Wednesday January 29, 2014

6:15 a.m. Cebu City, Philippines

I’ve always been fascinated by dreams, particularly how my dreams tend to be almost fully realized movies with characters I’ve never met speaking languages I’ve never heard and saying things that, as far as I’m aware, I have no knowledge. These characters also say things that I would never say. Yesterday morning, I woke up just after one character in my head said, “I guess the bloom is off the rose.” He was speaking about his friendship with me, as I was being reluctant to share a hotel room with him to save money. I know this phrase, of course, but it isn’t anything I’ve ever said or written. I would only do so in a self-conscious way, as if quoting from a movie or a book.

That line from my dream stuck with me the entire day, and it applies very well to my feelings about Cebu. Perhaps my dream was foreshadowing. I arrived in Cebu as it was getting dark. I also arrived by ship – the most romantic and best way to arrive anywhere. We passed dozens of large ships anchored in the harbor, each of them speaking of mystery and adventure. Where have these ships been? Who lives on board them? What are those men and women like? Also from the water, you get a very different view of the land. The mountains in the background seem much closer and they always loom above the city, Since it was getting dark. There were lights twinkling and shadows growing. My walk through the city with Chris and then our exploration of the Carbon market was also very interesting. But yesterday, I encountered Cebu in the full light of day and found it to be less than attractive and pleasant. The bloom had definitely gone off this rose.

The first order of business was to apply for a 2-month tourist visa extension. The immigration office was a bit far away in the city of Mandaue, not in Cebu itself, and I set off as early as I could. I rode there down a wide road along the harbor. I had an image of the harbor as a place of excitement and visual variety. Yesterday morning, it struck me as simply a long stretch of industrial wasteland – concrete and grey. Traffic was not yet in full swing, but it was already annoying as can be. It’s rather pointless to go into it in much detail. Anyone who has been to cities like Cebu knows what the traffic is like with all its chaos, traffic jams, and insane drivers (not to mention insane pedestrians). The main culprit by far is the ridiculously inefficient and stupid form of mass transportation the Philippines has developed – the jeepney. I can’t imagine a worse system. People might defend the jeepney for its artistic flair and history. But that era is pretty much over. The beloved jeepney of yore has been replaced by boring modern box trucks called multi-cabs. I hardly saw any jeepneys at all. They have been replaced by a cheaper and more nimble alternative. However, in terms of moving people around, it makes no difference. The modern version is as awful as the original.

Another complication was the absence of road signs. From beginning to end of all my journeys yesterday, I had no idea where I was. There were few road signs at intersections and I was reduced to asking people all day long about which street was which. People can argue that the Philippines is a poor country and can’t afford such luxuries. I say nonsense. Any country that can produce such a volume of traffic – expensive cars as well as the jeepneys and multicabs – can afford to put up a street sign. The Philippines is nowhere near as poor as people like to say. Not having street signs at intersections is an embarrassment for a country as rich as the Philippines. It just shows that they don’t have their act together.

By asking many people for directions along the way, I found the immigration office. It was housed in a pleasantly small and friendly building. It had the whole building to itself, and it even had a nice curved driveway, and riding my bike up the driveway, I felt like I was dropping by a friend’s house rather than a government bureaucracy.

In a rare moment of forethought, I had put on long pants, socks and shoes for this trip. Had I worn my usual shorts and sandals, I would not have been allowed inside. At least the large sign indicated that. I took a picture of this sign because I found it quite amusing. It showed the same young backpacker type of traveler in two sets of clothes. In one, he was dressed as every young person who visits the Philippines is dressed – colorful board shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops. In a telling bit of local humor (or perhaps not), there is a big slogan on the man’s tank top. It reads “ALL LOVE IS EQUAL.” There is a circle with a big red X next to this picture. Beside it is a picture of the same young man dressed in clothes appropriate for visiting a government office – a red shirt with sleeves (I can’t tell if it had a collar or not), a pair of dressy pants with vertical lines, a white belt, and white shoes. Looking at the pictures now, I’m impressed by them. They weren’t thrown together as you would expect them to be. The young man is good-looking and well-muscled. He is clearly a model and not just some dude they pulled out of the nearest hostel. And the clothing is not some parody. Both pictures show a fairly reasonable representation of what is not allowed and what is allowed. They didn’t go crazy and make the “bad” outfit really horribly bad. It simply makes the point that shorts, sandals and sleeve-less shirts are not allowed. And the outfit presented as being acceptable is also not a caricature. They didn’t put him in a suit and tie. He’s wearing modern and fashionable clothing. The point is simply that his shirt has sleeves, his pants have legs, and he has shoes (running shoes) on his feet.

The immigration office was a bit busier than I’d have liked, but it wasn’t overwhelming. I filled out the now very familiar form and tried to present it at the first counter. That woman waved me off toward a desk near the front door. Apparently, the system was that you went to that desk first for a type of pre-screening. This woman scanned your documents to make sure that all was correct and then stamped it. After that, you could begin the official process. It was a very logical and efficient procedure.

The woman at the first counter took my form and passport and told me to sit down. I wouldn’t call her the friendliest person in the world. She barely looked at me and seemed lost in her own world of boredom. But I couldn’t blame her. She would see tens of thousands of us every year and there was probably very little for her to do. The Philippines is very generous with their tourist visa policy and will issue one almost automatically as long as you pay the necessary fees. I don’t think this woman was expected to look at the forms carefully and make judgements about anything. It was more of a rubber-stamp process than anything else.

In a few minutes, a man at another window took a stab at pronouncing my name over a PA system. I went up to his window and received my passport and two bills and was directed over to cashier number 1. The fees were the usual suspects – a mandatory 1,000-peso fee for using their express service, a fee for making sure I wasn’t on their blacklist, a fee for this, a fee for that, a fee for something else. A new one was a 300-peso fee for being included in their annual report. I can’t even guess what that means. My total came to 3,430 pesos for a 2-month extension. I paid this money without thinking about it too much. I didn’t want to get annoyed. And then I was directed to sit down and wait for my name to be called again.

I had a chance to look over all the people at the office while I sat there. The vast majority were part of the retiree crowd – mainly retired men from the United States who had settled in the Philippines because it is cheaper and who then had married a local woman. I have mixed feelings about them. On the one hand, who cares? People can live their lives however they choose, and who is to say that retiring in the Philippines is any better or worse than staying in one’s home country? To each his own. One could easily argue that doing so was much superior to the usual pattern. I know lots of retirees in Canada, and their lives from retirement to death consists of little more than a morning coffee at Tim Hortons and watching TV for the rest of the day – and this goes on for decades. Men who retire to the Philippines are at least doing something different and having something that resembles an adventure. But I can’t help but experience some negative reactions, particularly when these men don’t dress their age. I know it’s a very weird reaction for me to have, but I can’t help it. I saw one elderly man with a big, white choker chain of shells around his neck. It just looked wrong. Men in their teens and twenties can wear such a thing and get away with it. On a 65-year-old man, it looks kind of sad.

In a very short time, my name was called, and I got up to get my passport. While I did so, I asked the man about the exit visa. I had just learned that anyone who has stayed in the Philippines longer than six months has to obtain an exit visa to leave the country. That means I have one more visit to the immigration office in my future. That’s a bit of a pain. And it will involve more of those fees. I can only hope that some of that fee money does not just go into a corrupt politician’s pocket. Maybe some of it will go toward putting up a street sign here and there. (Dream on…)

The bike ride back downtown was a bit of a nightmare. Traffic had increased, as did the horn honking, swerving, sudden stopping, and a variety of other ridiculous maneuvers. Everyone clearly had a selfish attitude about public spaces – drivers and pedestrians. They drove and stood wherever was best for them without the slightest regard for how it affected anyone around them. I was more annoyed with the pedestrians than the drivers because the pedestrians invaded my space – the area on the street by the curb. Large crowds were waiting for multi-cabs and they spilled over onto the street itself and blocked my way, which forced me out from the side of the road and into the dangerous traffic. Oh, well. That’s life in Asia in a big city.

When I arrived the night before, I was pleased to see that there were a number of big bicycle shops right in my neighborhood. After a bit of Internet research, I learned that even YKK, one of the biggest and best bicycle shops in Cebu was just a block away. I set off for these shops with a warm hum of pleasure in my belly. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long. At three bicycle shops, I was largely ignored. Then I was told bluntly that they didn’t do repairs. No one was interested in engaging with me as a customer. They clearly had better things to do. Then I went to YKK. This shop was much larger. They carried high-end gear, and I was hoping to be able to hang out there and absorb the atmosphere and meet some friendly like-minded people and buy an item or two and get some repairs done. It was not to be. They had multiple security guards and one of them was assigned to be my shadow. He stuck with me everywhere I went and annoyed the hell out of me. When I finally got some help from a store employee, I was told that they did not do repairs unless I bought a bike from them. On top of that, they kicked me out because they were closing for lunch. In one sense, it was amusing. While talking with this store employee – a young woman – she kept mentioning that it was lunch time. She said it three times, and it had nothing to do with what I was saying to her. I was very confused. Then she came right out with it and said that I had to leave the store because it was their lunch break. I laughed aloud at that. Then I ticked off my situation as I saw it: I had sent an email to YKK in advance of my visit, and they had not bothered to reply. They would not help me with repairs to my bicycle (despite my being a Yolanda survivor). And now they were kicking me out of their store. “Do I have all that right?” I asked her. I was super annoyed.

As I left the store in high dudgeon, I reflected on how lucky I was to get the bulk of the repairs to my bike done at the last minute in Tacloban. I had had this image of Cebu as a city of grace and plenty and ease – a place where I could have my bicycle fixed with no problem at all. It turns out that getting my bicycle repaired here is nearly impossible and simply moving around the city is hellish.

Rather than waste more time on this fruitless quest for bicycle repairs and getting more annoyed, I decided to switch my focus to buying a circular polarizer for my camera. This was another of my most important errands. I had a line on one of the best camera shops in the city – Macy’s – and after a few minutes going over my map, I set off on my bicycle.

It was a much more difficult ride than the one to immigration because I was now going through the heart of Cebu. The traffic was absolutely insane. Most of the time, it just wasn’t moving. The streets were jammed with vehicles and the waits at traffic lights were extremely long. All of this was compounded by the complete lack of organization shown by the multi-cabs. These are allowed to simply pull over to the side of the road anywhere they wanted and just stop and then stay stopped for as long as they wanted while they honked their horns to attract passengers. Dozens of these horrific beasts could congregate at one spot and start spilling over into lane two and even lane three, bringing all traffic to a complete standstill. Horns blasting and blasting and blasting by frustrated drivers of cars, but it made no difference. The multi-cab and jeepney drivers had rhino-skin. The honking of enraged drivers had no effect on them. I was constantly trapped behind stopped multi-cabs. They were nearly impossible to get past and it was difficult to judge whether they were stopping for just a few seconds, a minute, or three minutes. Or maybe they would never move again. It was, as I have already said many times, insane.

The stress level inside me grew and grew and grew until I was ready to explode. While blocked for a long time by a nasty set of multi-cabs, I turned to an unsuspecting Filipino waiting on the sidewalk, and I said, “How can you live like this?” It was a stupid thing for me to do, but I keep wanting to blame someone for all the problems I face. I’m angry and upset, and I end up blaming all Filipinos. It isn’t fair, of course, but I simply blame them all and my anger sprays out in all directions indiscriminately. I yelled at a couple of the drivers of the worst multi-cab offenders.

Meanwhile, I was finding the overall atmosphere of Cebu to be very harsh. There were lots of homeless people about, including a lot of desperate-looking people. There were many children – young boys mainly – in near rags and covered in dirt yet full of energy and menace. Gone was the friendly “Hello, Joe” of Tacloban to be replaced by angry stares and indifference. I guess I am just not accustomed to the atmosphere of a big city, but I found it hostile and threatening. My route took me over a lot of disgustingly dirty canals. The water was filled with garbage and the smells were overpowering. Somehow I wasn’t expecting this kind of nasty atmosphere. I had had a mental image of Cebu as a clean and pleasant place – a garden city. I don’t know where I got that idea from, but it was far from the reality. At its best, it was just characterless – grey and ugly and dirty.

I had my usual trouble finding my way – all thanks to the lack of street signs. Here, too, I wanted to blame someone. And when I asked people over and over again for the name of a street, I’d point out in a passive aggressive way the lack of street signs – as if I expected the average person to apologize to me personally.

After what felt like an endless nightmare, I arrived at a long strip mall where Macy’s was located. Just crossing the street to get there was a dangerous and trying experience. Then with a feeling of utter relief, I found the camera store and set my bike on its kickstand and began locking it up. It was then that a security guard came up to me and told me that I couldn’t park my bike there. It wasn’t in the way. There was plenty of room. I was right in front of the camera store, and there were no other customers anywhere in sight. But I was not allowed to leave my bike there. I had so much pent-up anger that I nearly exploded. I wanted to say that there were a thousand perfectly reasonable and useful traffic laws they could enforce. But they aren’t enforcing any of them. And this – this not allowing me to park my bicycle in front of the store – was the time they chose to enforce a rule? I tried arguing with the guy, but it was pointless. He said that I had to park my bicycle somewhere else, and he waved his hand off toward some motorcycles in the distance. The problem with that is that my bicycle is much more vulnerable than a motorcycle. Children play with the gear shifters and yank on the chain and cables. It can be picked up and thrown into the back of a pick-up truck and stolen. You can’t do that with a motorcycle. And there is never anything to lock my bicycle to – no steel fence or pole. I told the guard this, but he didn’t care. He just waved me away. I was so angry that I was going to just leave and to hell with buying a circular polarizer. But I controlled myself and locked up my bicycle in the appointed area – way at the back of the strip mall in a type of alleyway. I had no choice.

So what I thought would be a pleasant errand hanging out in a high-end camera store turned into another high-stress event. How, in fact, DO people live like this? The people in the camera store – Macy’s – were, fortunately, very friendly and chatty. They knew their stuff and we could discuss my camera needs in depth. Of course, when it came right down to it, they didn’t have the items I needed. It was a relatively new branch of Macy’s, and they weren’t fully stocked yet. To get what I needed, I would have to go to their main branch. I was hoping that they would just make a phone call and have someone from the other store bring over what I needed, but it doesn’t work that way here. I would have to go there. The employee at Macy’s gave me directions to the other branch. These directions were largely of the “go straight” variety and were completely inadequate and wrong. Yet, through several strokes of luck, constant checks of my map, and many queries thrown out to pedestrians, I eventually found my way. That’s not to say it was easy. This part of my bike ride was even worse than what had come before. The street narrowed and became extremely rough – torn up pavement, huge potholes, piles of sharp gravel, giant pools of water – and the traffic got worse and worse. It was worse than a nightmare.

But I did find the other Macy’s and they were just as friendly as at the other Macy’s branch. I was allowed to take my time and think things over and test the various circular polarizers and adapters I needed. I picked out what I wanted and paid them the billions of dollars and then I attempted the long ride back downtown – now in the dark. This ride was worse than all the rides that had come before it, mainly because it was now dark. I amazed myself by not getting too lost. While riding out there, I had left myself a trail of visual bread crumbs – forcing myself to notice businesses and other landmarks. So on my way back, when I see these places, I knew I was on the right track. I had dozens of near-death experiences along the way, but there is no point recounting them all or how angry and stressed-out I got. That can just be taken as a given.

I brought my bike up to my room at the Hallmark Hotel and then went out for dinner at a nice carenderia that Chris had shown me the night before. After that, I went to an Internet café to do some more research to prepare for today. I wanted to find at least one more bike shop to try to see if they will do some repairs for me.

And that’s about it. It was a long and busy and stressful day.

 

Tags: bike, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, visa