I made the snap decision to head for the Guiuan peninsula on Samar before heading south and eventually out of the Philippines. I had a vague idea of going up the east coast of Samar and then crossing over the interior mountains and doing a loop back to Leyte, but a bum right knee has caused me to rethink that idea. I will probably go to Guiuan and then double back the way I came.

Since I knew I would be returning to Tacloban, I left a bag of extra stuff at the hotel to be picked up later. I thought I could seriously lighten my load, and I suppose I did. The bag I left behind (containing my shoes, the Indonesia Lonely Planet, and my Trangia X2 burner among many other things) was quite heavy, but I don’t know that it made an appreciable difference. My bike and all its pannier bags still felt extremely heavy. And my body did not appreciate it at all. This time it was my right leg that gave me problems, not my left. Specifically, my right knee became extremely painful. I don’t know what the problem is. It does not hurt when I walk and it doesn’t hurt when I poke, prod, and otherwise massage it. It only hurts – and it hurts like the blazes – when I pedal. Something about the pedaling motion causes the pain. It didn’t kick in until about 30 kilometers from Tacloban. And then it quickly got worse until I couldn’t really use my right leg anymore. I had to apply all the pedaling force with my left leg and let my right leg coast. Even then, it hurt a lot. I have some hope that it is a temporary condition. When I rest my right leg for a while, the pain lessens and I can pedal again. The pain returns fairly quickly, but that short cessation makes me think that this condition isn’t permanent. It only requires time and conditioning to heal it. That’s the hope anyway.

My ride into Tacloban long ago was a pretty horrific one with the heavy traffic. My ride out wasn’t as bad, but it still wasn’t much fun. The large trucks and the buses quickly got on my nerves and there was nothing in the scenery to interest me. I walked my bike over the San Juanico bridge again and took in the sights as I went slowly across. There wasn’t a huge amount going on, but there was some fishing and that sort of thing.

On both sides of the bridge, I stopped to chat with the National Police. I’m not sure how they fit into the grand scheme of the police service since they look like and are outfitted exactly like soldiers. They generally set up barriers on the road that make vehicles slow down and do an awkward zig zag to get through. It’s called a checkpoint, but I’ve never yet seen them actually check any vehicles. It feels a bit rude to me to just ride past them, so I always stop and give them a chance to check me out. In any event, I’m always interested in a break and a chance to chat with someone new.

On the other side of the bridge, the road immediately split with one branch going north and the other going south. I took the south route and everything changed for the better. I was suddenly off the main route through the Philippines and traffic dropped by about 90% or more. The scenery was quite lush and the houses were more traditional than in other places – made from thatch for the most part. The people were extremely friendly and very vocal. Seeing me on my bicycle was a big event for them. I had received many warnings about the dangers on Samar, but I couldn’t see how it was any more dangerous than anywhere else. I even asked the National Police for their opinion and they told me that nowhere on Samar was safe.

I passed through the town of Basey early on and found it to be a very attractive and interesting little town. I made a half hearted attempt to find a place to stay thinking that it would be interesting to wander around and take some pictures. I could even make the trip up to the Sohoton Natural Bride National Park if the opportunity arose. The problem, as always, was finding affordable accommodation. A local man actually brought me to a place that had rooms for rent, but they wanted 1,000 pesos a night. I also dropped by the local tourism office. There, I found another foreigner. He was a middle-aged European man of some variety and he was sitting at a desk getting the rundown about how much it would cost to go on a guided tour to Sohoton. Not surprisingly, the cost for this tour amounted to a long checklist of fees. The grand total came to something like 2,640 pesos and the man found this – as I did – to be a bit too high. The main cost was the boat at 1,500 pesos and it could take up to 7 people. Since he was on his own, it was expensive. He was pleased to see me and hoped that I would go with him and split the cost. At another time, I would have considered it, but it was already late in the morning and it appeared to be too late to go for me. By the time all the arrangements were made, most of the day would be gone and it wouldn’t be worth it. I also had the idea that I wouldn’t enjoy it that much. I’d talked to a number of Filipinos about this place and it seemed to be the sort of place that serves well for school trips. Everyone who went to school had been to Sohoton once in their lives. It just didn’t sound that special – more like something that was cooked up to give tourists something to do to fill up a day. Finally, I had the idea that I could cycle to Sohoton if I wanted to. I could do it as a day trip from Tacloban taking the boat to San Antonio and cycling from there – on an unloaded bike.

In terms of taking pictures, there was a section of stilt houses along the waterfront. I actually went back there intending to somehow just park my bike and walk along taking pictures. But I couldn’t quite see how to do it. That’s a problem for me – the difficulty of taking pictures while on the bike. It’s very awkward and usually impossible. I can’t leave the bike and go walking around, so it’s a problem.

The other big tourist attraction along this stretch of road is Marabut Marine Park. All I knew about this was that it was a type of archipelago – a small version of Halong Bay in Vietnam. A few kilometers past Basey, I started to come across some interesting and beautiful limestone rock outcroppings. The scenery in general was very nice. And since my knee was hurting very badly, I started to think in terms of calling it quits for the day. To my surprise, I came across a small but very modern-looking hotel that termed itself a travel lodge. It was right across the road from a beautiful village called Legaspi. As with many places in the Philippines, all the doors and gates were locked tight and I had trouble finding anyone to let me in. Filipinos tend to call ahead and make reservations. They don’t generally have people just dropping in like me.

I was very glad to find this place and thought it would be wonderful to use it as a base for exploring the area. Unfortunately, their prices were a bit high. A standard single room went for 850 pesos, which is around $20. I guess that isn’t outrageous, but I keep hoping to find prices more in line with a backpacker’s lifestyle. Most of the hotels I stumble across are meant for full-on tourists – people looking for a certain standard of luxury. And from that point of view, this place was good value. The room was very well-appointed with a nice bathroom, a TV, a kettle, and free coffee and all the rest of it. This was a fan room – no air conditioning – but that was fine with me. A room with air conditioning was quite a bit more. My feeling is that they can keep the TV and free coffee and even nice bathroom. I don’t want or need any of those things. I just want a simple room with a bed and a chair for 200 pesos a night. But that kind of lodging is very hard to find.

I told the woman that I was looking for something a bit cheaper, and she told me that they had bunk beds for 400 pesos a night. That sounded a bit better, and I went to check them out. She was right that they were bunk beds. But she had failed to mention that they were inside rooms the size of broom closets. They were so small, I can’t imagine what they were thinking when they built them. I’m no stranger to small rooms, but I do prefer a room that allows the door to open and that sort of thing. If this closet went for 100 pesos a night, I’d probably take it and be happy. I can make myself comfortable anywhere. But to pay 400 pesos seemed insulting.

Despite the agony in my knee, I made the decision to press on. I thought that if I found this expensive hotel in the middle of nowhere, perhaps there are many more hotels in this area – cheaper and more basic hotels.

I rode my bike around Legaspi before I left, and it confirmed my belief that it was an interesting and beautiful place. I’m probably going to stop there on my way back. Perhaps I can camp in the village. Or perhaps I can just spring for the 850 pesos and live in luxury.

The scenery continued to be very nice on both sides of the road, and after a few kilometers, I found myself at the gates of the Marabut Marine Park Beach Resort. I pulled up to the gates on my bike and peered through the gates at an oasis of greenery and luxury. I chatted with the guard for a couple of minutes and asked him if there was any possibility of camping here. He said something about there being cottages for 600 pesos. That blew my mind and I went inside to check the place out. I quickly was disabused of these cheap cottages. I was told at the desk of the bar/restaurant that their cheapest rooms were 2,600 pesos a night. And that made sense to me. This was clearly a very nice resort. For someone on a short holiday (and with a reasonable income) the place would be a bargain. The beach was beautiful and sandy (though I saw a disturbing sign warning of jellyfish) and the view out over the rocky archipelago was wonderful. I don’t know what there was to see out there, but I imagine the resort offered boat rides out to see the outcroppings and perhaps go snorkeling. There were nice shaded pavilions along the beach and there were actual foreigners sitting in them and sipping on what were probably ice-cold drinks. There were also the typical couples one would expect to see in a place like this – older Western men with young Filipino girls. In my experience, these girls were either wives or girlfriends or escorts. I’ve come across all three of these situations. Though I have to say that most of the time, these couples are married. A few times, even I’ve been creeped out. The day before I left from Tacloban, I found myself walking along the street behind a Western man and a Filipino woman. They were holdings hands as they walked, and when I caught up to them, I was surprised to find a vast age difference. This man was very elderly. He had the paper-thin skin and the trembling hands of a great-grandfather. And the woman was little more than a girl, perhaps in her early twenties, but not much older than that. It was very strange – and very sad – to see. A certain age difference is understandable and it doesn’t bother me. But this was extreme, and it seemed sad. A young woman like that should have an equally young and healthy man at her side.

I should have stuck around this resort and done some investigating, but I really didn’t feel like I belonged there. I think it was the presence of jet skis on the beach that disturbed my equilibrium more than anything else. My experience of the Philippines so far had little to do with jet skis. Once I found out that the cheapest room was 2,600 pesos, I rolled my bike out of there and hit the road. At the time, I had the idea that this Marabut Marine Park was extensive and would stretch down the coast and I would have many more opportunities to take it in. That turned out not to be the case and a short distance after this resort, all of that magical scenery simply vanished. That beach resort was the only game in town. I began to think about returning there to ask about simply taking a boat trip out to the archipelago. This is something I could do as a day trip from Tacloban. Or I could stay in Legaspi village and make the trip from there. I’m fairly certain I will cycle back along that road, so I will have a second chance to look into that.

By this point, I was really beginning to count on the town of Marabut as a place where I could find food and even a place to stay. My knee was in agony, and it was all I could do to just keep moving forward. More than the pain, I was bothered by the thought that I was damaging my knee. I thought that it might be better to simply stop and give my knee a chance to recover. As it was, I could only pedal with my left leg, and I stopped often to give my right knee a chance to recover.

I could get little information about Marabut from local people. The town had the same name as the marine park, and most people thought I was asking about the marine park. I even got the idea that this town didn’t exist at all and it was marked on my map mistakenly. Therefore, I wasn’t that surprised when I never saw the town at all. I cycled along and eventually, I was far past that point on my map and I hadn’t seen any buildings. I did, however, come across a little spot that seemed to offer lodging. It was called French Kiss. I turned my bike into the long driveway and was greeted by a couple of unfriendly dogs. I saw a couple of bungalows and a building that might have been a restaurant. But as is often the case, I didn’t see anyone around. After a while, I spotted a man that was working on a fishing net. I approached him and as far as I could make out, he was the manager of the place. He certainly didn’t make any effort to make me welcome or entice me to stay. I had to do all the work to get information out of him. I finally learned that this was a beach resort and hotel and their rooms cost 1,000 pesos a night. I couldn’t believe it. Why were these places so expensive? I asked about just setting up my tent, but I couldn’t get anywhere with that. There was no friendly vibe about the man or the place, and I decided to just leave.

About half a kilometer up the road, I came aross a much more promising place. It was called Jasmine Beach Resort and it looked to be an extensive operation with many different types of rooms. I chatted with some men at the front gate and they were very friendly and informative. But then I discovered that they did not work there. They were drivers and were staying at the resort themselves. I rolled my bike onto the grounds and went up to the front desk. There was little welcome there, either, and the girl simply pushed a rate sheet across the counter at me. I was disappointed to find another place with high prices. Their cheapest room was 1,600 pesos a night ($40). Who are all the people in the Philippines that can afford to stay at these places? In my entire day of cycling, I don’t think I’d seen anyone that would make 1,600 pesos in a week or two. I asked about the possibility of camping, and there seemed to be a possibility of doing that. The girl was not exactly jumping out of her chair to help me or make me feel welcome. She did eventually find someone else who would show me the camping area. It turned out there was no camping area. This guy just walked me around the resort and pointed to spots at random where I might put up a tent. These were just bits of dirt here and there. Still, this appeared to be the only game in town and with my knee in the condition it was, I couldn’t afford to continue to be choosy. However, when I asked, they told me that it would cost 500 pesos to camp. I didn’t see why it should cost so much. I’d be sleeping on the ground in my own tent on a patch of dirt in the parking lot. I felt it should practically be free. They could make money off of my eating in their restaurant.

The man who showed me the patch of dirt suggested another place that had bungalows for 500 pesos a night. That was more my style. I had trouble getting the name of this place out of the guy. It had a weird sound to it like “Prench Keys”. I took him at his word and went to find it. Of course, what he meant was French Kiss, the same place I had already checked out. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask again. I have found that people generally only tell me about the most expensive rooms they have and leave it at that. They never tell me about cheaper options. I have to press hard to find about them. So I went into French Kiss again and found it just as unfriendly as before. There were now two men playing basketball, but they ignored me. The dogs growled and barked and tried to bite my legs. I wandered around for a longish time until I finally realized the man reparing the fishing nets was behind me on the left. He had clearly seen me arrive and wander around, but he made no effort to approach me or help me. I find that strange. It’s a common pattern in the Philippines. People in general are very friendly. In fact, the Filipinos themselves constantly tell me how friendly they are. But this friendliness often fails when it comes to any type of customer service at hotels and resorts.

I asked this man about the mysterious 500-pesos cottages, but he just shook his head. I saw a cottage that looked older than the others and I pointed it out, but he wouldn’t show it to me or do anything. I eventually had no choice but to turn around and leave. The funny thing is that I probably would have paid the 1,000 pesos he was asking for, but only if he made me feel welcome. Paying him 1,000 pesos while he was so unfriendly felt insulting. I’d rather just camp at the side of the road and risk all the unnamed horrors of the Samar night that everyone kept warning me about.

I tried Jasmine one more time, but they were firm about charging me 500 pesos to sleep in my own tent. Part of the problem is that most of the places offering accommodation are beach resorts. As such, they are charging for the beach and scenery. And I don’t need or want the beach. I simply want a place to sleep for the night. Yet, these types of places don’t exist here. Even in a place like Ethiopia, towns had lots of cheap hotels for travelers. These were meant not for tourists but for Ethiopians that are going from town to town. But such places don’t exist here for some reason. Perhaps people don’t need to travel. Certainly, Filipinos now go on holidays, and these beach resorts cater to them.

Trusting to luck, I turned the wheel of my bike back onto the road and continued on. I’m supposed to be an adventurous dude on a bike, so I should hardly be put off by beach resorts and their high prices. If I can’t live without a beach resort, what kind of traveler am I?

A short distance past Jasmine and “Prench Keys”, I saw a very attractive little village right on the ocean. There was an inviting cement walkway going down into the village, and I turned my bike down it. There was nothing in the village in the way of shops or restaurants, but it was a nice place and I started to look about for a way to camp there. Luckily, I stumbled across a woman sitting on a chair on the cement path and having her hair dyed black. She was very friendly and talkative and I eventually worked the conversation around to my putting up my tent in the village. She just shrugged and indicated that was fine. In fact, she pointed to a patch of grass between two nearby houses on the beach and said I could put my tent there. It wasn’t a great place to camp – too small and way too public, but at least there was a possibility.

I rode my bike around the village looking for another spot. There was nowhere that was perfect – an isolated place with access to water and a grove of trees for a bathroom – but at least there was flat ground. And if I could get permission from someone, I could probably camp there.

I returned to the woman having her hair dyed, and we chatted some more. I asked about talking to the barangay captain. She pointed to the next house and said that the barangay captain lived right here, and she was his wife! She was the “capitana”.

It took a while to tear the barangay captain away from his TV, but he eventually noticed me and he invited me inside. I took off my sandals and took a seat on the nice sofa in his living room. He got me a cup of coffee and even a couple of pieces of bread and I told him that I was a visitor and wanted to put up my tent in his village. He really didn’t seem to care one way or the other. I don’t think he quite understood, but he didn’t seem to have a problem with it either. Through all these conversations, the local basketball court was mentioned as a place to camp for the night. It didn’t seem attractive to me, but it was at least an idea. And it was getting dark. I had to get set up quickly, and I set off to the basketball court with the barangay captain’s young son, Alvin, at my side.

Alvin become a constant presence during my time in the barangay. He, by his own admission, was a bit of a joker and he kept things lively with constant jokes and gags, whether I understood them or not. The basketball court seemed more promising when I got there, because there was a small raised platform at one end with a roof over it. This would give me some privacy and protection from wind and rain. I was told that the previous night there had been a big rain and wind storm – the outer edges of a big storm that passed by. It could rain again that night, and a roof over the tent is always welcome. The tent is waterproof, but even so, a roof is nice to have.

Setting up camp was an entertaining if somewhat exasperating experience. A large number of the village kids had gathered around me and my bike and I had no end of eager helpers. Of course, helpers often are of no help at all and make things much worse. This was the case here and I became worried about damage to my tent and tent poles and such things. I generally set up very slowly and methodically, but here I had no choice but to set up quickly and get everything thrown inside the tent as quickly as possible. I figured I could climb inside later on and get things organized.

It was full-on dark but the time the tent was up. I had been soaked through with sweat when I arrived in the barangay, and I was sweating even more from the exertions of making camp. I was dirty and tired and my knee was making every move painful. I also hadn’t had any dinner or lunch. Ideally, I’d find some water and take a shower and get clean and dry. Then I’d cook some dinner and go to bed. But there was no way to do any of that easily. I was exhausted for one thing. And I had a huge crowd of visitors with more coming all the time. I suggested to Alvin that I go for a quick dip in the nearby ocean to get clean. He said that wasn’t a good idea because there were lots of sharks there at night. I couldn’t cook dinner because I had nothing to cook. I hadn’t purchased any food and there was no store in this barangay. Alvin kept asking me if I was hungry. I thought perhaps he was conveying an invitation from his father and mother to have dinner with them, but it was never clear if that was the case. Besides, in talking to them earlier, I had mentioned my experiences at Jasmine and French Kiss. It was clear that I could stay there, but I thought it was too expensive. So I wanted to camp in their barangay because it was basically free. That being the case, I didn’t want to force myself on them as a guest and have them now feed me and give me a place to bathe. That didn’t feel very polite, so I just sat there on the ledge of the platform in the dark and entertained all the questions from the kids. Lots of new children and teenagers came and went. Many were carrying flashlights, and they’d walk across the basketball court, turning their lights over me and my tent. My tent was the object of much admiration. Everyone agreed that it was very beautiful. My bike was also admired and there were lots of questions about how much everything cost plus the usual questions about having no companions and no wife. I was basically a big sweaty and dirty puzzle to them, and they had to ask lots of questions just to figure out what I was and what in the world I was doing there.

The most uncomfortable part these situations is when the teenage girls show up. As icky as it is, there are always comments about my being single and how I should marry a Filipina and these teenage girls were “available”. There is lots of giggling and pushing forward of these girls. This night was particularly uncomfortable because it was dark and they couldn’t really see how old and decrepit I was. I told them a number of times that I was 50 years old and an old man, etc. But this didn’t seem to make any difference to anyone. The girls clearly wanted to get a good look at me, and they would find excuses to send the beam of a flashlight or the light of a cell phone into my face. At those times, I’d try to look as ugly and old as possible (not a big stretch) so I’d be a repulsive figure. I failed at this, just as I failed at camping, and it was agreed that I was very handsome.

I had many things I wanted and needed to do, but as soon as I started to move, the crowd of children would grow and grow until I was overwhelmed. I realized that in order to get any peace at all, I’d have to be uninteresting. So I just sat on the ledge and didn’t move at all for a long time. Slowly but surely the children started to move away until only Alvin and his cronies were left. Then Alvin left and I was left almost alone. I went inside my tent with the comment that I was tired and needed to rest. My idea was to hide until later and then emerge to get cleaned up. As it turned out, I never moved and never emerged from the tent again for the entire night. I was so tired that I just lay there in my sweaty glory and didn’t budge.

I heard lots of children come and go. They would stand outside my tent and admire it and wonder what I was up to in there. Teenagers passed by the basketball court and shouted things my way. They were clearly jokes and they all laughed crazily every time. Eventually, I heard a familiar voice. It was Alvin. He was outside the tent and he called my name and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was resting and we kept up a stilted conversation through the walls of the tent. I don’t think I could have moved even if he said there was a large pepperoni pizza out there waiting for me.

Alvin left and returned four more times throughout the evening and night. Lots of other children came and went, too, and they stood outside my tent and tried to get the pronunciation of my name right. I eventually started to doze a little bit here and there as I tossed and turned on my Thermarest and my blow-up pillow. Finally, the visits stopped, and I lay there throughout the night listening to the wind and rain. A big tree branch rested right on top of the tin roof above me and the wind pushed it violently back and forth making the sound of a monster. The wind picked up and the rain became harder and I was glad that I had that roof above me.

I began to think about the morning and how I would handle the inevitable calls of nature. My plan was to emerge from my tent around 4 or 4:30 when it was still dark and find a quiet and dark place to squat in the few nearby trees. There were horrendous numbers of mosquitoes about and this plan would likely end in my being bitten a hundred times, but it was the only option open to me. It’s not like I would have the chance for any quiet bathroom time once the sun came up. As it turned out, I had no urge to find a bathroom, and I remained in my tent through my 4:30 deadline. Then the sun rose and I was wide awake with it. Not long after, I heard Alvin and his friends outside the tent. It was only 5:00 in the morning, but they didn’t want to waste a second of time to hang out with the mysterious Douglas.

I emerged from my tent with my toothbrush in my mouth. This was a joyous event for the kids. The foreigner was doing stuff and the call went out to the barangay to come and watch. Soon, I had a large audience as I brushed my teeth and spit out the foam and rinsed my mouth. I thought about making a cup of coffee, but I thought it would better to break camp while it was still relatively cool. My helpers were just as eager to help me break camp as they were to help me set up. I had to step in a number of times to stop them from breaking something. My tent poles are shock-corded, of course, and it is a simple matter to pull them apart. But the boys grabbed the poles and pulled them so far apart that they were close to breaking the elastic cord. I jumped in as fast as I could and stopped them. Then they saw me remove the ends of the poles from the grommets. The boys went to the other poles and found they didn’t come out that easily. There is a nack to it. But they put all their muscle into it and just pulled. I had to stop them again before they broke something. I suppose I should have just told everyone to leave everything alone, but they were so eager to help and they had so much fun that I didn’t have the heart to stop them. When everything was packed up, they helped carry my bags across the basketball court to my bicycle. Everyone wanted to ride my bike, but I drew the line at that. A crash on my bike was just too big a risk to take.

When my bike was loaded up, I pushed it along the cement pathway, the crowd of children around me. I stopped at the barangay captain’s house to say goodbye and thank him for letting me stay the night. To my delight, he invited me inside and his wife brought me a cup of coffee and two pieces of bread. Surprisingly, I hadn’t been hungry during the night. I wasn’t even hungry that morning, but the hot coffee was delicious.

I told the barangay captain about my plans to cycle to Guiuan that day. It turned out that he had been born there. It was his hometown and he still had family there. He wrote down their address for me and said that I should visit them. He also said that they had a bangka and I could probably use it to visit the island of Homonhon. This island is famous as the spot where Magellan first landed in the Philippines on March 16, 1521. Of all the places I’ve thought of visiting in the Philippines, this one appeals to me the most.

I was up early and I wasn’t in any particular hurry, so I asked the barangay captain if I could leave my bicycle at his house and walk around to explore and take some pictures. He said that would be fine and he made me roll my bike right up onto the cement landing outside his door. I thought just being near his house would be safe enough, but I guess he didn’t trust his fellows as much as I did.

I took out my camera and of course Alvin was at my side as I set out to explore. I can’t imagine what the people of the barangay thought of me. My guess is that they would assume I was there in some of official capacity – either with an NGO or a government agency. What else could possibly explain my presence? But I told everyone that I was a tourist and that seemed to make sense to them. I took lots of pictures of the crab boats and some of the people. Alvin took me inside one building and I was delighted to find four big wooden tanks filled with different types of crab that the villagers had caught. I was told that a man from Manila owned this place and the locals caught the crab and sold it to him. A couple of local boys plunged their hands into the tanks and held up various crabs to show me. There was one species in particular that intrigued me. I’d never seen anything quite like it before. It looked to be a very old and primitive species. I’ll have to look it up sometime.

I had my wide angle lens on the camera and shot a few pictures with a big crowd of people watching me. It was great fun later to zoom in on my camera and look at each face individually. I couldn’t take in all the faces when I was there at the time. It was only later that I could see everyone in the picture. As I moved my eyes from face to face, I was startled to find one young boy with an extreme cleft palate. I hadn’t seen him at all when I walked through the village, but he showed up in a number of photos. To my surprise, I even had a picture of him looking out the window of his house. When I took the picture of the house, I hadn’t even noticed that anyone was looking out the window. That is one weird angle to using an LCD monitor. Had I been looking through an optical viewfinder, I’d probably have seen much more. My camera continues to be a great pleasure when it comes to taking pictures of people and objects. It doesn’t do as well when it comes to landscapes. The pictures don’t seem to pop. The color is washed out and the shadows are dark and the detail isn’t there. My favorite picture is of a boy wearing a black rubber mask. It was a Hallowen type of mask of a monster and I took his picture with some of the houses in the background. Of course, Alvin borrowed the mask to have his picture taken, too.

I stayed for quite a long time taking pictures, but it was finally time to hit the road. I had 70 or 80 kilometers to cover to get to Guiuan and I was worried about my knee.

The road followed the coast most of the way, and I was offered up some beautiful views. However, it was the villages and the people that were most interesting. I think they rarely saw visitors and my cycling through was a big event for everyone. I spent the whole day returning greetings and chatting with people. I passed through the town of Balangiga and stopped to check out the monument to the Balangiga massacre. The monument called it the Balangiga Incident. When the Philippines was an American colony, the local people had smuggled a bunch of weapons into the town inside coffins. Then they orchestrated a surprise attack on the American soldiers stationed there and killed most of them. From what I read, the Americans counter-attacked later and killed lots of people in revenge. I don’t know the exact figures. (I’ve since read that 48 Americans were killed in the initial attack by the locals. Estimates for the number of Filipinos killed in retaliation range from 2,000 to over 50,000.)

I also stopped to watch some men harvesting the rice in field. I parked my bike at the side of the road and walked out into the field with my camera. It was a labor-intensive process involving a portable thresher. The rice had already been cut by hand and placed in large piles. The threshing machine was placed beside the piles and men grabbed big armfuls of the stocks of rice and fed them into the thresher. Somehow, the thresher separated the rice from the stocks. The rice simply fell to the ground underneath and the stocks were shot out into the air onto a big pile. Men pushed the rice out from under the thresher to another area. Here, it was thrown into the air in front of a large fan to blow away loose bits leaving just the rice itself. Then the rice was measured in a large container and poured into sacks. There was a big pile of sacks of rice already there and I took lots of pictures of the whole operation. I spoke to the manager and he said that they moved from field to field during the harvest season and rented out the equipment and the labor. He said that the fields were too small for anything like a combine. In any event, combines were far too expensive.

I also had an interesting encounter over a late breakfast or early lunch in the town of Lawa-an. I stopped at a local eatery and the woman who seemed to run the place asked if she could sit with me. She was pretty talkative and was also the local dealer in herbal remedies. When she found out about my sore knee, she was eager to sell me herbal pills. She told me that she had cured lots of people with severe arthritis. She said that one woman was unable to walk at all, but with the herbal remedies and massage, she was now able to walk again. She also cured someone with kidney disease. Of course, I found all of this quite unlikely especially when I realized that she was selling just one herbal pill. It was called Herbal Plus, and it contained the usual assortment of things like ginseng. Even if I granted that there was some benefit to herbs, I was not about to believe that a single herbal pill can be used to cure arthritis, kidney disease, and heart problems. This woman said that she knew that Western people did not believe in herbal medicine. She said that we believed in synthetic medicine. The way she said synthetic it was clear that she thought of it as fake and unnatural. Therefore herbal medicine had to be better.

She didn’t land me as a customer, but I enjoyed talking with her. Her eatery also had a boarding house attached and she said I could stay there for as little as 150 pesos a night. She mentioned a few local tourist attractions that I could visit. If the timing works out, I might stay there for a night on my way back. It would be a convenient stopping point.

I eventually called it a day in the town of Quinapondan. Shortly after this town, the road splits with one branch heading north to Borongan and another branch heading south to Guiuan. Accoring to my map, it was only another 30 kilometers to Guiuan, but my knee was in very bad shape. I had been reduced to walking my bike much of the time and when I happened to pass by a little place that billed itself as a lodge for travelers, I stopped to ask about a room. The town itself didn’t seem to offer much in the way of atmosphere or interest, but my knee wasn’t interested in atmosphere. It just needed a break from pushing the pedals around.

The rooms at this place cost 300 pesos a night. Getting to the room involved a passage through narrow hallways and an even narrower stairway (one which caused my knee a lot of problems). It was a small room – about nine feet by six feet – but it was pleasant. It was on the second floor with three windows, a new and powerful fan on the ceiling, a double bed, and even a small balcony with a sink. There was no private bathroom or toilet. Those were downstairs in the hallway, but that was fine with me. My only concern was a videoke machine I saw in the attached restaurant. I asked the woman specifically about this and whether the room was noisy. She reassured me that the room was very quiet. It was far away from the videoke machine and there would be no noise at all. It turned out that she was either lying or kind of dumb. When the videoke machine fired up that night, it shook my room and blasted it with the most horrendous noise you’ve ever heard. My heart sank and I steeled myself for another awful, awful night. Of all the horrible nights of my life, the most horrible have all been in the Philippines and they’ve all involved videoke machines.

I couldn’t really give the woman a hard time about this because it was still early in the evening. I couldn’t complain about noise at 7:00 at night. It meant, however, that I was helpless to do anything but just lie in my room and fume. I tried to read, but it was impossible with that noise. I tried to write, but it was equally impossible. Of course, there was no question of sleeping and there was nowhere else to go in the town. All I could do was lie there and endure the most awful sound you can imagine. How this is pleasurable for the Filipinos, I can’t even imagine. I understand the appeal of singing, but the distorted blast of noise that emerges from that microphone and speakers can’t be called singing. I decided to distract myself by counting the songs. I would count 25 songs before I would allow myself to get annoyed. So I just lay on my bed and let my mind wander and daydream while I counted the songs. I figured that 25 songs would pass in about 2 hours. Occasionally, there would be a short and blessed period of silence between songs and I thought the horror was over. But then the next song would kick in. To my utter amazement, however, the torture ended at song number 24. That song ended, and no new song began. I looked at my watch and it was only 9:30 – still plenty of time to get a good night’s sleep. Mosquitoes entered my room by the dozen, but I dealt with them by putting up my mosquito net, and I had a good night’s sleep to be woken up by the sun and the traffic noise at around 5:00.

I had become quite fond of my little room during the night. I could make my own coffee on my stove on the little balcony and the powerful fan kept me cool. I decided to stay in Quinapondan for another day and night to give my knee a chance to recover. Right behind this little lodge is a wide area of rice fields and I can go out there and perhaps take some pictures during the day. The restaurant served good food and had nice tables and chairs. Perhaps there is an interesting place in the town. Time to let my knee recover a bit and I can go to Guiuan the next day.

 

 

Tags: barangay, barangay captain, bike, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, South Coast of Samar, tent