Tuesday April 2, 2013

7:17 a.m. Mayon Backpackers Hostel

I’m back on the rooftop of the hostel. The hostel has a lot of furniture in the rooms and on the roof, which is nice, but it is not the most comfortable. It is made out of some kind of rock-hard substance and then painted to look like wood. The furniture in the common area is made of wood with no cushioning. No soft couches and armchairs to chill out on here, which is a shame.

I suppose that is one of the negative qualities of this hostel – there is no comfortable common area. The common area consists of the kitchen and dining area and then a small space near the lobby and front desk. The dining room has a large dining room table with six or seven hard chairs around it. The small area has a couple of wooden benches and a single hard chair. This space is meant more for people to wait as they check in and check out. It tends to get filled up with piles of backpacks and that sort of thing. As such, I find that this layout does not encourage social gatherings.

The modern world of technology also does its part to discourage social interaction. Personally, I am dying to talk with people. I’ll talk about anything at any time and I am constantly starting conversations with people. I don’t care that the opening often begins with the standard questions about where a person has been and where they are going and what they plan to do and what country they are from. I like hearing the answers to those questions and I don’t mind giving my answers. However, technology is a great barrier. I’m not sure I’ve seen a single person without a laptop computer or an iPad – except me. I learned yesterday that my two dorm mates are from Belgium. That surprised me very much. Like most people in the world, I don’t have a clear image in my head of a Belgian. They come from a country of many languages and cultures. But I definitely don’t associate Belgium with dreadlocks. I guess many languages and chocolate are the two things that come to mind.

Well, these two guys are often in the common area and I want to start a conversation, but both are generally hunkered down behind either a laptop or a tablet. It feels rude to interrupt someone when they are on a computer. It’s impossible to tell if they are doing something personal and important or just killing time.

So far, I’ve launched my conversational assaults on people when they are in the dorm room. In a way it feels much more comfortable there. There is only one small desk and a single desk chair in addition to the 3 bunk beds (6 beds total), which doesn’t leave much room, but it’s possible to chat while we rummage through our various bags and gather up what we need for the day and put away what we don’t need. It was during one of these moments that I learned that these two were from Belgium. I also learned that they were on a shortish holiday and must return to work at some point in the next two weeks. I also learned that they had arrived in the Philippines just the previous Wednesday. That surprised me because they both gave off vibes of having been settled in forever. I suppose I often feel that way. I have this habit of seeing everyone else as perfectly in control and experienced and knowing exactly what they are doing. I also imagine that they are doing the right things – great things. I only change that opinion once I get to know them and learn some of their story and then realize that they are just like me. Once I found out that they had just arrived three or four days ago and were simply on a short holiday, I wasn’t as intimidated by them. I hadn’t seen them at all during the previous day and I was curious what awesome adventure they had gotten up to. I found out that they had simply taken a jeepney to downtown Legazpi and to the waterfront. That was a fairly normal thing to do, and was in fact what I was planning to do myself that day.

I got a couple more dorm mates during the day. One – to my great surprise – was another Belgian. He had been sleeping in the non-aircon dorm but had been moved to ours to make room for a large group that was arriving. He’s a friendly guy and we chatted about this and that during the day. He ended up in the bunk right above me. I was somewhat dreading the dorm filling up to the extent that I would have people sleeping beside and even above me. However, despite the cramped space, it wasn’t as onerous as I expected. The bunk beds are not solid and when he moved or climbed up or down, my world shook like an earthquake was about to swallow me up, but I was so tired that I slept just fine anyway. He was finding the air conditioning to be a bit strong, and he turned it off during the night when he couldn’t take it anymore. I think he only had the hostel sleeping sheet, so it doesn’t surprise me that he was too cold. I was using my down sleeping bag to stay warm. However, once the air con was off, it quickly got very hot, and then I was uncomfortable and couldn’t sleep. I felt reluctant to turn on the air conditioner and impose my choice on the rest of the room so I just left it. I was glad, then, that this fellow got up at one point to turn the air con back on.

I went to the bathroom once during the night, and upon removing my eyeshade, I was startled by a blast of blue light. This blue light then went off and then blasted me again. This was another modern detail. The blue light was, of course, the light of a charging station plugged into the wall. The charging was complete and the blue light was blinking to indicate that fact. I don’t know who it belonged to or if it was bothering anyone. I think if I didn’t have an eyeshade, it would have bothered me. But other people seem able to sleep more soundly than I am able. I thought about unplugging it, but I didn’t want to mess around with another person’s stuff. I also couldn’t be sure that the blinking light meant it was done charging. Perhaps that meant it was still charging.

My fourth and final dorm mate for the day and night was a young fellow from Norway. He, if I have his story straight, had been to Borneo and Singapore before coming to the Philippines. His plan is to climb Mayon Volcano while he is here. He is on his own and he hopes to link up with some other people to go as a group to reduce the cost. Climbing Mayon Volcano is not a simple stroll. To do it properly without rushing takes a standard three days. You go first to Camp 1 and spend the night. Then you climb to Camp 2 and spend the night. On the third day, you climb to the peak and then do the full descent. You need tents and sleeping bags and water and food and the ability to carry all of that. I don’t know if porters are involved, but a guide certainly is. One needs a guide to navigate the volcano and the preparations, of course, but a guide can also be useful just to navigate the transportation to the volcano itself to start the hike.

This fourth dorm mate had met a potential guide at the airport, and a meeting was planned for the evening for a bunch of people to put the details of this trip together. I was around for some of the meeting, and it didn’t look like it was going to come off. The larger group interested in going did not have very much time before their flight and were trying to find a way to shorten the climb considerably. They were also trying to reduce the guide’s asking price by a lot. Being just a group of friends, there was no clear leader and the guide had to work pretty hard to get a good answer out of them. In the end, I don’t think he was successful. This group felt that they didn’t need a guide as much as people told them they did and they didn’t feel like paying very much.

I don’t feel a strong urge to climb the volcano myself. That’s a good thing, since I don’t think it would be wise from a physical standpoint anyway. I’m not in any kind of shape, and having just arrived, the sun would probably finish me off before I got anywhere near the top. The weather seems unreliable, too, and the chances are you would climb for two days to only see clouds. I can see the volcano clearly from where I am sitting and enjoying my cup of coffee, and like all volcanoes, it looks extremely steep. I remember climbing up a much lower one in Indonesia, and once I got to the upper slopes, I found that I was sliding backwards 1 foot through the scree for every two feet that I climbed upward. It was tough going.

I found another victim for my conversational assault in the common area near the front lobby. This was a Filipino man, who, I quickly learned, was an engineer from Cebu, and he was in Legazpi with his wife and two daughters for the holy week holidays. The previous day, they had gone to a place that let them ride ATVs. He was interested in teaching his daughters skills like that. He said that he had a wide range of interests. In fact, he had entire bookshelves filled with books on different topics. The problem was finding the time to pursue all of these interests. He was, for example, quite interested in survival skills and he wanted to take a course that taught everything about how to survive in the wild on your own. This ATV driving for his daughters was somewhat related to his interest in survival skills. He wanted them to be able to handle themselves in a variety of situations and be familiar with motorized vehicles and driving.

He said that he had gotten a good deal on the flights to Legazpi because he had booked them months ago. He had paid about P5,000 ($120) for round trip tickets for all four of them. He had found the Backpackers Hostel through TripAdvisor and booked a room here because of the price. I believe his whole family is staying in one large room, which goes for P1,000 ($25) per night. Perhaps he managed to get a cheaper rate.

My plan for the day was to simply get on my bike and ride down to the waterfront. It turned out much better than I expected. The ride down Rizal Street was entertaining as I had to dodge the jeepneys. The traffic problems kind of surprise me. It doesn’t seem to be a large enough place to produce so much traffic. This brings me back to the jeepneys. I think they largely cause most of the traffic problems. They are simply too slow and too bulky and too inefficient. Traffic never manages to build up a head of steam and get moving because a jeepney is always blocking the way.

I was in downtown Legazpi in a short while. I noticed a couple of large shopping malls – the ones that Mike had told me about at the airport. The road brought me right to the docks, where I turned right (south) and followed the water line. To my delight, I soon found myself cycling right beside the ocean on a big and empty sidewalk alongside an equally large and empty coastal highway. The views were expansive with the Mayon Volcano in one direction across the water and other low hills and mountains all around in the other directions. Lining the highway were many bars and restaurants, though most were closed. I assume they open at night for the most part. There were no swimming beaches here, and I think it is far too hot for people to be out during midday. I was worried about the sun and I had thought ahead to the extent of applying sunscreen. But, really, I probably should not have been out there at all, let along for the hours that I rode around under that hot sun.

I followed the coast road for as long as I could and saw many interesting things along the way. At one point, I passed three men pulling on a rope. It seemed a bit like a comedy sketch because there appeared to be nothing at the end of the rope. I saw it stretch ahead of us along the sidewalk for a very long way. It went so far that I couldn’t see where it ended or what it was attached to. I rode my bike along the rope, and it went so far that I practically forgot about it before I got to its end. When I got there, the men pulling on the rope were so far away as to be out of sight. The rope itself was wrapped around a post and made a 90 degree turn and headed out into the ocean. It dipped under the water a short distance out and vanished. Obviously, it was connected to some kind of fishing net. They must have deposited the net by boat far out in the ocean and then brought the end of the rope to shore. Now it was time to pull it in, and pull it they did. They were not heaving on it like crazed men – singing a pirate shanty as they did so. No, they were going about it in a very slow and methodical way. They gave off the air that they had been pulling on that rope (walking with it, actually) for days and would continue to do so for many days more. It didn’t even occur to me to wait to see what emerged from the ocean. For all I knew, hours could pass before the net reached shore.

I stopped cycling at a point where the road turned inland away from the shore. It probably just went around a mountain and rejoined the shore on the other side, but I had gone far enough. On my way back, I noticed that there were little lanes going inland between all these bars and restaurants. I rode down a likely looking one and discovered that that entire area was populated. I couldn’t have guessed it from the road, but there were lots of people living back there in typical Filipino houses. It was quite pleasant and shaded. Children were everywhere playing games they had invented. The current rage appeared to be a game that involved lining up their flip-flops across the road and then throwing another flip-flop at them and trying to knock the others away and send them as far down the road as possible. I saw children playing this same game in every lane that I rode down. I can’t even guess at the rules. I imagine that they were quite fluid, and the fun lay largely in throwing the flip-flops. The obvious point of interest is that these children had invented this game with some of the few objects that they have access to – their own footwear. It was very inventive when you think about it. It’s what all children show themselves capable of doing when they don’t have hundreds of store-bought toys to distract them.

I have no idea what the people in these neighborhoods thought of me when I turned up pedaling slowly along on my bicycle. I was greeted by lots of people. Some just said “hello.” Some said “Hey, Joe!” There were others that I couldn’t make out. Some children were so startled as to be frightened and run away. Others couldn’t be bothered to look up from their carefully aimed flip-flop.

At one point, I decided to go a bit further inland. I saw that the road began to climb and I wondered if I could get a nice view of the area. My bike made the steep climb effortlessly (since I was carrying no luggage), and I found all kinds of people living all over the hills in tight groups of houses. There was an elementary school – perfectly manicured and painted and gardened as they all are. There were painted signs everywhere encouraging people to not litter and to otherwise behave like responsible citizens. A strong civic attitude seems to be deeply ingrained in the Filipino culture.

At another point, I parked my bicycle to climb up a short but steep hill of red clay and rock to get a view of a little village clustered around an inland lagoon. I would have liked to walk through the village, but there was no way to safeguard my bicycle. I didn’t see much activity in the village. Most people were resting in the shade.

The last interesting sight I’ll mention appeared at the very end of the road at the point when I turned back. This was a set of two floating rafts. Each raft was essentially a party boat. People could rent them, I assume, and sit around the big table in the middle and have drinks and food while floating on the ocean. They were festooned with bright flags to give them a party atmosphere, and they had nippa roofs to keep off the worst of the sun. No one was on them at the time, but there was a man and his family in a little hut right beside them. I think it was his job to rent them out. He also had a little shop there selling a variety of things.

Once I returned to Legazpi proper and left the cooling ocean breeze behind, the cumulative effect of my ride hit hard and I simply couldn’t stop sweating. It poured off me in buckets. I spotted a little eatery and I went in to get a plate of rice and some other dishes and a bottle of water. I felt like a disgusting bit of human debris as I sat there. The Filipinos around me were cool and trim and dry and neat. I was pretty much a puddle of sweat. That started me thinking about the effect of hot weather on people and on a culture. I was finding the heat almost unbearable. It is probably bearable only to the extent that I know it is temporary. How would I feel if I lived here permanently and this heat was my constant companion? How could I live? Of course, you would adapt your life habits. You certainly wouldn’t be riding a bicycle through the hottest hours of the day. Sensible Filipinos were napping in the shade while I was huffing and puffing up the steep hills. Still, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be completely happy living in this kind of heat permanently. My instinct at all times is to get out of heat, to shower, to get refreshed, to find air conditioning. But these things do little good since two minutes after your cool shower, you are drenched in hot sweat again. How do you live your life in these conditions?

The day ended with a huge bang. April 1st turned out to be the first day of a month-long festival. I don’t know what the festival is called, but the whole town was gearing up for it, and it was kicking off with a big procession and fireworks. Luckily for us Backpackers dwellers, the main site of the festival is just two or three blocks away in a park near the cathedral.

Around four o’clock, I emerged from my shower at the hostel and set off on foot with my camera in my hand. My timing was perfect because the main part of the procession was just arriving at the park. There were large crowds there, but it was still very comfortable. There was lots of room for everyone, and I could stand there at the side of the road and see everything.

Words have to fail me when it comes to describing the scene. There was simply too much going on. It reminded me more than anything of a rustic version of Carnival in Brazil – at least what I’ve seen of it on TV. There were dozens and dozens of large figures that were pushed along on wheels. These consisted of fantastic creatures of myth and legend. Many were horrific monsters and furry beasts tearing the heads off other monsters and furry beasts. Others were human figures of history and legend. I can’t possibly describe them all. Performers danced and played music with each figure, all driven along by a frenzied pounding of drums.

My vantage point was right at the end just before the various floats turned into the park where they put on their best performance to be judged. Having come all the way from downtown on foot, I was astonished that the dancers had any energy left, but they certainly did. The best performers by far were two young boys that had somehow covered themselves in a type of black mud. They were in bare feet and were stripped to the waist in only a small skirt over shorts. They danced and danced as if there was nothing on earth other than dancing. They were both hams and posed for pictures and simply reveled in the attention they received. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

I stood there at my vantage point for over two hours enjoying the spectacle. Towards the end, a huge Chinese-style snake or dragon arrived carried by ten or fifteen men. The snake raced around the street and charged at the crowds. From time to time, a spray of water came out of its mouth and drenched the screaming and laughing crowd. People ran in all directions to escape the water, yet couldn’t resist standing their ground and daring the snake to come at them. There was another monster that rolled low on the ground and it went after the children in the crowd. You could tell the children knew it was fake yet weren’t quite sure. They dared each other to race up behind it and touch its tail and then run away screaming.

The sun was down by this point, and the food stalls and restaurants and other entertainments were in full swing. It was crazy and wild and fun. There was an air of unforced fun. Some celebrities had shown up and were posing for pictures with long lines of fans. Large crowds stood around just to cheer and watch. Men stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat were putting on a fire dance of some kind. Bands were playing. Young men were everywhere trying to entice customers into their restaurants and bars – showing their menus.

I had dinner at the very first place that I saw. It had a row of dishes on display and I could simply get a plate of rice with as many of the dishes that I wanted to point at. The woman asked me how many rice I wanted. How many servings. I asked her how many servings a hungry man would want and she said three. So I had three servings of rice and a fish patty and three other dishes of vegetables that I didn’t recognize. I was quite hungry by this time and the food was like a gift from the gods. In fact, the meal had an almost primitive feeling about it – this mood helped along by all the monstrous creatures I had seen parading past all afternoon. Suddenly, the skies opened and rain poured down. People ran and screamed. Everyone swung into action to move tables under shelter. I had to move to a new table to make room for the sudden influx of refugees. Fireworks suddenly started to go off – massive explosions that shook the air and made my chest thump just as the percussion of the drums had done before. My chest felt like it had undergone a deep massage by this point.

My meal, including a small bottle of water, came to only P52 ($1.20). (In fact, Filipinos have the verbal habit of adding the word “only” when they give the price. The woman said to me, “Fifty-two pesos only” when she gave me my bill.) I plan to return to that restaurant again today. I paid my bill and then flipped through the large book of karaoke tunes. It’s clear that I could offer no greater entertainment to the Filipinos than to sing a song from time to time. I went through the book to see if there were songs that I could handle and that could become part of my repertoire. That I probably can’t sing at all would make no difference. Not being able to sing well certainly doesn’t stop anyone here from grabbing the mic and blasting away.

The crowds were quite thick by this point, and I slowly made my way through the festival grounds. I knew it was time to go, but I couldn’t resist one last stroll around. I saw lots of stages set up with instruments, so it was clear that the party was going to go for many more hours. I didn’t have the energy for that. I experienced one bad moment when I realized that I was completely lost. It was dark and I had lost my bearings. Luckily, I had the intelligence to go back into the festival and then work my way out of it again in a direction that felt familiar. Then when I emerged again I was better oriented and I had a better sense of where I was. A few false starts, and then I finally found my way down the dark lanes and alleys. I passed a family cooking skewers of meat over a small barbecue and selling them for P10 each. I ordered a couple of them and then waited with the small crowd as my skewers were cooked. I munched on them as I made my way down the lane to the hostel. It had been a good day.

 

 

Tags: Belgium, bike, Legazpi, Magayan Festival, Philippines Bike Trip 2013