Bus and Truck Madness – Cycling from Legazpi to Sorsogon City

Speaking of a menacing aspect, I was saying that I eventually got on my bicycle and rode the 60 or 70 kilometers to the next town in Bicol – a bustling little place called Sorsogon. The Bicol region is divided into two provinces – Albay and Sorsogon. The town of Legazpi is in Albay Province. Sorsogon is the capital city of Sorsogon Province.

I had been off the bike and relaxing for long enough that getting back on the beast was a fairly traumatic experience. It was like starting the bike trip all over again. I had even lost much of my suntan. I didn’t realize this, and I didn’t put on any sunblock, thinking I didn’t need it anymore. I paid the price for that later as my forearms, my calves, and my forehead all burned quite badly. It happened before I was aware of it. When I arrived in Sorsogon, my forehead felt like stiff cardboard and my arms were on fire.

The physical exertion of riding my bike was also almost more than I could handle. Leaving Legazpi involved a very long and very steep climb, and my legs had a difficult time getting me and my bike to the top. My mood plummeted as I struggled my way up the slope and I contemplated doing this day after day after in the hottest month of the year. I told myself to relax – that the first day is always the toughest and it just gets easier after that. All true, but it didn’t help my mood much. My mood was also not the greatest as I contemplated the heavy load on my bicycle. This is an old, old story for me, but it’s still significant. I’d left a few things behind in Legazpi when I went on my ride around Catanduanes, and those things had been added back into my luggage – making my load much heavier than before. I want to lighten my load drastically, but doing so would involve almost a complete change of gear – even a new bike, as my bike is quite a heavy beast for touring.

The biggest problem, however, had nothing to do with the sun, the heat, the steep roads, and the weight of my bike and gear. No, the biggest problem was the traffic combined with the narrow road. I realized quite soon that I had been spoiled by the laid-back rural quality of Catanduanes. Now that I was back on the main island of Luzon, I was faced with all the fury of the main national highway in a country with the second highest economic growth rate in Asia after China. Things are bustling in the Philippines and that means construction vehicles and people on the move. The road was jammed with gravel trucks and other monster trucks blasting along and spewing out black clouds of exhaust. Modern and powerful buses raced along as the undisputed kings of the road slowing down for no one and cutting so close to me that my day’s ride from Legazpi to Sorsogon will likely count as the most dangerous day of my life. When you read about travel in a place like the Philippines, you are warned of dangers such as thieves and terrorists and rebel groups and kidnapping. By far, however, the most real and present danger is that of being flattened by a truck or bus.

The road was paved and from its condition it was paved just recently. That is a good thing, since it makes cycling easier. However, it also makes driving easier, and the trucks and buses took full advantage of that. I don’t know why so many Filipinos need to get somewhere else or why they need to get there so quickly, but the buses are serving this need in their thousands and the road was a nightmare for cyclists.

There was physical danger from all these trucks and buses, but there was also the danger of my going mad from the noise. The trucks were not always in the best of shape and that, combined with the steepness of the climbs, meant that they were often down in first gear with the engine simply blasting and roaring. The drivers liked to warn people of their presence and laid on the horns with abandon. The buses with their air horns were even worse. The idea is that you can drive as fast and as badly as you want as long as you blow your horn a lot. I don’t know how that works, but it seems to come from a certain arrogance. I’m the biggest and fastest thing on the road, the buses say, so I can do whatever I want. I blew my horn, didn’t I? So I did my part to keep the roads safe.

I haven’t even mentioned the jeepneys and the tricycles. That they share this same road with the buses traveling at light speed is clearly not the greatest thing. Jeepneys by definition are slow, bulky, erratic, and subject to sudden fits of stopping and swerving. And, without regular stops of any kind, they rely on their horn to get the attention of potential passengers. Oh, and the people on motorcycles. They can move at a pretty good clip, too, and they are in just as much of a hurry as everyone else. When they see a potential bottleneck or danger in the traffic ahead of them – such as a jeepney unloading – they don’t slow down. They simply blow their horn to warn that they are coming through. Air-horns on buses, blasting horns on trucks, toodling horns on jeepneys, and beeping horns on tricycles and motorcycles. The horn honking simply never ended.

The really crazy thing is that the Filipinos are so friendly and so excited to see a foreigner on a touring bicycle, that they react by – you guessed it – blowing their horn. It’s their way of saying hello. So on top of the regular horn honking, there is the happy “hello!” “nice to see you!” “good luck!” “nice bike!” and “it’s great that you’re cycling” honking. I wanted very much to put in ear plugs or my iPod earbuds to deaden the sound, but then I wouldn’t be able to hear the thousands of “Hey, Joe!” “What’s your name?” and “Where are you going?” greetings. I didn’t want to appear rude, so I had to keep my ears unobstructed so that I could respond to all of these.

Sorsogon did little to calm me down. Filipino towns and cities take all the craziness of the main roads and condense it into a few square miles. And just for fun, they throw in a few bizarre one-way streets and speakers the size of houses. Sorsogon was the definition of bedlam. I’m sure the one-way streets were put in place as a way to deal with traffic congestion, but I’m not sure they’ve had any effect. For me, their effect is largely just one of confusion. I find it hard to get my bearings, because I can’t doubleback on my route. I get pushed in new directions and then I can’t figure out where I’ve been or where I’m going. I end up going in strange circles as I try to get the lay of the land.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in Sorsogon in the way of accommodation. I spotted a number of hotels on my way in, but they turned out to be fairly expensive – at least for my budget. The average cost was about one thousand pesos, or twenty-five dollars. They would be great places to stay and good value for someone on a short holiday. Twenty-five dollars for a clean room with its own bathroom, a TV and air conditioning is pretty good, especially when it is set in a nice garden. But i didn’t want to spend that much. The first place I saw in my price range went too far in the other direction – toward a disgusting dive. The hotel looked promising on the outside – basic and friendly. And the rooms looked to be on the first floor – which is a bonus for someone on a bike. The price at 350 pesos was acceptable. The problem was the room itself. If I had been arrested and was being shown my prison cell for the next ten years, this room would have fit the bill. In fact, as a prisoner, my heart would probably sink if I realized that this room was going to be my cell. I had a sense that this place would be the only place in town I could reasonably afford and that I would be back, but I told the man that I was going to look around a bit more.

I fought my way through the madness of Sorsogon for another forty minutes or so, but with no luck. Then I stumbled on my home for the night. The hotel was called Caroline’s, and it was located on the second floor of a strip mall. I had seen it earlier on my trip but skipped it because it looked to be too difficult to get my bike and gear up those narrow stairs. Plus, in order to check out the place, I’d have to leave my bike on the street. But on my second trip around the city, I decided to check it out and it turned out to be quite nice. Their cheapest room at 350 pesos was quite small, but it had all the luxuries – its own bathroom, a fan, and a TV. There was an air conditioner, but using it would bump the price up to 500 pesos for the night. I decided to stick with just the fan.

The two young guys working there helped me carry my bags up the stairs to the room, and then I carried my bike up the stairs and locked it on the balcony. A quick unpacking and a shower, and I was back on the street on my bike to do the whole hunter-gatherer thing. I had found shelter, but I still needed food and water. Water, luckily, was easy. I found a “refilling station” in short order. I loooooooooooove those places. They are, without a doubt, the greatest thing in the known universe. Combine them with my Dromedary bag, and they are perfect for a thirsty cyclist. The people who work in these places are always friendly and even overjoyed to have a foreigner as a customer. They are always amused by my water bag, and they give it a good rinse and even a good washing and then quickly fill it up with cool, clean water. This place charged me 12 pesos for filling up the bag. I think it holds about 10 liters (I’ll have to doublecheck that). It’s an incredible bargain. Once my bag is full, I lash it to my rear pannier bag and take it back to my room for the night. I’ve done that many times on my journey so far, and I can’t help but feel like a mighty hunter – my catch of pure water lashed to my vehicle.

Food is often easy to come by in the Philippines as well. There are only a couple of problems with this part of the hunter-gatherer trilogy. The first is timing. You have to get the food when it is available. If you miss your window of opportunity, the food can be finished and they don’t make more on demand. They make their food for the day and when it is sold, you hear the dreaded words “All finished” time and time again. The second problem is the almost total lack of vegetables. I consider myself extremely lucky if I find an eatery that has a vegetable dish or two. When I find one, I return to that place as often as possible. I’m as far from a diet-conscious person as you can get, but even I start to feel a bit unhappy when meal after meal after meal consists only of rice and big hunks of beef or chicken. Throw in a liter of Coke, and that is practically the national diet in the Philippines. I don’t know that there is a connection between this diet and the number of diabetes clinics I see, but it makes sense. And if you don’t get food at an eatery, then your only choice is fast food – with which the Filipinos have a passionate relationship. Fried chicken is by far the most popular. I also see pizza. And this part of the national diet probably accounts for the surprisingly large number of fat people I see. It’s a strange sight. I associate Asian countries with slim, healthy people. One does see an occasional chubby child in a place like Taiwan, but they are the exception and a relatively modern thing. The vast majority of Taiwanese, Thais, Cambodians, Indonesians, etc, are slim. But in the Philippines so far, I have seen lots of fat people. I’d almost call it an epidemic. Is this a genetic thing? Or is it a modern occurrence because of this poor diet? If the latter, then where did this poor diet come from? It makes sense when you consider the large historical influence the United States has had on the country. One associates fast food and obese people with the United States, so it’s logical that the Philippines would have these characteristics. Or perhaps the people are just genetically inclined to be a bit stouter than their Asian neighbors.

The last problem I face in getting food in the Philippines is one of seating. I often find a place with a great selection of food but with nowhere to sit. It is expected for people to take the food home. They have an interesting method for doing this. Food is served in standard proportions based on a little dish or a small bowl. If you wish to take this food away, they put the dish or bowl inside a plastic bag so that the plastic bag lines the inside of the container. Then they fill it with food as if they are going to serve it in that dish. Then they simply turn the bag inside out with the food neatly contained inside the bag. A quick twist and a knot and it is ready to go.

I realized when I arrived in the Philippines how accustomed I had gotten to the absence of bags in Taiwan. In stores, you are generally not provided with a plastic bag unless you ask for it. And then you have to pay for it. It became my habit to simply throw my purchases into my knapsack. In the Philippines, it is quite the opposite. Food is taken home in these plastic bags from the eateries. And in stores, they are so security conscious that they go a bit crazy with putting your purchases in bags. It felt really weird at first – and it still feels weird – to suddenly have to deal with all these bags. I had gotten so used to never having to deal with bags. Now I’m drowning in them. You have no idea how many bags a normal consumer ends up with until you do without them for a while and then suddenly end up in a country that uses a lot of them. (Though it appears that there is a trend toward using paper bags instead of plastic.)

I rode my bike around Sorsogon looking for that perfect combination in an eatery – available food, vegetable dishes and a place to sit. I had a lot of trouble this time, and I rode around far too long looking. I struggled with those one-way streets and I felt myself starting to get irritable from lack of food and the long hard day I’d gone through. To my delight, I realized there was a small eatery in the alley right beside Caroline’s hotel, where I was staying. They didn’t have any vegetable dishes, but I was too hungry by that point to care and I tried to balance my meat-based meal with a dessert of 5 bananas.

The night passed with difficulty. With just the fan, the room remained very hot and I lay on the bed sweating and sweating and sweating. I ended up opening the door to my room to try to let some cool night air in while I slept, but it did no good. I was hot and sweaty the entire night and got little sleep.

The next day was Sunday, and, as on all Sundays, I struggled again with finding food. People take Sundays seriously in the Philippines and most businesses – including eateries – are closed. I got out my bike and rode around, but the best I could come up with was a bakery. Unfortunately, all the bread was extremely sweet. The dough itself is made with sugar and then the outside of each bun is covered in sugar – also contributing, I imagine, to the diabetes rate. I found I had little choice but to head to Jollibee – the one place that is sure to be open in any town in the Philippines.

The problem was that I wasn’t the only person forced to go to Jollibee. The place was jammed with people and more came all the time. I stood in line for a long time to order my meagre breakfast. Cyclists need a lot of fuel, and I could have had four of those meals and probably still been hungry. I would have ordered another one or two meals, in fact, but the lineups were so long and the noise level so high that I couldn’t face it and I left and got back on my bicycle.

Tags: bike, eatery, Leaving Legazpi, Legazpi to Matnog, Philippines Bike Trip 2013