A Walk Down Copra Street on a Sunday

 
Sundays are very quiet days in the Philippines. Most businesses are closed, and I found all the copra warehouses closed and the streets empty of trucks. That isn’t to say that the streets were without life. There were quite a few people on that street and as I made my way along it, people asked me to take their picture and I stopped and took …

Copra Warehouses in Tacloban and 2nd Visit to San Antonio

There is a wide street near the docks that is lined with copra warehouses on both sides. I’ve often looked with interest at the dirty men loading and unloading the copra from trucks, thinking they would be great subjects for a photograph.
I also wanted to learn more about copra, so yesterday I went inside one of the warehouses to check it out. This first warehouse …

A Visit to a Local Prison

Visiting hours at the jail start at 1:00 p.m. and I arrived there at about 1:30 to find a very long line-up of women waiting to get in. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a line-up, but I was. I wasn’t sure if I had to register first or not, so I initially walked past the line and went right up to …

St. Nino Shrine and Heritage Museum in Tacloban

I finally went to the St. Nino Shrine here in Tacloban. It is one of the two actual tourist attractions here, the other being MacArthur’s landing spot. I’d been to St. Nino Shrine before, but I didn’t go in as I was tired and irritable that day and didn’t like that I couldn’t buy a single entrance ticket. I had to buy tickets for three …

Visa Extension and New Parts for the Bike

My trip to the immigration office was successful. They remembered me from before, and I was greeted with the question, “Visa extension?” Pretty much any foreigner who shows up at their office is there for a visa extension.
Every time you get a visa extension, the fees are different. The first time is really expensive. The second time is less so. And the third time, the …

Cycling from Naval back to Tacloban

Well, I’m back in Tacloban. I decided it made more sense to return here to renew my tourist visa rather than try to reach a different town. I know for a fact that it can be done in Tacloban, and there’s no way to be sure about other places.
On my ride back here, I encountered something new, something to add to the travails of Doug …

Visit to a Cockfighting Arena

Mark, the fellow that runs the sari-sar store and who took me out to his farm on his motorcycle, wasn’t around for a couple of days. Yesterday morning, however, I spotted him at his store – which is at the front of his house – and we had a chance to chat some more. I got a lot of information from him about his life
Mark …

Photos – Naval, Biliran, Philippines