Typhoon Troubles and Other Adventures Around Manila

December 10, 2006

I decided I wanted to take a day trip to Pagsanjan Falls, which is, as the name states, a waterfall. But they are very scenic and evocative a tropical jungle, so much so that they were used in Apocalypse Now to emulate the rough-and-tumble settings of the Vietnam War. So I was pretty psyched to see this natural wonder. You can't drive anywhere near the Falls, so you have to park your car and pick one of a dozen boat tour companies, which plop you in a very low-riding wooden canoe-like watercraft with paddlers in the bow and stern who propel you for half an hour against the current to the Falls.

The lucky two chosen to accompany me were Jorald, of Mall of Asia fame, and Charlie, one of Leticia's good friends and work colleagues. (By the way, Leticia founded and runs a company that administers standardized tests to Filipino students. Basically, making sure that student progress is measured in some way, even at schools in rural areas, so that teachers can adjust curricula accordingly.) When we set out on the two hour drive, it was pouring rain. Apparently, it was the outskirts of a typhoon. That fact becomes relevant later.

Anyway, the whole adventure was made a whole lot more interesting because of the rain. The second our butts touched the keel, our bottom halves were soaked, and my FOP raingear did no better protecting the top part. It was really coming down, and the wind was acting up, so that as we sliced through the water leading up to the Falls was brown and murky, with appetizing bits of bamboo and leafy sticks and potentially sewage churning in mini-vortexes.

The whitecaps became so high that our paddlers -- who were shirtless, tan, and muscular Filipinos wearing what could be called short-shorts -- had to leap out of the boat and brace their feat against the riverbank, holding onto our boat's gunwales at a 45-degree angle from the shore and literally walking us forward, forcing us against the current. There was one point when even that wasn't enough resistance, so we used the bow of our boat to ram through some long grass, as our paddlers were mid-thigh in the water, yanking us through the underbrush.

We heard from other travelers that a trip to Pagsanjan involves a pretty lazy meander upriver. Not so for us. It was such rough going that we couldn't even get all the way up to the Falls, which normally look like this and this, and you can get on a raft from your boat and drift under the Falls to get damp. We couldn't even get up to where the Falls actually are because of the current, but our paddlers held onto the boat with one hand and a big rock with the other while we climbed out and took pictures of our soaking-wet selves and the Falls way way way in the background, sorta around a bend. Oh well. It was hilarious and more an adventure than a tourist trap. Jorald kept turning around to take pictures with his cell phone, and Charlie would say, "Balance, Jorald, balance," in a slightly-panicky-but-trying-to-be-the-adult sort of way. I bought a pair of men's shorts three sizes too big so that I wouldn't wet the Isuzu.

Later that night, Zak picked me up and took me out with some friends from a summer program he's worked for. I learned that Filipinos in their early twenties do the same thing we do -- talk for a long time about which place to go and then change their minds three times -- except they have the conversation in a car instead of on an NYC street corner. We would up going to this cafe that reminded me of a cross between DTUT, the Cheesecake Factory, and Uno's, and we had an enlightening conversation about cultural differences. More on that later. When we got a little tipsy and more comfortable, we discussed tactics for women to use to pick up men in the Philippines, discovering that there is an equivalent to Joey's "How you doin'?" in Filipino. Unfortunately, I don't remember what it is, but the fact that there is one says enough.

December 11 - 12, 2006

Ah, the unpredictability of traveling. Nicole's and my flight for Boracay -- the Philippine's answer to Thailand's Phuket or Greece's Mykonos -- left at 5:45 a.m. We left Bautista Street at 4 a.m. It was still raining. Because of the tail end of the typhoon, our flight was delayed until 6:30, and then until 8:30. (But the domestic airport in Manila DID have a Cinnabon, which made me happy.) Manila was fine, storm-wise; it was the runway in Caticlan, where we would then catch a ferry to Boracay, that was too wet for a proper landing. When we finally landed in Caticlan around 10 a.m., the weather was sunny and bright, and the ocean was a vibrant blue. I was ready to jump in.

We had to take a tricycle (a pedicab that has a motorbike attached to the sidecar instead of just a manual bicycle) to the ferry station, and when we got there we found broken glass, sand everywhere, fallen trees, bewildered and sweaty tourists -- general confusion. Turns out the typhoon (which, for those of you who didn't follow the link earlier, hurled 75 mph winds at some parts of the country and killed at least three people [all in very rural parts, though]) was stronger than anyone had expected, and the ferries couldn't dock as usual. No one seemed to know when the ferries would start running again, and when I asked if they could call the dock at Boracay, the official just laughed. We'd heard that the boats might be picking up passengers from the beach at the other side of Caticlan,.

Here a fairly accurate recapitulation of a conversation I had with a ferry terminal official:

Me: So this terminal is closed.

Official: Yes.

Me: Do you know when it will reopen?

Official: Wait, half an hour, an hour.

Me: And then the boat will come?

Official: Maybe, maybe not.

Me: What's this I hear about the ferries docking on the other side of Caticlan? Is that true?

Official: I don't know.

Me: The tricycle drivers say they won't go there, they say it's too far.

Official: It's on the other side of the island.

Me: So if we go over there, and there's no ferry, and we stay here, and there's no ferry, we don't know what else will happen?

Official: Yes.

Me (suprised) : Oh, well....thanks....

In any case, we finally got a tricycle driver to take us to this "faraway" makeshift ferry site where outrigger canoes picked up passengers on the beach -- who had to wade into the water with their luggage -- and took them out to the actual ferries anchored in deeper water (which, by the way, we had to climb up onto from the outrigger canoe. Not easy when balancing a backpack and a purse and a camera.). Once on Boracay, we got a tricycle driver to take us near our beachfront hotel -- he couldn't make it all the way because transverse between the paved road and the beach road (which run parallel to each other) was flooded and the water would ruin his engine. Then we flagged down a regular bicycle-powered pedicab to take us the rest of the way, only to find that Casa Pilar, our hotel, was temporarily without electricity and water power. Sweet, we said.

After we ate lunch staring at palm trees and inviting water, we hit the beach. I discovered that Filipinas (also known as Pinays; guys are Pinoys) relish being pale, while currently one American standard of beauty is to be healthily tan. Nicole and I walked along White Beach Road (the one main drag on the island) browsing in jewelry stalls and getting henna tattoos. The hawkers there are persistent, and they all say "Yes, ma'am?" "Sunglasses, ma'am?" and "Pearls, ma'am?" in the same exact high-pitched tone; also, when we were there they outnumbered tourists 3-to-1.

We went back to the hotel to get ready to "go out," and then promptly discovered that most of the bars in town were without power and closed or else busy sweeping sand off the floor and repairing roofs and washing off barstools and glassware and such. White Beach Road, which Lonely Planet described at lit up like the Vegas strip, was completely dark in parts. We walked by people siting in circles around candles, strumming guitars -- we over heard a rousing rendition of "Silent Night." The Christmas thing again -- American's would be singing Santeria or something. Anyway, we played pool for awhile at a bar that played reggae pop from the 1990s, and then went to a juice bar that also served liquor and pumped house remixes of "Hips Don't Lie," flashing colored lights onto its vanilla-hazelnut-shake-sipping clientèle. It was there that I met Christian, a 28-year-old diving instructor from Switzerland (who wore a backwards baseball cap and really cute board shorts....not like I was looking...) who described to us from a local perspective how shaken the town really was after the typhoon and how he rescued a swimmer caught in the strong undertow before the typhoon actually hit.

We turned in relatively early for lack of Boracay's usually thriving nightlife and woke up a 6 a.m. in order to get in the most beach time before our early afternoon flight. The highlight of the morning as a wild tube ride that left our arms sore. We lay on our stomaches on a raft, and held on tight to two handles, but the driver of the motorboat pulling us had some fun driving in circles and zig-zagging so we bounced through the boat's wake. It was awesome. We left so much time to get to Caticlan that we got an earlier flight.

On the whole, our experience was definitely colored by the typhoon's destruction, and not just because of the travel delays. In addition to the damage to hotel swimming pools and bars and restaurants and landscaping, many in the community of poorer locals -- who live behind White Beach, facing the other shore -- lost their homes. On the tricycle rides to and from the ferries, we zoomed by flattened shanties, shanties with the roofs blown off, shanties with a palm tree impaling their roofs, and other signs of devastations, like giant piles of ruined, damp clothing. It gave a tourist paradise a realistic, albeit sad, perspective. Typhoon or no typhoon, though, the beaches were absolutely breathtaking. And the Philippines is made up of 7,107 islands -- so I'll have to come back and explore more of them some day.

December 13, 2006

Leticia, Charlie, Jorald, and I took another day trip, this time to Tagaytay, a town about two hours south of Manila that is up on a ridge and boasts glorious views of Taal, an active volcano which last erupted in 1977 (Wikipedia-ed it.). Taal is in the middle of a lake, and when one of its eruptions caused the top to blow off of it and create a crater lack at its peak. It's surrounded my mountains and really gorgeous, especially when the clouds roll across the ridge and leave the view of the volcano crystal clear. You can take a boat across and hike up to look at the crater lake, but we didn't have time for that, and frankly, even though the volcano is monitored by geologists and seismologists, it doesn't seem that safe.

We ate in this totally organic restaurant, which may be passe for Californians or even Americans in general, but in the Philippines, where every meal is meat-rice-fish-sauce with the occasional potato, a place that grows and serves its own mesclun is the ultimate culinary novelty. After a week without salad, I gorged myself on the mesclun with mangos and pineapple and cucumber, followed by fresh-baked wheat bread with bruschetta and pesto, followed by spaghetti with a mango chicken sauced, followed by crispy banana cannolis and sweetened sweet potato bits laced with sugar. It was divine. We waddled to the car and drove home for me to pack up.

Other Musings on the Philippines

The question of identity: "I think you'll find," Zak said to me, "that the Philippines is different from other South Asian countries.... We don't know who we are. Are we Filipino? American? Spanish? Japanese or Chinese?" The most popular radio station is in English. The performance of 12 Dancing Princesses at the mall was in English. Catholicism, street names, and much of Filipino food is Spanish-influenced. The food also has influenced from other parts of Asia that were short-lived colonizers. The shopping culture is grounded in international imports (as well as Filipino-made textiles). Zak and his friends joke that they often lapse into "Taglish," Tagalog being the dialect most people from Manila speak, but infused with certain English words. Leticia pointed out that the Philippines was colonized by the Spanish long before the Brits or the French latched onto their chosen bits of SE Asia -- and the Spanish were in power for 300 years! Thanks, Magellan. Though America's colonial rule there was certainly not laudable for many reasons.

English is ugly: I am becoming aware that my accent is very yucky-sounding. Americans often put the emphasis on the first syllable, while Filipino words often have it on the second syllable. In English, BORE-uh-kai; In Filipino, Borr[rolling]rr-AAAHH-kai. In English, MUH-nill-ah; in Filipino, Mah-NEE-lah.

Life at Street Level: I felt that Manila, and even Boracay to some extent, was a city of contradictions. I know you can say this about any city that has visibly rich and visibly poor parts; New York has that. But it seemed different in Manila, somehow. Maybe it was because, on the same city block as a glass skyscraper, there was a shanty made of layers of thin aluminum siding, twisted gray rags, and blue plastic tarps, where it seemed to me a family of 10 lived in quite an unsanitary squalor. In New York, housing projects do stand apart from other residences. But they aren't made of plastic and twine. And in Boracay, even though the hotels got hit by the typhoon, too, I can't get the images of those flattened homes out of my mind. I guess it's just one of those things I'll have to reckon with.

Best Jeepney names: No Other Love, Jason, Justin, Senorita, Gargoyles, D'Avenger, Scorpio, Scorpion, Lydia, Angjelica, Queen Margie, Mr. Crab, Gringo, God's Gift, St. Peter, Genesis, Gold Rush

Most entertaining signs: "Crabs for Sale" on the side of the road on the way to Pagsanjan Falls. Made less funny by the "Tilapia for Sale" sign next to it. In Manila, "Need to reflect? Text Bible to 2623."

Average cost of a really, really, really cute purse: 400 PHP or $8. And I refrained from buying any. That is willpower, my friends.

Filipino men = attractive. Though short. I was often the tallest person in photos by 3/4 of a head, and I'm 5'3.5".

Beer of Choice: San Miguel Light (San Mig, as the locals say. That's how I ordered one in Boracay, and I felt very worldly. Zak suggested I collect labels of the different foreign beers I drink, so I'm starting to.)

Acclimating to Asia

December 5-6, 2006

After a near-mishap involving a Ziploc bag of liquids tearing during security clearance and a tearful separation from Mom at JFK airport, my flight to Hong Kong clocks in at a pleasant if slightly leg-cramping 18 hours. Cathay Pacific is a great airline for two reasons: for one, the food is good (hot noodles! and yogurt! and brownies!), and there are unlimited snacks (cookies! and apples! and peanuts!). Second, they give you these cozy socks with rubber bumps on the bottom and a toothbrush and mints and a mask to put over your eyes, which went very well with my fuzzy neck pillow. It is a not-so-great airline because of the poor movie selection; I was forced to watch My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Trust the Man (which is apparently a romantic comedy with David Duchovny and Maggie Gyllenhaal whose release in the States was so unanticipated that I didn't realize the film existed).

The cool part about the flight was that we went over the North Pole, and it felt like being on top of the world when you watched the little flight path map. Since I was zooming ahead several time zones, the sun was sort of out for part of the trip and I could look out the window and see the icy terrain all cracked and jagged below.

The Hong Kong airport is super high-tech and rather metallic, and it had a restaurant that boasted deep-fried ramen. (Ew.)

After a painless two-hour flight to Manila, the first thing I noticed was that is was noticably hot and humid, even at midnight. My other salient observation was that the rest of the passengers arriving at Ninoy Aquino International Airport were Filipino, and they were greeted by hordes of jubilant family members. As I learned later (thanks, Lonely Planet), the average Filipino has five children (Bambi [see below for introduction] explained to me that he has 62 first cousins since Leticia has so many brothers and sisters), and 1/10 of the population lives abroad -- meaning homecoming around Christmastime is a crowded, hectic, boisterous, weeks-long celebration.

(Another travel-guide-informed realization -- one of the reasons the Philippines changed its stance on Iraq when one of its own was kidnapped there a couple of years back was because so much of the population lives and works abroad. If they had refused to comply with the demands of the kidnappers, it was basically saying that the government doesn't care about the 10 percent of the population abroad and the even larger percentage with a family member abroad.)

December 7, 2006

In Manila, I am staying with Leticia, a friend Mom met in graduate school some 35 years ago, and her family -- including her daughter Nicole, who is a year older than me, and her son Bambi, and his adorable three-month-old son Adrian. Nicole works for 411 (yes, that 411 -- international assistance), which apparently is staffed by a lot of Filipinos. She says it's a pretty good job except when Americans call asking for addresses or phone numbers after a night of heavy boozing.) They -- and their staff -- live in a seven-story building in Malate, which is in the "Manila" part of this map of Metro Manila, which is a hodge-podge of a bunch of municipalities. On the roof of the building, Bambi breeds roosters, which, contrary to popular belief, crow not just at dawn, but all the time. Cockfighting is a prominent sport here, and they tried to take me to one, but they had all finished for the day.

For breakfast, Leticia's two maids served me rice and eggs, and attempted to serve me some kind of fried crispy fish concoction. Rice here comprises or accompanies absolutely every meal -- the McDonalds advertise a McRice Burger, and the KFCs serve rice alongside the fried chicken. Apparently, a lot of rice is grown in the north. Go figure.

After spending much of the day just hanging out in the air-conditioned house, I got a little stir-crazy and wanted to get out. I decided to go to Intramuros, or the Walled City, the main tourist attraction here, which is basically the remnants and reconstructions of the colonial city centre from when Spanish imperialists ruled Manila (from 1560ish until 1898). Bambi changed some money for me (US$1 = ~50 Philippine pesos [PHP]), and put me in a 150PHP cab ride (which was too much -- it should have been about 80).

I arrive at Intramuros and promptly cannot find where I am on my map, so I sort of wander around, just watching the hordes of uniformed teenagers mill around and get snacks from street vendors and cluster in little circles gossipping. Apparently, school had just let out. I was definitely the only white person in sight. It was quite jarring -- everyone stared at me and whispered, and the pedicab drivers and street vendors and beggar children kept following me saying "Yes, ma'am?" in heavily accented, lilting English. I just nodded and kept walking in what I hoped was a confident manner, and tried not to reveal that I had little idea where I was. Apparently, white women don't often traipse around the city by themselves.



I finally got my barings and found a visitor's center at Fort Santiago, which served as the military headquarters when the Philippines was occupied by Spanish, British, American, and Japanese regimes. During World War II, it was used to house hundreds of prisoners-of-war who were eventually executed by the Japanese. Pretty much everything in Intramuros was destroyed several times over the course of Manila's various occupations and bomb raids, so it is all reconstructed. What's notable about Fort Santiago is that the Philippine nationalist who wrote passionate prose about independence, Jose Rizal, spent his last night here before being marched to his execution in 1896.

By the time I finished poking around, it was getting dark, and I had been told not to go wandering around by myself at night. So I asked a nice guard at the front of the fort if he would help me get a cab. Navy officer Anthony stood with me for 20 minutes during rush hour and helped me get a taxi, which would only take me if I agreed to pay 200PHP, which I did. While he tried to get me a cab (and apparently the light-on, light-off thing that is so effective in NYC is nonexistent in Manila), soft-spoken, sweet Anthony offered to be my "personal tour guide" around the city. I politely declined, after deflecting questions about whether I was married (I wear my Harvard ring on the wrong finger, I guess) and what my plans were for my time in Manila.

Leticia took us out for to a Spanish restaurant -- many streets and other aspects of the Philippines retain influences from the long colonial reign of the Spaniards. This includes the devout Catholicism practiced by a large majority (something like 92 percent) of the population. Christmas here is celebrated to the nines in a gaudy, lights-flashing, tropical sort of way. More on that later.

December 8, 2006

After my failed attempt to see Intramuros on my own, Leticia sent me out with Nicole and Jorald, our driver and friend. San Agustin Church and Museum was our first stop. Built in 1587, it is where the last Spanish governor of Manila surrendered to the Filipinos and Americans in 1898. It has withstood five earthquakes and three national invations (and WWII bombings), and it's also been restored, so it postively gleams. We arrived at the perfect time -- a wedding was about to begin! Ignoring the signs that said no tourists allowed, we oohed and aahed over the bridge and the flower girls who kept breaking formation and throwing confetti at one another. We wandered around the museum (the grave paintings of Biblical scenes and exhibitions of gold-threaded vestments from the seventeenth century contrasted nicely with the tinny playing of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" piped into the exhibition halls) and the picturesque monastery garden (where, by the way, one Father Blanco experimented with medicinal plants in order to write a book, Flora and Fauna in the Philippines. Go Hist and Sci!).



We also walked through the Casa Manila -- basically a shrine to the lifestyle and home decor of the Spanish imperialists. The delicate wood-carved detail on the walls and ceilings were stunning, though. Interesting fact: the toilet area had two wooden seats next to each other (FOP style -- do it with a buddy!), and sometimes they carved a chessboard in between the two seats so that companions could pass the time. In other bathroom news, here they are called "Comfort Rooms" or CRs. A misnomer if there ever was one.

Oh, our car had been towed. So we had to take a pedicab to pick it up. The rampant corruption the Philippines has been known for since independence in 1946 was in effect -- if we paid enough money they would give it back, along with Jorald's license. So we bribed.

After a quick stop by Rizal Park (10 PHP to see the spot where martyr Rizal was executed, highlighted by a reenactment the event in Soviet Realist sculpture), Nicole and I head to one of the dozens of malls. In "Robinsons Malls" (as it is called) we eyed a live performance of Barbie's 12 Dancing Princesses (which was in English -- and all Filipino kids were watching! They are basically all bilingual, partly, I suppose, as an indirect result of the American occupation from 1898 -1946) before moving on to the stalls where we bartered to get sunglasses for 90 PHP.

Jorald picked us up, and we made our way -- slowly -- back to Malate. A few observations about the traffic in Manila, which is clogged and congested and horn-honkingly horrific. The rather narrow roads are not only filled with passenger vehicles, but dozens of jeepneys (pseudo-buses made out of leftover vehicles from the American occupation) and pedicabs, trucks and motorcycles.

December 9, 2006

After a 14-hour sleep and a relaxing morning, Jorald took me to the Mall of Asia. It's about the size of three airplane hangars and might as well be located in Los Angeles. It has a Citibank, an ice skating rink, live concert stages, a 100-foot tall Christmas tree, and every store and fast-food joint imaginable. It was built on land that was put on top of Manila Bay, so it's like they literally created this shopper's paradise from mere water. As we were there, I noticed that people came in droves -- apparently mall-going is an affair that calls for all 18 members of a given immediate family, including a great-grandmother and a three-week-old infant, all ooh-ing and aah-ing at the window of the Kate Spade New York store.

Interesting factoid: they call the McDonald's here "McDo's," pronouncd "McDoughs." BUT the Philippines are one of the few countries in the world where it's NOT the number one fast food chain. Here, Jollibee has that honor -- it serves burgers with rice as side dishes alongside sweeter dipping sauces a la duck sauce. I had an ice cream from an outfit that looked suspiciously like Cold Stone Creamery but is apparently Australia's equivalent. I bought a shirt at what is one of the many stores here that is like H&M except with cooler clothes and cheaper. Sigh. Amazing.

As we were leaving the mall, it was refreshing -- after all that slick commercialization -- to see an eclectic group of people dance and sing down the mall's runway-like main drag as part of a parade celebrating 143rd Pasay Day (Pasay City is a sub-part of Metro Manila). Many were were these garish t-shirts in various Day-Glo colors that said I Heart Pasay. Some donned what I guessed was traditional native Filipino attire, such as grass skirts and dark body paint. Some adorable children dressed up in what looked like Aladdin- and Cindarella-eque costumes bought at CVS, but it was so adorable and they were beaming and being a part of the parade. They saw my camera and posed with their banner. I promptly fell in love with a nine-year-old boy who was banging very exuberantly on a drum, pausing every so often to wave at me and grin at his friends.

Later that night, I managed to track down an old friend of my Mom's, Nina Yuson, and I went over to her house in Makati City (another part of Metro Manila. Sidenote: it's freaking giant. At least it feels that way, since it takes eons to get anywhere because of the traffic.). Nina pulled out this ancient photo album containing pictures of my mom when she was pregnant with me, because what's when Nina and her family (four kids, the youngest about my age) visited New York and stayed on 91st Street. That was a nice reminder of home.

My Nine-Month Plan

After a fantastic summer reporting and writing for Newsday and a much-needed fall of relaxation, I have decided to put off getting a full-time job in journalism in order to take a gap 3/4-of-a-year.

From Dec. 5 until Feb. 20, I will be traveling around Southeast and East Asia with various friends from high school and college, hitting up 10 countries at an incredibly fast clip. For the last few weeks, I am teaching English to 16-to-18 year olds at a two-week "winter camp" in Taiwan.

Then, from the beginning of March until the end of May, I have an unpaid internship at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence. I'm going to be doing some writing, some communications, and some student outreach for the museum, which, by the by, contains such treasures as Galileo's telescopes, astrolabes, and compass, as well as the rather shriveled remains of the middle finger of his right hand. Yes, I know. It's awesome. (For all you Hist and Sci junkies out there, check out www.imss.firenze.it for more in this vein.)

Then, for the summer, the plan is to work as a counselor or trip leader for some kind of camp/teen tour program that allows me to travel as part of the job. (If you know of any programs like this, let me know! I'm in the process of applying to them now.)

Send me a text mesasge!

http://www.telestial.com/view_product.php?PRODUCT_ID=MSIM-EX01

Scroll down to where it says "Send free SMS online to any Explorer subscriber: Click here." Then click there and enter my text message number (372-5337-3378) and write a message that includes your name, since I won't know who it's from otherwise. I will then get the text message and proceed to be ecstatic.

I'll be blogging my various adventures as best I can. Please comment!