were leaping off the edge into the water, then climbing up on the concrete landing to sit in the surf. The little one started out reluctant then got into it.

Sabtang Island

2010-05-25T06:08:00.001-04:00

The Batanes are a cluster of islands, the main one being Batan, where I'm staying. A short boat ride away is Sabtang Island, which is even more remote and traditional than Batan. It's of course dramatic and gorgeous in landscape, just like all of the Batanes are.

It's recommended to stay overnight on Sabtang, but I decided to make my life simple and just signed up with the day-tour with the other tourists here at the Batanes Seaside. Everything necessary for the tour was included in a price of P1200/US$25, and I liked knowing I didn't have to sort anything on my first day.

All us tourists piled into the jeepney. Observe the "traditional tourist garb."

Some of the landscape of Batan Island, on our way to the ferry.

My friend Leslie has told me that the boat ride to Sabtang from Basco was "The longest 30 minutes of my life." Meaning, the waves are famously naseau-inducing. We were lucky and had an unusually calm sea. Our guide Rogers loaded us onto the boat with this announcement: "NEXT VICTIM! NEXT!"

The actual color of some of the water here. This isn't photoshopped. It changes from this rich blue to a darker blue to lighter hues.

View of Sabtang in the distance. The best place to ride is on top of the boat.

Sabtang Island coming into view.

The harbor at Sabtang.

Our guide, Rogers, took us around the island to a couple of the towns, with traditional stone houses. No one was around, but all the doors were open. We walked right up (led by Rogers) to doors and windows to look at the structures, but didn't go inside since the owners weren't home. It felt a little odd, one of those things where it might be a better experience to not be part of a tour group, poking around people's homes, but I guess no one minds... The only time you'll find people hanging out at home is on Sunday afternoon. They have daily work to do, including fishing and gathering vegetables for dinner.

With the open doors and relaxed attitude... it's against the culture here to steal. It's punishable by excommunication, apparently. Rogers said there were 2 cases where the law was exercised -- over the theft of an old fishing net and a garbage collector taking a wooden carabao yoke that was inside someone's fence, not actually outside it for garbage collection (considered stealing). The people accused of stealing were ejected from Batanes and are not allowed to return. I wondered if this was really true that there were only 2 cases of theft in recent history there, and asked another Ivatan about it. She said there is more theft than that around Batanes, but it's still infrequent and minor. The maxim here is that the police battle boredom more than crime, and I sense that's true.

I met a little girl on the tour, Bianca, who reminded me of me, which was strange. Her mom seemed strong-willed and overprotective... she totally reminded me of my mom! Bianca was not very expressive, until I started talking to her, then she opened up pretty quickly. I asked if it was hard being the only kid her age on the tour, she said "Sometimes it is. Sometimes not."

She let me take a picture with her:

She and her siblings got to swim in the waters later, which I think is about the best thing a kid can have -- swimming in the ocean on a hot day.

Some shots from a ridge along our path:

And now... you know it, LUNCH SHOTS!

I am that animal that took a melted chocolate bar out of my bag, looked at our buko juice, decided we should swipe the bits of coconut flesh through the chocolate and get it all over our faces.

After lunch we swam in the cove nearby. But frankly it's difficult to swim on any of the Batanes beaches -- they're full of sharp stones and the waves are strong. It was so hot that it felt amazing though.

The Umbrellas of Batanes

2010-05-25T04:58:00.000-04:00

People here have stylish umbrellas. They're used for the heat just as much as the rain. And boy does it rain here.

Some people bike and umbrella at the same time.

It's raining cats...

...and dogs

Some families have matching umbrellas.

The not-so-uncommon manly umbrella.

Ivatan Spirit

2010-05-22T07:15:00.000-04:00

The Ivatan (the Filipinos of the Batanes islands) are extremely kind, open people. I'm really liking it here.

I had an inkling before I came that these islands were very safe and calm, so I actually did what I never do when I travel: just show up without a plan. I asked around at the little airport about the Batanes Seaside Resort, which was listed in my guidebook. I had no guidebook + no idea how to get there, and I didn't really care. And it was this easy: a minute after I asked, the transport van from the Batanes Seaside Resort shows up. I shrug and get in it. I'm followed by about half of my Seair flight (the plane was something like a 28-seater), who I guess are all staying at this place.

When I show up, I'm told by the check-in person, "sorry no rooms". I figure I should ask again, and I'm told the same thing. But she also says she'll call the manager to talk to me, which I take as a good sign. The manager, Lynda, is a character, with her bustling manner, bright pink lacquered nails, dangling gold earrings, and blackberry that keeps ringing. Can you guess this is really not the speed of things here on Batanes? She apologies for being so busy as she juggles me into looking at her sign-in sheets. "I haven't even taken my meals yet today!"

She puts me into a single room at the Annex, which is really "Batanes Landside Resort", since there is no sea in sight from the town. It's totally perfect though -- simple, very clean, and cheap. I have no idea where I am in this town, but I'm told that for my meals I can take them at Hiro's Cafe. I should just ask around where it is. I decide I'd rather wander and see what's available instead, see a cute little cafe, and realize this is Hiro's. Budget meals there are P50 (about $1.05), and are great.

A little sinigang, a little chicken adobo, a little sauteed camote leaves with onion and tomato. Mmm.

This was some sort of cold coconut and cream dessert. Yum.

There's a lively street life here, which I can see from the windows of the cafe.

Beauty

2010-05-21T06:24:00.000-04:00

This is a very short post. I flew into Batanes, the cluster of islands that is the far, far north of the Philippines, this morning. They're actually closer to Taiwan than the Philippines.

It's great here. I haven't seen much of the islands yet, but people here are really so lovely. This is small town Philippines at its best. The kind of place you don't think twice about walking away from your bags because no one has any interest in taking them, and people will help you with whatever, just because you asked for their help.

And what I saw of the landscape flying in is "wow". The ocean was all sorts of rich azul tones coming in, the colors changing because you could see the "almost islands" underneath the surface of the water changing the color, and the islands above the water line coming up sharply, clouds riding very low on the water. Beautiful.

Family

2010-05-20T07:04:00.000-04:00

My "niece" Naomi is a funny kid. She cracks people up just with her unexpected verbosity on all sorts of things.

She's only nine, but she outlined all the people who had run for election in her district, and said she told her parents they should vote for Gibo Teodoro this past election. She just started educating and went ON. She enthusiastically explained how Gibo hardly spent any money on his ads, while Manny Vilar spent 150 MILLION PESOS on all his ads to get people to vote for him, on his songs, etc. "And now .... they're STUCK in my head." She looked aggrieved by this. I totally understand, Naomi.

My wonderful beautiful Tita Luchie is still gracious and humorous. She has dementia and has lost her short term memory, but she still has that Tita Luchie sparkle to her. She loved the hand lotion pasalubong I brought her, and asked me 4 separate times if my dad was retired yet (he's 83, so yes, he is).

"Sabi ni God"

2010-05-20T05:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I went to the Manila Doctor's Hospital Emergency Room, since I didn't know where else to go with my nasty bites. They referred me to a dermatologist, Dr. Katty, in the hospital, who was in 2 hours after that. She confirmed they were insect bites, not something like chicken pox (I wondered), and then we had a really great conversation about the Philippines.

I surprised her by saying I was born at the Manila Doctor's Hospital. Karmic? She was really nice to me. Which is good because I just felt low and panicked with all these bites. My visit and medicines cost about US$30. Not bad considering the cost of medical care in the US, even insured care. I used up all my anti-itch cream quickly though, and bought more, so I spent another $30 on several packages of that.

And yes I'm going to go there with a visual! Ready?

If you're eating, better stop now.

This, multiplied on my other arm, neck, ankles. Shudder.

I panicked when I realized this was bedbugs, so I just leapt and booked a high-end hotel, The Diamond. I did that because staying with any friends or family is out of the question until I'm sure the bugs didn't hitch a ride in my stuff. These things are a big problem in New York and very hard to get rid of once they're in your space.

Also I rneeded, quickly, the sort of help a high end hotel can provide, and a comfortable environment for my distressed body. The intense heat here makes my bites feel on fire. I need this sort of climate-controlled environment right now. It's not cheap though, and although I just needed to get it done, my laundry bill with the Diamond Hotel is painful -- $80. OUCH. There's many cheaper laundries available, but I didn't have it in me to spend the time finding one, taking my items there, making sure it would be washed in hot water twice, etc.

I confess to feeling some guilt staying at the Diamond, and to just feeling demoralized from these bedbugs. The hotel was not in my travel budget at all, but here I am (thank you credit cards. It will come out of savings I needed for other things). It's so fancy, so plush, it feels divorced from the world outside it. And false. Manila is messy and hot outside, but it's real. I hope that's not a tacky cliche way to put it.

People also don't talk to each other in places like this, it's not why they book a place like the Diamond. The Malate hostel I came from had a very easygoing, social environment that I was looking forward to being in a couple more days. It feels weird to be enjoying something that feels like a false front. Plus I've travelled all this way to Manila to see friends and family and experience being here, and all I'm doing is sitting in a hotel room. I had wanted to brave the heat and walk around Binondo and Intramuros, and I just. can't. do it. with my arms on fire. Disappointing.

However, as my cousin Beth cheekily put it "You know, I think God wants you to be at the Diamond Hotel. So just enjoy it!" And she's right. How often does one get to be at a swanky hotel like this? Why over-analyze?

I told that to my friend Leslie and she laughed, because she has a saying now when good or bad things happen to her that she needs to just roll with: "Sabi ni God _____" (God says ______). God apparently likes an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Who knew?

Life at the Diamond is pretty nice:

Their breakfast buffet made me think of my mom, of course. She would have absolutely loved this place, it's totally her style:

toppings for Japanese-style noodle breakfast

sauteed pork and beef tapa

The little ensaimadas at the top were pretty awesome. They're piled with whipped butter and cheese.

UGH

2010-05-19T07:12:00.000-04:00

My vacation has taken a sharp turn towards "THIS SUCKS." The budget hotel I was staying at had bedbugs, and I've got disgusting bites all over my body. I panicked and jumped to book the opposite thing: a very swanky hotel on Manila Bay where I could count on a supportive staff to wash all my clothing in hot water twice.

More disgusting details to come.

New York -------> Maynilad

2010-05-18T00:29:00.000-04:00

I have been told this about my blog: Too many words. Need more pictures. So, here are some photos from my journey.

The Franklin Avenue station on the S train in Brooklyn. Being an El Cheapo Traveltype, I took the subway to JFK. It took 4 trains and over an hour, but it only cost me $7.25.

The beautiful stained glass windows at the station are at odd with the pee smell around the elevator to the C train.

In the El Cheapo theme, I got off at the Aqueduct Racetrack stop on the A to get the public bus to the airport (free transfer) rather than going one more stop to Howard Beach to pay $5 on the airtrain. DO NOT DO THIS. The bus does not stop at Aqueduct Racetrack, so I had to get back on and go the one stop. I lost 25 minutes, but it was a beautiful day outside. Just look at the sky:

It was like some inverse view of the sight I saw a few hours later:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is THE ACTUAL NORTH POLE. We flew right over it. I and several college-age travellers nearby were mesmerized by the sight outside our windows. None of us will ever actually set foot on the remote landscape we saw thousands of feet below us. The mountains are landmass, the flat area you see is water, frozen. The college students all wondered why everyone else preferred to watch movies or play games on the plane's entertainment system, rather than look at this rare sight.

They also thought plane seats should be set up to face each other, with a dance floor somewhere on the plane for those long flights when your butt hurts from sitting too long.

For my family who hasn't been back, here's the view from my taxi that night of Roxas Blvd:

I got the late-night taxi from NAIA and got to my hostel in Malate with no fuss. I got there in 20 minutes in a metered cab, for about P180 (about $4). For breakfast this morning, I walked just 1 block to Cafe Adriatico. And now for the money shot:

Oh sweet sweet Daing na Bangus. Yum.

Packing

2010-05-18T00:14:00.000-04:00

This is the look kitties have when they realize you are abandoning them for 3 weeks. The look that says, "Don't go or I'll pee on your pillow." Have fun Ate Mari!

Blood. Spandex. Glory.

2009-02-28T20:29:00.000-05:00

Last night I got lucky and managed to see that great Mexican sport: LUCHA LIBRE!

If you've seen Jack Black in "Nacho Libre", you have an inkling of the glory at stake in a lucha libre match.

Los luchadores are Mexican wrestlers. They roughly fall into 2 camps: los tecnicos and los ruidos. Which roughly correspond to the good guys and the bad guys. Both groups have their fans, though of course the good guys get more cheers. Los tecnicos tend to be more clean cut, and spandex clad. Los ruidos tend to have long hair and display lots of bad behavior, like taunting the tecnicos and whacking the referees on the head, or grabbing their mikes away. They too wear spandex. It´s all about the spandex.

While I am told some of the pain and injury is real, the matches are highly staged for drama and camp effect. Each wrestler has a persona, like Ninja Pequeño, or Los Terribles, or the Blue Panther or Maximo or Mistica. (Imagine a deep baritone referee voice rolling out each name on the loudspeaker). It´s quite gymnastic when they get going, lots of backflips and twists as they dive onto an opponent, and sometimes the action spills over into the front row. Which is why you don´t want to sit in the front row. Each new match is introduced by large-breasted women in bikinis and go-go boots, who stand in a line and gyrate for the television cameras when they come by.

The final match was the best. A very famous luchador, Mistica, was in the group of tecnicos. They tend to follow a pattern of fighting, then the ruidos looking like they´re winning by beating up on the tecnicos. They tend to gang up 3 on 1 to kick the crap out of one of the tecnicos, dragging him around by his hair/mask, only the other 2 tecnicos are often just hanging out on the side, so I think that´s staged. THEN there´s a dramatic turnaround as the tecnicos start fighting back and throwing the ruidos around. Sometimes the ruidos run away.

This final match also had Marco Correlioni on the tecnico side. He had on the littlest spandex of the evening, did not wear a mask to show off his blonde hair, and kept periodically striking poses in the ring to show off his abs. I was amused by the fact that his teeny blue shorts had "Marco" written on his butt.

I saw a match at Aztec Coliseum on Friday night with a group from my hostel. Which was fortunate, because although the actual arena is safe, the area it is in is sketchy, which means I couldn´t have gone alone. It was most excellent.

More Sunburn and Surf!

2009-02-27T11:02:00.000-05:00

Because the Zicatela is not safe to swim in, I ended up taking a cab to Playa Carrizalillo for several days of my stay. It's a quiet little bay of a beach, so the waves are much more gentle. You descend a long flight of stairs, but there's a big range of beach restaurants with shade there, and you can spend all day hanging out, swimming, taking surf lessons on the smaller waves there, or snorkeling.

My first time I got a sort of freebie lesson from some random guy I chatted with who offered to show me some tips. Hector is a Mexico City transplant to Puerto Escondido. He is not a surfing teacher, he explained, but he was happy to just give me the basics. I bought him lunch as thanks and just rented a board for the day to practice (at Playa Carrizalillo, it cost me 120 pesos -- it's cheaper elsewhere). I spent the whole day trying to just practice balancing on the board while lying flat on it and paddling! Not that easy at first. Standing up was a whole OTHER task I tried a couple times, without success.

Really, the trick to surfing is getting enough speed under you. Like riding a bike or roller skating, balancing is a whole lot easier if you're going fast. Going slow is more unstable. So you really have to get a good strong paddle going, then catch a wave, which will help you along with it's speed.

A couple days later I went back for a formal lesson with Pablo, a local surf instructor. He was just what you'd think a surf instructor would be: super-relaxed ("Tranquila, tranquila" he kept saying throughout the lesson), sported a punky goatee, and was a big flirt. It was 300 pesos for a lesson of 1 - 2 hours (depending on how much energy one had, because an hour will tire out a beginner). Surfing is a whole lot of waiting on your board for a good wave to come along. By the end I was able to stand up a couple times for a few seconds, before toppling into the water. I was so excited when I realized I was standing! On a surfboard! That was moving on the water! And I hadn't lost my balance yet! Then I lost my balance. At least falling while surfing is generally painless, since you hit water.

Later I realized I worked up an excellent sunburn, pretty much where I sit down. Ow. I used a lot of sunblock, but the waiting out on the open water, lying on a surfboard, just means your legs and lower back get a whole lot of sun exposure.

It was fun. As my hotel owner Olga said, (in Spanish) "You can't come to the surfing capital of Mexico and not surf!"

Yesterday was my final day in Puerto Escondido. I think I really am a big city dweller, because I was a little bit bored by the end of a week in paradise. I had even taken to going to movies at the little bitty expat cinema house here: Cine Mar. It's such a great idea. Cine Mar is mainly a used book exchange for the many expats here, a video rental, and a makeshift cinema house. They also rent surfboards and boogie boards and have coffee and ice cream and sodas there. They show 2 English language movies a night. 45 pesos gets you entrance and either a popcorn, a beer, or a soda. And air conditioning. Not a bad deal, even if the movies might flash "Property of Paramount Pictures: not for showing" across the screen while it plays. If you come before 5 pm, you can pick out whatever movie you want from the collection and have it screened for the price of 2 tickets. "Slumdog Millionaire" is currently showing there a couple times a week.

I soaked up all I could my final day. I went back to Playa Carrizalillo in the morning for some serious relaxing on the beach. I scored that gem of a find right before I left the beach: the dude who comes out of the water in a wetsuit carrying a big bag of oysters in his own net, then cracks them open and sells you a half dozen of them with limes and hot sauce for 40 pesos (about $3). I was such a happy camper eating the freshest oysters one can get, with my feet in the sand, right before leaving Puerto Escondido.

Back at Casa Olga, I made myself a final lunch in the open air kitchen and took a last swim in the little swimming pool under the bouganvilla, patted the dogs Osso and Pirata goodbye, and got the fancy overnight bus back to Mexico City. I arrived this morning at about 7:30 am, and took the metro and collectivo bus back to my hostel in Coyoacan.

Sunburn and Surf

2009-02-21T19:35:00.000-05:00

The hotel I ended up at, Casa Olga, has no internet access. Which is a bit of a blessing because it really focuses the attention on doing nothing at all. Which, really, is the point of being at the beach, no?

Puerto Escondido is a formerly rustic surfer's town on the Oaxacan coast, now undergoing a whole lot of construction to keep up with the money. There are many parts that are ramshackle, and apparently a fancy area tucked up further north, with mostly moneyed Mexicans buying property near the prettiest cove beaches.

I have not had a whole lot of motivation to seek out all parts of the town and report back on its character. So I only know what my end of it looks like.

I am staying off the south end of the Zicatela. The Zicatela is a ridiculously beautiful loooong stretch of serious surfer beach. It's also dangerous. You don't really go into the water unless you're a professional surfer. Watching the break, the perfect curl of water repeat again and again from the shore, is mesmerizing. There are the pros bobbing on their boards out there. Even wading in up to the knees and waist, I got dragged around a bit by the intense power of the waves before scrambling back out.

The rabid construction ends shortly before the quiet hotel I'm staying at: Casa Olga. Close to where I am are loads and loads of retaurants, palapas, stores, and rather expensive swimsuit and Haviana flip-flop shops. The bikinis are selling for about US $80, which is an odd juxtaposition with the inexpensive nature of being here. $80 for a bikini is expensive even for New York City. A typical beer here is less than $2, no taxi ride around town costs more than $2, and the downtown is all cinder-block mercados and taco stands and such, so it's uneven.

Yesterday I learned the harsh lesson of wearing a smaller bikini than usual: there are previously never-exposed parts of you that will burn a lot faster than the rest of you, and you will be most unhappy about it. When you discover that you should have applied extra sunblock on key areas, it's already too late for you. I stayed out of the sun all day today and probably will have to tomorrow as well. Which unfortunately rules out of most of the activities here.

Yes yes I know the world's smallest violin is playing for me.

I had plans to move on to cheaper, more rustic accomodations in Puerto Angel, another beach town nearby that is supposed to be really charming and secluded, but I am liking the hotel I'm at so much I abandoned that idea, even though I'm basically paying for a much larger room than I need (there are 3 double beds in it, and I am paying US $30 a night). It was the only one available when I got here with all my luggage, and I grabbed it when I saw the place.

Casa Olga is a short New York City block from the south part of the Zicatela. It's lovely and very clean, although there is a bit of construction happening around it. I have a shaded terrace with a view of the little swimming pool and open kitchen below, and the beach beyond. I can even see some of the surfers from my terrace, in fact. There is a hammock on the deck and a little table and chair set. My room is bright yellow and the tiles are a rich red-brown. The front wall is all windows, with floor-to-ceiling white drapes for privacy. I get up in the morning when the sun comes up and go running on the beach. So do a lot of other people here. There are plenty of night activities - there's apparently a great jazz concert going on right now in town - but I just haven't been up to figuring it out on my own. At night, I can hear the ocean surf crashing from my room, while going to sleep. It's really nice.

Midday is brutally hot. Even without being in the sun or being on the beach, I find myself sweating at about 4:00 every day. And forget about being on the beach then -- the sand gets so hot then it burns your feet.

There are a whole lot of different tourists here: an international crowd ranging from young to old, macho surfer-types from everywhere, bratty Mexican teenagers in big groups, wealthier Mexicans from places like Mexico City who have resettled here, a handful of wandering hippie types. The locals here are nice -- when I offer a greeting to anyone local, I almost always get a pleasant acknowledgement.

I made a trip to the local mercado today with some Puerto Escondido regulars staying next to me. I stocked up on lots of fruits and vegetables there, and got other items from a supermarket like a handful of imported products and ice cream and meat. So I am now making my meals in the open air kitchen to save a bit of money. John and Cristy (the regulars who come here almost every year from Canada) and I are planning to buy fish up along the beach tomorrow and grill it for dinner, and make some coconut rice and salsa too.

Although none of this is all that exciting, I hope, my readers, that you are more relaxed after reading this post. There's pretty much nothing going on, and that's a beautiful thing.

Buenas noches!

A Maze of Autobuses

2009-02-18T19:30:00.000-05:00

It is surprisingly difficult to figure out bus schedules here. Considering how efficient and nice the bus system is generally, it's a bit odd.

It was near impossible to figure out my bus route to Puerto Escondido, but I finally got feedback on message boards to book a ticket out of the southern bus terminal, Taxqueña. Because it's a long, overnight bus to Puerto Escondido (12 hours), I went all out and got the Executive Class ticket. I will confess I am way PSYCHED to take one of these, I've always heard they're like the Rolls Royce of buses. Fully reclining seats so you can sleep, bathroom on board, my seat is separate from the rest of the row.

A Day in Coyoacan, Mexico City

2009-02-18T00:26:00.003-05:00

This is a post for the friends and family. Because they're the only ones who really care what I ate for dinner and whether my flight had any turbulence. At least I think they care. Sorry to disappoint the rest of you looking for the sordid tales of daring and adventure I normally write about :-)

So I have safely landed in Mexico City and a pleasant hostel in Coyoacan. I was advised by a poster on a travel board to get my feet wet in Coyoacan before tackling more of the Districto Federal, or D.F. (what Mexico City is commonly referred to here).

Coyoacan is a neighborhood that is almost like it's own little city, far to the south of D.F. In fact it was at one time, before D.F.'s intense urban sprawl swallowed it. It's a chilled-out, safe area, with walkable streets and lots of little shops and restaurants close to its parks. It feels like Oaxaca in its neighborhood-iness, and I feel very comfortable walking home alone at night.

My hostel, the Cuija Coyoacan, is all of 4 blocks from Frida Kahlo's house. La Casa Azul. I walked there today and went through the rooms she shared with Diego Rivera. It is painted bright blue and filled the energy of their intense life together. The objects displayed throughout articulate their trangressive and outspoken and creative lives. Correspondences of friendship or business or acquaintance with Albert Eistein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Modigliani, Trotsky, all on display. Diego's portraits of women he had affairs with. Frida's corsets, which supported her damaged torso, turned by her into objects of art.

Mostly outside views of Casa Azul

I was also accosted by a mike-wielding reporter for TV Azteca and his camera crew in the local park. I wasn't exactly sure what their show was about, but my crap Spanish and deer-in-the-headlights expression ended the interview quickly.

I had lunch at a little family-owned retaurant, with a set menu of simple food.

For dinner, on the other hand, I splurged out at one of the nicest foodie restaurants in the city, which just happens to be 8 blocks from my hostel. Los Danzantes means The Dancers, I suppose a reference to the playful and graceful menu drawn up by the chef.

I had a tequila, a huachinango fish served on top of tomato chutney with squash blossoms and capers in a brilliant lemon broth, and goatcheese cheesecake with passionfruit sauce. And an espresso. Normally I like a coffee to cut the sweetness of a dessert, but this dessert was surprisingly not sweet. Rich and delicious, yes, but the goat cheese added more tart to the cheese cake than normal, and passion fruit also has a tart edge.

My hostel has really nice people running it. It is clean and friendly and pretty enough (there are plesant pockets of greenery to sit in outside), but it is certainly a hostel-level accomodation. Sound travels easily, and I can hear people talking in the common areas from inside the room. And my dorm room is a little stuffy with no windows to the outside, only ventillation windows to the interior of the building. It's perfectly fine for a couple of nights though, and for US $10 a night, I can't complain.

The exchange rate is currently about 14 pesos to $1.

Lunch was 52 pesos.

The Frida Kahlo museum was 90 pesos with an audio tour.

My fancy dinner was 335 pesos.

My safe taxi ride from the airport to my hostel door in far off Coyoacan was 190 pesos. And it took about 30-40 minutes, late at night.

Blessings. Fate. And Other Things.

2009-02-17T23:04:00.000-05:00

Years ago, I had a dream about fate. I retold it recently to friends, and the details came vividly back to me.

I was running with a stray dog in a dark field with long grass, behind some buildings. We were playing. I got it to "shake" the way dogs do if they're trained, then laughed and pretended to turn its paws over as if I was reading its palms and predicting its future. In my dream, where logic is not exactly linear, this was comical because it was a dog and had no hands to read. But then the dog unexpectedly spoke in a dead-serious voice.

"It's not right for the customer to try to read."

Staring at me, the dog morphed into a little gnome-like man with an intense look on his face. He gripped my hands and turned my palms up. In a flash, I understood that he was going to read to me all the details of my life, written out on my hands. When I would die. How I would die. If I would have children. If I never have children. When I would lose my family. If another atomic bomb dropped somewhere in my lifetime. Everything.

Because he was a supernatural, otherworldly creature, I knew that whatever he told me would be my true unchangeable fate. This was no fortune teller with wiggle room on how things would come to pass in my life. I would be condemned to live out the rest of my life with the knowledge of every important detail before it happened, with no ability to change it. He was about to steal my life.

I was scared out of my mind, and tried to yank my hands away, but couldn't. I knew that this was a dream. But even so, I realized I would still wake up and wonder if whatever he said would be true. I began screaming to wake myself up before he could speak, and woke up.

Grim post, Christina! You might be thinking.

Yes, well. I think a lot about how blessed I am, normally. Simply by virtue of having an American passport and a roof over my head and more than enough food to eat at each meal. My family is not in danger of a militia wiping them all out in a day, or famine. Because the world is not an equal place and some people begin with luck and others do not.

I have had a strange string of condensed good luck in my life recently. I really don't know what to make of it. Is the universe just messing with me?

We have a new President and a hurting country. Everyday feels like we are on the cusp of something momentous, but we don't know what it is. A disastrous collapse or a slow healing or both entwined. Or something completely other than that.

Fate unfolds itself in small bits of paper, you read the message as it's being written. And that's all you're given by time to work with and understand.

I realize this is not a travel post. But when you've got the electronic microphone in hand.... Travel makes me pause and count things. In whatever way one is grateful for life, I am grateful.

Squash Blossoms, Chiles, and Mezcal

2007-11-25T23:45:00.000-05:00

My humanity mostly restored by Friday, I took a cooking class with Pilar Cabrera of Casa de los Sabores. This was a very special class. Pilar teaches it in the courtyard/kitchen of her b&b, which is a very pretty space.

Our group of 9 began with a reading of the menu we were about to prepare and a trip to a local market here to shop for the ingredients, including several types of chiles, purple tomatillos, squash blossoms, potatoes, rice, masa, Oaxacan string cheese.

We would be making quesadillas with green tomatillo salsa, squash blossom soup, yellow mole (which, as Pilar explained, was actually more of an orange mole) with chicken, and rice pudding. Pilar took us to one of her favorite markets -- La Mercéd in the eastern part of the city, on the corner of Murguia and Calz de la Republica. It´s not in my guidebook and felt much nicer than the big one everyone goes to. It is mostly a food market, and has a section of fondas -- small eateries with benches set up that locals come eat cheap fresh meals at. Pilar pointed out that as far as food is concerned, women do most of the shopping, selling, and cooking of food at markets, and as such, because each eatery was named after it's owner, they all had women's names.

There was a lot Pilar was able to explain to us along the way that would have gone over our heads had we been on our own, of course. One surprising thing was the bright yellow color of the plucked chickens. Apparently in this region that is desirable as a sign of freshness, and so vendors might rub the chicken with marigolds to make it even more yellow and appealing (think of how farmed salmon is fed certain mixtures of things to get the exact shade of fresh pinkness that entices us to buy it because we think that color means it's fresh). Pilar said you can't really tell how long chicken is out at market (she had bought our chicken for the class earlier at an organic place).

Another thing she pointed out was a stand of medicinal plants/foods. Among the items were 2 baskets of eggs. For children suffering from illness or evil spirits, an egg may be traced over their face and body, drawing away the bad, and then the egg is cracked open and discarded.

Back at the kitchen, Pilar and her assistants coordinated the class with a lot of skill. I know from trying to put together multi-part meals how hard it is to time everything the right way. Much less involving several people in the cooking while teaching about the cuisine. If there is one observation that stands out and that Pilar made sure to emphasize: good Oaxacan food is good because it is made FRESH and FROM SCRATCH, everyday. It is an intensive amount of labor, actually. Grinding the salsa alone in a stone mortar is a tough task, to crush the seeds of the chiles and tomatillos and get things smooth. Even something simple like whether something is processed in a blender or whether it is ground in a stone will affect the flavor. Pilar told us that her father would tell her if she had made a dish using a blender: he could taste the difference between that and preparing a dish via stone-grinding.

She started with the rice pudding first, and quickly went into fire-roasting the chiles to prep for a side sauce. Tomatillos were also roasted before being used, on a big ceramic heated plate. In going over the ingredients for a mole, she showed us just how many natural thickeners there are. Rather than use cornmeal, this mole leaned on potatoes, green beans and a green squash to thicken the sauce. She got us all outfitted in big poofy colorful embroidered aprons (yes very sexy) and one by one got us going on a side task or another, juicing limes or peeling and dicing squash, de-seeding chiles.

At the end of the food juggle, we finished in the inverse, with making the appetizers -- quesadillas -- last: rolling masa (pre-prepared cornmeal) into little one-inch balls that were then placed into a tortilla press and flattened. Then the tortillas were placed onto a ceramic plate that was being heated on her stove, and cooked from the contact. These were then filled with julienned chiles, mushrooms and Oaxacan string cheese (which melts well and doesn't get watery, so is good for quesadillas), and folded over.

Then it was time to sit down and start the serious business of eating all this deliciousness. Pilar started us with a drink of mezcal, which is very popular in this region. It is preferred to tequila, but hardly anyone outside of Oaxaca drinks it. She showed us how to take a piece of lime, sprinkle it with chile powder, bite it, hold that juice in the mouth and then sip the mezcal, mixing the cocktail in your mouth, so to speak. I have to say I'm not a mezcal fan. It's really strong. This is my preferred way to drink it though.

I'll allow the photos to tell the rest of the story of the food. It was all beautiful and delicious. Pilar's talent is clear.

I also made friends with: 1) Annabelle, a Filipina-American graphic designer who lives in Brooklyn (do we come in a 6-pack or something?), and 2) the most happy grey and white kitty cat. Who wouldn't be a happy cat if you lived in Pilar's kitchen, searching for mole drippings twice a week?

I later ate at Pilar's restaurant, La Olla, which is at 420 Reforma. That was probably the best Oaxacan food I've eaten the whole time I've been here. She really is an artist, and you can taste the thoughtfulness in everything coming out of her kitchen.

Sick and Sicker

2007-11-22T21:27:00.000-05:00

Saturday and Sunday mostly passed getting acclimated to Oaxaca City. I mainly just walked around, saw a couple museums, and hung out in the zócalo (which is the big public square here). It's like a constant party in the zócalo. Vendors, musicians, performances, parades commemorating la revolucíon, kids tossing enormous oblong balloons into the air and chasing them... that's the scene. With historic buildings framing things -- old churches and pillared buildings and such.

Hamburgers from the vendors come topped with a slice of ham, melted cheese slice, mayo, onions, tomato, lettuce, and chillies. Mmm. The corn of course comes slathered with mayo, then dusted with chili powder and the local cheese, and a squeeze of lime (it is called "límon" in Spanish, not to be confused with lemon).

I was feeling pretty worn out quickly, so didn't really DO much those first 2 days other than hang out. But clearly it was because some vicious bacteria was working on my system.

Sunday night was the start of a full-on fever. I'll skip (most of) the gory details except to say I've been pretty incapacitated for a few days. Oh and there was an injection in the butt involved, once I saw a doctor, since my fever ran up to 103F and things were starting to spin. A little scary. But all is well now. Also, Tuesday was probably one of the most underwhelming birthdays I've had in awhile, hacking up my second lung through my eyesocket while lying in a bunkbed all day, alone. Perhaps the only notable birthday moment was, by pure serendity, chancing to read a short story called "Birthday Girl" by Haruki Murakami, on my actual birthday.

I haven't talked with a whole lot of the travelers coming through because I've just, well, not had the motivation to make chit-chat, but by-and-large they are friendly enough here at Paulina and will respond if you extend yourself. There is a wide age range, though there is certainly a cluster around 20-somethings.

Today was the first day I began to feel like a human being again. I slowly eased on over to the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, which is part of an enormous 2-block complex that also contains a beautiful, thoroughly gilded, ornamented, painted church (el Templo de Santo Domingo), and a Botanic Garden that is filled with large, shapely cactuses and other fuzzy dessert plants.

The museo itself houses some incredible artifacts taken from, among other places, the temples at Monté Alban. There is some wonderful, expressive and intricately articulated sculptures, vessels, and tools. Animals are a big subject, and both the animals and people look, to me, very geometric. Some of these ancient pieces hundreds of years old look an awful lot like creatures out of "Wallace and Gromit".

Journeying

2007-11-18T00:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday began with sunrise over the cold streets of Brooklyn. I could see my breath getting in the car in the dark. The city warmed by degrees as my car sped to JFK. Whenever I´m coming or going, senses sharpened by travel to a new place, I always realize once more how beautiful New York is. How glorious this city looks in moving light.

My day closed with a pink candy cloud, floating above a shadow countryside of mountains, farmland, grey village, brightly painted village, spreading away from the highway in Mexico.

After the pink puffball cloud had long vanished into night sky, I was still on the bus to Oaxaca City, half-asleep. What was normally a 6-hour journey had turned into 8.5 hours because of the traffic. I had heard that Mexican buses are excellent and this is true. I ended up on a second-class bus, and it was still head-and-shoulders above Greyhound in the States.

As it sometimes happens when I travel, my mother´s spirit made an appearance. Maybe because I have time to think about things on long bus journeys or boat rides. I really miss her then. In part, I guess it´s because I know she would, after initial motherly panic detailing about 100 scenarios in which my safety would be in immident, possibly fatal, danger, she´d be really interested in my travels. My mom also loved to travel. I think she would have delighted in the little details -- particularly the food and music -- in many places but especially in Latin places. Her Filipina soul loved many things Latin. The music the bus driver played, Mexican salsa, made me think of her, it would have been exactly something she would have played.

We made one stop along the way at a highway bathroom and convenience store. The tamales got snatched up by the time I got to the counter so I settled for browsing the packaged snack section. There I got a surprise.

There in this Mexican snack stop were packages of "polvoron". Also for sale was a corn-based, warm, thick drink with chocolate called "champurrado." Neither of these items was an exact match to it´s Filipino counterpart, though the Filipino champurrado also has chocolate in it. Champurrado in the Philippines is a chocolate rice porridge eaten for breakfast, drizzled with sweetened condensed milk out of a can (needless to say, it kicks ass). The polvoron I didn´t buy, but it looked more solid than the crumbly milk powder candy that it is in the Philippines. I doubt it´s the same thing. I had also seen a sign at a market outside the TAPO bus station in Mexico City, naming items for sale including "longganisa." Curious. I wonder if it is the adobo phenomenon, where 2 different things share the same word in 2 different countries, possibly because the common conquistador -- Spain -- applied it to things they thought were similar.

World history cares little about mapping the influences of one "3rd world" country on another, or mutal cross-influence. History favors influence of one kind: of the colonizer on the colonized. Anyway, I´ve heard before of cultural links between the Philippines and Mexico, and if so, here it was in the odd permutation of a convenience store´s snack aisle.

I arrived in Oaxaca de Juarez past midnight. Dead exhausted, I called La Villada Inn Hostel, where I´d made a reservation. They weren´t answering. Not a good sign, but what else could I do but call a radio taxi and go there anyway -- no one answered the door. Overtired and worried about where I was going to sleep, I called the Paulina Hostel in downtown. There is someone working reception there until late, so I lucked out and got a bed. Even dead-tired, I thought, "wow this is a REALLY CLEAN hostel" before passing out on the fluffy mattress.

Bienvenidos a Oaxaca.

In Memory of Julia Campbell

2007-04-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

I have a backlog of 20 entries that will make their appearance later below this one. This one needs to be posted in real time. Please check BELOW this entry for new ones as I update the blog. My post for Julia will remain on top.

Among many great people I met in the Philippines these past 2 months was Julia Campbell, Peace Corps worker. Fellow Brooklynite. All Around Cool and Nice Person.

Julia hiking with friends in Sagada

Her body has just been found in Batad after she has been reported as missing for a week. It's one of those moments when the absurdity of life just reaches out and smacks you in the face.

It's absurd that a middle-aged, smart, savvy, culturally aware individual and New Yorker like Julia would be dead. Just like that. It's surreal that she was found buried in Batad, which everyone considers to be a safe little town. It's on the tourist trail for its serene rice terraces.

Yes, there are NPA guerrillas in the general vicinity, but everyone knows they aren't interested in tourists and that they don't have a presence in Batad. They did kidnap a Peace Corps worker once, but that was 17 years ago, and they released him unharmed.

It's beyond surreal that the night before she vanished in Batad, she and I and 6 other travelers were sitting around a cozy fire in Sagada after consuming an excellent Italian meal at the home of a Sagadan couple. It doesn't seem to inhabit the same time-and-space universe that on Saturday night Julia and I had intense conversation about New York, and what it was like to be away from that city and what it's like to uproot a life you actually like to go chase a dream, and that the very next night she would be gone.

I met her first in Donsol, where she was doing her work with the Peace Corps and I did a short volunteer stint with Hands On, a typhoon relief group. Both groups got together for a St. Patrick's Day dinner, and she heard me say I was from Brooklyn when we introduced ourselves to the group, so she sought me out to talk about the 'hoods we were from. It was to paint the marine ecology center she had helped put together that the two groups had gotten together for -- the next morning several Hands On volunteers and Peace Corps workers were painting the center together.

When I got to Sagada a few weeks later, I wandered into a tiny restaurant, Bamboo Grill, across from my hotel and she was sitting in there trying to text her friends on her cellphone, sporting the exact same Brooklyn Industries t-shirt that I own.

Thanks Iya for the photo of her. Chance and circumstance placed Julia in the background of Iya's photo of her husband, as chance allowed me to run into her that night.

Because of that chance encounter we ended up hiking around Sagada and having dinner together the next 2 nights with my friend Kathy and 5 of her friends. We were among the last people to see her before she vanished.

Julia joined the Peace Corps when she was 38, because she had always wanted to and the opportunity presented itself at that age. But it's harder to do something like join the Peace Corps when you're already happily settled somewhere and you have something to leave behind when you go to the other side of the world for 2 years. It's much easier to do if you are 22. She rather sheepishly said, more than once that Saturday night by the fire in Sagada, how she felt guilty for leaving her friends in New York like that for so long. That she had a lot of work to do when she got back to make it up to them.

I felt like she must have had great relationships with people in New York, because I know how we New Yorkers make second families out of our circles of friends. Her apartment buliding in Brooklyn Heights was pretty communal, from the sounds of it. She described common areas where people hung out, like the roof, and it sounds like people just stopped by each other's apartments to say hi. I think it was one of her neighbors in that building that was Filipino-American. She was hoping to get him involved in a conversational Tagalog group she wanted to start later this year in New York, and she wanted me to meet him. She was also working on me to study Tagalog back in New York so we could practice together.

We talked about culture shock. She was surprised at how Filipinos don't think anything of commenting on your weight directly to you. Julia was thin as a rail, but she, like most American women, she said are used to hearing comments on their weight as criticism -- not to mention Filipinos simply insist on continually feeding guests as a gesture of hospitality. I liked talking to her about the Philippines because in general I feel she listened to the people she had met and wasn't judgemental about the differences between cultures, that she respected the culture she inhabited.

My friend Kathy (also from Brooklyn) was curious about what kind of reverse culture shock she might experience when she went back after having been in small town Philippines for 2 years. I asked her what she missed about New York the most, but I don't remember what she said. I teasingly said: bagels? But that wasn't it. Maybe it was taking hot baths, not showers, maybe it was just being in New York, maybe it was her friends. I don't remember, but I remember that she was really looking forward to it.

She talked about her first host family, who lived in a 2 bedroom nipa hut. She got one of the bedrooms and the entire family of something like 11 people stayed in the other bedroom. This is because it is a Peace Corps requirement that she have a door that could close. She also said how surprising it was to see so many gay boys in the province she was in, so far from a big city. She said the kids were excited about staging a Miss Gay Philippines pageant, complete with costumes and talent contest, that they liked "Ate Julia" a lot and wanted to decorate her nipa hut for her. Everyone sitting around the fire cracked up at that image of Queer Eye for the Nipa Hut. We cracked up again when she told us that she had cheerfully told her Filipino friends in Bicol that she used to be a tomboy when she was a little girl, and that was how she found out that tomboy is slang for lesbian in the Philippines.

She really had an awareness of poverty in the United States as well, I remember that when we all got into debate that night about the differences between poverty in the Philippines and poverty in the U.S. she talked about the people living in Appalachia here in the States. She was mindful.

In addition to teaching English and helping organize the marine ecology center in Donsol, she also did a little yoga teaching (being a typical Brooklynite she was a certified yoga teacher :-) ) just before she left Bicol, which she said was well received there.

She was about to go to NYU graduate school in the fall. I think she was to study journalism. Before that she was planning to ambitiously travel overland all the way through Asia in the span of 2 or 3 months, starting in mainland SE Asia and then going all the way through Russia to finish in Poland and fly back to New York.

I want to know what happened to absurdly, surreally, interrupt the story of her life in full swing.

I barely got to know her, and I'm sad for that.

If you knew Julia, I invite you to post an anecdote about her here in the comments section. Let's honor her however we can. If you have photos of her you want to share, email them to new.yorkian.afoot@gmail.com so I can post them here.

"Uncle Ho", Espresso, Silk, and Dreams: Four Days in Hanoi, Vietnam

2007-04-06T05:53:00.000-04:00

Hanoi is often described as a little Paris. There are reasons for this metaphor: people drink a lot of strong coffee at little hole-in-the-wall cafes, it's very walkable in the center with winding streets, there are touches of that French architectural style here and there, and the residents have a smidgen of that Parisian attitude (or perhaps, coming from traveling the very friendly Philippines, I am inventing this perception, Hanoi people are overall quite nice).

But I wonder sometimes if there is a tendency among us Westerners to overattribute the cultural qualities we observe in a place to whatever culture we are more familiar with that was once a colonizer.

Hanoi is certainly quite stylish.

Not having traveled Asia outside of the Philippines, I am shocked at the masses of scooters on the roads. Hanoi is absolutely packed with them, it looks like a motorized Amsterdam. Good luck crossing the road filled with onward-bearing scooters that don't stop, it's like jumping into a swimming pool, you just have to leap in and keep your head up and let the water flow around you.

To my eyes it was a bit surreal and funnily glamorous to see so many people dressed formally for work or for going out riding motorbikes. Women wearing tailored clothes and high heels riding a scooter like that was the most ordinary way to dress to ride a scooter, or men dressed in pressed pants and shirts on the bikes -- needless to say helmets were rare. And yes indeed, at least once I saw a couple on a motorbike, each of them talking a cellphone. And dressed stylishly.

Tailoring is quite inexpensive in Hanoi, as is silk. You can get clothing made to fit in about 8 hours from the time you are measured. The clothing styles are really nice, with lots of designers working with silk to make the most beautiful coats, slinky dresses, Asian-collared shirts and loose pants and ruffly skirts, beautiful beaded bags. Overall I thought the aesthetic I saw was very feminine and pretty. Hanoi is also known for it's embroidery: on cute little pieces of children's clothing, on hankerchiefs, on any range of handbags. Hard to pin down an overall design aesthetic in a place, but I liked whatever Hanoi's is. It wasn't just pretty, things like bags came in interesting shapes and colors which to me shows good design.

I did as many tourist activities in Hanoi's old quarter as I could fit in before falling sick for a day with a sore throat. I got in a water puppet show, paying a visit to "Uncle Ho", the Temple of Literature, the Museum of Vietnamese Art, and a Vietnamese cooking class.

The water puppet show was fun to see, but as I know zero Vietnamese and it was rather chopped up so far as any storyline went, I could only enjoy the colorful puppets, not gathering anything deeper from the show re. a story. Mostly each scene enacted by the colorful wooden puppets on a watery stage were about things like planting rice or a rowing competition. One vignette did enact the famous turtle lake story in which a king gives his sword to the long-living turtle. The best puppetry moments, I thought, were with puppets that made sense in water, like a snake or a dragon swimming in the water, or the planting rice vignette, actually.

The visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was wacky, though short. The building was an imposing stone edifice of a giant concrete block, and although it was tempting, in the solemn, hushed, supremely air conditioned atmosphere of the walk into the building and around Uncle Ho's entombed body, to make some inappropriate joke, I refrained until my friend Kathy and I were out of earshot of the unsmiling guards. There is some theorizing that the waxlike body is actually wax a la Madame Tussaud, but Who Really Knows. It is rather creepy to see the actual shell of the man, if that is his real, dead, embalmed body. It's rather ironic to see a man who lived such a simple, anonymous, life to be treated, in death, to the mausoleum-and-museum package.

14 Hours in Kuala Lumpur

2007-04-06T05:34:00.002-04:00

Getting to Hanoi, Vietnam, from Manila is not nearly as easy as it should be, apparently.

My route involved into Kuala Lumpur, landing after midnight, then waiting 14 hours to get another flight at about 4 pm headed for Hanoi. So really, my 14 hours involved nothing more than going through Malaysian customs, getting ringgits, getting a US$30 taxi to drive me to my US$10 hostel one hour from the airport in Kualu Lumpur to sleep, then get up and have some local food in some serious heat, and return to the airport. These are my astute observations of that city based on the 4 hours I spend awake there.

1. It's Hotter than Hot in Malaysia, it's most Hottest.

2. The food is delicious. And cheap. And spicy. (Maybe US$3 for a full and delicious meal and bottled water at a local/non-tourist restaurant, but I could be remembering wrong.)

3. There is an interesting cultural mix in KL! Many Indian/South Asian people (even areas where a row of stores and restaurants are Indian), Malaysian Muslims, and people who look of Chinese descent.

4. The Malaysian Muslim women who don't work at KL customs are really colorful in bright headscarfs and patterned dresses. Pink, bright yellow, blue...

5. The elevated rail system seems, from the solitary ride I took on it, quite efficient. And air-conditioned.

6. Many people speak English in Malaysia. Which is why you can smile when your chatty taxi driver expresses great surprise that you are 32! You don't look 32! You're 32?! You'd look even younger if you were thinner! (End smile.)

Swimming With the Sharks

2007-04-03T05:17:00.000-04:00

I am moving Kayaking With Orcas (killer whales) down to the number 2 spot on the list of Best Things I've Ever Done.

Number 1 has now been claimed by Swimming in the Open Water with Butanding (that would be GIANT WHALE SHARKS, Jesucristo).

Donsol, a town at the southernmost tip of Luzon in Bicol region, has a high concentration of the butanding through the months of about December through May because there is a concentration of the plankton they feed on in the water at about that time.

The whale sharks used to be hunted regularly for their meat and fins, and got to a dangerously low population count. They are still endangered, but thanks to preservation efforts at least their being hunted so much has stopped. We saw about 7 during our trip. I got so close I could have touched one, with my strong swimmer of a guide pulling me along as the giant creature started to surface underneath me! I could see the spotted back of the whale, I could even see the tiny suckerfish attached to its sides.

Art-Infested: Ponce Suites

2007-03-11T22:04:00.000-04:00

If art was a virus, Ponce Suites, owned by prolific Mindanao artist Kublai Milan, would be incurably infested. It's halls are overrun with photographic collage, collaborative alphabets with street kids, sculpture, prints, paintings and more, all by Kublai. It's quite wonderful. I didn't get to stay there (and the rooms don't really match the spirit of the rest of the hotel), but wanted to share some of Kublai's work here.

Loud, Proud: Mebuyan Sings it for the Crowd

2007-03-11T22:02:00.000-04:00

"Mebuyan...Ibuyan...Moibulan...Maibulan...Nabuyon... Her name means both mother and moon... " -- Agnes Miclat-Cacayan

A purple chorus, a vocal powerhouse, the multi-breasted goddess of the dead and unborn: this is Mebuyan.

In Bagobo and Manobo (2 tribes indigenous to Davao) mythology, Mebuyan is the goddess of the underworld, whom legend says nurtures the unborn and the dead from her many breasts.

In the Davao of 2007, Mebuyan is a soulful all-female performance group with their own brand of world music.

I was so happy I had the opportunity to see them perform. Appropriately enough, on International Women's Day. In seeking them out, I also got to see Matina Town Square, which has a special vibe of it's own.

Matina Town Square is a semi-outdoor area (enclosed on top but not on the sides) with rows of carinderias (mmm barbeque) along the sides and free performances by Davao musicians on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights. I heard that they are a supportive community of musicians. Watching some of the regulars mix after the performance, it looked like everyone knew everyone.

There are some wonderful murals around the space with some local artists painted in, and iconic historical murals as well. The space is privately owned, and neither do the performers pay to perform nor the audience pay to hear. I imagine this is a wonderful way to foster creativity rather than the pursuit of what sells the most.

Fittingly enough, one banner in the space says: "ARTISTIC FREEDOM." Another says: "PEACE ZONE" as Matina Town Square is also the site at which many artists sing about peace.

The site was mostly empty when I came in, but it filled up with adults and a group of young students in their starched white shirt uniforms from a local gender and development class.

And then Mebuyan took the stage. Rock and roll. Tribal drums. A lilting acapella chorus singing lullabies. Powerful harmonies weaving messages of motherhood, love, the goddess, domestic violence and women's strength. The funky twang of the Mindanao mouth harp mixed in with rock and soul.

They were wonderful. I'm dying to buy their cd, but alas, they are still at work on their "maiden" album. The musical links on their site and my videos of them on YouTube will have to suffice for now.

I initially had made contact with Geejay Arriola, one of the members, who is also friends with musician Waway Saway and Rosalie Zerrudo of Enigmata. It was so funny to meet someone I'd only been corresponding with via email. Geejay is a warm and spirited person. Another member, Maan Chua, is married to Kublai Milan, whose prolific artworks fill a hotel here in Davao. This creative circle is wide.

After the concert, I drank Red Horse and ate BBQ with the band. One of the band members impishly suggested I try balut: "C'mon, it's on Fear Factor! I thought you said you were backpacking it?" (I did mention my serious lack of backpacker cred earlier? I may also have a serious lack of Pinay roots cred going now too). They also tried to explain some of their favorite baklese-isms (gay Filipino slang), but my Tagalog is so bad the humor mostly went over my head. This is why the link between saying "chocolate cake" for "ok" got a little blurry for me. It was a fun time.

You can read more about the nuances of Mebuyan mythology here: http://mebuyan.mindanaoculture.com/goddess.htm.

Taxi Encounter #3: Explaining the N-Word

2007-03-11T22:00:00.000-04:00

Taxi drivers say the darndest things sometimes.

I met a very sweet driver in Davao one evening. He grinned and showed me the copper bracelets on his arm that he had made himself, and chatted away all through the ride. I asked about what Muslims in Mindanao spoke, as I wasn't sure if they hailed from different tribes and basically wanted to know what the indigenous languages around Davao were.

"Islam. They speak Islam," he said.

"Umm. I think that's the religion, not the language? Do you mean they speak Arabic? But I think that's just for reading the Koran anyway..."

"No, they speak Islam."

I was rather sure that Filipino Muslims did not "speak Islam." I was sure that no Muslims anywhere "speak Islam," actually, so I tried a couple more times to clarify whether it was different tribal dialects or Arabic that was spoken. But after going around like this a few more times, I gave up and steered the conversation to New York, saying, "Hey (conversational switch), there's lots of Muslims in New York too."

"Oh yes!" he said. "There's lots of different kinds of people in New York! Muslims, Black niggers, Chinese people--"

As you might imagine, I felt a need to interrupt his enthusiatic listing of the various peoples of New York to explain something.

"Uh, don't say 'nigger' when you're talking about black people. It's really insulting. Kind of like if someone insults your mother, only A Lot Worse Than That. Never say that. Say 'black person' instead." I figured that "Black" was a better term for him to know than "African-American."

I could tell from the cheery way he said "nigger," the fact that there are no black people in the Philippines, and the fact that the Philippines is probably the only Asian country with an active hip-hop music scene that he had no understanding of it as a racial slur. I'm guessing he probably heard the word from a rapper or in an American movie as a term of brotherhood. I was hoping to clear it up for him so that if he ever visited the U.S. in the future he could avoid, at best, an incredibly awkward moment with a group of new black friends, or at worst, his ass being handed to him on a platter.

"Oh .... Really?"

"Yes."

"Wait... So I don't say nigger?" He was a little confused, and talked, I think, about his one black friend he had made in the Philippines, who was from Africa. I wasn't clear whether he had called his friend a black nigger. I sincerely hoped not.

"No, don't say that. You can say Black. Or you can say Brotha." I realized this was Too Much Information. "Never mind, just say Black. Or black person."

"So..." he frowned to take in what I was saying, processed, then went a step further.

"So ...." he said, "I will no longer say: 'You are my black nigger.' Instead in the future I will say: 'You are my black friend'?"

Eureka.

"Yes, correct."

The Little Museum That Could: Davao Museum

2007-03-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

The excellent Davao Museum is a petite repository of the history of Davao City. It is just 2 floors, but it is chock full of interesting bits of history and beautiful tribal clothing and artifacts. Davao Province is, afterall, home to no less than 15 different tribes: the Ata, Bagobo, Blaan, Dibabawon, Giangan, Kalagan, Kulaman, Manobo, Mandaya, Mangguwangan, Mansaka, Matigsalog, Obo, Samal, Sangil, Tagakaolo. Whew.

The bottom floor is a timeline of Davao, from it's earliest existence as a hunk of molten rock to the socio-politic-economic events of the 20th century.

It's a truly fascinating and colorful history that I had never heard before. Some highlights follow:

After the Philippine-American War in 1899, Americans started moving to Davao, calling it appreciatively "garden of the gods" for it's natural fertility and abundance of fruit. Initially the locals received Americans peacefully.

However.

Things took a turn for the worse in Davaoan-American relations when Americans began claiming large chunks of indigenous land for plantations, kicking off the locals. About 6 years into the Philippines' existence as an American colony saw armed conflict breaking out in the Davao region. The people of Mindanao were fierce fighters, never having had the Spanish exert the same kind of dominance over that region that other areas of the Philippines experienced and having a strong, uninterrupted cultural identity for hundreds of years.

All hell broke loose when the first American politico-military governor of Davao, Lt. Edward C. Bolton, was assassinated by the Manobo leader, Mangulayon. In retaliation, the Americans pursued a brutal "huwes de kutsilyo", or "scorched earth policy". I'll quote from the museum exhibit:

"The Americans retaliated with a horrible huwes de kutsilyo that raged for 3 months. All that the Americans saw they killed, whether young or old, man or woman, according to the old indigenous inhabitants of Davao del Sur."

I read elsewhere that even animals of the villages were killed as part of the "scorched earth policy." It was after these events that abaca and coconut plantations were developed in the "garden of the gods."

As Mindanao locals weren't that interested in working the plantations (go figure, eh?), the American plantation owners recruited Filipinos from the Visayas and Luzon to migrate to the region and grow the produce. I was wondering why there is so much Bisayan spoken in Mindanao when it's not a language indigenous to the region ... that explains why. By the 1930s, there were 10,000 workers migrating to Mindanao annually.

Japanese workers also migrated to that region to work the plantations. More intercultural drama followed as Japanese immigrants slowly increased in number and in wealth, working their way up to head the plantations they used to work. It was also during this time that abaca exploded onto the world market as a popular product, meaning plantation owners became extremely wealthy. In the early 1910s Japanese corporations began to buy out the American plantation owners, and more Japanese migrated to Davao.

By 1939, there were 18,000 Japanese living in Davao. Initially mostly men, the migrants often intermarried with Davao women, particularly of the Bagobo tribe.

It came to be that the Japanese community, which also built separate schools, roads and hospitals, controlled Davao politically and economically by the 1930s. The neighborhood of Mintal became known as "Little Tokyo."

The American-backed goverment in Manila was wary of this situation, in part because of increasing Japanese military aggression in Asia at the time (1931 was the year Japan annexed Manchuria). In 1936 the Congress declared Davao a chartered city, with it's officials appointed by Manila. Davao did not return to a democratically-elected mayorship until the 1957.

The museum didn't spell out what happened to those Japanese-Filipinos during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII and after. I'm very curious.

The other historical events that were particularly interesting to me were the Welgang Bayan (People's Strikes) of 1984 and 1985. These were large mass demonstrations against martial law by a broad coalition of students, professionals, religious, workers and peasants, that mirrored the demonstrations happening in other parts of the Philippines against the Marcoses after Ninoy Aquino's assassination. These strikes were so massive that they shut down transport, business, and school operations. The "Yellow Friday Movement" also happened regularly in Davao (as it did in Manila), with protesters wearing yellow and marching every Friday in opposition to martial law.

The historical timeline was on the first floor. The second floor was a wonderful repository of beautiful tribal artifacts: clothing, instruments, jewelry, looms, jars.

I was so surprised to see some old old jars called "Martaban jars". They looked a LOT like jars my mom kept in our house while I was growing up -- replicas of these originals no doubt. Their function came from the 1400s as export containers, packed with salted foods like citron and pepper. Orignially made in Burma, they became quite popular in the Middle East and India as well as SE Asia.

Photos will follow....

"Backpacking" Davao (hah)

2007-03-11T21:43:00.000-04:00

After staying in dusty Malaybalay for a few days I decided to splash out after my bus ride to Davao and stay at the Davao Insular Waterfront, which is *ahem* UPSCALE. Which raises the question: I walked in there with a big hulking backpack strapped to me, which TECHNICALLY means I'm a backpacker, right? Or does the room service, swanky swimming pool, and the fact that hotel staff carried the big hulking backpack up to my room for me from reception disqualify me from calling myself that?

Never mind, don't answer. I'm a sad sad excuse for a budget traveler.

I couldn't even bring myself to eat balut to redeem what's left of my "travel cred". Jesuchristo.

I admit I really enjoyed the pampering for about 3 days. By day 4, I started feeling like I was missing out on experiencing Davao more directly (the Waterfront is a bit removed from the city center and sits on it's own swanky grounds), so I felt a little bit of the bubble that being in such a place provides. After visiting my friend Masoma at her job in downtown and going for lunch at a cute little Persian kebab carinderia with great food that cost about 1/4 of what my meals at the Insular Waterfront did, I wished I was staying in a mid-range or budget place in the midst of downtown, so I could get up, walk out, and get breakfast from the vendors outside, or just walk the downtown area more.

I had heard a lot about Davao being a very safe city. One American I recently met in Bohol told me how much he liked the city and that he felt safe walking around Davao by himself at 2 a.m.

Several people told me that the mayor was really tough and that was why the city was safe (back in the 80s it was a really dangerous place I believe, with a lot of guns present in the city -- I don't know if those were in the hands of criminal gangs or other groups, I just don't know the history). I don't really know enough to comment on this much except I think the mayor was a bit controversial in making the city safe -- I had read in one guidebook that vigilante groups sprouted up under his governance. Many Filipinos speak well of him, I've met a couple who also question his tactics. Other than that, I can only say that as a single female traveler I did indeed feel quite safe going around it by myself, now, in 2007.

I have heard (I hope I'm not spreading rumors) that the same tough guy mayor is also an environmentalist and is working on building a major park in Davao (I wish the same was happening in Manila). Davao is a place that has proximity to a wide range of tribes, and also a place that Masoma, a British Muslim, said was Muslim-friendly as far as ease of finding halal foods went. It's a place with Chinese temples and Christian missionaries. It's a place with a very "colorful" history, and an interesting music scene around Matina Town Square. In short, I liked it a lot, though I wouldn't say it was a beautiful city per se, I did like that it was an urban Filipino city with Mindanao flavor that wasn't too big or overwhelming.

Among the things I did and saw there was visit the excellent Davao Museum, the Philippine Eagle Sanctuary about an hour's taxi ride away, the Lon Wa Buddhist Temple, have dinner at Jack's Ridge (a place every taxi driver knows perched on top of a ridge overlooking Davao), visit Ponce Suites which is the hotel of Kublai Milan -- Enigmata artist -- and so is filled to the brim with his whimsical varied artworks, and watch the excellent women's group Mebuyan perform at the cool Matina Town Square.

Meeting Waway Saway in Talaandig Tribal Land

2007-03-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

After Kaamulan I got a text invite to visist Waway Saway in Songco, in Bukidnon province, about a 1.5 hour jeepney ride from Malaybalay. Waway is part of the Talaandig Tribe (actually brother to the chief). He's also the musical director of Enigmata on Camiguin, and the first Filipino artist to sign with the Putamayo record label (which is well-known for it's focus on world music and it's charmingly illustrated album covers).

My directions were basically: take a jeepney headed to a town-whose-name-I-don't-remember-now, tell the driver you're visiting Waway Saway and he'll make sure you get off at Songco. Then walk up the hill until you get to Waway's house. I wasn't sure how I would end up finding Waway's house, but hoped it was All Going To Work Out.

Actually, I got a much later start than I thought trying to get a jeepney (I left Malaybalay at about 4:30 p.m.), so I realized I was going to be arriving in Songco in the dark. Which is generally not an ideal scenario (greaaaat, I thought, I will get off when the jeepney driver tells me to, in the dark, to find someone's house I've never been to before).

Luckily Nelvin, Ros's cousin from Camiguin, was traveling with me, which made me feel more secure, but he also had no idea where Waway lived either and was looking to me to figure it out. I figured we would just go with the flow. I had a little travel flashlight to light the cliffs up the side of the mountain we would scale with our bare hands, I figured.

Kidding.

The road to Songco was very dusty and bumpy. Nelvin and I were coated with it not too far along into the journey. And 15 minutes into the trip a little girl across from us puked onto her own shoes from getting car -- er, jeepney-sick.

Even so, somehow, I had a very deep -- and unsolicited -- feeling of safety and peace on that jeepney. I don't know why. No, maybe I do:

Maybe it was that the mom holding the little girl yakking on her own shoes looked up at me and flashed me a real smile -- while her daughter was upchucking away onto her own shoes -- neither frustrated or embarrassed or angry, just calm. Maybe it was the way the guys with tshirts wrapped around their heads to keep the dust off, holding onto the back of the jeepney, wordlessly stepped in to help. Maybe it was because one woman traveling alone who got on the jeepney after nightfall suddenly called out a greeting to another woman who got on after her (clearly an acquaintance) and began chatting.

Maybe it was because when you say to the jeepney driver: "I'm going to visit Waway Saway in Songco" he will indeed say, "Oh you're going to Waway's".

I just knew right there and then that whether or not I got off in the dark and had to walk a path I didn't know, no one would hurt me or had any bad intentions towards me. I could feel that sense of community that is so strongly present in many parts of the Philippines, that directly flies in the face of a very overhyped reputation of the Philippines in general, Mindanao in particular, as some unsafe place (hello, Brooklyn? muggings in Madrid? gangs in London? Raging grannies in West Palm Beach? just making up that last one...).

There are areas that travelers should not go to in the southwest part of Mindanao, but most of eastern Mindanao is as fine for travel as anywhere else in the world. Even if Nelvin hadn't been with me in Bukidnon, I would still have felt safe.

Long and short, it was a short walk up a small hill into a small village, and yes indeed, we just asked people where Waway's was and we did indeed find him.

Waway's home and village -- in the heart of Talaandig Land, is a very relaxed community. A sign at the road up to the village says: "Welcome. You are now in the heart of Talaandig Ancestral Territory. Be Culture Conscious...." (grin) Our main activities while I stayed just the one overnight were watching the sunrise from a bamboo treehouse in Waway's house (Waway jokingly took the tribal gong off his wall and told me he'd be waking me up with that so I could see the sunrise over mountainous Bukidnon Province) and listening to Waway play his guitar while passing around a wine bottle with his neighbors around a fire at night.

sunrise over Bukidnon province

Waway is quite a creative force. He makes a lot of the instruments he plays on as well, including an extra-long and thin bamboo flute that is very difficult to play (he's one of the few who can) and a string instrument that I don't know the name of but I've seen around Mindanao. He showed me his dream journal as well, which was a beautiful collection of whimsical sketches and watercolor paintings documenting his dreams.

Waway Saway

traditional homemade string instrument

I also missed seeing him play 2 days later at the continuing Kaamulan Festival (DOH!!). Apparently he was performing traditional music with a 20 piece band and with 50 dancers (DOUBLE DOH!!). If you head to Kaamulan some year in the future, try to find out if Waway will be performing, it sounds like it would be a great performance to catch.

Waway built his house himself, which, like Enigmata, has a lot of bamboo elements both functional and decorative. He lives there with his lovely wife Jessica and his 5 children ranging in age from about 13 to 4, whose chores are written up on a white board in the kitchen and just jump in quietly to help peel potatoes for dinner or do the dishes. Their artwork is hung up around the house. His oldest son plays guitar too and accompanied his dad on singing a song for me that is a lullaby in progress that Waway wrote about his daughter Maya.

Saway kids' artwork: Talaandig pride!

What I was really impressed with as well was that in this small community, there was a house that was in essense a little impromptu museum of the children's artwork and handmade instruments. There were a lot of symbolic brown paintings because the paints were derived from the soil. Everyone should be engaging their kids in the creative process like that, I think. I believe our world would be a much different place if that were the case.

Also unusual for the Philippines, there was no church in the Talaandig community -- I think people here are animists, if that's the right term -- more in touch with nature and the creative spirit and life force. That was the case for many of the people of the Philippines before Muslim traders and Spanish Catholic conquistadors came to its shores hundreds of years ago.

I wish I had had more time to hang with Waway, but I hope to take the inspiration I got being around his community with me for the long-term.

Oh, and lastly, here's Harry the Saway Family Dog. Who, clearly, loves to be loved.

Monks Just Say No to Emotional Baggage

2007-03-06T10:22:00.000-05:00

The Monastery of the Transfiguration was neat to see. It is a Benedictine order that is, like, harder than Harvard to get into.

Although it's spread out over an area, most of the facilities are to accomodate retreat participants. The monastic community is actually only 15 big, including monks and priests. They do have dorm facilities for travelers but they really don't encourage that or want it really as part of their identity to have transient travelers using it as a budget hostel.

I spoke with one of the monks there, who answered all my questions and whose contact info I will post for anyone seeking to find out more information about it or who wishes to attempt to join.

Among the requirements to join are that applicants be college-educated, have worked in the world for a while, and not have psychological problems/emotional baggage. The monk explained it's because the community is so small, they need mature candidates to share the spiritual life with in close quarters. I just found it amusing, as even Harvard will take you if you have emotional baggage.

The monastery is self-sustaining, and follows the ideology of prayer mixed with the sweat of labor. They get up at 3 a.m. in the morning, pray and gather for discussion 7 times a day, and tend food and livestock crops in between. They are in bed by 9 p.m.

They are famous for their Monk's Blend coffee, which will be advertised on products it's made with, like Nestle's Coffee Crumble ice cream ("Made with Monk's Blend Coffee").

The church there is a really cool structure, being a pyramid shape, square inside with modernist touches. Although I can't verify as I was only told word-of-mouth by a non-member, I was told by a Malaybalayan that it cost about P60 million to build (that's more than US$1 million), which is a huge sum of money. No wonder it looks so nice.

Kaamulan Snapshot

2007-03-06T09:34:00.002-05:00

Finally, my glorious Kaamulan snapshots!

So despite the excitement of my posts and the real fun and energy of the festival, I need to clarify a couple things about Kaamulan:

a) I'm not sure exactly how tribally based it is anymore. My earlier post made it sound like an ethnic market was based there, when in truth the markets are about 90% consumer goods made in China that are the same as stuff you'd buy in New York: jeans, flip flops, generic jewelry, Bob Marley keychains, shirts that say "Now auditioning for role of girlfriend", "100% cute", or "I will never forget my shirt from Kaamulan!". Only about 10% is tribal handicrafts like abaca (banana leaf fiber) woven bags or gorgeous T'boli beaded jewelry or the stunning mother of pearl inlaid wooden chests that I believe are also T'boli, or organic Bukidnon rice. It's like that because the people living nearby coming in do not always have access to malls or those type of goods, like pillows or cutesy plastic jewelry or rasta hats.

Also, I *think* the old traditional way things were conducted are now done more privately in December. This is a big, advertised, commercialized festival, and I don't know exactly how many of the dancers are actually of the 7 tribes. It seems like the main point of the festival is now to shop.

b) It was mobbed on Saturday -- it may not be much on a Western tourist map, but it certainly is packed with visiting Filipinos from the outlying areas.

Still, it was totally fun, I would certainly recommend planning a visit to coincide with it. It's still a way to see what some of the tribal costumes would look like, and no doubt some of the dances and music retain their original flavor.

The primary colors of the costums are red and yellow, with some black, white and blue mixed into it all. All the way to Malaybalay in the neigboring areas are red and yellow banners for Kaamulan.

The drumming was awesome, with each float bearing about 20 drummers pounding away on drums and gongs. Some of the dance numbers were better than others, with the dancers yelling in synchronization to add to the rhythm. Some of the moves channeled hunting, or the movements of eagles and monkeys.

Poor dancers .... thanks to the late start, they were absolutely sweating buckets under their costumes and beaded jewelry. The reason they try to start it at 7 a.m. is because it is much cooler then that at 9, or really 10, by they time they got going. It used to be that the dancers did not wear shoes, but they all wear flipflops now otherwise the ground would be too hot for their feet.

Malaybalay itself is a small, dusty, unattractive town surrounded by some nice forests. Here is a link to a Malaybalay site put up by Richard, the NGO volunteer, with some useful info if you are visiting. There are some nice things in an around town including a REALLY nice, pretty cafe called Mint Leaf Cafe that serves TOBLERONE FRAPPUCCINO (yeah) and an interesting monastery. It is quite inexpensive there generally. For some odd reason the primary businesses there seem to be bakery pharmacy bakery pharmacy bakery pharmacy.

I stayed at Small World Travelers, which a new budget hotel that just opened 3 weeks ago right on the town plaza (it's listed on Richard's site). For Kaamulan, the price for a single fan room with shared bath was P420/US$8.40, but normally it's P350/US$7. The rooms are tiny -- just big enough for the bed and some walking around area, but really that's all you need for a budget place. There's doubles as well, and they are building air con accomodations as well.

I have to highly recommend it as a budget option for a few reasons, the main one being that the owners, a British + British-Filipino couple, Neil and Cheryl, were such lovely people. In helping me figure out the best way to get me to the Monks of the Transfiguration Monastery, they decided to just drive me there themselves, and absolutely refused any payment from me for the ride. Not only did their whole family end up coming with me, Cheryl tried to buy me an ice cream cone.

Cheryl, Neil and family.

That aside, what makes it such a good backpacker choice besides an affordable price is that it is very clean, has hot water in the shared bath, each little room has a new t.v. and a tiny balcony, is next to an internet cafe that is open as long as there are customers (P20 per hr only), there is an affiliated budget restaurant downstairs with meals as cheap as P30/US 60 cents, and a bakery next door that, though slightly scary for food, is open 24 hrs, and I like the security of that when I travel.

Budget room at Small World Travelers.

The Briefest of Updates

2007-03-05T18:57:00.000-05:00

Saan ka pupunta, peeps.

I realize I have AN AUDIENCE to keep satisfied (happy dance), so I post to keep the masses coming back.

I have several entries to catch up on, but in short, I realized just how commercialized and non-tribal Kaamulan is, got to meet Waway Saway, a Bukidnon musician of the Talaandig Tribe who is also the very first Filipino artist to sign with Putamayo Records, traveled like an entire day from Talaandig territory back to Malaybalay and then on to Davao, am now in Davao at a swanky hotel, and am going to get to meet another of Ros's friends, Geejay, who (YES YES YES YES!!!!) is going to be performing on Thursday night with the other members of Mebuyan, which is an all-women Muslim dance group doing peace work through the arts here in Davao.

A backlog of entries and more photos tk later. Dag this hotel is expensive! P200/$US4 an hour to use the internet, where other places in Davao are charging P20/USD 40 cents an hour. That's why this entry is short, LOL.

On a parting note, I am struck by one glaring difference between Bolivian buses and Filipino buses. Whereas in Bolivia you will find yourself pleading with tears in your eyes for the driver to stop in a middle of a 13 hr bus drive so you can pee somewhere other than in your pants (with a crew of Bolivians and an Aussie backing you up), Filipino bus drivers do not require this convincing because you will stop every 2 hours for snacks anyway.

I "heart" the Philippines.

LIVE! BLOGGING! FROM KAAMULAN!

2007-03-02T19:00:00.000-05:00

I'm stealing a few moments from my plastic chair sentry to blog. I lucked into a balcony view of the street at Small World Travellers Hostel. The energy here is high -- I woke up at 5:30 a.m., and although everything was supposed to start at 7 a.m., we are of course on Filipino time -- so it's taken until 9 for the parade to show.

The vendors are out and the streets are packed and the drums are on their way!

Yeahhhhh Kaamulan!

Karaoke Before Kaamulan

2007-03-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

I just arrived in Malaybalay, in the mountain-locked province of Bukidnon, Mindanao, today for the famous Kaamulan festival. It's nuts here!

Malaybalay is not a big town normally (about 100,000), but loads of vendors have built up stalls to sell all kinds of wares this month only during the Kaamulan festival. It's almost like being back around West 4th street in New York, walking among the stalls.

I've met up with a contact of a contact of Ros's in Camiguin: a pair of friendly VSO (Volunteer Service Overseas) volunteers were passing by Enigmata for lunch and put me in touch with Richard, who is working for an NGO here in Malaybalay. I met a bunch of his coworkers tonight at dinner -- mostly Filipinos from Manila, Mindanao, Luzon, but also a couple Belgians. They are an interesting group. Like many a public policy project, it sounds like they have lots of meetings to figure out what the point of their work is exactly (or so they joked) but it sounds like they are doing research on environmental science and social justice, among other things working as liasons between government and local community to try to find feasible solutions in implementing government policies with local input.

We inevitably ended up at a karaoke bar, which, here in the Philippines, is NOT like the States. YOU ARE IN COMPETITION with the karaoke bar right next door, so the point is to sing as loudly as possible in order to drown them out. God help anyone who lives in the vicinity of these places and needs to sleep.

These NGO workers are a fun bunch. A couple are really good dancers, including Hussein, who looks like a Pinoy hippie with his long hair.

Kaamulan -- the tribal gathering festival -- will officially start tomorrow, with the big tribal Dance-off on Saturday. I learned that actually, there is another Kaamulan in December, that is more for the tribes, where business is conducted. There will be business conducted this week, but apparently it's more working out of political business than having dialogue. Historically, it brings the tribes together, so it's basically the time that all the people of the area can come together and see one another, arrange weddings, gather with family they have not seen in a while, celebrate their culture.

It's already crazy to see all these vendors open til almost midnight in this little town, selling T'boli beadwork (intense hanging necklaces, earrings, headdresses), woven bags, beautiful mother of pearl chests, flip flops and jeans and mass-produced commercial goods, snacks, Dunkin Donuts. I hear it's going to be a mad party here for the next 2 days. I really can't believe this is not more on a tourist map, though I may live to regret those words if this ever becomes tourist-popular.

I doubt this is going to be any kind of possibility, but the fact that gorgeous mother-of-pearl inlaid black wooden chests like the kind my mother had in our house growing up are selling here for about US$350 (with no negotiating yet attempted) has me plotting how on earth to buy one and take it back with me. A highly unlikely scenario as I can't see holding it on my lap on the bus to Davao, but I can dream.

Coming back from the karaoke bar, I ran into what I think was a dress rehearsal for one contingent, slowly dancing in the street to tribal drumming and gongs in mass sync. All I will say is: it looks super cool. Can't wait to post more.

Did I mention I'm having a great time? I think this has now officially moved into the category of Funnest. Vacation. Ever.

Crumbling Houses and Hot Springs

2007-03-01T10:05:00.000-05:00

Goodbye Camiguin

Staying at Enigmata has been such a great experience. In particular for putting me in touch with Ros, who is a wealth of information on Philippines art and culture, particularly of the south.

"Ma'am Ros" (as her students call her)

While I am finding out, like, a week late that Bohol is FAMOUS for it's heritage okkil houses (DOH!) that you can visit and look at (DOUBLE DOH!), Ros took me around the many okkil houses of Camiguin around Mambajao yesterday. There are more on other parts of the island, but that's all we had time for. I will need to save further exploration for another trip.

I even got to go inside a couple by asking the owners politely if I could and explaining my interest (with a little proactive push from Ros).

Okkil is essentially the art of wood carving. These houses that are typically about 100 years old have a common look to them. Squarish structures with windows that have wood and capiz shell shutters that slide open. The typical okkil patterns cut into the wood trim or along the tops of walls on the interiors are both decorative and functional -- they vent the air.

Almost none that I saw have been kept up, and many are about to fall apart, which is sad. At least one is being renovated by a man who is interested in preserving it.

The nicest one I saw has been kept up functionally by one family, who was so gracious and happy to show me their house. It's funny, they look like not that much from the outside necessarily, but when you go in you really get the sense of the structure because the ceiling are REALLY HIGH, and they are designed to be very big open spaces inside, it is an unusual structure and design.

The interior of the family's house and a detail of the wood carving trim at the top -- note how high the ceilings are compared to the lola.

In the bottom of one of the nicest okkil houses here the Paradiso. It's an Italian restaurant owned by an Italian, so the food is pretty good.

To top off a great day, we did a spontaneous trip to the Arden Hot Springs after dinner. Visiting a hot springs at night, then riding back home in the dark on a scooter is exhilirating. Admittance was P30/US 60 cents, I had to buy a tiedyed wrap thing there because I didn't have any extra clothes with me -- in recent years a market has sprung up around the hot springs that was open with lots of tourist items, all stamped with "I went to Camiguin Island, Philippines!", so finding something wasn't a problem. Wouldn't you know we drove past more than a couple karaoke places going full steam near the natural hot springs.... There were a lot of people at the springs at night, surprisingly, including families.

I have really really enjoyed my time on Camiguin, even though I barely got to see any "sights" due to scuba diving lessons and just trying to have some down time. I've had such a comfortable feeling of safety, and although Filipinos are already known for being warm, the Camiguin people are about the friendliest people I've ever seen. Sometimes this means a very long and personal list of questions will be asked as you are walking past. Still, it's been a great few days. I highly recommend a visit for people looking for some natural beauty and peaceful island life.

Diving around Camiguin

2007-02-27T22:42:00.000-05:00

It has happened: I am now PADI-certified to scuba dive.

I've been doing my open water dives over the past few days with Johnny's Dive n' Fun here on Camiguin.

I can't express, after the bad experience I had on Bohol, how glad I am that I waited to do my open water dives here on Camiguin, instead of on Alona Beach. The equipment is all pretty new and in great condition (scuba shops typically use them until they fall apart, which is not really how you want to go 60 ft. underwater). My dives were all one-on-one with the divemasters, as they don't have that much traffic and I'm at the end of the season. I felt extremely comfortable with them. Not to mention, I think the general pace here on Camiguin is just much better for learning than on Bohol. The teachers are more relaxed with taking their time to do everything properly.

I did 3 dives with Alan "the Eye", who was a local fisherman before he became a divemaster at this shop. He's been diving these waters for something like 9 years, and is extremely knowledgable and comfortable with the terrain around here. He got his nickname "the Eye" because of his tendency to point out critters that others might not notice. He picked up what I would have sworn was a wobbly shaped piece of styrofoam floating along the bottom to show me. Lo and behold, it was a white spongy fish/sea creature. It barely showed any signs of not being a piece of styrofoam, except that it distinctly walked off his hand with its fins and swam back to the ocean floor.

I stayed in shallow waters with Alan, around the Secret Cove reef area first, then 2 dives at White Island (which is basically a large white sandbar a boatride out from the shore near Secret Cove resort). There is a bit of a current in the waters around White Island, I attempted hovering/practicing buoyancy, but I ended up being pushed along by the current. The corals there are lovely, lots of interesting critters, some small fish. I saw a floating starfish that looked like something out of a Tim Burton/Star Trek movie: a black, multi armed with long thin feathery arms, radial creature with no visible eyes.

I can't identify much of what we saw, except for clownfish hiding in the corals, angelfish, and big bright blue starfish.

Alan took us to a fishing trap on the bottom with some varied colorful fish inside. There was a sea snake -- an eel inside, that was big and kept trying to get out with no luck. I guess it will be someone's dinner soon.

There was a suckerfish that followed us along: it's long, black and white, and small -- less than a foot long and very thin. I thought it was just a friendly curious creature, as it followed us all through our dive, but really it was trying to hitch a ride on us.

I did my last dive today with John, who is a former Californian-turned-Camiguin-dive-master. Today we went deeper in the water, looking around a sunken sailboat and the edge of a larger reef. There were more schools of fish, but nothing big, more pretty corals. Comically, a suckerfish attached itself to John's airtank. They usually attach to whales or sharks or big fish and gather algae for food.

Our visibility was poor today for Camiguin waters: 10 m. John says it's typically excellent visibility here: 25 m. being the norm for these waters. But still I saw a lot of cool critters and enjoyed the experience of it all.

Unfortunately I think I'm out of time here, and so won't get to actually dive the underwater volcano -- you can see the lava flows underwater, which sounds amazing. Also the underwater cemetary is now off-limits to divers and fishermen, because it's now a protected marine sanctuary for aquatic life. Another cool site around here is a giant clam nursery that is open to divers -- how cool does that sound?

A typical dive with Johnny's is US$22/P1100, plus US$10/P500 for all-day equipment rental.

My 4 open-water dives (the coursework and pool portions were done in New York separately) cost me US$300/P15000. By contrast, the dive shop in Bohol that I will always remember for facilitating my vomiting underwater twice was charging me just about US$100 for the 4 open-water dives, but frankly, the comfort I felt with this shop made it well worth the money. You're literally putting your safety into someone else's hands when you learn to scuba. It's one occasion when paying the extra money is just plain worth it.

Cross Posting Alert!

2007-02-26T04:12:00.000-05:00

Because it will be lost if I put it with the Chinese New Year entry, I am putting a link to Gypsy Christine's writeup of the Chinese New Year festivities in Malate here.

She snapped pictures of the kids who serenaded us, among other things, so you can see a bit of what that evening looked like.

Vegetarians Alive!

2007-02-25T04:44:00.000-05:00

I arrived at the ferry dock on Camiguin overwhelmed by touts overcharging me for transportation they didn't have (middlemen, in essence, aggressively negotiating an inflated price in order to flag down transport for me). Although in American dollars it means being overcharged by about $2, I hate this kind of interaction.

And, it's completely atypical of the people on Camiguin.

This is such a chilled out, friendly island. I am at the Enigmata Artist's Ecolodge, where Rosalyn, the artist running Enigmata day-to-day, has taken me under her wing. She knows practically everyone here, not to mention in Davao, talks a-mile-a-minute, and is bubbling over with energy and ideas.

The aesthetic at Enigmata is very DIY (do-it-yourself) whimsical, with artwork and fabric and natural/recycled decorative materials everywhere.

Every little nook and cranny has a dreamcatcher or a painting or a bottlecap sculture positioned there. I have a whole floor of the treehouse to myself, the Shell Garden suite, overhung with pretty shells, and a bed that is hung with white netting.

Netted bed at Enigmata

As I made new multilegged friends in the bathroom last night (yes yes they are more scared of me than I am of them, I know I know), I realized the white princess bed netting is functional as well as aesthetic. The floor is made of bamboo slats, and you take your shoes off before going inside to keep it clean. There is a pretty woven hammock, a table and chairs made out of local wood, and the old tree runs through the middle of the floor.

The pretty and creatively articulated interior of the Shell Garden Suite, Enigmata

The corners are dusty and fabrics are frayed around the edges, but this place is loaded with personality and charm. And for vegetarians visiting the Philippines, there is an unusual wealth of choices on the menu. My first day here, Ros made curried monggo (Filipino lentils) over a red rice that's native to Bohol. It was delicious. I also had thick wheat bread toast topped with wild ferns, cooked onions, and parmesan cheese, which was also really good. The mango shakes are fabulous too.

The meals are between about P80-P180/US$1.60-$3.60, very affordable.

I have never been anywhere with such intense humidity. It rained steadily the first day, and I feel like even at night things are still a bit moist, even with the fan on.

Camiguin is an interesting island, with a mountainous, jungle interior (with springs, and volcanos as well). Most people live around the shore areas circling the island. Enigmata is set slightly into the interior, and I feel like I'm staying in the jungle, teeming with life (eek).

Among her many projects, Ros teaches an ecotoursim class at the local Camiguin Polytechnic High School. For Camiguin Polytechnic arts and culture weekend, she's been working with her students to put on a performance about Camiguin culture, using theatre and storytelling to discuss environmental and history issues, in the local dialect. The kids were milling around Enigmata during the morning, practicing songs and rehearsing.

I lucked into watching their performance last night. For kids with no theatre or performance background at all, they surprised their friends and administrators with what they put together. The principal spontaneously cancelled classes the next day as a reward for all the hard work the students had been putting into the weekend overall. It's very cool to see young people putting forth such energy into an awareness of environmental issues. And although I didn't understand the dialogue, they were cracking up their friends in the audience with the humor in the performance. Among other skits, there were 2 guys with big styrofoam cockscombs on their heads, imitating a cockfight (cockfights are very popular activities on Sunday afternoons). There was also a Miss Camiguin Lanzones Festival skit, cracking up the audience (the Lanzones Festival is famous here), and an eco-awareness skit about oil spills polluting the environment.

Camiguin Polytechnic ecotourism class kids strike a pose

I further lucked out after the show by being invited along to a celebratory disco put on by the Camiguin Polytechnic teachers and administrators. Ros was my in, of course, I just tagged along with her on the back of a scooter. That was a funny scene, with some cheesy old-timey disco music playing while all the matrons and old guys danced.

When the dj flipped over to more current music, Ros's choreographer and his friends got out on the floor. It was a really fun night, though we sweated buckets and at some point had a mini-brownout.

It's amazing how easy it feels to do things here on Camiguin. I feel like this is really the essence of island life, right here.

Night Ferry to Cagayan de Oro

2007-02-25T04:39:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I experienced my very first Philippine Night Ferry.

Ralph at the Alona Tourist Center booked my Tourist Class ticket (there is General and Tourist) for about P700/US$14. I imagined that meant private cabins on board as opposed to open dormitories, but basically tourist gets you an air conditioned dorm as opposed to an open air dorm. And thin blankets to lay on your plastic bunk (the price difference is about P100/US$2).

Odd as it feels to be sleeping among complete strangers with all your belongings out, it felt safe. Hard to explain, but the vibe was not a Manila one. There were families and kids about, and a few other travelers, and both women and men. I did sleep with a money belt on for precaution, with documents and money inside, but really it was not threatening.

Ferry routes in the Philippines are of course dependent on demand. Although Camiguin is not far from Bohol on the map, getting there means you take a Tagbilaran to Cagayan de Oro ferry, then a bus from CdO to another town, then a ferry from that town to Camiguin.

The Tagbilaran to Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao left at 7:20 p.m. and arrived at about 5:45 a.m. the next day.

Our in-cruise entertainment was B-grade Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that I couldn't identify, on a small t.v. with static. On the back open air deck was where you could buy some bbq and rice and sit down at the tables, there was also a tv on the left side of the kitchen with Filipino programming. Unsurprisingly, to the right side of the kitchen was a larger tv for the karaoke corner. And most unfortunately, the boat designer should be shaken for positioning the smokestack ahead of the eating area -- you basically breathed the ship exhaust while eating out on the deck or looking out on the water.

I bought 2 sticks of chicken bbq and rice for dinner for P50/US$1 (each stick: P20, rice: P10). And on biting into it, realized I had just purchased my very first chicken-back-and-neck-cue. Uck. I was relieved to find out that's why the cue, while looking all tasty and meaty, was completely criss-crossed with bones. I was starting to worry I had inadvertently sampled some other Creature-Cue.

I tried to strike up a conversation with a French traveler sporting a "Zidane" shirt, Christoph. I recognized him from Alona and told him so. Funny, when I said hello initially, he said with interest, "You have an accent. Where are you from?" Here, I very much have an odd American accent, apparent both to Filipino locals and to other Western travelers. I was pleased to put my quickly deteriorating French to use. He was pleased and suprised that I spoke some French ("It is good to speak French" he said proudly), but the conversation didn't continue, unfortunately. I still seemed stuck in the "Alona Beach" traveler aloofness.

After listening to a variety of popular songs being butchered on the karaoke deck until about midnight, I stayed up a bit more, clinging to the railing posts on the open deck, watching the water dancing away from the boat in white spray into the blackness of sea and sky meeting somewhere out there in an invisible dark horizon. The stars were extremely clear. Manu Chao's "Infinita Tristeza" played in my headphones, keeping me company in all the blackness and silence of the Philippine seas. It was beautiful. I even spotted a tiny flying fish by the side of the boat at one point.

Down in the Floating Tourist Dormitory, I had exchanged smiles with a Canadian pair: Dave and Jenny. Although we were all completely knackered from the journey, once we ended up on the same bus in Cagayan de Oro the next morning and realized we were all headed to Camiguin, we started chatting (which is generally how I've met other travelers on journeys, when you realize you're all travelers and all headed the same way, you chat while in transit). They had some interesting takes on Alona:

a) The Alona Tropical (where I had eaten some meals because they had fancy outdoor seating), they also found the other travelers and staff there to be unusually snooty. They got much friendlier reception from the other travelers as soon as they left that area of Alona.

b) I love Canadians and their nature-knowledge. Jenny is very knowledgable about plantlife -- to generalize, many a Canadian traveler I've met seems much more informed about nature than the average American traveler -- and so she had really appreciated and been blown away by some of the plants and flowers growing naturally around Alona Beach.

c) They noted that the pricing was generally higher for us because of Chinese New Year. So a lot of the prices I quoted in an earlier post are higher than what one usually finds on Alona.

Parting Thoughts on Alona Beach

2007-02-23T01:18:00.000-05:00

Wouldn't you know, on the day that I am leaving Alona is the day I'm really finding my groove here. I wish I'd embraced just doing nothing at the beach earlier, as I'm enjoying that flow very much today, and not been bothered by the lack of conversation on the part of the other tourists here.

Also, the tourists here have been a bit friendlier, so perhaps it's just subjective. Some German matrons, among others, smiled back at me, and for the first time I had a nice chat this morning with 2 travelers from Los Angeles, Dennis and Gerry. Dennis was the first person here to not find the idea of backpacking solo unusual, as he's traveled that way as well.

I've also found a bar on the beach with a nicer vibe than the Oops! bar, the Alona Vida, that has a great world music mix and a large roundish bar that you can eat dinner at. I still didn't meet other travelers there -- and frankly there are plenty I am glad I didn't get into conversation with, namely the fine specimens of Western manhood with bouffants of bad hair and baseball caps drunkenly urging the petite Filipina bartender to smmiiiile more, you should really smmiiillle more.

{Ick.}

But eating at a counter is a much better way to facilitate conversation over dinner than sitting at a separate table. I chatted with the bartender and one of the waitresses there, and perhaps on a different night would have struck up conversation with travelers I could relate to.

My parting impressions are:

This is a nice beach with a mix of some activity and peacefulness. It's not too overdeveloped or crowded (and let's hope it stays that way), but there's quite a lot here as well: restaurants, bars, dive shops, little stalls to buy some fruits and dry goods, even a disco I didn't realize was here, off the beach along the road to the main road.

It IS a really nice place to travel to with your family and relax at, or to spend time with your significant other, or your barkada / gang of friends. It seems ideal to hang out in with people you know. The people watching is kind of fun.

Pricing:

- FLIGHTS: My one-way Cebu-Pacific airfare was US$40 from Manila. I assume a round-trip would be US$80. I was told Dennis that Philippine Airlines was offering an all inclusive package of round-trip flight from Manila, 2 nights at the Alona Tropical (which seems nice from the outside), free breakfast, and a Chocolate Hills / tarsiers tour for P8000/US $160. Which sounded like a really good deal. I wouldn't be surprised then if there were other good-deal packages being offered, so perhaps shopping around for a package tour isn't a bad idea.

- LODGING: The resorts (and some that are called resorts are not luxury places), range from over USD $100 per night to my little room at Bohol Divers for $16/night. I don't know if there are cheaper options than where I was at on the beach proper, but Sun Appartelle and the hostel across from it, which is just a 15 minute walk away, is even cheaper, I believe. There were several midrange options here in the USD $50/night area, which tend to include air conditioning and sometimes your own kitchen to cook in, or simply nicer rooms.

- FOOD: Breakfast ranges from P100-P200/US$2-4 for an all inclusive breakfast, lunch and dinner tend to be priced the same and are around P100/US$2 on the cheapest end to P400/US$8 on the high end. San Miguel beer can be had for P40-55/US 80 cents-$1.10, wine seems to be about P100/US$2 a glass, and cocktails around P150-220/US$3-4.40.

- DIVING: I've only gotten one price for dives here, which is P1100/US$22. I think that is typical though, based on what my guidebook says.

Goodbye, Alona, helllllooooo Camiguin!

Tiny Tarsiers, Big Hills, and Boundaries

2007-02-23T00:10:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I did the requisite Bohol tour of the Tarsiers and the Chocolate Hills, with a little cruise of the Loboc River thrown in for good measure.

Funny floating restaurant and floating band on Loboc River

I went to the tourist center here, where the guys have been very helpful and friendly with arranging ferry tickets and other information. In typical island fashion though, I arranged for a car to come at 10:30 a.m., at which time Ralph (of the tourist office) informed me the driver was running late -- would 11:00 a.m. be ok? Sure, I said, I wasn't in a hurry. I was happy enough to hang in the hotter than hot little shack of a tourist office, sweating it out under the rotating fan and chatting with Ralph and his coworker.

Ten minutes later, Ralph told me that the driver had just called again, he was still in Tagbilaran and couldn't guarantee a time that he'd be there to pick me up. Perhaps reading between the lines, Ralph said, "I can't guarantee a car for you. They're all of them on Chocolate Hills tours. I'm sorry." I appreciated his honesty, and slightly nervously accepted an alternate -- a 6 hour ride on the back of a scooter to the Chocolate Hills. I also had the number of a taxi driver who said he could come, but I was in the mood to be adventurous and try riding a scooter for the first time -- plus it was P1000/US$20 cheaper (P800/US$16 for a scooter tour, P1800/US$36 for a car tour).

Being on a scooter was so fun. If you're not in a pollution-conjested place with minimal traffic, it's a far better way to see the countryside and experience the environment. The drawbacks are of course you breathe more dirt and exhaust, and you have to wear something like sunglasses or goggles to cover your eyes. Also, I got sunburned and a little heat exhausted despite applying sunscreen twice -- be sure to cover your skin with long sleeved light clothing if you're out for 6 hours on a bike in the tropical daylight.

At one point along the long journey, we passed through the "man-made forest" that's famous on Bohol. It is a forest that was entirely planted by human hands about 30 years ago. It's a tourist attraction, that for me, on paper, didn't have any attraction. Who cares if it's man-made or natural? I thought. But being on a scooter I really felt it's presence the way you wouldn't inside a car: the moment we passed into it, I swear it was like stepping into air conditioning. The temperature from outside the forest to inside felt like a temperature drop of 20 degrees. Wacky.

The only thing that was a real bummer was that my driver, Jo-Jo, thought it was appropriate conversation to hit on me, asking what hotel I was at and what room number I was in. I of course a) intially lied about which hotel I was in, b) got mad and questioned why on earth he was asking what room I was staying in. Only not as wordily as that: "BAKIT!!!" (WHY!!!) I barked at him.

"Just as friends, just as friends," he shouted. "WE'RE NOT FRIENDS!!!" I yelled. Then I yelled how inappropriate it was for him to be asking that, how uncomfortable that would make a woman feel, it was not nice, etc. It was basically a much toned-down version of the boundary assertion I have had to exercise in New York City (yelling just because of the wind, not to convey anger), because a New York response would not be appropriate here in the provinces of the Philippines. My goal was to establish a boundary and make my feelings very clear, not to humiliate someone and make a potential enemy out of them.

Once Jo-Jo realized how mad I was, he apologized, "Hey, Christina! I'm sorry! Ok? I'm sorry!! Ok??"

I post this because it's the experience of single female backpackers everywhere to deal with stuff like this, all over the world. It's not uncommon for men to hear "female traveler" and think coming onto you is going to go over well. They are often unintentionally clueless that it's threatening, not charming, to have some stranger asking for your personal information.

Although it bothers me when I have to deal with stuff like that (wouldn't you know a middle-aged tourist at the Tarsier Center kept trying to hit on me too), women who travel cannot allow that to ruin the enjoyment of travel that we deserve just as much as our male counterparts. So I tried to not let it affect my enjoyment of the sights.

The tarsier center in Loboc is a lot smaller than I thought -- I am not sure if it's the main one as I believe there are a couple more, one of which has the tarsiers behind glass. These poor little guys were being handled a bit by the tourists and people running the place. It was a suggested donation fee to see the tarsiers.

itty bitty tariser

Tarsiers' claim to fame is being the smallest primate, but they are not monkeys. They are smaller than my hand, have saucer-eyes that are bigger than their brain, and can swivel their head 180 degrees. They are awfully cute.

I did the Loboc River boat tour, but really, it's not all that eventful. If you're with a group, you can go swimming where there's a small waterfall. What was comical were all the floating restaurant barges, and floating bands playing to the floating restaurants. Bad blogger that I am, I forget how much it was to take the boat ride.

The Chocolate Hills are indeed cool-looking. They are a geologically oddity, drop-shaped hills arising from the earth in all directions from the viewing point, scattered with palm trees and farmland. Entrance was P10/USD 20 cents. You could live if you never saw them in your life, but still, they're cool to see. Legends abound on what caused the upswelling, from the tears of a broken-hearted giant to the droppings of a giant carabao.

The Chocolate Hills

The other drawback of a 6 hour scooter ride? Your bum really hurts at the end!

Alona at Bohol

2007-02-21T00:49:00.001-05:00

I'm now at Alona Beach in Bohol, on Panglao Island. (It's a 30 minute drive from the airport at Tagbilaran).

The bancas at Alona

It is nice here, but I had heard many say it rivaled Boracay, and so was surprised that the beach is short and not white sand. Many of the resorts have built right up close to the waters' edge (the exception being the Alona Tropical, at the left end of the beach when facing the water).

There's lots of seaweed and underwater growth that come up to the shore also, so you only get out about a little more than waist deep before you step on a thick forest of underwater seagrass. There's lots of starfish in there, so it's probably nice for snorkeling, but feels a little funky to walk on with bare feet when you can't see what might be in the sea grass.

The vibe is really a "do not disturb" one from the other tourists, mostly couples and families, so as a solo backpacker it's a little disappointing. Not many tourists make eye contact and smile, it seems, even when eating at the same relaxed outdoor restaurant. I think perhaps people have come to escape their lives and lie on the beach and be catered to (and that's not criticism on my part, that's perfectly understandable at times), just those are not the people who are really looking to adventurously mingle with the other tourists, who are really quite diverse -- Japanese, Filipinos, Aussies, Germans, French, Americans, Koreans.

I stepped off the plane and checked in here convinced I was going to die of dengue fever because I wasn't feeling well after eating at Kamayan, and my gums started spontaneously bleeding on the plane here, which scared the crap out of me. Perhaps it was the airline pressure. And of course whenever you diagnose yourself via Google, you think you're going to die of something. I wasn't running a high fever, so it wasn't that or malaria, and of course I'm fine now.

But that's all to say when I checked in at Bohol Divers Resort I was feeling too crappy to question why I wasn't getting a beachfront room like I thought my email reservation had said, but was far in the back, in my fan room with no ocean breeze. I asked the next day, and I'm sure I got the wrong room, but now there's no ocean front. Anyway, it's a little cheaper than what they quoted me (P800 / USD $16 per night), and I had already gotten acclimated to the space once I unpacked, so although I reserved the oceanfront for my last 2 nights, I might just stay put rather than pack and unpack again for just 2 night.

Also, the fan was dusty and hung over one of the beds, but once I put in a request for things they got taken care of quickly. Bohol Divers is NOT one of the fancier places, it's certainly a little rustic, but it's fine enough for beach living and kind of cute. It face a green lawn area fringed with some bushes and a few tropical flowers: pleasant enough.

So I'm in a room that looks like a little hut, with a bathroom in the back that's got a shower and bucket right next to the toilet. Here on Alona Beach, unless you pay top dollar for one of the nicer resorts, the bath water is semi-salt, as it costs more to pipe in fresh water. This also means I've been buying lots of drinking water and have my own stash in my room. Luckily it's cheap on the dollar: P60/$1.20 for about a gallon. By the smaller bottle from the stalls along the beach, I think it's priced a little higher than, say, a Manila 7-11, because it's a captive audience here, and fresh water is a commodity when the taps run salt.

There are 2 double beds in my "hut", with a wood cabinet and dresser. The walls are covered with thatch weaving, which is sort of nice, but also makes the room a little dark. I have a small concrete landing outside my room with a plastic table and 2 red chairs and a clothesline for my wet things to hang outside. I leave my sandy shoes outside and put on a pair of indoor flipflops, and it's all good and homey.

As stated earlier, the beach massages are really super great, and just P250/US$5. The food is inexpensive here too. Breakfast on the Bohol Divers patio restaurant is P150/US$3 for full American breakfast (including coffee/tea), the full Filipino breakfast is P100/US$2 (also including coffee/tea).

The swankier place at the far end of the beach, the Alona Tropical, is P195/US$4 for either style of breakfast. They pitch a huge tent on the beach itself, under which fit about 12 nice wood tables and some arty Asian statues and shell arrangements. Diners can eat their bbq chicken, abodo, grilled fish, curry, garlic rice, mango shake, calamansi juice (you get the idea) with their feet in the sand, looking at the water. Lunch/dinner entries (they're generally the same menu) ranges from P100/US$2 for sandwiches or pancit to P300/US$6 on Alona, generally (I misquoted my pricing earlier, making it seem more expensive here). There's also bbq stall options at the eateries, which are even cheaper -- 2 sticks of pork bbq and some rice is about P100/$2 (not quite a meal, unless you have a small appetite, which for some reason I do).

The Ooops! Bar is the most popular hangout at night, but I've not been that inspired by the crowd to hang out there so far.

I'm also here to get PADI open water certified to scuba dive, and so yesterday, feeling much better from my post-dengue-fever-paranoia, I ventured out on a boat to get into the open sea for the first time.

Long story short, I got seasick and vomited into my regulator underwater. Twice. And vomited once more for good measure getting back up on the boat. It was scary, but I have my friend Junie to thank (thanks Junie if you're reading this) for telling me she did the same thing underwater. So at least I didn't completely panic and think I'd die.

Still, it's kind of scary as a newbie diver to be upchucking fluid into your air source. One of the cardinal scuba rules is to never take the regulator out of your mouth, you do whatever business you do through it: cough, sneeze, vomit, it stays in your mouth. So basically you vomit (you're not eating lunch I hope?) into the regulator, then hit the purge button to flush air through and out the sides, and then you can breathe again through your vomit-flecked mouth. Mmmm.

Also compounding my fear was a sense I had forgotten everything I'd learned from my PADI course in New Year, with the accompanying mental message retained from my PADI class that if you screw it up YOU CAN DIE. Remember never to hold your breath or you can rupture a lung and YOU CAN DIE. Don't forget to continually check your gauges or else you may run out of air and YOU CAN DIE. Don't let your buddy get too far or if you have a problem and they can't help you YOU CAN DIE. Don't touch anything! Or else... YCD!

I'm not sure I'm exactly cut out for scuba diving, but I've decided to take today off and try again tomorrow. I think I will try to at least push through the 4 open water dives that are required to get certified, and face the fear. Then if I'm still not liking it I will skip plans to dive the underwater cemetary at Camiguin or do any other diving while here.

I'm also kind of mad at the scuba instructor for taking us out when the water was so choppy. In addition to getting seasick, which I know happens to divers sometimes, the rough waves made it harder for this newbie to manuever underwater. Perhaps that's unreasonable, as it's common for divers to get seasick going out.

The little bits of underwater life I saw were pretty cool, the sea anemones winking open and the clownfish poking around, but also the waves I think were making it more cloudy down there than usual.

Will keep everyone posted. That is, of course, if I don't get eaten by a shark. Good night.

Massage Heaven, and I Kill the Mood at Kamayan

2007-02-20T23:02:00.000-05:00

After successfully scoring a good pair of teva-style sandals for about P500 (approx USD $10) at the Glorietta, I hustled back to Malate to get a massage at the Sanctuario Day Spa before meeting up with fellow backpacker Jenna for dinner.

I am so loving the affordable massages here. I think in Asia there is the concept of massage as for one's health, as opposed to it being more of a luxury spa good in the West. Not to say it's always one or the other in either place, but that's why I think its tends to be proportionately cheaper in Asia.

My one-hour aromatherapy massage was P1,020. Plus a tip, it was approximately USD $22.

In New York, a one-hour spa massage is going to run you around $110 once you figure in tax and tip. But I don't think it's just the exchange rate at work for the price difference, because the average cost of an entree at a nicer restaurant runs about $20 in NYC. The cost of a massage is more than 5 times that, so it's definitely a luxury item.

The cost of a dinner entree at a nice restaurant like M Cafe in Manila seems to average around P450, so it's only about twice as much (all the other massages like Thai or shiatsu average P850), which to me makes it a smaller luxury here. If a New York massage were just twice the price of a nice dinner entree, I'd be getting them a lot more, but at more than 5 times the price of a nice dinner entree for a one-hour massage, it's just not affordable.

And, just to fan the flames of jealousy further in my readership back in New York, heh heh .... on Alona Beach here in Bohol, a perfectly reputable (and FABULOUS) massage from a uniformed massage therapist while on a beach blanket under the swaying palm fronds while the ocean breezes blow is P250 (yes you read that right -- USD $5!).

The Sanctuarium is a couple parts elegance to one part hominess. Meaning it's inside a house renovated to be a spa, so some of the homey, non-glamorous bits poke through, and the style ranges from elegant zen rock ponds to cutesy trimmings. Like the pink flipflops you get to walk around in, adorned with plastic flowers. I liked it a lot, but it wasn't entirely modernist elegant. They give you a cheery yellow-orange floral print wraparound skirt and beach top to wear while walking around. You get some hamman (steam bath) and cold dunk pool time with your massage, but ironically I had to rush through my relaxing accoutrements to meet with Jenna at 8.

We went to Kamayan, which I had thought was a place where you can eat with your hands and had especially traditional Filipino cuisine. Wellll, that's not what we got.

I don't know if it's changed since it started or if I got the wrong restaurant or something, but it's all buffet style -- I think it got bought over by Dad's, which is a chain buffet restaurant here. The Filipino food was good and all, but it wasn't exceptional or anything. And no banana leaf / bamboo furniture aesthetic, just generic furniture.

For just the Filipino buffet, it was I think P350 (USD $7). For both the Filipino and the US/Japanese/Korean sides, it was about P500 (USD $10).

There was, in the large dining area, a band of blind guitar-playing singers doing the rounds. Towards the end of the evening when Kamayan began to empty out, the restaurant staff started to really groove on the different tunes, sometimes stopping to sing along. The Dancing Sushi Chef was really funny, he'd clandestinely start to dance, then when he caught me and Jenna laughing at him, he'd grin and stop.

When they got to our table, I put in my request for John Lennon's "Let It Be". Which they didn't know (???) but did "Hey Jude" instead. Jenna's request for "Hotel California" was extremely popular with everyone present, the band really singing their hearts out and the waiters gathering around.

Unfortunately I am baduy (tacky) enough to request an old-timey Filipino love song called "Dahil Sa Iyo." It was always a bit cheesey, but it was permanently super-cheesified by Imelda Marcos, who used to belt it out at many a diplomatic opporunity or campaign trail moment.

Upon hearing my request, one of the waiters standing by who'd been singing along groaned and covered his eyes: "okay, goodbye!" Pretty much everyone else but the band walked off.

My closing note: the next day I had minor tummy troubles. I don't know if it was from the food I had at Kamayan. It could have been accumulated bacterial exposure, but come to think of it buffets may not always be dependable for freshness.

And a travelers' tip: I don't know if this really works, but it seems a good idea. Drink Yakult when you get to the Philippines to help your digestive tract adjust.

Eating local yogurt, which contains the "good" bacteria local to the area, generally helps balance your digestive system against local bad bacteria whenever you travel. Yogurt is not so common here as Yakult, a little yogurt drink that's common in other parts of Asia too. The ones sold here seem to be manufactured within the Philippines, and it's cheap and easy to find at most 7-11s, supermarkets and convenience stores. A tiny little bottle is P9 (USD 20 cents), drink one or two a day.

Malls and Taxi Encounter #2

2007-02-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

Back in Manila, I did what I philosophically resist but eventually succumbed to, and if you visit Manila for more than 3 days I swear you will too: I visited a mall.

I hate malls in general. They are spaces built with profit in mind, as opposed to parks or some open town square. Here in the Philippines, malls are serious business, and I must say they absolutely have their plusses. Not to mention that their popularity, and air conditioned environment -- while still making them overwhelming crowded places designed to get you to buy stuff you don't really need -- makes them a little bit more of a hangout place than in the U.S. For example it's not unusual for concerts and dance recitals to happen in malls: generally for free, I might add. There's also play areas in some malls for kids.

For the traveler, you really can, under one roof, take care of lots of business at the mall. You can safely exchange your money at a more favorable rate than a bank will give you. You can use the ATM, you can buy pretty much anything you're going to need in your travels throughout the Philippines. You can get lunch either cheaply at a fast food joint, or go to a pretty good restaurant: some very nice restaurants are located in malls here (I shudder to type those words, but it's true).

So in the pursuit of hiking sandals before setting out for my Bohol, Camiguin, Mindanao circuit, I grabbed a cab from Malate to Glorietta 4, in Makati.

I stepped into the cab, and after we started off for Glorietta, the driver began telling me "wow, you are verrrry beautiful! What's your birthday? I'm going to play those numbers on the lottery, because you are so beautiful!"

Oy.

I don't generally like that reaction to me in the Philippines. Because I think it's because I'm half-white, sometimes I'm automatically seen as "so beautiful." Filipinos are a very handsome people, I don't think being tisay (mixed race) is more or less pretty than not being tisay or tisoy.

He asked me to pick four more numbers, because why? Because I'm so beautiful, of course. He'd play those numbers too. After a bit of conversation, and we came back to how I'm so beautiful, I got a little annoyed and said, "you know, I'm just average, like everyone else. You should pick numbers, I mean, I'm sure they're just as lucky if you pick them."

He considered that, said, "Well, OK. You're not, you know, MAGANDA maganda. But still ...... (polite tone after pause) ganda." (Translation: Ok, fine, you're not, like REALLY beautiful. But you're ...... (polite tone after pause) pretty.")

As I mentally started deducting from his tip, I remembered Manilena Leslie's words on taxi drivers: "sometimes I tip more when they just don't talk."

Pinoy Humor Moment #1

2007-02-20T21:04:00.000-05:00

Spotted at the Glorietta 4, inside breadtalk (a trendy bakery with some tasty looking Western style baked goods) was a crusty bread roll cut to reveal the cheese and ham swirled throughout.

The name of the pastry? "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bacon."

Boom cha cha ching boom bang: HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!

2007-02-18T10:58:00.000-05:00

Saturday (yesterday) I checked into Friendly's Guesthouse in Malate in preparation for a traveler's meetup a couple blocks away, at The Oarhouse.

Friendly's certainly lives up to it's name. Benjie the owner is very hospitable -- I unfortunately couldn't stay for the wine hour he has going here on Saturday night to allow travelers to mingle. I highly recommend it to budget travelers. It is nothing fancy, the walls are thin and the rooms small, but the common areas are a nice touch, with cool views overlooking the bustle of Malate and some cross breeze and plenty of plants to soften the environment.

View of Friendly's common interior

There is a book exchange as well -- apparently a lot of Peace Corps volunteers pass through Friendly's and they tend to keep it going. It's clean enough -- just meaning the bathrooms and the kitchen sink have a little mildew around the edges (it is the tropics), but everything else is clean, most importantly the beds. It's safe, and accessible 24 hours for returning guests (there's an all-night sentry at the locked gate downstairs), and in the heart of what I think is my favorite corner of Manila so far: Malate.

For a big bed aircon room, I'm paying P700 (approx $14). What's nice is that if you are really on a tight budget, the dorms are air conditioned, and have lockers, for just P250 each / $5.

I skipped wine hour to have merienda with my cousins (non-Pinoy readers: merienda is basically a large afternoon snack to hold you over until dinner, very traditional Filipino).

I was psyched to realize we were headed to Cafe Adriatico. I had never been and it's known for being a Manila writers' cafe hangout place since forever. Or maybe just since the 70s. I'm absolutely in the love with the place. The inside has a very old-world genteel Filipino sense to it, with lots of dark carved wood furniture and paneling. Very romantic.

The food is delicious. We ordered off the merienda menu, having typical merienda foods that were just as they should be: really good toasted ensaymada with queso de bola (translation: a sweet buttery roll with shredded gouda cheese, sugar, and butter on top, and a thick slice of tangy gouda on the side), dinaguan with sweet puto (pig's blood stew with small rice cakes), hot pandesal with blanco queso (warm bread rolls with soft white cheese), macaroni with garlic bread, and tsokolate-eh (traditional thick Spanish chocolate in a demitasse cup. The thickness and richness doesn't come from milk, it comes from adding peanut butter, but you don't really taste the peanut butter, it's subtle underneath the rich chocolate taste). Cafe Adriatico is my new favorite place now. It's just down the street from Friendly's -- imagine that. I'm going to be forced to eat there a lot while at Friendly's.

As I was rushing out later to the meetup, we lucked out with the Chinese New Year parade passing right in front of Friendly's. I'm sure it doesn't compare to the celebrations in Binondo (Manila's Chinatown), but it was still festive and fun to see, dragons, marching bands and all.

I had the pleasure of meeting with some cool ladies from the BootsnAll traveler network and the Thorntree. We chatted and swapped travel stories over schnitzel and San Miguel. One Pinay traveler, Leslie, had actually worked for Lakbay T.V. for a while -- a Filipino travel channel no longer around -- a great chance to pick the brain of someone who's really traveled the Philippines. I had gotten a chance to see a Lakbay visit to Cagayan de Oro on TV when I visited in 2000, it was well done, fun stuff. Too bad it's not around anymore...

Afterwards, we went on to a Chinese New Year party at The Living Room. It's a cool space in a building with mostly artists and creative types living there -- the building didn't look like anything special from the outside, but once inside the space felt a little bit old-world somehow -- something about the height of the ceilings and the grillwork -- in fact it felt a little like a New York apartment, the way it felt like an older space now inhabited in a contemporary time. There was a view out to Roxas Boulevard from the living room of The Living Room, and a fortune teller in a side room. The host was none other than Mr. Carlos Celdran, whose Manila walking tours I've been looking forward to for a while but haven't gone on yet. It was a great crowd. Funny enough one of the people I chatted with is now the theatre production designer at the school my sisters and I used to attend in Manila, I.S. It's a small small world.

Just before midnight we headed out to a Taosist Temple nearby to welcome Chinese New Year with mad fireworks and incense burning. Holy crap. It was absolutely insane inside the temple, with massive crowds waving the lucky money paper in 67 rotations around the incense stick circular altars located throughout the space. It was filled with figurines of Chinese deities, offerings (including bags of M&Ms along with oranges and other foods), carved dragons, red banners, people, photographers. Many Filipinos were wearing red shirts there. At 12:15 pm, the fireworks started in front of the temple, and everyone came spilling out for the show. If you've ever seen Asian fireworks, they are just mad, spinning wheels that keep going til they burn out and ignite a new piece of the structure to make a different pattern.

En route back to The Living Room, a gaggle of 8 kids were walking alongside us in their little gang, poking some questions at us. I couldn't tell if they were being smart-alecky or not when they spontaneously burst into Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All" ("I beleeeve that children are our future, teach them well and LEEEET them lead the way.... etc), but Jenna, American traveler, jumped right in alongside them. Soon we were all shouting along as we walked the streets of Malate all together urchins, Manilenos and backpackers, fireworks behind us, taxis honking, bicycling circling around "BE CAUSE THE GREAAAA AY TEST, love of all, IS HAP PEN NING TO MEEEEEE." It doesn't get schmaltzier, but I think the kids just made my entire 2 month trip.

Somehow, the chaos of Manila I'd been feeling a bit intimidated by so far made so much sense. I felt that city energy that I love so much about New York. The street hawkers pushing big vats of steamed peanuts, the taxis honking, us walking in the road because the sidewalks were broken in parts or else filled with plastic tables overflowing from the carinderias with Filipinos and the occasional foreigner drinking and eating the Saturday night away, the street kids hanging out on the corners, the occasional broken down building in between restaurants, hearing The Cure playing in the background, pumping out from some club, it being 1 a.m. and no signs of slowing down. Manila.

A Museum and Musikita

2007-02-18T09:39:00.000-05:00

On Friday, my 81-year-old Tita and I hailed a taxi from Quezon City to venture through the traffic, smog and heat to the swanky M Cafe at the Ayala Museum.

I'm surprised at how inexpensive it is, as a New Yorker, to take a taxi here. From Quezon City to Makati was about P150 (approx. $3), and I think that's the most I've paid for a taxi ride within the city -- the flagfall is P30, and it goes up from there. (As comparison in my mind, even a relatively short ride in NYC just going cross-town from westside to eastside Manhattan will run one about $8 these days).

M Cafe is a lovely space, from the jazzy music and elegant modern Asian style to great cafe food and drinks listing. Grilled scallop salad on farm greens with toasted cashews and a tangy dressing, a flavorful longganiza sandwich on farmer's bread, and a leg of lamb over mixed couscous and red rice were all fabulous. The pastillas de leche gelato sounded better on the menu that it actually tasted -- yes, life is hard when dining at M Cafe. The total bill for 2 plates, salad, dessert, wine and iced tea ran about P1,450 (approx $29). Not the cheapest meal here, but well worth it.

Ayala Museum is currently running an exhibit on Tsinoys (Chinese in the Philippines) in conjunction with Chinese New Year, most of it based on ceramics found all around the Philippines. The Chinese presence in the Philippines is far more extensive than I realized -- I had generally thought of it being restricted to around Manila, but apparently the Chinese were trading throughout the Philippines several hundred years before the Spanish, with heavy concentrations of certain kinds of distincly Chinese ceramics found even as far as northern Mindanao, as well as Palawan and other locations. This was also a connection of sorts to the various sectors of Asia, India, and the Middle East, as southern Chinese ports were connected to all those parts of the world hundreds of years ago via trade. Thai and Vietnamese ceramics have also been found throughout the Philippines.

The video on Chinese-Filipinos was hard to hear, regretfully -- the images were very cool -- made me want to shake the exhibit designer for not putting speakers out. But one fun fact I gleaned was that many Tsinoys (Chinese-Filipinos) had to change their Chinese names to more Filipino-ized names (I think to avoid discrimination once the Spanish came into the picture), and one of the altered family names was "Cojuango". For the non-Pinoy readers of this blog, the Cojuangos are a powerful clan that none other than former President Cory Aquino is from. That's all to say that many Filipinos are unaware of their own personal Chinese blood-heritage, though in the larger picture we do know it's there. My mom used to often say she thought our family had some Chinese blood somewhere -- my Uncle Efren especially looked a bit Chinese.

We went to atmospheric Paco Park in the evening for a concert -- apparently on Friday evenings there are free concerts there, along the lines of madrigal singers or a concerto.

I'm not sure if we were lucky or unlucky, but our free concert was an orchestra of kiddies armed with violins: Musikita (little musician). They were awfully cute in their little matching uniforms, but musically..... I'll allow you to fill in the blank there.

Musikita is actually a program at a school attended by kids from poorer families. The hope of the program, besides enriching young minds through music, is to cultivate enough musical talent in a couple of the kids to take them through college via scholarships, which will otherwise probably be unaffordable for them. The kiddies showed a lot of spirit, playing mostly German and European songs in honor of German-Philippine friendship month -- a representative from the German Embassy was given the front row folding chair. The definite crowd-pleaser -- and actually one of the numbers they were tightest on -- was the Can-Can.

Surprisingly problematic was trying to get a taxi home. Auntie Luz and I stood outside Paco Park for a good 20 minutes desperately trying to get one lousy taxi to stop for us in the dark. Apparently Friday night in Manila at about 8:30 p.m. is a really hard time to try to catch a taxi, and I was starting to really worry that we were stuck in a part of the city I was unfamiliar with that was now dark. There is no easy way to get from there to Quezon City except via taxi, as there is no direct jeepney route. I was getting really close to flagging down one of the many guys manually pedaling the little metal tricycle sidecars for what would have been a skanky 2 hour cycle to Quezon City through highway exhaust.

With a bit of a desperate look I went into the Paco Park Fire Department across the way to use their phone to call for a radio taxi -- of course there were no radio taxis either. Damn post-Valentine's Day Friday Night! However the desperation on my face meant Auntie Luz and I ended up with the Paco Fire Department firefighters lined up on the curb with us, all flagging their arms and psssting at the taxis passing us by until one FINALLY stopped.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. Except for the ipis (cockroach) that made an appearance in our dim sum later that night. It has mostly been erased it from my memory banks so I can no longer discuss it. Ever.

Manila My-nila

2007-02-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

I am here. It is hot. But only Hot, not Hotter (if you didn't already know, there are 2 seasons in the Philippines, Hot and Hotter). My Auntie Luz's house in Quezon City is now 2 blocks away from a Starbucks, where, yes, I have visited twice within a 24 hour span of being at her house. Ensaymada at Starbucks...who'd have thunk it. Interestingly, the sizes are all smaller, with Short, Tall, and Grande being the sizes instead of Tall, Grande, and Venti. I must say I wish all Starbucks would move to that sizing, it makes much more sense as a Short is all I really want, most of the time.

Tomas Morato Blvd in Quezon City has gone from being a street of residential housing and grand sampaloc trees to being a busy, messy commercial strip of western restaurants and coffeeshops: Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and several more names I don't recognize but which all offer lattes, cappuccino, cheesecake, and wi-fi access with cafe tables and/or plushy couches.

I am going to admit to being overwhelmed by Manila and it's pollution, heat, traffic, concrete 70s style architecture, but I'm acclimating and getting more the sense of the energy here. It's all better at night, when it's cooler and breezier outside and people dress up and go hang out. I love being somewhere that 10:00 p.m. isn't all that late. My 81 year old Auntie Luz and I ended up at Starbucks last night until 11:30 p.m., with all the college kids doing their homework on laptops around us.

And it's been so nice to spend a little time with family I haven't seen in so long, getting to really chat with my cousins. Their kids are a hoot: 6 yr old Naomi and Miguel. These two are thick as thieves, with chatterbox Naomi pulling the smiles from introvert Miggy. They are each other's favorite people it seems, and a day doesn't pass that one of them doesn't run over to the other's house to at least say hi, if they're not taking pictures of each other with my camera or hula hooping or playing cards. Naomi yells at Miggy for messing up her efforts to hit 700 hula hoops and he grins.

I've gotten a Philippine-based cellphone, which makes me feel like I'm here. Especially with the free 116 text messages I got with my phone cards. The way this system works, you buy a phone which comes with a SIM card, and then buy pre-paid minutes separately, and load the minutes into your phone. Altogether, the phone and about 1,000 minutes cost me around P3,180 (or approx U.S. $64).

For now, Mabuhay.

Pictures of Bolivia

2007-02-09T18:42:00.000-05:00

I have a flickr account with some Bolivia shots up now. Hopefully I will be adding lots of pics of lechon, adobo, leche flan, pastillas de leche, macapuno ice cream, taho, daing ng bangus -- oh right, back to the photos.

View away: http://www.flickr.com/photos/73075568@N00/

Some Photos

2006-03-22T16:59:00.000-05:00

La Isla del Sol

2006-03-15T18:52:00.000-05:00

On Monday I took the boat to La Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca, the island which the Incas considered the birthplace of Viracocha, the Sun God. On the boat, I ran into Adam, an American I had met on the Salar de Uyuni tour. I asked what he´d been up to since the Salar, and he said he´d been sick for 5 days because he ate street food in Uyuni when he was leaving. Yikes.

I got off on the southern part of the island, and hiked up a steep steep path to the village of Yumani. I didn´t realize the island was so mountainous, it was about a 200 meter climb and took about an hour, over a rough stony path. I was looking for Don Ricardo´s B&B to stay overnight, and a teenager on the island let the way, carrying my backpack at one point. Apparently he does the up-and-down climb 2 or 3 times a day. I was puffing and panting and had to stop frequently.

Although it´s kind of lame, I didn´t bother going to the ruins, but instead just took a hike to take in some spectacular views (on the advice of Martin at La Cupula). I later spoke to another traveler who had gone to the ruins, and he didn´t think they were all that impressive, so I don´t regret not going to see them.

Walking the paths I found myself taking on what I think is the mind of a mountain goat. I had to test with one foot before putting the rest of my weight down when going down the steep hills. The gradated levels were made up of old, uneven chunks of rock and dirt that were sometimes not that stable. There are no "roads", no motor vehicles on the island (hence burros everywhere).

Don Ricardo´s is perched up high on the ridge, so we had excellent views of the sunset. La Isla del Sol is generally a bit rustic, and the most comfortable thing to do was to stay in for dinner, so all the travelers sat around a long table and shared some bottles of wine and a fun meal. There wasn't a whole lot else to do in the evening. Some of the travelers at nearby hostels joined us for dinner as well, with 2 German travlers even cooking their own meal of spaghetti and tuna in the kitchen next to Susanna, the cook for the Don Ricardo's B&B. It was all rather informal and pleasant.

Copacabana: mas paz de La Paz

2006-03-14T16:14:00.000-05:00

On Saturday morning I took the tourist bus from La Paz to Copacabana, on the shores of glorious Lake Titicaca. It´s about a 3 1/2 hr. journey.

My seatmate was a graduating film student named Javier from Quito, who was returning home from university in Buenos Aires overland. I was able to carry on a grammatically incorrect conversation in Spanish for most of the time. Javier said my Spanish wasn´t bad, and we determined he was being "diplomatico." He was reading Nietzche to pass the time. We talked politics a little bit (I generally enjoy bringing up the Evo Morales Sweater whenever possible as I find it humorous). I didn´t quite follow some of the things he said about Ecuadorian politics, except that people were sick of the last president´s corruption, and he was now in jail. I couldn´t remember his name, so in keeping with the clothing theme Javier started jokingly calling him "The Armani."

I am finding that people tend to identify me as a Latina tourist. Sometimes even as Bolivian. Back in Uyuni, one of the tour guides told me I look like people from Cochabamba (a university town in Bolivia). And on my second day in Sucre a Latina woman approached me to ask directions. Other travelers, including Americans, don´t tend to identify me as American until I speak English. When we got off the bus to ferry across a section of the lake, I joined Javier and some other Latin travelers clustered together, including a vibrantly friendly Peruvian tour operator who works in Cuzco. When I explained I was part Filipina he asked if I spoke Tagalog. I said not really and he said "No? Not even kumusta ka?" I was impressed and asked if there were many Filipinos going to Machu Picchu in Peru. He said no but that as a tour operator he made it his business to learn a few basic words in several languages.

Copacabana is a restful, hilly little town on the shore of Lago Titicaca, a bit touristy and somewhat of a hippie hangout in parts. There isn´t a whole lot to "do" here. Travelers say there´s more activity in Puno, on the Peru side, but I´m fine not doing much right now. I am staying in a beautiful little Hotel called La Cupula that feels like a tranquil oasis with soul. I can´t recommend this place enough to other travelers. The design of the place feels like a pleasant beachhouse, simple but with a lot of light and air incorporated, as well as wood being a prominent material. Some of the second level has distinctive cupola shapes. The walls are white, accent materials are blue. It´s up on a hilltop with lovely views of the town and lake. The space is also broken up with plants/garden areas. There are 2 different areas with hammocks outside with views over the lake. There´s a sweet communal living space and kitchen, and there are nightly movies on request from a video library. Just up the stairs is La Mirador, a small restaurant that is recommended in the guideboos. The food is delicious and includes fresh juices, a range of vegetarian dishes, and crepes.

I chatted up Martin, the owner (who´s a real sweetheart), and got some of the history on this space. He and his ex-wife built it about 14 years ago. Much of the materials -- the wood, the stone are intentionally from the land the hotel is built on. Originally the hotel was meant to be more community-geared, with carpentry and art classes (Martin has an art teacher background). These days it runs simply as a hotel. Going by what the owner said, the staff is paid decently and has health care and retirement benefits. Which I think must contribute to the overall soul of the place. Even the little black cat, La Negrita, who roams around the grounds is a chilled out kitty. She´s the first cat I´ve seen here who will let you touch her -- she loves being petted and hangs out a lot in the t.v. room, asleep.

In general hotels/hostels in Copa are cheap and of good quality, one can find clean places with private bath for $5. At La Cupula a single with shared bath is $10 (low-season), but the shared baths are only shared by 3 other units and are extremely clean and inviting. And they have the first genuinely HOT water I´ve had in a while.

I bought my return bus ticket early from Milton Tours here and chatted up the salesgirl, Maria Eugenia. She actually doesn´t work there full-time, but was doing a few shifts to help her sister, who worked there. I was very impressed by her. We got into a conversation about women raising children (she asked if I had children, I said no and asked if she did or wanted kids). We talked about how it was better for a mother if she has first had a chance to live her own life for a while and learn a trade. As best as I could follow she said she saw a lot of young mothers in Santa Cruz already with not-small kids and I said sometimes you see that in the States as well. Then she said she was going to study medicine in Cuba as part of a program between Cuba and Bolivia, and become a doctor (she showed me the flyer with the list of requirements to qualify). If I understood right, it´s free (not 100% clear on that) and she wasn´t committed to work in Cuba afterwards.

I later shared this story with a pair of female German tourists, and it resonated with them as well, in this 18 yr. old girl´s strong sense of self and purpose. I was also fascinated with the Cuba angle of the story, as in general I first think of Cuba in political terms -- as a Communist country and all the myriad issues that involves (when I´m not drinking a mojito or listening to the Buena Vista Social Club that is). Cuba is not a place I would call a land of opportunity. To Maria Eugenia, this program will give her an education and a future in a solid profession.

Later that evening I had dinner. The trucha (trout) is a specialty here. Along the beach is a row of little shacks that all serve simple trout dishes for very cheap. I had Trucha Diablo, with rice and french fries (papas fritas are everywhere) for about 15 Boliviano.

I stumbled across an arty little bar here on the tourist row that plays Afro-Latin jazz nightly. The crowd was mostly young foreigners. The musicians, who pretty much owned or worked at the bar, were pretty good I thought. A wry "Titicaca Reggae" was one of the songs (unfortunately I couldn´t follow most of the lyrics). A later musician came on and did a revamped version of "Guantanamera" on guitar and harmonica. He worked the crowd a bit by doing the "who´s from where" callout. He poked at the backpackers from Buenos Aires by saying that B.A. wasn´t in South America, which got some chuckles.

Among the people I chatted with in the bar were a pair of Parisian girls. One of them asked me quite frankly if the French had a bad reputation abroad. I told her yes, to a degree they did, but that it was just a stereotype, and that most people knew better than to believe it was real. She was really puzzled by this, and when I said maybe it was just a Paris big-city thing, like New York or London having unfriendly reputations, she said "but people in Paris are really nice". She said that the younger generation in Paris tended to be more friendly than the older generation.

More along the stereotype line ... in the span of 24 hours I met 1) a British couple who in their travels really enjoyed the warmth and open-heartedness of people in Brazil, and then had a hard time with the cold, reserved Peruvians; 2) an Aussie who felt that Brazilians he met in Rio were not friendly or genuine at all, and that he was so glad to get to Peru because the Peruvians were such friendly warm people.

Fascinating. Kind of makes you wonder what people say about Americans, hey?

Deserts are Not Fun

2006-03-11T19:49:00.000-05:00

To elaborate on the hellish 2nd and 3rd days of the Salar de Uyuni tour....

We spent all of the 2nd day driving out to the Laguna Colorado, spent the sub-zero night in rustic housing, and drove back the next day, periodically stopping to take pictures of mountains and lakes. There was also a termas (hot springs) along the way, which was really neat but I didn´t go in, as it was on the tour at about 7 a.m., and I just wasn´t up to it that early.

Other details: my eyes kept on burning periodically, so I pretty much kept them closed for most of 2 days while we bounced along a nonexistent road, alternating between choking on dust with the windows down or roasting in the hot sealed car in the middle of the desert. I did mention the -15 degree Celcius night in between? The tour -- in fact all tours which do the Uyuni circuit -- are not very forthcoming with information and plans tend to change a lot. So among the things they neglected to mention was that the route we took included REALLY high elevation (at one point, 5,000 meters. The highest city in the world, Potosi, is at about 4,000 meters, for comparison). So if you´re suffering the side effects of altitude sickness that I was -- full on insomnia and pounding, eye-tearing headaches -- it´s pretty awful to go higher.

To make things even more painful our taciturn driver, Raoul, played a single grating song again and again for the punishing 2 day drive -- Bolivian marching band music. I guess there were no other tapes in the car. When we weren´t driving he whistled the tune. I guess he really liked the song. Rachel the Aussie theorized that Raoul was taking his revenge on the tourists who he had to drive out to the desert every day by torturing us with the marching band loop. Flora from Buenos Aires: "es horrible!"

In short, it was awful. And I thought not a trip for anyone not in the best physical condition, honestly. The environment and altitude was really harsh on the body. And
rough terrain was hard too. Rachel whacked her head on the roof of the car when we went over one rough spot. There were 5 elderly people on the tour, Jean Claude from France and 4 seniors from Switzerland, so perhaps I´m just sensitive.

The food was also no frills. At one point my group of six stole the cheese being served to a different tour group for breakfast to supplement our bread, jam, and tea. I suppose if you pay more money, you get cheese. It was pretty good cheese I must say. Most of the food on the tour was inadvertently vegetarian. As in, there should have been meat, but it just wasn´t there. And I was slightly floored when we asked for more spaghetti on our overnight stay and were told there was no more. The Snickers bars and mini-bottles of Chilean wine I had brought made me a popular girl let me tell you.

That being said, I seem to be the only person who said the last 2 days weren´t worth it, everyone else appreciated those days. And I suppose the thinking is that one day of sight-seeing isn´t worth the punishing and long travel to get to the town of Uyuni. I certainly think the Salar itself was incredible and worth the effort. Also the only one traveling for 2 weeks --everyone else has 1 month minimum to 1 year for travel, so perhaps they´re not counting days like I am.

The people of Uyuni are a bit taciturn in comparison to the other Bolivians I´ve met. A little less likely to smile & joke around, a bit more gruff. If I lived in dusty forsaken Uyuni I´d be gruff too. And I don´t know if it´s particular to Uyuni, but our driver Raoul works 7 days a week, doing a couple different jobs. One of the Argentinians said that´s the Bolivian work ethic, working constantly. Perhaps that´s why the partying is so hard, when Bolivians do party.

I did meet the sassy Maria at the tienda next door to Colque Tours. Maria is a short elderly chola with an enormous German shepherd named Oliver. They´re quite the odd couple, Maria being the yin to Oliver´s yang. I asked if Oliver was her dog. She said yes and began giving him commands to demonstrate her authority.

Maria pointed to a spot by her feet. "Oliver! Venga!" Oliver lay on the sidewalk and ignored her. She pretended to kick him (jokingly only). "Venga! Venga!" She persisted until he got up and came over. "Sientate!" He sat, looking woeful. His head came up to her chest. She patted him. The next day I bought water from her again and was greeted as "amiga."

I spent yesterday in La Paz, a big, dirty, overwhelming city (kind of like New York, come to think of it), at the Hotel Milton, a retro 70s type place. It kind of rides the line between funny kitch and just plain bad cheese, but it was clean enough and had hot water. Though I think I might have shorted some wiring when I recharged my camera battery. Not a joke. And the staff was super nice. And laundry service is very inexpensive.

Finding my Inner Princess on the Night Bus to Uyuni

2006-03-07T20:25:00.000-05:00

Right about now I really am missing the creature comforts of hot water and flush toilets you can throw paper INTO. And not being covered in dust. It only took 2 days to get really comfortable with my little hotel in Sucre, and the friendly staff.

On Monday I hustled myself onto the 1 pm bus to Potosi, with connection to Uyuni. It was a rough exhausting journey for a Western girl like me. The buses are small, a size up from very big vans (about 23 seats), and low tech. No in-flight movies for us. Though I did notice the "Star Wars" poster decorating the inside of the connecting bus, and a lonely pine scent air freshener hanging towards the front left side. Which didn´t seem to be doing anything.

The ride was bumpy and winding. 3 hours to Potosi, the world´s highest city (at an altitude over 4,000 meters). Potosi is a colonial city (some Spanish style) has quite a history involving mines, silver, and the deaths of many miners, either via working conditions or being shot protesting those conditions. There are stories there that I unfortunately don´t know.

I met some fellow travelers along the way (backpackers seem to be magnetically drawn together), luckily including another solo female traveler connecting to Uyuni, Nicola from North Ireland. This was especially good as the bus to Uyuni arrived at 1 a.m., so we stuck together. We and a crowd of other backpackers had to walk the empty streets of dusty Uyuni looking for a place to spend the night (my "reservation" with the Hotel Kory Wasy didn´t exactly pan out, as no one answered the door when we rang the bell hoping for hot showers). Instead we ended up at the most basic pension I´ve stayed in ever that is still a couple steps up from truly basic (see FMIP title above), the Hostal Sucre, with bare bulb, rickety wood walls and flies chilling out on the walls. Which I would recommend to other backpackers for its clean sheets and yes, it did have hot (meaning lukewarm) water in the shared bathrooms. Price: 15 Boliv (about $2). And the flies are everywhere here in Uyuni, including the salt flats, so though it wasn´t pleasant to see 20 hanging out on the mirror of my room at the Hostal Sucre, it´s not a sign of dirtiness, they´re just simply around.

Back to the bus ride: the bus stations are not the cleanest places here. And since I´m probably being overly cautious about the food, I couldn´t find anywhere that I felt comfortable eating at. Did you know that a King Size Snickers bar really does satisfy you? Immediately next door to our hole in the wall bus station for connection to Uyuni, for Diana Tours (which is incidentally not the same bus station one comes into in Potosi, which of course no one told us), was a hole in the wall restaurant serving some chicken that smelled delicious and was probably fine, but none for me.

We got on the bus for Uyuni at 6:30 p.m. The little bus was overbooked. And I found that comfort is a relative thing. For as uncomfortable as the ride was on the little bus with no real bathroom stops, and an awful smell I realized was coming from the stinky leather hats that have now been given away because I couldn´t take the smell anymore (ref. to FMIP), I realized I was lucky I had a seat. A chola mother with her 2 niños put her little ones to sleep on the pair of seats they had and then sat herself and her package of stuff wrapped in the colorful bundle down in the skinny aisle of our bus/van, with her torso partly draped onto the seat, and slept in that uncomfortable position for hours. It got dark about an hour after getting on the bus.

We picked up and dropped off more people throughout the night at places that to my eyes looked like the middle of nowhere. Around 10 or 11 pm, a father and his niño walked on, the father squeezed into the very back of the bus and the little boy sat on the aisle in front of him and by my left elbow. Eye-level with me in the dark, he piped an "Hola" before sitting down on the floor. He was a dusty little kid with tufted hair.

As for me, I was wide awake with nothing to do to pass the time: the lights above didn´t work, so no reading, no reviewing any Spanish, no knitting. And I was aware, possibly no bathroom break for about 7 hours, so I drank very little water. We stopped once at a little restaurant that serves travelers (very informal, like a house with a large room in front with a few tables and chairs, the kitchen separated by a curtain), and a counter with candies, gum, snacks and other sundries, but there was no bathroom available. Again the food smelled delicious and was probably ok, as it was stewed and served hot, but again I didn´t eat it.

I felt the sheer size of the country of Bolivia, with the dark shapes of mountains rising and falling all around the curving bus for hours and hours, and no lights anywhere in the dark to mark a small village or town, except most infrequently. Bolivia is twice the size of France -- a gigantic country, and it´s cities are connected by rough-and-tumble bus routes such as the one I was taking. There was nothing to see outside the window except occasionally the half moon coming up above another mountain and the dark shape of the land. I could see why Pachamama (the Earth Mother) is a revered and feared deity in Bolivia. She is overwhelming.

The 3 day tour of the salt flats began this morning, Tuesday. More to come on that in a couple days, as tomorrow night my tour group (Colque Tours) will spend the night at the Laguna Colorado, needless to say no internet access. Today in brief we drove out to the train graveyard and the Salar in 4x4s, talked with a salt worker, and visited a hotel made entirely of salt blocks. My eyes hurt terribly. They wouldn´t stop watering when I got back. I lay down and covered them with a dark shirt for a couple hours, and now it´s night, they´re all right. I will see how they are tomorrow, for which I now have sunglasses. I stupidly went out without sunglasses. The Salar is an endless plain of reflective white. It is beautiful and surreal.

The salt workers, as much as I could understand of the conversation between one worker and the Spanish-fluent tourists, have a hard life. They belong to a co-operative which they pay 1,000 Bolivianos to join. Their wages are small: 15 centavos (Boliv) for 1 kilo of salt. If I followed correctly the kilo later fetches 1 Boliviano somewhere else. They are only able to work the Salar when the ground is wet enough, raking up the salt with large hoes from the wet areas. They must stop work in July, when the Salar dries up and becomes rock hard. They must do other things with the salt then, I think is what he said. And I wasn´t clear but think the dry season is July - December.

Flor from Portugal asked if the salt is disturbed by the trucks driven over for the tourists, and he said no. Then he added that he was bothered by the tourists asking to take his picture, or taking his picture without asking. "No somos animales." His gear was a ski mask, with dark glasses/goggles in the only open spot. Long sleeved shirt, baseball hat, rubber boots. Full disclosure: before he said that, I had photographed one of the workers from a distance, and felt very guilty. Tourists taking pictures is an iffy dynamic.

More to come around Friday, after I brave the buses again for a 13-hour journey to La Paz, or if the Aussie couple who were the lucky recipients of my gorgeous but smelly leather hats can figure out the midnight train situation to Oruro and La Paz, I may travel with them on the train.

Until then, Ciao.

Salteñas, Champallas y Montañas (oh my)

2006-03-05T20:11:00.000-05:00

Today my hotel hosts Jaime and Madeleina drove me to the famous Sunday market of Tarabuco. It´s famous as a mercado artesania (artesan´s market) on Sundays. It´s about an hour drive from Sucre curving through spectacularly empty and boundless mountain landscapes.

Anyway.

Jaime picked up some salteñas for our lunch. On his advice, we planned to do that rather than eat in Tarabuco. Most food in Tarabuco would not be hygenic enough for tourists he said, and when we noted that there was a cafe at Tarabuco with pretty much every gringo shopper, he noted that though that particular restaurant was clean, well the food wasn´t very good. Gracias to Jaime. Actually muchas gracias, because after a bite of my first salteña, I thought I might die happy. (Maybe I was hungry?) They were unbelievable. From the description they sound like empanadas, but the flavor was so much better than the empanadas I´ve had.

Salteñas are fragrant little juicy pastry pockets filled with chicken or beef or pork, these had raisins and olives (the pit still in the olive -- now THAT´s an olive!) and a bit of hard boiled eggwhite in them too, and probably garlic and some hot peppers too. The orange-red juice eventually leaked out onto the napkins. They had a mildly curry-like flavor. And with a buttery-tasting crust that´s just the right consistency of firm and crumbly, but not dry or tough.

Tarabuco is a colonial town (think red-tiled roofs on a rectangular grid) that is near smaller towns where craftspeople weave the multicolor llama and alpaca champallas (sweaters), scarfs, vibrantly colored backpacks galore, warm hats, other types of intricately patterned weavings that hang on the wall or cover your table, or the bright pieces of cloth that the chollas and country people use as a backpack or bundle, tied around the body and then filled with a child, or goods or other stuff. They come in colors like hot pink or bright orange, with other vibrant colors striped across in certain spots.

Many of the shopkeepers were not themselves the artesans, but merchants. I guess they´re the middlemen, hawking the goods made in other nearby towns. My guidebook said it was an overwhelming scene with aggressive vendors pushing goods on you, and also wasn´t a bargain, as you´re not buying direct from the original makers. None of which were my impressions, but being a New Yorker my definition of overwhelming is probably different, and the prices (which seemed like a bargain to me) were lower than in Sucre. I did get a couple of aggressive cholla hawkers seeking me out for a bracelet or purse, but a few "nada gracias" was enough to get them to stop.

I was cautious about being a shutterbug around the Tarabuco people. It was my understanding that chollas don´t like their pictures being taken, and think you´re stealing their spirit. Which was a common feeling when the camera first came out and has been a theme for many an art photographer since. But I digress. It´s not actually a problem if one asks permission first. I ventured to ask one of the hatmakers, a wrinkly-faced, tan abuela named Francisca, if I could photograph her. Well, I ended up getting pulled into a picture with her wearing one of her funky Carnavale hats she picked out for me to wear. She was not shy. At all. Which I could have perhaps realized when she pulled out a framed photograph of herself at work that a newspaper had taken. And everyone around her stall was delighted with seeing the images on my digital camera. Mas rapido!

We saw many of the farming people/country people walking the long roads we were driving. In dress, there is a certain look -- the women often in bunchy skirts that stop at the knee and a bulky top/with a shawl, long black hair in a braid or two down the back, and a black hat with a brim. The men also wear black hats with brims. Everyone wears sandals. Around Sucre, the hat shapes vary, but there are more bowlers on the women.

I have no idea how they do that, walk along roads to get from point A to point B, because there were not that many towns along our path, so anyone out walking must be walking some long distance. Jaime said that to walk from Tarabuco to Sucre is a day.

The earth, especially close to Sucre, is rich red-brown. Jaime said it gets that color from oxidizing metal in the earth. It´s the same color I saw from the plane around El Alto flying in. It´s noticable, and perhaps why many brick houses around here are that red-brown too (bricks made from the earth?).

In one week is the massive Carnavale celebration in Tarabuco, March 13. I am terribly sorry I didn´t time my stay in Sucre to coincide (oh well). I understand there is some serious bailando (dancing)and masks and outfits.

This afternoon I walked around the city centre a bit, resting on a bench in the main plaza, La Plaza de 25 de Mayo. Sunday afternoons make for very good people watching, and it´s funny how one sunlit town plaza or park seems, to some degree, like town plazas in pleasant weather everywhere. Snack vendors are set up with plastic bags of chips, bright candy and sodas. The kids chase each other and yell in pippy little voices, perch on the backs of stern brass lions that are part of some serious historical monument. Or they feed the square´s pigeons with popcorn bags their parents buy from the snack vendors, or play swordfighting an enterprising snack vendor is twisting up from narrow long balloons. A hippy backpacker/student sits on the pedestal of said historial monument completely absorbed in a book until the light is gone. Couples hang out on the benches, relaxed and chatting. The fuzzy-haired woman in a tracksuit runs around with her fuzzy-haired dog pulling her on a leash as he scatters the pigeons from spot to spot. I´m noticing that dress ranges, and that sneakers aren´t uncommon at all.

On my way back to the Hotel Colonia, I pop back into La Iglesia de San Francisco that I had stopped in earlier. It seemed a shabby church, needing a new paint job in spots outside and the ornamentation ornate in spots but otherwise bare. The statuary was certainly plastic, with fake flowers offered in front of the dramatically lit statues of the saints, which were more like giant dolls, than the elegantly carved statuary one might expect from a church this old. A statue of God, which I can´t remember ever seeing in a church before (I´ve only ever seem Jesus, Mary, or the saints pictured or sculpted, except for the Sistine Chapel painting) was the oddest of all, being a smallish statue off to the side with a metal square perched on his head and holding a basketball-sized green-and-blue globe on his knee. I am still stumped as to what the artist intended to convey with the metal square. It was empty when I went in with just a few people trickling in for Mass when I left.

When I stepped back in later, though, it was a standing-rooom-only situation (and it was a big church!) People were piled in along the sides and up the aisles (guess that answers the question of what the people of Sucre do on Sunday night). The choir was quite good, with a surprisingly modern rock sound. The nice thing about growing up Catholic is feeling the familiarity of the mass´s rhythms, even when in a language one don´t speak so well. A trio of tourists came in after me. Just in time to be surprised with the "Peace be with you" part of the mass where everyone shakes their neighbors hands and wishes them peace. Paz contigo.

Tomorrow: on to the Salar de Uyuni.

Sweet Sucre (or "At Last a Bed to Sleep off the Altitude Sickness")

2006-03-04T20:42:00.000-05:00

After a very long journey which started yesterday at 3 p.m., which involved the M60 bus, 3 planes, 1 ironically detached American Airlines plane crew, altitude sickness, a new sore throat and almost using my little green vomit bag while curving through the mountains into Sucre I finally got to the Colonia Real Hotel at about 1 p.m. this afternoon. That´s been the bulk of my day, and I´m exhausted.

It was an eerie magical sight flying into El Alto airport, near La Paz. Out the window we were flying above a thick off-white cloudbank, like a carpet over all the earth. Above was another layer of thick cloudbank, and slightly visible in the distance, in just one spot, were 2 mountain tips, dusted with snow. They looked like mountain islands floating in the cloud-sea. The red-brown and green countryside I saw from the plane when we descended to land was largely unpopulated. The housing in El Alto looked simple from the air, red brick rectangular structures on a rectangular grid, tin roofs reflecting in the sun. And churches, churches everywhere (simple, not fancy ones). You noticed them because their spires stick up in an otherwise one-story town.

I felt the altitude sickness right away. Headaches and weird feeling. I must have drunk about 6 cups of coca tea already today (which has a surprisingly pleasant earthy taste). The alt. sickness probably compounded the naseau of the 1 hr flight to Sucre. A mom and her pre-teen son (my seatmates) were eyeing me with caution after we landed in Sucre (me pale, focused breathing, holding the little green barf bag from the seat pocket at the ready): "You are not feeling well?" They offered me medication to prevent me from throwing up and told me that Sucre is the worst airport in Bolivia. In part because the flight path takes you between 2 mountains so there´s a lot of turbulence and the airport runway is not that long, so the planes have to bank very sharply coming in and brake hard.

The Bolivians I´ve met so far seem laid back and very friendly. I have already gotten some friendly amusement from the guys at the Aerolineo desk at the El Alto airport witnessing my poor Spanish.

My hotel is near empty (it´s so brand-new that the rooms on the floors above are still being constructed, perhaps that´s why it´s empty). So I don´t think I´ll be meeting fellow travelers there, but I´d already chatted up several other travelers in route, including Elizabeth, an elderly woman who runs an artesan-sweater and weaving shop in La Paz who told me all about her banker hijo in Miami, a missionary Spaniard living in Santa Cruz named Ascuncion, Dustin, a slightly obnoxiously friendly but very sweet teenage boy who wanted to talk to me and the very jetlagged Alex (British woman) on the overnight flight from Miami to La Paz. He and a large gang of older kids/young adults/parents were headed to Santa Cruz to build housing with Habitat for Humanity and their church. It was comforting to meet Alex, who like me was a solo female traveler who just decided to up and go travel to this region, walking the Inca Trail for 3 weeks. Unlike me, she had booked her whole trip with a tour and she had zero Spanish.

I´ve not seen much of Sucre yet. It reminds me a tiny bit of the Manila of my childhood, but only in how the shops are set up, the little tiendas remind me of the sari-sari stores. All the beauty parlors are open late here. The streets are narrow, some signs are hand-painted and businesses and shops are so informal-looking. In the area I´m in, lots of people were out walking around into the evening, including older women by themselves and children, a cholla here and there (the bowler hatted ladies who wear shawls and big skirts), it feels pretty safe and calm.

And now to bed to sleep off the altitude headache. And if you were curious.... at 8 to $1, my hotel room, which has it´s own bathroom and is new and clean, is 100 Bolivians a night ($12), my steak dinner with coca tea was 33 Bolivianos ($4), and an hour here to use a computer at the internet cafe is 2 Bolivianos (25 cents).

Tomorrow: the famous market in Tarabuco, a high-energy artesan´s market. Buenos noches amigos y familia.

Nothing Interesting Has Happened Yet

2006-02-22T11:04:00.000-05:00

Well I had to put something on the page to amuse all the people checking my travels.

Interesting descriptions of what I ate for breakfast and the weather to come!