I don’t know where these moods come from, but as I left from Guiuan, I could feel that I was irritable. Perhaps it was because I left without breakfast. I had only a cup of coffee and two buns. I thought that would be enough to get me to a town where I could have a meal. However, things just didn’t work out meal-wise, and I cycled a long time – 75 kilometers – without eating. So I wasn’t feeling the greatest. On the plus side, my knee did very well. It felt fine when I left from Guiuan and then it still felt fine after 10 kilometers. Fifteen kilometers and then twenty and then thirty went past, and my knee still wasn’t in much pain. There was some soreness, but it wasn’t that bad. In fact, some soreness had developed in the shin bone of my left leg – a place I’d had considerable pain in the past on this trip. Then pain developed in the shin bone of my right leg. And once or twice when my right leg shifted to one side or the other, I felt a twinge of pain in my knee. Also, when I was suddenly freewheeling downhill and moving my legs too fast, my knee suddenly hurt. Overall, however, it did very well. Things still aren’t rosy. When I ended my day at Lawa-an and stopped for a meal, I found it very difficult to get up and walk over to the water dispenser. My legs were completely worn out and stiff and in pain.

Packing up and leaving was fairly routine, though it took a while. I had been in Guiuan for a few days and my gear had spread out. It took a while to get it rounded up and back in place. My irritability began when I carried my bags down to my bike and the two guard dogs in the hotel started to bark at me and wouldn’t stop. I could feel the urge to let go of my temper and take my irritability out on those dogs. They, however, were just doing their job. I wonder about the role of dogs here. Everyone has a dog, it seems, and they all say that the dogs are for protection at night. Their job is to bark at anyone passing by at night. This is supposed to make everyone more secure. Yet, I think the net result is for everyone to feel LESS secure. I certainly feel less secure with them around. I feel tense and nervous everwhere I go because I don’t want to disturb the dogs. I’m not afraid of them attacking me, of course. I just get so annoyed at their endless barking, and I don’t want to set them off.

I was in pretty good shape as I rode to Mercedes and then to Salcedo. I even did quite well on the long climb after Salcedo. I just put the bike in low gear and powered my way up. There were times when I didn’t even think about my knee at all. It was after Salcedo that my mood really started to deteriorate. The next landmark was the intersection with the main road where I would have to turn left to Quinapondan. That intersection never seemed to arrive and I cycled on and on and on to the point that I began to wonder if I’d made a wrong turn. It was also a very empty stretch of land – the emptiest I’d seen anywhere in the Philippines – and there were no houses and no people to break the monotony.

I finally reached the intersection, but I wasn’t in the mood to stop for a meal there. I figured I’d do the last 5 kilometers to Quinapondan and eat there. If I hadn’t lost my temper at the videoke hotel, I could have stopped there for lunch, but I just blew past the place. I looked through the doors, but I didn’t see anyone and so couldn’t wave. There was a food house in Quinapondan, but when I rolled up to their window, I saw that they had no good food. They just had dishes of the fish head variety. I tell people that I like Filipino food – and I do – but that liking does not extend to a big plate of fish heads. I’d rather go hungry.

Then things got a bit weird. On my way out to Guiuan, I’d stopped in a little eatery and had a good meal and had a chat with a woman who was quite a character. She was extremely talkative and had all kinds of interests and hobbies. She made baskets. She was a lawyer. She sold herbal medicine. She probably did a dozen other things. She mentioned at that time, that there were rooms I could stay in for as little as 150 pesos. I thought that it might be wise to eat my late lunch there and then spend the night – take it easy on my knee. But when I got to the town where I thought this place was located – Giporlos – I didn’t see it. I rode around and around and around the streets but I couldn’t find this restaurant. For that matter, I couldn’t find any restaurants.

The next town up the road was Balangiga – the place of the historical massacres. I figured the eatery had to be there, but again I couldn’t find it. I was getting quite hungry and irritable by this point, and I tried to find food – without success. The eateries that I did find were out of food. As I rode around, I found myself being yelled at a lot. It was friendly yelling, but it got quite annoying after a while and I wasn’t in the mood for it. I did stumble across one of those Big Mak burger joints, and I decided to have a hamburger or two to tide me over. A group of men were hanging out on their pedicabs beside the place, and they all started yelling at me and joking and laughing. One man had an idea of where I should park my bike and he shouted at me over and over again about that. I finally turned to him and asked him to stop yelling. I could hear him just fine and I understood him. He didn’t have to shout the same thing over and over again.

The little Big Mak stand was also something of a disappointment. There was a large and enticing cooler sitting there, but it was completely empty except for one can of Coke and a bottle of Lipton Lemon Tea. I asked about these and the woman said that they weren’t cold. The cooler didn’t work. Later on, I did discover that there were drinks inside the freezer – the place where they kept the meat. I asked for one of those and was handed a Lipton Lemon Tea that was frozen solid. Well, I wanted a cold drink and you couldn’t get any colder than frozen solid.

Meanwhile, a pedicab full of teenage girls had pulled up outside the Big Mak place and started yelling at me. These girls had appeared to follow me all around town. In any event, I had run into them several times. This was a pattern I’d noticed – the Filipino version of cruising. A group of kids would take over a pedicab. One of the kids would pedal, and they would ride around having fun and goofing off. When these girls saw me, they started calling out to me. Quite often, I’m called “Daddy”. I have no idea why. These girls started giggling and laughing and shouting, “Are you looking for me, Daddy?” “What do you want, Daddy?” It was kind of creepy. To make things worse, the woman at the Big Mak stand was very chatty and she hit me with all the standard questions until I thought I would go out of my mind. I was just in the mood to be left alone.

I mentally shook the dust off my feet as I left Balingaga.

To complete my bad mood, it started to rain when I left the town. I pulled over to the side of the road and put the rain covers on the pannier bags. I was not in a very good spot and the bike kept trying to tip over and roll down the hill and into the ditch. I got the rain covers on and just set off down the road getting more and more wet. I do have a raincoat, but in this heat it hardly seems logical to put it on. I could wear it if I was standing still, but wearing it while riding my bike would just result in so much sweat that I’d be just as wet as if I’d not worn it.

So I rode along in the rain. In a way, it felt good to get so bedraggled. It’s that mood where things are so bad that you welcome it getting worse. It just confirms how awful things are. The rain came and went, sometimes a drizzle, sometimes a full-on downpour. I had to use my new hand towel to keep my eyes clear so that I could see where I was going.

In Lawaan, I finally found the eatery that I was looking for. I honestly thought it was in Giporlos. I had no memory at all of it being in Lawaan. Anyway, there it was. The woman I’d met was there and she called out to me happily and encouraged me to come inside, have something to eat, have a cup of coffee, and change my clothes. There was little point in changing my clothes. I’d be just as wet from sweat from the effort. I’ve been so drenched in sweat in the Philippines, that I’ve almost come to accept it as a natural state. I don’t even think about taking a shower and getting refreshed and dry. What is the point when I’ll be soaked through in a few minutes anyway?

I had a glorious meal at the eatery. I had just eaten the two hamburgers a little bit earlier, but they hadn’t made any dent in my appetite. I needed a full meal of rice and meat and vegetables. And their water dispenser was plugged in and dispensed wonderfully cold water. I drank glass after glass after glass.

After some thinking, I decided to spend the night in Lawaan, if this room turned out to exist. I had thought of going on to Legaspi and staying in that little hotel there, but it was too far away in my current condition. I asked the woman, Paz, if she could show me the room. It turned out not to be at the eatery at all. She brought me down a series of side streets until we arrived at the house of someone connected with the barangay captain. There was nothing attractive about the room, but there was nothing particularly bad about it either. And I’m not about to turn down the chance at a cheap room in a lovely little town like this.

There were some complications, of course. The biggest one was that there was no key to the main door. It had a beautiful and large and brand new lock on it, but there was no key. Therefore, in order to go in and out of the room, I’d have to take a second door, which led into a small sari-sari store and then into the home of the people that live here. That was the only way I could access the tiny bathroom and the water supply. I hate the feeling that I don’t have freedom of movement. And, of course, in the evening, I found the door to the sari-sari store locked from the outside. I was something of a prisoner. I could still go out the main door. The problem was that I couldn’t lock it behind me, so my room would not be secured in the time I was gone. Another problem was that this door opened directly onto the street. That made me quite visible whenever I stepped outside. I’m used to being visible, but this meant that everyone could see when the room was empty. And with the door unlocked, anyone could dash inside and steal something. Paz had assured me a dozen times that since I was in the barangay captain’s house, I was completely safe. It was very secure. But she told me that so many times, that instead of making me feel secure, it made me feel vulnerable and in danger. I was told so many times that this room was safe that I couldn’t help but think about all the dangers. Why go on about it so much if it wasn’t an issue?

I was exhausted by this point. Totally and completely exhausted. I’d cycled 75 kilometers down a fairly rough and hilly road, but that wasn’t so abnormal. It was just something about the day that did me in. I started the day tired and irritable and hungry and then I got soaking wet and the day was just a tough one. Paz had suggested that we go to a place called “Jupiter” for one beer and a bit of singing, but I begged off. I spent some time setting up a clothesline inside my room and hanging up all my wet things. Then I took a bucket bath and prepared my bed.

This bed reminded me of spending the night at the fire station. I didn’t see any mosquitoes around, but that meant nothing. There was no netting on any of the large windows and there were sure to be lots of mosquitoes hiding somewhere. I thought about hanging my mosquito net, but there was no easy way to do that. I also thought about putting up my tent. There was enough room on the floor to do that. I would have done that, but I thought it might traumatize my hostess, Paz. In the end, I draped my mosquito net over the bunk bed, just as I had done at the fire station. And just as at the fire station, it didn’t work. I lay there in the dark and my body suddenly felt like it was on fire. My back, my arms, my legs, and my fingers were all burning. I turned on my Petzl flashlight and looked around. Sure enough, there was a flight squadron of mosquitoes inside the net with me. That wasn’t surprising since it was impossible to get the net to cover all the gaps perfectly. I got up and did a lot of rearranging. And then I got out my sleeping bag and used it as a liner to plug the gaps all along one side. Being extremely careful and methodical, I managed to completely enclose the bed with the net. Then I went on a search and destroy mission and killed all the mosquitoes in the net with me. Finally, I applied mosquito repellant. I lay back down, drenched with sweat once more, and found that I was successful. No mosquitoes at all, and I got a good night of sleep. I was concerned that I was being rude as a guest going to bed so early. But I was exhausted and I needed to sleep. For some reason, I didn’t sleep very well in Guiuan despite staying in a fairly luxurious room. I suspect that air conditioning sometimes results in a lack of real sleep.

The night passed easily. I knew I was sleeping well and deeply because I had my usual assortment of fantastic and vivid dreams. It wouldn’t take much to convince me sometimes that the world of dreams is the real world. This real world that I wake up to feels quite pale and insubstantial by comparison.

I took a bucket bath this morning. I had to use water from a large container sitting outside the bathroom, but it seemed clean enough. I set up my Trangia and boiled some water for coffee. All in all, I’m sitting pretty. I’m going to stay here for the day and do some walking around and picture-taking. The room only cost 200 pesos, so I might as well take advantage of that. I pass so many small towns like this wishing there was accommodation there, and now some accommodation has just fallen into my lap.

 

 

Tags: Big Mak, bike, eatery, fire, Lipton Lemon Tea, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, South Coast of Samar