Tuesday September 9, 2014
7:00 a.m. San Juan, Siquijor
Casa Miranda guest house – Room 2

Ah, where to start? I stopped writing yesterday because I looked up and saw a bunch of people streaming out the door of the harbor building and going toward a small GL Express boat. I remembered that my boat to Siquijor was a GL Express boat, and I realized that that was probably my boat.

My heart sank when I saw how small the boat was. For a passenger with a knapsack or a cardboard box or a purse (which was everyone but me), the boat was just fine. The dude at the gangplank rips off part of your ticket, you climb aboard, grab a seat, and then cross yourself and pray that you don’t capsize during the one-hour crossing. For someone rolling up with a fully loaded touring bike, it is a completely different – and extremely negative and frustrating – experience.

It’s funny in a way that despite having done this multiple times, it is still a disaster every time. I can’t seem to shake my cultural frame of mind and adapt to how things are done (or, more specifically, not done) in the Philippines. I clearly represent some kind of a loading challenge for the people running the boat. So I can’t help but expect that they will spot me coming and then start doing things to make the process smoother. After all, they have a specific listed charge for bicycles. So I’m not springing something unheard of on them. In any event, nothing happened. I got to the back of the line and then I inched forward along with everyone else as the boat dudes ripped tickets and let people on board. When it was my turn, nothing changed. The dude ripped my ticket, handed it back to me, and then ignored me. He was a rude and inattentive young punk in dark sunglasses – the usual type that is too cool to do any actual work. I stood there for a few seconds wondering what I was supposed to do next. It’s not like I had any way of knowing how they handled bicycles. It was clearly impossible to put the bicycle inside the boat. It was extremely cramped inside and could barely contain the usual complement of passengers and luggage. In any event, the only way to get on the boat was across a rickety gangplank that was moving up and down as the boat rocked in the waves. Even if I insisted on putting my bicycle inside (as, in retrospect, I should probably have done) I would need some assistance in doing so. All my bags would have to come off and the bike and bags would have to be carried across separately. But what I thought didn’t matter at all. It was what the boat dudes thought that mattered, and they were clearly not thinking about anything. I’m positive that if I had not made an effort, the boat would have simply left with me still standing on the dock beside my bicycle. The employees of GL Express would not have cared one little bit.

Anyway, I started asking questions of every GL Express dude I could find. I didn’t think I had to really say much. The situation was obvious to me – I was a paying passenger with a bicycle as part of his luggage. This bicycle needed to get on the boat in some fashion. But this didn’t seem to be obvious to anyone around me and I had to go up to a series of people and point at the bicycle and then at the boat and then at my ticket. And I spoke to them, of course, though it was never clear just how much of my English was getting through. The best response I got was a vague wave in the direction of the boat. The original ticket-taking cool dude had dismissed me with just such a wave and the single word “Porters.” Apparently, the porters would have to help me with the bicycle. But who were the porters? Where were they? I had no idea.

The crazy thing is that I have no problem with doing things myself. I was more than happy to load the bicycle on the boat in some fashion by myself. I knew I would do a better and safer job than the GL Express employees anyway. But I had no way to know what was the right procedure. There must be a designated place for the bicycle and similar types of cargo. If I knew where or what it was, I’d take care of it. But I don’t have this information, so I need some kind of help – at least the barest amount of interest. But this was not forthcoming from the GL Express people.

After a long time of bouncing around from person to person like a ping pong ball and trying to get answers, I finally got some response. There was an open-air kind of space on the front of the boat high up and just below the windows where the captain looks out. And there was a separate narrow gangplank going from the dock to this small space. From the group of manic porters that now encircled me, I gathered that my bicycle was supposed to go there. It’s crazy, but these guys, had I let them, were more than willing to just pull the bicycle out of my hands and try to manhandle the entire thing as it was across this gangplank and into this recessed space. That’s the weird thing about this kind of process in the Philippines and my cultural background. I’ve grown up trusting people in certain positions to know what they are doing. In Canada, I trust that the train engineer knows how to drive the train. I trust that the ticket-seller knows when the train will leave. I trust that the baggage handler knows the proper and safe way to transport a bicycle. I can hand over my bicycle with some confidence that the person is not going to do something insane. But here, you can’t have that confidence. Had I not asserted myself, my bicycle and everything I own in the world would now be sitting serenely under forty feet of water at the dock in Dumaguete. My fully-loaded bicycle is not a graceful vehicle. It is a brute, a heavy tank, and there is no way it is going across that narrow gangplank without going over the side into the water. It’s silly to even say that because the loaded bike is simply too heavy and ungainly for anyone to move it around like that. And, more to the point, I wouldn’t let them try. Of course I want to take the bags off. Why would I let all of my valuable luggage just sit out there in the open – an easy target for thieves – getting soaked by massive ocean waves? But if I didn’t do something, that is what these guys would try to do. It was insane.

Anyway, I got these guys to calm down and let go of the bike. Then I started unhooking the various bags. This is the main problem for me in these situations. Once I start unhooking bags, I lose all control. My belongings are now divided up into multiple pieces, and I can’t protect or control all of them at the same time. The second a bag hits the ground, some guy will try to grab it and make off with it. He might be trying to help me by taking it onto the boat. He might be a thief. I have no idea. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let anyone walk away with my pannier bag carrying all my camera gear or the other one containing my passport and other valuables. They’re staying with me. But then I have to ultimately relinquish control of my bicycle. I can’t go with my bicycle and protect my luggage at the same time. So once my bicycle was free, these guys grabbed it and started carrying it across the gangplank. Of course, they picked it up in all the wrong ways and cables are being pulled, handlebars are swinging around and the mirror is smashing into things and bending backwards. It was a miracle that it didn’t go into the ocean and that it wasn’t badly damaged in just carrying it across the gangplank. Then when they got it across, they just dropped it into this recessed area. By pure luck, they had dropped it onto its non-gear side so the rear derailleur looked to be relatively safe and unbent. I was expecting something professional to happen at this point – tying down the bike with ropes, covering it with a tarp and securing it, anything. But nope. After dumping the bike on its side, their job was apparently done. Now everyone started grabbing my pannier bags and began carrying them across intending to just dump them alongside the bike. I quickly put an end to that idea. I indicated that my sleeping bag and tent – both in waterproof stuff sacks – could go there with the bike, but the other bags stayed with me. My sleeping bag and tent were given the heave ho over to this area and left. Again, no attempt to secure anything or tie it down. I guess my bike and my camping gear was going to just be left there to roll around and smash as the boat rolled with the waves and seawater likely poured over everything. I knew from experience that even though the water was nice and calm in the harbor, it was not going to be like that out in the open ocean and waves were going to crash over my beloved bike. But what could I do at this point? I tried talking to the guys about this, but they just left. I wanted to secure my bicycle in some fashion, but there was little I could do. If I went across the gangplank, my luggage would be left unattended on the dock. And even if I did go across, I wasn’t sure what I could do. There didn’t seem to be any ropes or tarps or tiedown points out there on the bow of this boat. I had my own ropes, of course, and I had a large raincoat. Given enough time, I could probably have rigged something up to give the bicycle some protection. But it was too late. The boat was ready to depart and I had to get on board. If I didn’t, the boat would certainly have just left without me – my bike lying unceremoniously on its side on the bow of the boat. None of the GL Express employees would have cared one way or the other whether I was on board or not or whether my luggage was safe or not.

I grabbed my four pannier bags and waddled over to the main gangplank. It would have been nice to hear someone say “Can I help you with that?” or “Can I give you a hand?” but that didn’t happen either. It was a struggle to make it across the gangplank with this heavy load, but I made it. The only response I was aware of from the GL Express staff was some laughter at my predicament. Once inside the boat, my problems multiplied. The spaces in there were extremely narrow. There was barely room to move, and being the last person on board, my options were limited. There were no empty seats in the main area near the door. Not that an empty seat would have made any difference. The seats were so small and jammed so close together that there was no way I could have gotten my Canadian frame into any of them with any degree of comfort. The trip was only an hour, and I was more than happy to stand anyway, as long as I was near my luggage. However, there wasn’t even space to do that. I had no choice but to find a bit of space near there to put down three of my pannier bags and carry my fourth most valuable one as I looked for any other space on this crammed vessel. There were two other seating areas on the boat, and in the one deepest in the boat and at the front, there were two empty seats – both of them jammed in the middle of a row of four – the three other people barely visible under all the luggage they had piled on their laps around them. I could only laugh when I saw my options. There wasn’t a chance of me getting into those seats without causing a major ruckus.

There was, however, one empty seat in a back row of three. A random woman selling peanuts and snacks passed by and urged me to take that seat. She was quite insistent, so I think she was a GL Express employee. The two people in the occupied seats were both somewhat young and attractive women. In any event, they were fully decked out in nice clothes, nice sunglasses, earrings, lots of makeup, beautiful purses and chatting away into the latest cell phones. They were clean and relaxed and in control. There was no way on earth I was going to force myself into that tiny seat between them and inflict my sweaty, stinky, dirty body on them. To me, it was an embarrassment that such clean and lovely creatures should have to subject themselves to this boat as it was let alone have someone like me rubbing up against them and forcing them to take all their purses and packages and delicate items off the one remaining seat and find somewhere else to put them. The saving fact for me was that I found a small plastic stool and if I stuck it close against these seats at the bottom of the stairs, I could make a little home for myself there. I don’t know if the women were relieved to see me do so, but if I were them, I would certainly have been relieved. It was a struggle, but I managed to wedge myself into this space on top of my plastic stool. I sat there for a few minutes, and then it dawned on me that my other pannier bags were upstairs, far away, and completely unattended. The main compartment zipper of each bag was secured with a padlock, and I kept all my valuables in the main compartments. But there was nothing to stop anyone from rummaging through the smaller pockets or from just picking up a pannier bag and leaving the boat with it. It’s not like the GL Express staff would stop them or even be aware of it. I thought about just trusting to fate, but I reflected that no Filipino would ever leave their own bags unattended like that. They would probably consider me quite stupid to do so. There was literally nowhere for my luggage in my area in the bowels of the boat, but I decided not to let that stop me. I heaved myself to my feet and went back through the boat and retrieved my three other pannier bags. I saw some other foreigners on my way, and I smiled and tried to make eye contact, but they all strongly ignored me. They were clearly retirees living on Siquijor and they wanted nothing to do with a random tourist/backpacker like me. I’ve found these ex-pat foreigners in the Philippines to range from the quite unfriendly to the seedy to the clearly insane.

It was a big struggle to make my way through the narrow passages of the boat with my four pannier bags, but I made it. Then I collapsed on my stool and tried to pile my bags on and around me in such a way as to block the stairs and aisle as little as possible. At this point, I was starting to care less and less about how I was inconveniencing other people. I had myself to worry about. Clearly, no one else was going to worry about me, so I had to look out for my own interests. I imagine this is the pattern that local people end up following, which kind of puzzles me. I’ve noted many times how passive Filipinos are. They never complain or stand up for themselves about anything. They take all the ill treatment the world bestows on them on the chin and just keep smiling. Yet, how then can they survive on a daily basis? I guess they just know the system and they don’t do insane things like try to take a fully-loaded touring bicycle onto what is clearly a tiny passenger-only fast ferry.

That last fact brings up another point. I clearly was on the wrong type of boat. I knew that. It was simply too small for a loaded touring bicycle. Yet, when I arrived at the harbor in Dumaguete, I could get no one to help me figure out which was the best type of boat for me and my bicycle. I knew there had to be many different types of boats going to Siquijor. And I didn’t really care whether I went that afternoon or waited until the next day or even two days from now. But no one would listen to me or give me the information I required. Again, I was more than willing to put in the work to safeguard my own interests. But without information, I’m helpless. I could buy a ticket for this or that boat departing at this or that time, but no one could tell me what type of boat it was. To me it is common sense, that a guy with my fully-loaded bicycle would want a large vessel – even one that handles cars and motorcycles. All these ticket-sellers could see my bicycle. I pointed it out to them as I asked my questions, but they largely ignored me. They were willing to have me open my wallet and give them money for a ticket for the next boat on their schedule, but that was it. Buy a ticket or get out of my face was the response I got. I eventually concluded that since Siquijor was such a small place that there really wasn’t a range of boats available. I didn’t seem to have a choice but to buy a ticket and see what happened. Later, when I got to Siquijor, I saw much larger vessels at the docks, and all of them would have been better for me. But there was nothing I could do to get information about these boats. I can’t help but contrast this with how I would behave were I a ticket-selling clerk. It would take me two seconds to look up and see a guy with a lot of luggage on a bicycle. Clearly, it would be better if he could just roll his bike onto a big vehicle barge. I’d offer that up as an option and say that such a barge was leaving later today or tomorrow morning, and would I want to go on that boat? I could buy a ticket for this boat leaving at 2:15 p.m., and they WILL accept a bicycle as luggage (for a fee of 50 pesos), but it might be difficult getting my bicycle on board. Basically, I’d apply some common sense and try to help the customer choose the appropriate boat. But that doesn’t happen here.

If I were doing this in India or Bangladesh or China, I’d expect all kinds of problems due to the language barrier and relative levels of poverty. But this is the Philippines. Everyone speaks basic English and those in authority tend to speak excellent English. There is tons of money around. The other passengers on this boat had clearly gone to Dumaguete on a shopping trip and were returning with big boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts, bouquets of flowers, new handbags, and new computers and new phones. So there is no economic excuse for the lack of professionalism, the craziness and absence of customer service.

Well, back to the narrative. I was sitting on my plastic stool, exhausted, and pleased with myself that I had cut these two women some slack and not taken that middle seat. Then a last passenger came on board – a frantic thin-boned kind of woman – and she took that seat, meaning she had to get past me and my pannier bags and the two fashion models had to completely rearrange their lives. To their credit, they didn’t respond with even the smallest grimace of annoyance. They fully expected that last empty seat to be taken, and they probably wouldn’t even have been annoyed or bothered if I had taken it. This bird-boned woman struggled past me, managing to smack me in the face three times with her heavy bag. Then the entire duration of the trip, she kept pulling herself to her feet to monitor our progress and try to look out the front window. I followed her gaze and, every time, saw nothing but more ocean. I have no idea what she could have been looking at. The point is that every time she got up, her purse swung around and whacked me in the back of the head. And, of course, as we approached the harbor on Siquijor, she leaped to her feet and forced me to move so that she could get out into the aisle and stand there blocking everyone’s way and trying to be the first one out. What is so important in her life, I wondered, that on the laid-back island paradise of Siquijor, she needs to save four seconds of time?

This trip might sound less than pleasant so far, but the real puzzler, the winning riddle, was yet to come. Normally, I’d have stayed behind and let everyone off first. But with my pannier bags in the aisle, I had no choice but to get up with everyone else and push and shove and struggle to get out. Once on the dock, I was pleased to see how quiet and green and lush the area around the dock was. It reminded me of Catanduanes. But then I was less pleased as the time went by and I could do nothing but stand there and just stare at my bicycle on the bow of the boat. There was no gangplank to the bow of the boat, so I couldn’t retrieve it myself. I could have gone all Spiderman on their ass and leaped across the eight-foot gap to the boat, but then there would be no way to leap back with my bicycle. I did the Canadian thing and I assumed there was a system in place and that I just had to wait my turn. Surely, they were letting all the passengers off first, and then they would move the sole gangplank to the front of the boat to remove my bicycle. Surely, they were aware of me. Surely, they hadn’t completely forgotten about me or decided to completely ignore me. But, yes, that is exactly what happened. All the passengers got off the boat, some kind of crew in hardhats showed up to pump diesel fuel into the boat’s tanks, and I was left all alone just standing there looking forlornly at my bicycle on the bow of the boat. I took a picture to remember the occasion.

I gave the idiots of GL Express a long, long benefit of the doubt period. I stayed there and waited patiently. I made eye contact with GL Express employees and smiled and sort of willed them to wonder why the dumb foreigner was just standing there with his mountain of pannier bags and yearning toward the bicycle on their boat. But no one reacted. I eventually had no choice, and I started approached people. I asked them if they could help me get my bicycle, and I pointed at it. They looked and saw it. And then they went away and never came back. Everyone did this. And that was truly annoying. Two guys, after I spoke with them, left and went back inside the boat. I assumed they were making arrangements that would lead to me being united with my bicycle. But time passed, and they never came back and nothing happened. I was astounded, to be honest. I was accustomed to extremely poor customer service in the Philippines, but to be completely forgotten like this was amazing. Again, it’s not like the bicycle was hidden from view and my problem was a mystery. There it was proudly riding the bow of the boat. There I was, clearly yearning to be reunited with it. Wouldn’t someone put two and two together? Wouldn’t even one of the many people I spoke with actually do something to help me? I often read in travel guidebooks that the worst thing you can do in Asia is lose your temper and make a scene. My view is exactly the opposite. If everyone fought back, things would improve. How else will things get better if you don’t make a scene? I was steeling myself for one last attempt to get someone to help me (with the option of grabbing them by the throat and forcing them to help me) when a man from a completely different boat – the one docked in front of mine – yelled across to me and asked if that was my bicycle. I said that it was, and this man, whoever he was, got off his boat, called over a couple of his friends, and then jumped across to my boat. He picked up my bicycle and we accomplished this complicated maneuver of him holding the bike across the gap as far as he could and waiting until the waves pushed the boat the closest, and we three on the dock lunged forward and grabbed various parts of the bike and, luckily, managed to pull it across. All this activity finally caught the eye of someone from GL Express (whose name will forever go down in infamy) and this man had the nerve to come over and then demand if I had paid the bicycle fee. He demanded to see my bill to confirm that I had paid the 50 pesos. I ignored his request and I told him in clear terms what I thought of GL Express and the poor service they provided to their customers. Not surprisingly, this man just smiled and laughed. He thought it was all very funny and just went back to doing his job poorly. Things will likely never change.

Well, that was a very long and detailed story. I’ll finish it up quickly. Now that I was reunited with my bicycle, I went over it for damage and found none except that the mirror was all twisted around. I loaded up my bags and set off down the dock. I chatted with the guard and another man there and tried to figure out where I was. I understood that boats went to the docks at the city of Larena. And it’s true that the main docks are there, but this boat had come to the dock at the capital city Siquijor – same name as the island itself. I didn’t have any plans of where to go. It was about four o’clock, and I had a couple of hours of light to get my bearings and figure out where I was going to spend the night. I half-assumed I would find a little guest house in Siquijor and then ride out from there in the morning. However, I stopped to chat with a couple of guys at a motorcycle tricycle. They had clearly had some experience with people like me in the past and they made a distinction between a tourist and me, meaning they assumed I was cheap and wanted a cheap place to stay. They said that the place with the cheapest prices was Casa Miranda just outside the small village of San Juan. They had rooms for 250, 300, 400, and 500 pesos. I had no idea if any of this was true. I wondered if these guys had a commission deal going with Casa Miranda and they used this 250-peso price to lure people there before springing much higher prices on them. I think they did, in fact, have a commission deal with Casa Miranda, but I did go there and things worked out in a fashion.

It was nice to be on Siquijor from the point of view of traffic – the lack of it. The main road going around the coast was nicely paved, but it had no buses or jeepneys. The only traffic I saw consisted of tricycles and SUVs, and those were few and far between. The scenery was not as nice as I’d hoped. I had imagined a place with high mountains coming down close to the shore and providing scenic vistas. I guess there are hills in the interior, but I didn’t see them yesterday and the scenery along the coast was standard sort of fare. I passed a bakeshop, and I stocked up on some buns in case I wasn’t able to find food for the night. I also passed a water station, and I filled up my water bag with ten liters of water (for five pesos). That water added a lot of weight, of course, but I figured I only had to deal with it for the ten kilometers or so to San Juan down a smooth road. Schools were letting out as I rode down the coast road, and a large number of the children smiled and waved and called out greetings. An equal number made me a butt of their jokes and got all their friends screaming with laughter and pantomiming my silly pedaling motion. One always has to take the rough with the smooth.

I passed a number of beach resorts, and some of them had prices listed on their signs. These prices were in the 1,500 pesos a night range. They offered amenities like swimming pools and such things. Casa Miranda was unusual in that it was an attractive ramshackle sort of two-story building. Miranda, assuming that was the owner, had clearly targeted more of the backpacker crowd and offered simpler and smaller rooms at a cheaper price. I had been spoiled in Oslob with my huge beachside room in an interesting setting for 200 pesos a night, so I wasn’t entirely pleased with Casa Miranda. None of the 250-peso rooms were available, but they did have one 300-peso a night room available. No one would call it an ideal sort of place. The room is quite small with barely enough room to contain the bed, a fan, a plastic chair, and rough wooden structure meant to serve as a desk and table. The door opens directly onto the small parking lot filled with motorcycles. That could mean lots of engine noise and exhaust at all hours. The ceiling is very low, and I have to be careful not to bang into beams and the lightbulb. The bathroom is equally small and all the bits and bobs are made of cheap plastic and will surely fall apart in a short time. On the plus side, the bed is large and has clean sheets. The windows are sealed, but there are air vents along the tops of the windows and these are sealed with mosquito-proof screens. Water pressure is strong and there is even a seat on the toilet. What more could one ask for?

Once I settled into my room, I hopped on my bike and rode the final kilometer to the village of San Juan. It was getting dark and a rain storm was moving in, so I had to move fast. I found a little shop that sold spaghetti and spaghetti sauce and I decided to make a meal on my stove rather than try to eat out. I didn’t know if Casa Miranda served meals. They probably did, but I hadn’t had a good plate of spaghetti in a long time. I made my purchases in record time and was racing back to Casa Miranda ahead of the storm when I ran into one of my friends from the tricycle who had recommended the place. He was glad to hear that I was indeed staying at Casa Miranda and he was full of questions about the room and how much I was paying and how long I was going to stay. I’m fairly certain he was putting together the details of his case for a kickback from Miranda, and he kept saying things like “I’ll see you there!” A quick meal in my room and it was time for an early night. I slept well, entertained by a crazy number of detailed dreams – each one like a complete a movie. I’ll never stop being amazed at dreams. Sometimes they are so real and so detailed, I start to wonder if they don’t really represent an alternate reality. I could come out of most of the dreams I have a write a script for another complete Twilight episode.

No idea what is on the agenda for today.

Tags: bike, Casa Miranda, GL Express, pannier bags, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, San Juan, Siquijor