Thursday April 11, 2013

6:30 a.m. Virac, Catanduanes

If I were informed that I was here on this world as a kind of messiah to deliver my important message, I know exactly what my message would be. “Hooks,” I would begin my first sermon, “are good! Hooks cost next to nothing and make life a thousand times better. Go, my children, to the hardware store. Go today! Buy hooks – plastic hooks, metal hooks, any type of hooks. And install them! Put them in bathrooms. Put them on the backs of doors! Put them on the wall! Put hooks everywhere. That is my message, my children. Go forth, purchase hooks.”

I guess I’m alone in this belief because I always encounter places with no hooks. And it simply stumps me. People must not live their lives as I do. But then how do they function? I’m thinking, of course, of my room and bathroom at the Marem pension. I mentioned the other day that the bathroom was a shared bathroom and fairly small. That was all I said, other than that a substantial spider corpse lay on the floor being feasted upon by ants. Since then, I’ve come to know this bathroom much better.

At one point during the day, I was back at the pension and I decided to take a refreshing shower. I gathered up my toiletry kit and my fancy high-tech towel (the hotel had not provided one), and put on my flip-flops and went to the bathroom. I went inside and had to stand far to one side in order to close the door. The toilet sat there – without a toilet lid of course. There was a sink in the corner with a single cold water faucet. The sink was on a strange angle and had some garbage piled up on top of it. The showerhead was in the wall nearly directly above the toilet and was clearly going to soak the entire room. There I stood with my towel and toiletry it and I realized there was nowhere to put any of it. There were no hooks of any kind. My toiletry kit has its own hook and my towel even has its own look with a snap built in. But there was nothing on any of the smooth cement surfaces that I could attach my hooks to. Nothing. The best I could do was hang everything over the doorknob. Everything was perched precariously there and then I pulled off my shorts and draped them over my towel. It required a masterful and light touch to get it there. Then I turned on the water for the shower. The water blasted out and I had to carefully aim it at the side wall to keep my towel and clothes from being soaked. I’m standing there doing practically a gymnastics routine to wet my body but not wet anything else. Then someone tries to get into the bathroom. I had locked the door, of course, and the water was clearly running, but this person hit the door like a linebacker popping out the little latch of the doorknob itself. I had thrown another latch, so the door didn’t fly open, but the force knocked everything off the doorknob and it all fell into the pool of water on the floor. All this to save a couple of pesos on hooks?

I seriously wonder what other people do. I can’t be the only person who ever goes into this bathroom with at least a towel and a pair of shorts. What does everyone else do? Is there a secret I’m not aware of? Am I the only person in the Philippines who showers? Just to be annoying, I might drop by the hardware store today and see what they have in the way of hooks. I’ll donate them to the hotel.

The bathroom is the biggest problem at the Marem, but my room is not that great, either. I took it knowing that it wasn’t a great room at 250 pesos. But there were lots of problems with it that weren’t apparent from a casual glance. For one thing, the walls are paper thin. There is almost nothing there. They seem to have just taken a wide section of hallway and thrown up pieces of plywood to divide it into narrow spaces. Therefore, when the people on either side of me turned on their TVs (why do they spring for TVs and not for hooks?), they might as well be right in my head – loud and blaring. There is also this large electrical cord stretching through a hole in the wall from the room beside mine right into mine. I have no idea what it is for, but it suddenly started whipping around and moving the curtain. I thought someone was coming into my room from the balcony, and I quickly whipped on a pair of shorts so that I didn’t greet my visitor in the nude. I pulled aside the curtain to see who was trying to break in, and that’s when I saw this thick wire whipping around and thrashing like a snake being killed. Someone in the other room was holding the other end and twisting and turning it. But why? What could it possibly be attached to?

The room also faced west, and it got the full blast of the afternoon and setting sun. The temperature rose to really uncomfortable levels. There was a series of small windows right up at the ceiling level and with a huge effort, I could wrestle those open to let in some fresh air, but that then opens my room to mosquitoes and whatever else wants to come in. Die of heat or be eaten alive by mosquitoes? Thinking of malaria, I opted for the heat and I just turned the fan on high and lay there trying to cool down.

This room is quite small, and I was having trouble organizing my luggage to keep it straight and accessible. A few hooks in the door and on the wall would have been wonderful, but there were none. I would have strung up a line or two (my normal pattern), but there was nothing to tie the rope to. I arranged my stuff as best I could and then I was just left with my towel and my clothing. There was a curtain held in place by a curtain rod, and I put my towel and shorts and clothes over that. Of course, the curtain rod was just barely held in place, and the whole thing came crashing down with the slightest movement.

Despite all this and despite the room facing the main road with all its traffic noise, I slept very well. I used earplugs and an eyeshade as I always do and that got me through the night. I went to sleep quite early. I had gotten up at 4 a.m. the morning before and I had had a long day of adventures on the ferry and then exploring Virac, so I was tired and felt no shame at going to bed early. In fact, going to bed early and getting up early is one of my great pleasures, and I would do that a lot on previous trips. Cycling fits into that pattern pretty well. Life here in general fits into that pattern. In Taipei, there was so much to distract me at night – things like the Internet – that I’d stay up late doing nothing. Here, once the sun goes down and I exhaust my energy for reading and stuff like that, it’s time to go to sleep. I get a good rest, and I’m up early the next morning.

After I settled into my room yesterday, I got on my bike and went out for a bit of an exploratory ride. Virac is right on the coast, and I found a kind of long cement wharf running for two or three kilometers right along the ocean. I could ride along that and watch all the activity in the town and in the water. Lots of children were in the water swimming and playing. A funny thing is that everyone talks about Taiwan being a crowded place. Yet I could travel for a very long time in Taiwan without seeing anyone. I could drive my scooter through the mountains and see no one at all. There would be no houses or structures of any kind. Here in the Philippines, there are people EVERYWHERE. Absolutely everywhere. You can’t get away from them. From the ferry, Virac looked like it was sitting all by itself in a green jungle. But when I got on my bicycle and rode along the coast and then along the road outside of town, I found that it wasn’t as deserted as it looked. The road itself was lined with houses and businesses. It was as busy as any city anywhere. And on either side of the main road were many smaller roads filled with houses and schools and hospitals and everything else you can think of. Even here in the middle of nowhere, the land is simply jammed with people. It is so crowded that even when you are standing somewhere just gazing around you and thinking that you are somewhat alone, you aren’t. There were dozens of pairs of eyes on me at all times and the “Hey, Joe!”s came pouring down on me from all directions. Half the time, I can’t even tell where they are coming from. People are hanging out in the shade everywhere around me and watching me. They all see me though I can’t see them. One time, I was close to the water and I was framing up a picture of a picturesque boat lying on the sand. Suddenly, I heard a chorus of “Hey, man!” and “Hey, Joe!” and lots of laughter and I see that there are eight or nine teenage boys all UNDER the boat hiding from the sun. I hadn’t even seen them until they started laughing and calling out to me.

I’ve only been here a short time, but I already find the renowned friendliness of the Filipinos something of a double-edged sword. It’s great that everyone is so friendly and that everyone speaks English. I get to talk to lots of people all day long. But it also means that I am on center stage all the time. People greet me all the time – young, middle aged, old – everyone. And I feel that I have to greet them back. But what do you say back after “Hey, Joe!”? What is the proper response? I’m not the kind of guy that says things like “Hey, guys!” or ‘Hey, man!” naturally. I’m not that cool. Often whatever I do say is repeated back to me amidst a lot of laughter. Even if and when the laughter is good natured, it does wear you down after a while. It’s no fun to spend your entire day being laughed at whatever the circumstances. I also have no way of judging when a greeting is meant sincerely and warmly and when it is just a bunch of punks making fun of me. In the end, it makes no difference. I can’t do anything about it. It’s just the way things are, and so I ride around all day long greeting everyone around me.

The best part of this is that I can occasionally stop and talk to people. When I hear a “Hey, Joe!” that sounds more fluent than the norm and I see an intelligent and friendly face, I can stop and have a chat. That more than makes up for the negative feelings when a bunch of teenage punks get a bit unruly.

I didn’t have many such encounters yesterday. The most meaningful was with Michael. Michael was sitting at the side of the road – in front of his little house as it turned out – hammering at some wood and trying to take apart what looked like the remains of a large packing crate.

He called out “Hey, Joe!” and I pulled over on my bicycle for a chat. Michael was a man of many talents. He was a tricycle driver. He had his Honda tricycle right there and he said that he didn’t own it outright. He had it on installment. Unfortunately, I didn’t ask for the details. While we chatted, face after little face appeared in the small window right behind him. These were Michael’s wife and his five children. Michael was also a carpenter and a fisherman. He mentioned a couple of other things he did, but I didn’t understand them. Michael was born in Virac and had lived there his entire life. I stopped by again later on, and then I got to meet Michael’s father, who apparently lived right beside him.

Michael, being a tricycle driver, was eager to offer me his services. I indicated that I had my bicycle, but that little detail wasn’t about to deter Michael. He said I could just put my bicycle on the tricycle. No problem. Michael kept mentioning the surfing beach Panuram (or something like that). It is apparently popular with foreigners and since I am a foreigner, he assumed I would be going there. For 500 pesos he could drive me there and back.

After I said goodbye to Michael, I rode my bike on the road out of town in the direction of Parunam. At that time, I still had the idea that civilization ended at the edges of Virac. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The road was in good condition – flat cement pavement – and there were villages and houses everywhere and lots of Oceanside bars and videoke places. I rode for a good eight or nine kilometers, and the landscape never changed. It was just as crowded and inhabited at the end of my ride as at the beginning. I occasionally turned off the main road and road down a narrow lane to the edge of the ocean. There, I could see lots of children playing on the beach and in the water. People were everywhere lying in the shade and the cries of “Hey, Joe!” came at me from all directions. On one beach, I stopped to watch a unique fishing operation. They had attached a large fishing net to a boat perhaps two hundred meters off shore. About fifteen men and boys were holding onto the net on the beach and they were sloly pulling the net along the beach while the boat pulled the other end. In essence, they were sweeping the water clean along the entire length of the beach. This wasn’t an easy process. The net looked to be the type of heavy net that a fishing trawler would normally handle, and it took all the strength of the pullers on the beach to move it along. It was a complicated operation and they moved very slowly. They moved so slowly, in fact, that it took me a long time to figure out that they were moving at all. At the beginning, I assumed they were pulling the net in. When the net never came further in, I figured out that they were dragging it along the beach. I’d have stayed to see their haul, but it would have taken the rest of the afternoon for them to finish, I think.

Back in town, I set off to find something to eat. That was a bit of a challenge as the local eateries were not as cooperative as those in Legazpi had been. Most offered no seating. People got food to take home. I might have to start doing that. I can always eat back at the hotel on the roof or something. Those that had seating, never seemed to have any rice. It took me a long time to find a place that had any food available. The meal turned out to be very good, but it was an effort tracking the place down. When I asked people about places to eat, they kept pointing me to the Jollibee, the Food Hauz, and a place called Chick Boy – the standard fast food operations here. I’m glad to say that (until this morning anyway) I’ve never yet eaten at a Jollibee. That’s an accomplishment as no place in the Philippines is as advertised as the Jollibee chain. I actually like that Jollibee chain exists because they at least provide distances. On my trips on Palawan, I would always see signs saying how many kilometers it was to the next Jollibee and the Jollibee would be in the middle of town. The same thing happens here. There is no sign saying how far it is to get to Virac or anywhere. But there are lots of signs constantly informing you of how far you are from the nearest Jollibee.

I’m having breakfast at Jollibee this morning because nothing else was open at 6:30 in the morning when I was out on the streets. I wanted to find a local breakfast joint, but I saw nothing but closed shutters. Jollibee, however, was rocking and rolling and I popped in for a cup of coffee.

These fast food joints are a half-decent representation of what the Philippines is like. One tends to dismiss them as fast food joints. However, they are extremely popular and they get a lot of things right that you don’t see in other places. For example, I did stop at a wonderful little seaside restaurant called Sea Breeze yesterday. It sits downtown right beside the dock, and I had one of the best ice-cold beers of my life. I told the waiter that I would have the beer and then I’d order food afterwards. Then I never saw him or another waiter ever again. I saw lots of customers come in and sit at a table and be completely ignored. They would have to sit there with their heads swiveling around and waving their hands and trying to get the attention of anyone to serve them. I eventually got annoyed and gave up and left. When I paid my bill, it was the first time I’d seen my waiter since I got the beer. I told him clearly that I would have ordered more beer and had dinner, but he never came back to my table. And I pointed out all the other people waiting for service. In terms of customer service, this seems to be the norm. One can get service, but the customer has to fight for it. In Jollibee, service is extraordinary. I can’t say enough about how great it is. I ordered just a coffee and sat for a while with it. Then, even though one orders at the counter, a server came to my table and asked me if I would like to order breakfast. She explained all the meals to me and then took my order and brought it to me and took my money and even brought me ice water. She was friendly and chatty and the service was fantastic. I can see the people here working very hard and very efficiently – mopping the floors, helping people, and cleaning.

I hate to say it, but I ended up at the Chick Boy fast food restaurant for dinner, too. I walked around Virac for a solid hour and a half trying to find a local eatery, but I couldn’t find one. I was facing a foodless hungry night or I had to eat at Chick Boy. The food was quite good, the service was excellent, and they offered unlimited soup and unlimited rice. Not only that, they would come by my table and ask me if I wanted more soup or more rice. I almost always said yes, because I was really hungry. The food at the eateries is great. It’s better and cheaper, and you can get some vegetable dishes – if you’re lucky. But these fast food joints are a viable alternative. Sometimes they are the only alternative!

The last event from yesterday was finally getting out my Olympus. I did this around 4:30 – kind of the golden hour. I did take one or two pictures at the beach, but I didn’t take many. It was a hassle to take out the Olympus, and I just used my Canon Elph. But when I looked at the two pictures I took with the Olympus, I was reminded of just how much better those images are. So I was inspired to take my Olympus out on the street and shoot some people pictures. It was great fun, and I shot a dozen or so pictures of the tricycle drivers and some children. They are all great. Seems a shame that I don’t have a strong reason to take those pictures. It’s just so much fun, and I love looking at them later. I decided then to spend another day in Virac and see about turning it into a kind of photography day. I was out early this morning with the camera, but I had jumped the gun and the whole town was still sleeping. That’s how I ended up at Jollibee. I don’t know what I’m going to do today. I’m thinking about riding my bike to Twin Rocks to check it out. If the price is right, I might move there.

 

Tags: bike, Catanduanes Bike Trip, Chick Boy, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Virac