Weekend at the Beach

We spent last weekend at Alona Beach in Bohol, a 75-minute flight and 40-minute taxi ride south of Manila.

After liquids were banned on flights in the U.S. and elsewhere, I called Philippine Airlines to ask if the same rules were being enforced in the Philippines. "No," I was told. Of course, when we arrived at the airport Friday morning, there were signs indicating that liquids indeed are now prohibited on PAL, which is how I ended up flying with this classy carryon bag. As it turns out, Shelly carried her water bottle on without any problems, and I carried mine on on the return flight, so enforcement seems, at the best, spotty.

It's been a long time since I've flown into an airport as tiny as the one in Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, where you walk down the boarding stairs directly onto the tarmac, giving you fantastic views of the plane, if you're into that kind of thing. Which, if you know me, I am. It also gives you a great view of the "fire truck" they wheel out prior to your flight's arrival:


The beach was fantastic ... clean, white sand, only a few tourists, and a good selection of hotels, bars and restaurants, one of which advertised itself as "the best pizza on the beach." Shelly tried the pizza, and declared that if it indeed is the best pizza on the beach, then any other place selling pizza must make a really, really bad pie. Pizza aside, you know you're going to have a good weekend when this is the view out of your hotel room door:


Don't like the sand? Just look inland, instead:


After a day of snorkeling and napping, we headed out for a massage -- the blind masseur I had squeezed my head so hard I thought it was going to burst -- and dinner. On Saturday, we headed inland for a tour of Bohol with Rogelio, a driver we had met on the beach. Our first stop was the site of the "blood compact," where in 1565, Spanish explorer Miguel Lopez de Legazpi explained that he was not a Portuguese plunderer and Boholano chieftain Rajah Sikatuna agreed not to kill Legazpi and his men, and then sealed the deal by drinking a cupful of each other's blood. There's also a great overlook here, with a bunch of tourists standing around:


Just up the road from the blood compact site is the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Baclayon, the second-oldest church in the Philippines (and the country's oldest non-extensively-renovated church), founded by a pair of Spanish Jesuits in 1595.


But the real highlights of a trip to Bohol begin when you get to the Chocolate Hills, one of the Philippines' top tourist destinations. During the dry season, these 1,268 nearly identical hills turn a nice light brown, giving the hills their tasty name. Even when they're mostly green, the hills are an impressive place to visit.



Bohol's other highlight are the tarsier monkeys, primates which are just a few inches tall, yet can jump nearly five meters. They can rotate their heads almost 360° and have eyes that are, relative to size, 150 times larger than human eyes. These little guys can't see well during the day, so spend most of their time hanging out on tree branches. It's also the oldest primate group, having been around for an astounding 45 million years. I've stuck my fingers into this photo just to show the size of a tarsier.

Prunes, Apricots and Bacon

I've been here long enough to have a pretty good idea of where to find things in a Filipino grocery store. Usually, they're stocked in much the same place as they are at home. Dairy is in the back so you have to walk through the whole store to get there. Sugary cold cereal is eye-level for kids; bran is eye-level for adults.

But every once in a while, I have trouble finding something. And it's no wonder. My local supermarket yesterday featured this oh-so-logical collection of dried apricots, prunes, raisins and ... bacon.

Of course, if I had actually been in the market for a package of Hormel brand "Real Crumbled Bacon," I never would have found it. I probably would have been wasting my time in, oh, the canned meat aisle, for some reason.

Prison

Our post-church outing today took us to the grounds of Manila's New Bilibid Prison, for no reason other than we knew we could.

The prison, some 25 km from downtown Manila, is actually not far from our neighborhood. In fact, we had an excellent view of the taller buildings around our house from near the prison walls. As we drove through the compound, we found the minimum, medium and maximum security camps. At the minimum security camps, we could easily see the cell blocks through the barbed wire, with laundry hanging out of the windows to dry. At the maximum security camp, all we could see was a 15-foot wall. Outside the main gate (pictured here, looking somewhat like a castle) are shops selling prisoner-made handicrafts, including a backpack for carrying rice.

Uniforms

Many Filipinos in the service industry wear uniforms, more so (it seems, at least) than in the States. Many retail workers in the U.S. don't wear uniforms, most bank workers don't wear uniforms and, although I can't be sure about this last one, I would bet that most housekeepers don't wear uniforms (Alice from the Brady Bunch excepted, of course).

Many housekeepers here do wear uniforms, and certainly most housekeepers in this neighborhood do. Unless you work for us, that is. We've never even considered buying a uniform for Cheryl, which just might make us bad employers. If we ever decide that we are in the market for housekeeper uniforms, we can pick them up at any grocery or department store, right under the sign that says "Maid Uniforms."

Oh My Ghost!

Shelly has been suggesting watching a Tagalog movie for a couple of months. I finally found one that looked goofy enough to keep us interested through the parts that weren't in English. (In this case, about 85 percent of the movie wasn't in English, and since most people in the Philippines speak Tagalog and most foreigners don't watch Tagalog movies, there were no subtitles.

The trailer I saw a week ago for this movie made it look like a comedy, which it was. The first half of the film was filled with breasts, weightlifting midgets, the effeminate men known in the Philippines as bakla, more midgets, more breasts, fart jokes, physical humor (running into doors, that sort of thing), short skirts, cross dressing and a fat actress who goes by the name "Orca." The star of the show (Trixie, the one showing off her breasts) works in an advertising agency (named, apparently, simply "Advertising Agency") and has to fend off the unwanted advances of three tough guys who meet her at the gym.

Then the movie gets dark for a bit: The three guys don't like being turned down, so they break into her house and attempt to rape her. Instead, while outside on a balcony, she gets pushed over the wall and dies. The comedy part of the movie was over, but not for good, as Trixie reveals herself in her ghostly form to her sort-of boyfriend, Alvin, he freaks out and hilarity ensues.

Following a trial -- where the three guys were acquitted and where I learned that Filipino lawyers don't have to wear ties while litigating -- Trixie declares, in English, "It's time to take justice into my own ghostly hands."

This sort of brings the comedy back, as she first sets the three tough guys up, leading to them nearly being gang raped in prison (but in a funny way, you see....), followed by killing one in a car accident, driving another insane (he's hauled off in a straitjacket) and chasing the third around the house with a meat cleaver. She says in English, several times, "It hurts. It hurts, you know," which drew great laughter from the Filipinos in the audience, though I can't begin to tell you why. It's obviously an in-joke, and I'm obviously in the out-group.

In order to stop her murderous rampage, Alvin proposes to Trixie, but once they're at the church, the Father refuses, saying that it is only possible to join two visible people in marriage. (You might have thought Alvin would have checked this out ahead of time...) So Trixie says something like "wait a minute," heads over to a woman who is minding her own business in the front pew, and jumps into the woman's body. At that point, the Father agrees to marry them, making me think that while marrying a ghost is not okay, possession is. (While I haven't heard of the Vatican getting all uptight over this movie like they did over DaVinci, something tells me the Pope would not approve of a man marrying a dead woman who has possessed another woman's body. But, hey, I'm not Catholic, so maybe I'm wrong.)

Once they're married, Trixie heads to heaven, the other woman faints when Trixie leaves, and Alvin rushes to her side, where they begin to fall in love.

While I may have seen a dumber movie at some point in my life, I'm not sure what it was. However, this was a good movie for us non-Tagalog speakers to watch, as the plot was simple enough to follow without actually understanding the dialogue.

ANTS!!! Or, In Praise of Terro

We have bugs in our house.

We live in the tropics, and there's not much you can do about bugs other than declare chemical warfare on them. Sometimes the bugs wins, sometimes the humans win. Visits by cockroaches are relatively rare, thanks to Mr. Catangui.

Ants, however, are another story. The rainy season has apparently driven them inside, as we've recently been overrun by them without a corresponding slide into slovenliness. Nothing we've found here has been able to control them, so I asked Mom to send us a bottle of Terro, the best ant killer I've ever used (and which she's kindly sent to me on Guam and in Japan, where it's worked equally as well as it does back home).

Within minutes of putting a few drops of Terro in strategic locations, we had hundreds of ants coming out of hiding to chow down. (Though they look like some sort of tropical mega-ants, that's just Shelly's macro lens making them look impressive. The drop of poison is about the size of a pencil eraser.) Terro says it works by not immediately killing the ants, but letting them live long enough to take it home and poison the rest of the colony. It apparently works, as several days into their extermination, we're once again ant-free.

Or at least nearly ant-free. We do live in the tropics, after all.

I Drive Too Fast

I've been trying for several months now to grab a photo of a Filipino hearse, but something always goes wrong: I'm alone in the car, it's too dark, it's raining, there's too much traffic, or something else. The best I've done so far is this shot, which Shelly grabbed for me today as we drove home from church. We were passing the funeral procession, she had the camera ready, and I shot right past the actual hearse, mistaking this lead car full of flowers for the hearse.

Why, you might ask, am I trying to take a picture of a hearse? Well, unlike hearses at home, the back end of most hearses I've seen here are glass-enclosed. Whether that's so passersby can see the casket or so the deceased can see where he's going, I don't know...

Back to Subic Bay

Yesterday found us back on the road, this time to Subic Bay, which I visited in November. As seems the norm lately, it was raining when we left, it rained intermittently on our drive up, and it rained throughout the day when we were at Subic. Poor weather, coupled with me forgetting our camera, led to some fairly poor photos, but what can you expect when you're reduced to taking pictures with a phone?

Could the day be any grayer?


We did manage to get some decent photos of the old bunkers, which the Americans camoflauged with plants, and of the roads, some of which are being quickly reclaimed by the jungle.




Our drive down one of these back roads took us to a collection of failed or failing tourist spots, including an abandoned concrete Noah's Ark, a stand of concrete dinosaurs, a small zoo with at least two live tigers but no visitors, and an abandoned museum of Filipino national heroes. It also brought us face to face with a half dozen ostriches, though it was unclear whether they were on display or livestock.


We also made it outside the former Navy base this time, to the neighboring town of Olangapo. We were looking for a nearby fishing village mentioned in the Lonely Planet, but a sudden deluge of rain derailed those plans. We did see this interesting cemetery, which began on the shoulder of the highway and went straight up.




Since it was raining -- again -- we gave up on seeing anything else at Subic and headed north to Angeles, the town outside the former Clark Air Force Base, where there's a tasty little Cajun and Creole restaurant that does a fine imitation of New Orleans, both in food and ambience. The last couple of times we'd been in the neighborhood, they had been closed. (We tried on a national holiday and again on a Monday. Much of Angeles shuts down on Mondays since the city does much of its business over the weekend. After four or five visits to Angeles, I think Shelly is still the only western woman I've seen there. On the other hand, when it comes to white guys visiting girlie bars and hookers? Well, it kind of looks like the USAF is still in business, only they've gone out and recruited a bunch of fat 50-year-olds.) The Cottage Kitchen was open this time, and we ate like we were back in the South, with fried catfish and hush puppies for Shelly and a blackened burger for me. Yum!

Open Territory for Cats

Apparently, it takes approximately two months for a deceased cat's territory to become a new cat's territory, or at least that's how long it's taken for a couple of neighborhood strays to move into our yard.

This female, her mate and their kitten have been spending a fair amount of time hanging out in the yard lately. They're not new to the neighborhood -- Mister Tanaka liked to chase them around the yard, him peering out of the windows, them staring back -- but they are becoming bolder. She seems to think she lives here, sacked out on the front steps like that!

Immigration

Our visas are due to expire in less than a month, so I'm heading downtown tomorrow to pick up visa renewal forms. After poking around the Philippine Immigration website and finding next to nothing about our specific type of visas (they aren't the standard employment visa), I looked up the Philippine Immigration Act of 1940 to figure out what kind of visas we have. The section that governs our stay in the Philippines reads, in full:

SPECIAL PROVISIONS
Sec. 47. Notwithstanding the provisions of this Act, the President is authorized:
(a) When the public interest so warrants:
(2) To admit, as nonimmigrants, aliens not otherwise provided for by this Act, who are coming for temporary period only, under such conditions as he may prescribe;

This all came about after a trip to Makati last week to refund the return portions of our airline tickets, which will become worthless later this month. Shelly flew over on Philippine Airlines. Since I was carrying Mister Tanaka, I flew on Northwest, which allowed me to carry him in the cabin.

I stopped at PAL first. I stood in line. I filled out a form. I stood in line again. The agent then told me that he couldn't refund Shelly's ticket without either a different onward ticket, or the proper visa. Her visa, he said, which allows her to remain in the country after the expiration date of the ticket, was not good enough for the airline. They wanted either a standard work visa or an onward ticket. Period, and by the way, there will be no further discussion. (You would think that, since we were admitted with the authorization of the President, PAL would have been more accomodating.) The saddest part of the visit to PAL was that I knew I would get bogged down by Philippine bureaucracy, which was why I started the process so early.

My trip to Northwest was also as expected: In and out in less than ten minutes, with none of the hassles of dealing with Philippine Airlines.

Tomorrow's journey to the immigration office will include another stop at PAL. I'll show them the fully-refundable ticket I purchased for Shelly on another airline, claim our refund, and then cancel the new ticket.

Movies

After a couple months of there being nothing to see in the movie theaters, I've fulfilled my quota in the past week or so:

July 22: Nacho Libre
July 25: Lady in the Water
July 28: The Break-Up
July 30: The Producers
July 31: Pirates of the Carribean

I found Nacho Libre so funny -- in a really dumb kind of way -- that I sat through it twice. Lady in the Water was okay. The Break-Up was quite funny, and a good date movie. The Producers, which was released in December in the States, was worth waiting for. I understand why it was so popular on Broadway. And Pirates was pretty good, too.

Now, to figure out what's opening this week....

Shelly Cheated

I peeked at church today and noticed that Shelly did not take communion as directed by this poster we came across at the Santa Cruz Church in Chinatown yesterday.

Good thing for her that we're not Catholic, because I know she did not, as directed in number 3, "take one step to the side while still facing the altar."

That's because we're Episcopalians. We kneel.

Patrons of the Arts

We have become patrons of the arts, buying an original oil painting we have been looking at for the past month. It's the first time either of us have owned an actual oil painting rather than a print. If you have any advice about storing and displaying works like this one, we'd love to hear it.

The photo isn't great. I Photoshopped out as much of the glare from the camera flash as I could.

Finally, A Sunny Day

While much of the U.S. has been suffering through record high temperatures, we've been enjoying relatively cool weather, with highs only in the 80s most days. How does it manage to be cooler in the Philippines than in, say, Iowa? We're in the midst of the rainy season and, frankly, when there's no sunshine for days on end, it tends to cool off.

So it should come as no surprise that I found Shelly leaning over the bed this morning, urging me to get out of bed so we could enjoy the sunshine that had somehow managed to break out of the cloud cover.

After a quick stop at the neighborhood market to pick up some fresh kimchee and other assorted goodies, we headed for Manila's Chinatown, driving under one of three red gates guarding the neighborhood before returning later to walk underneath it.

"There aren't a great many sights in Chinatown," says the Lonely Planet Philippines, "but there is a lively atmosphere of industry and tradition." I'd have to agree with that. Aside from a couple of churches, this dragon sculpture and a bunch of restaurants and jewelry stores, there really isn't much to see, unless you count a horribly polluted creek. We chatted with a few vendors, got caught in a five peso (about 9 U.S. cents) scam and bought a couple of cheap souvenirs for our niece and nephews.

Just how did I get scammed? Well, it went something like this: As I pulled a handkerchief out of my right hand pocket, I heard a coin clattering on the pavement. I rarely keep money in that pocket, but since it did land right next to me, I leaned over, picked it up and asked Shelly if she had dropped it. Meanwhile, a man walked up to us, holding out his coin purse, showing me a few coins, gesturing that he had dropped the five pesos and that it belonged to him. Well, I handed it over without thinking twice. (I'd like to think that, if it had been a significant amount of money, I would have been more reluctant to give it up.) After he walked away, I reached back into my right hand pocket and discovered that I did, after all, have some coins there... But who can really complain about being scammed for less than a dime?

After Chinatown, Shelly wanted to visit a market called Divisoria that she had heard about, so we headed north and started looking for landmarks. We turned right at a mall, which we thought would lead us to the market. Instead, it lead us to an ever-narrowing street:




Suffice it to say, neither of our mothers would haved enjoyed this street. Come to think of it, neither did I. It seems impossible that I didn't hit somebody or run over something but, somehow, I didn't.

To end the day, we stopped by the Chinese Cemetery, which is full of mausoleums featuring crystal chandeliers, air conditioners, kitchen and flushing toilets. And, yes, you read that correctly. Not only are there two chandeliers in this photo, there's also an old Coca-Cola machine in the lower left corner.

We hired a freelance tour guide to take us around to the more interesting sites, including those with the air conditioners. Much as they do in life, Chinese families in Manila often try to stay ahead of their neighbors in death, which has led to larger and larger mausoleums, though some, like this one, are more modest. A number of wealthy dead men have been buried alongside more than one wife or, in at least one case, alongside two wives and a mistress.

We also saw a cremation taking place, or at least the smoke from a creation. The dark smoke seemed to be a fitting ending to our day in Manila: As we drove through the sprawling cemetery towards the exit, it started raining again.