Monday, April 8, 2013

7:30 a.m. Legazpi, Philippines

There were no adventures large or small yesterday, so I don’t have much to say this morning. It was a Sunday, and I noted that Sundays really do mean something in the Philippines. The streets were nearly empty, the jeepneys had ceased their endless parade, and most of the shops and stores were closed.

After my morning coffee and a little while chatting with fellow hostel-dwellers, I set off on my bike. I didn’t really need to go anywhere, but I invented the errand of looking for a small and lightweight soapdish. Sounds strange, I know, but these are the sorts of things I do. I have a soapdish, of course. It’s in my toiletry kit, and I’ve had it for many years. However, it has always struck me as too large and heavy. I’ve wanted to get a different one. I tried to find one in Taiwan but had no luck. I tried to get one online, but the few I found could not be shipped to Taiwan. So far, I’ve found that the Philippines is more amenable to the range of little errands that I always seem to want to run. Before I left from Taiwan, I spent days there trying to find isopropyl alcohol. I couldn’t find it anywhere. To my delight, I’ve seen it EVERYWHERE in the Philippines. In fact, in all the drugstores, I see entire shelves filled with ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol, and isopropyl alcohol – every type of alcohol you can imagine. In Taiwan, I also looked for an eyeglass case. I couldn’t find one anywhere. Here, I found huge numbers of them in the first place I looked. I hoped that I would just be lucky in my search for a suitable soapdish.

It was when I set off on my bike that I noticed how empty the streets were. Most of the shops along Rizal Street were closed. However, some of the shops downtown were open and the big LCC Shopping Mall was also open. I stopped at a couple of general merchandise stores. They seemed like ideal places to have soapdishes. And they did have them, but they were all large ones meant to be used inside a home’s bathroom. At these stores, a young boy would be sitting outside and making a living by helping people park or guarding their vehicles. They jumped up when I arrived and waved their arms about at random to indicate where I could park. It was quite funny. The more they can make it look like they helped me, the more likely it is that they will get a tip. However, I can park my bike anywhere, so they can’t really guide me to the perfect spot. In fact, they wanted me to just line up my bike with the motorcycles when I needed to lock my bike to something solid. In the end, I found my own spot and when I left the stores, I didn’t tip these boys. I just feel weird about that sort of thing, I guess. I don’t know how much to tip, and I their guarding services always seem uncomfortably close to blackmail. I always feel like they aren’t saying that they will guard my bike but that if I pay them they won’t actually damage it themselves. It’s more extortion than protection.

I popped into a cell phone store and bought another 300 peso card to load my phone again. Then I decided to go inside LCC to see what it was like. Bicycles are a bit of mixed bag in these cases. I enjoyed having the freedom to ride my bike downtown. But now I had to safequard it, and that wasn’t so easy. Where can I lock it up safely? There were armed guards at the doors to the LCC Mall and I went up to them to see if they had a suggestion. They just pointed across the street at a motorcycle parking lot. I didn’t see any another option, so I started off in that direction. A man ran ahead of me waving his arms and shouting and trying to guide me. I deliberately moved in the opposite direction from which he was pointing just to establish my independence. He eventually tracked me down and then he unhelpfully kept pointing all over the place and shouting. Whenever I stopped to consider a spot, he would gesture enthusiastically at it as if he had chosen the perfect spot. Then I’d move on and he’d claim that he had found the next spot, too. I eventually settled on a spot where I could put my bike cable through a big steel frame. The steel frame itself was not attached to anything, but nobody could move it easily and the bike seemed as safe there as it would be anywhere.

The shopping mall was very well stocked with anything a person could want. I wandered through several stores – often having to leave my pannier bag at the door. That was a bit of a bother since I had a lot of valuable thins in the bag, but I had no choice if I wanted to go inside. There were lots of well-dressed and prosperous-looking people inside the mall shopping. I wondered what all these people did for a living that they had a sufficient income to live the kind of life that involved all this shopping. Despite all the goods for sale, I did not find my soapdish and I left empty handed except for a package of AAA batteries. THOSE were pricey.

I had noticed many bubble milk tea shops in Legazpi, and there was one inside the mall, too. I decided that in honor of Taiwan, I should have at least one. I ordered a standard milk tea with pearls. The pearls cost an extra five pesos, and they also called them “sinkers”. I explained to the women that bubble milk tea was invented in Taiwan, but they didn’t really believe me or see why that was important anyway.

My bicycle was still in place when I left, and I packed up for the ride back to my part of town. I stopped at a typical eatery to have lunch. They served good inexpensive food, but I do always end up pretty hot and bothered after eating at these places. The second I stop riding my bike, I start to sweat, and once I go inside, the sweat turns into a torrent. The sweating increases as I eat, and then I’m just a wet soggy mess by the time I leave. I blame this partially on my shopping choices in Taiwan. I took a chance on these high-tec pants and shirts, and so far they haven’t felt very comfortable. It’s true that they dry quickly – unlike cotton. But I seem to sweat more readily in them, too. And they are so thin and light, that they hang on my body quickly loosely with no shape at all. As far as I can tell from pictures I’ve seen of myself in this clothing, I look terrible. The idea was to look trim and neat with a collared shirt with buttons. But I just look bedraggled.

Since the hostel is booked for the next two days, I had to get moving with getting organized and moving on. The first step was to go over my luggage and see what I can live without and can ship back to Canada or somewhere. As I’ve mentioned many times, I did not pack very carefully for this trip, and I went a bit overboard with bringing stuff. I was kind of tired of thinking of stuff and packing so I had just stuffed my bags into a closet and forgot about it. It was now time to take those bags out and go over the contents. The only full loaded cycling I’ve done so far brought me from the airport to this hostel, so I don’t have any firm experience to base my decisions on, but I was left with this overwhelming sense of just having too much. I’m trying to be sensible and take it slow. So the idea is to sort through my stuff and set aside all the stuff I don’t think I need. And then I’ll go for a short bike ride to Catanduanes Island and return to this hostel. Then I can make a final decision. At this point, though, I’m much more in the mood to travel as light as I can. My load will never be truly light since I have camping gear. It would be great to cycle without camping gear, but it will probably come in handy. We’ll just have to see how things go. The other big category is my photography gear. Photography became very important to me in Taiwan, but that is different from photography on the road. I have to make a choice – am I cycling or am I doing a photographic tour?

Tags: bike, Legazpi, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Taiwan