It rained pretty much the entire day yesterday, and it is totally overcast again this morning. I was told that a low-pressure system had moved in over the area coming from Mindinao and wasn’t expected to leave the area until Monday. It’s hard to tell what the weather will be like today, but chances are it will rain off and on for the entire day. That causes problems for me. A hardcore cyclist with a destination would just get on the bike and keep going. Without a destination, I’m more likely to just stay put. We’ll see.

The various battles continue. Despite all my efforts, the ants continue to rule this place. Nothing is safe from them. I had dumped out some extra spaghetti sauce into the toilet bowl yesterday and flushed it with water, but I guess it left a residue. I found the toilet bowl simply black with a covering of ants this morning. Just black with them. I dropped just a bit of water to give them fair warning, and they scattered like bullets. Incredibly fast species. My little bag of garbage is equally black with ants with a thick line of them leading from the bag and then around the full length of the wall and ceiling to get to the door and then out to their nest.

Less of a problem are the geckos. You’d think the geckos would station themselves on these massive lines of ants and hoover them up, but they don’t. Instead, they hide in any crevice they can find and leap out at me when I get close. I’m not frightened of them, of course. I’m quite used to the friendly creatures, but they can get a bit annoying after a while when there are so many of them and they hide underneath and behind everything.

The heat continues to be a burden with my room being very uncomfortable and muggy despite nice and cool temperatures outside. Worried about mosquitoes, I did not open the windows at all yesterday. That kept them out, but it also kept the awful heat in. It feels strange to pay good money for the privilege of staying inside a stifling cement square when it is nice and cool outside.

I was not tormented by mosquitoes, but one of the bites from the previous night has now gotten infected. That is bad news. It has happened on most of my trips to the Philippines, and on two occasions it eventually required a trip to the hospital for treatment. The other times, the infected bites were on my feet and legs and I believe they were caused by sand fleas. There were also multiple bites. This time it is a single mosquito bite on the outside of my elbow. I suspected there would be a problem because without thinking, I scratched that bite and I experienced a sudden sharp pain, which told me that I had pierced the skin. After that, it was just a matter of time until the infection began. There never seems to be anything I can do about it. It begins as a raised welt with pus oozing out of the center. Then a ring develops around the bite – a raised circle with a yellow, pussy, rotting center. The ring grows and grows and moves outward and the rotting center gets deeper and more painful until I have to go to a hospital. It got so bad on previous trips that I could barely put weight on the affected foot anymore. I’m hoping that this bite will not develop to that extent seeing that it is on my elbow and perhaps it will remain cleaner.

I had a little chat yesterday with the man that runs this place. I found him in the main building sitting at a table with another older man. It was around 8 or 9 in the morning, and they were drinking their morning beer.

These two men were in the army together for a long time. The second man had made a career of it and had retired a “full colonel.” Why do people always say “full colonel” or “full bird colonel”? There must be something unique about that rank so you can be a third of a colonel or half a colonel. Perhaps they mystery can be solved with such ranks as “lieutenant colonel”. I imagine one is a “lieutenant colonel” first before one becomes a full colonel.

In any event, this man had risen to the rank of colonel before he retired and he was given the pension of a brigadier general. This information was offered up to me appropos of nothing. It was just part of the way he introduced himself.

The two of them had been stationed in Mindanao and all the related trouble spots back in the 1970s. They said it was very bad back then. Today it is quite peaceful, but back then it was very bad.

Now that he is retired, this man operates a large chicken farm and some kind of hotel or resort in a small town called Alangalang between here and Tacloban. I saw a couple of places in that town, so it’s likely I saw his resort.

This information made me very curious, and I would have loved to have learned about how all this worked. I often meet people with businesses like this, and I wonder how they began them, how they run them, and how much money they make. Unfortunately, I can never make any sense out of the things they tell me. I suppose it must be a language problem, but it is more than that. The information simply comes out in weird disjointed ways without a beginning or an ending. It is always inconsistent and illogical as well. It makes me wonder, again, about all the travel shows and travel books in which people tell the stories of the people they meet. Do they simply make up these stories? I could never tell the story of these people since nothing they say ever makes any sense to me. A North American or a European could tell me their life story, and I would be able to understand it. But when someone in Asia tells me about their life, I never am able to understand it.

This is certainly not an isolated or unique thing. I never understand anything and it goes both ways. They have equal trouble understanding me. I experienced a number of examples of that yesterday. This happened because four or five large groups of people came to the beach resort. I was surprised to see them. I had no idea this place became that busy. But when I went outside, I found quite a number of jeepneys, motorcycle taxis, and pedicabs parked by the main building. There seemed to be four separate groups of people, each group numbering between twenty and thirty people. My appearance left them almost thunderstruck. Had I been open to it, I could have spent the entire day hanging out with them and drinking and eating. People began to call out “Hey Joe” and motion me toward their groups. I chose to misunderstand the invitation and I just waved back and kept walking. I had a book with me, and I wanted to just sit on the beach and read for a while.

I walked to the far end of the beach and sat down on the sand to read my book. Before long, however, a young woman with a baby in her arms and a group of small boys came toward me. I just wanted to be left alone, but I had no choice but to be sociable. One little boy reached me far in advance of the others and he simply crouched beside me and then went over me with his eyes and hands taking in every last detail from the nature of my shirt, the hair on my arms, my watch, the hair at the back of my neck, my fingers, and the book I was reading. Everything fascinated him and he was not shy at all. The other boys soon arrived and they all set to giving me the once-over. When the woman arrived, I said, “How are you?” She replied “Fifteen.” She thought I had asked “How old are you?” I tried to get her to understand that she had misunderstood my question, but the harder I tried, the deeper became the misunderstanding. I didn’t want her to think that I would ask her about her age the very first thing. What could be creepier than a hairy foreigner on a beach asking a 15-year-old how old she was before he even asked her for her name? I needn’t have worried, though. Age and marital status are usually among the first things that anyone asks me here. It is assumed by everyone that I am either married to a Filipina or looking to marry one. And a large difference in age is no barrier.

I tried chatting with this girl, but I made very little headway. I understood little that she said and she understood even less about me. I tried to find out the nature of the group she was with and why they were at the beach resort. I don’t think this is a difficult question. If you encountered a group of twenty or thirty people at a beach in Canada, it would be a simple matter to figure out the nature of the group. They could be friends having a picnic. They could be family celebrating a family event. They could be a club or organization. But no matter how many people I ended up talking to from the different groups, I never did understand any of them. Were they friends? Family? Other? Was this a special event? Did they come to this beach every Saturday? What? Nobody could answer even the simplest question to my satisfaction.

The mystery, as I said, went both ways. This young woman pointed at the book in my hands and asked me “What is that?” I happened to have a John Grisham novel with me that I borrowed from the man who managed this place. This occured when I was talking to him and his friend the retired colonel. I had told him that I was spending my time at his resort by reading books. He said that there were a lot of books here and I could borrow some if I wanted to. It turned out that his sister and her British husband often visited from the UK, and on each visit, her husband would show up with some books to read. He would, like me, head for the beach and then sit there and read all the time. The caretaker told me that this man wanted to be left alone to read and he would read all day long. This was a strange thing, but the ways of foreigners are strange. And he would leave these books behind, so they had a shelf or two of books at the house.

I had noticed the house before. It was a new and nice looking place that sat between the main building and my cement prison cell. I was very curious about it, and I was told that the house belonged to the man’s sister and she stayed there when she visited. Otherwise, it remained empty.

The man brought me to the house and I spent a few minutes going over the books on the shelves. They were all thrillers – the kind of books that you can pick up at airports. I hoped there would be one or two good books tucked away somewhere, but there were none. The best I could find was a John Grisham called “The Summons.” I was pleased, though. I like Grisham novels and I hadn’t read this one before.

As I said, the 15-year-old girl pointed at the book and asked me what it was. When I told her it was a book, she asked, “The Bible?” I said that it wasn’t the Bible, that it was a storybook. I showed it to her, but I got no sense that she understood what it was. I was kind of puzzled. This wasn’t a farm girl dressed in rags. She was dressed very well in nice jeans and a nice top. She was wearing jewelry and was otherwise very well groomed and intelligent-looking. When I asked if she was a student, she said that she was. So you’d think she would understand about novels. But apparently not.

A little bit later, three other women came over to check out the foreigner. They stood around me in a circle and asked the usual questions. They wanted to know how old I was and where I was from. They all assumed in this case that I was the owner of the resort. I said that I was just staying there, and this made no sense to them. Where was my wife? Where were my friends? I dreaded it, but I finally had to admit that I was single. This set off the usual explosion of laughter and excitement. One of the women was also single (of course) and they all laughed and joked about us getting married. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to them. I generally just plaster a fake smile on my face and endure these conversations until they run out of steam. In this case, it felt rude not to say something and I made the lighthearted observation that I was far too old for any of them. They were so young and I was old. They all assured me that this was not a problem at all. Even the fifteen-year-old was interested in marrying me, apparently. (If only they knew how poor I was…)

All these women had cell phones and they all wanted to have their picture taken with me. One by one, they crouched down beside me on the sand and had their friends take pictures. I took advantage of the situation to ask them questions to try and understand who they were and what their lives were like, but nothing they said made any sense to me. I was as puzzled by them as they were by me and my behavior. Why would anyone be alone ever? Why would anyone sit on a beach and read a book?

They tried to get me to go back with them to their groups to have a drink, but I resisted. It’s terrible to say, but at that point I couldn’t imagine anything more boring than hanging out with those groups and answering the same questions over and over and over again. There would be much laughter and I’d be forced to fake some laughter to join in with the mood of the groups.

Eventually, I got up and indicated that I was going to walk along the beach for a while. This was the only way apparently that I would be able to get away from them and their questions and marriage proposals. The problem was that the beach was a short one and was cut off on both sides by a river. There was no escape, and no matter where I went, I ran into people from these groups and I had to endure the same questions and conversation again and again.

There was one person that stood out from the crowd, and she tracked me down at one point. I had noticed her before because she was so different. She had long hair that she had bleached blonde and she was dressed in a form fitting bathing suit with a wrap. (All the other Filipinas went swimming in regular pants and t-shirts.) She looked and dressed, in fact, like a westerner and not a Filipina. When I talked with her, I found out that she was from Angeles, and that made perfect sense. This is a place right outside the Clark Airbase north of Manila and is full of girlie bars and that sort of thing. It’s the center of the sex industry in the Philipines, and this woman looked like she had just finished a shift working there.

Eventually, I gave up on my quest for solitude on the beach and I came back to the area around my room. I grabbed the chair out of my room and put it outside next to one of several large fish ponds. I could sit there and read in peace without fear of marriage proposals.

I passed most of the day just reading the Grisham novel. (It wasn’t one of his best works, but it was enjoyable despite a very weak ending.) I also rode my bike into Carigara for lunch. It was a Saturday, and the town was extremely quiet. Most businesses were closed, but I found a place that had some food for lunch, and I picked up another set of fixings for a spaghetti dinner back at my cement prison cell. It was raining most of this time, but not heavily and I enjoyed the light sprinkle on my face. It would have been miserable cycling in that rain all day, but it wasn’t a big problem for just hanging out.

There were a couple of other interesting events from the day. The most interesting was encountering a very large and very beautiful bird on the main building. The caretaker of the place told me that this bird, though wild, was something of a pet. They had started to feed it, and it came around all the time now hoping for a snack. It’s rare to get that close to such a large bird. I have no idea what kind of bird it was, but it had a huge beak and beautiful coloring. It thought I would feed it as well, and it walked along the roofline till it was right above me and opened and closed its beak while eyeing me hopefully.

The manager/caretaker told me during our conversation that I could get coffee or beer or other things from their kitchen. There was, in fact, a button in my room that sounded a buzzer. And if I pushed this button, one of the boys would come and would take my order.

This is interesting because it hints at how little I understand how things work overseas. I often end up doing things the hard way. I do things by myself and for myself, not realizing that there is any other way to do it. This has happened in pretty much all the countries I’ve ever visited. Local people with money just tap into local systems to provide themselves with stuff. If I were more relaxed (or smarter), I suppose that life would be a lot easier. I could just push the buzzer, snap my fingers, clap my hands, and “the boys” would emerge to take care of all my wants and needs. But I never quite understand the system or how it works. I end up doing everything myself or simply doing without. Last night, for example, I thought it might be nice to have a cold beer. The caretaker/manager said that they had beer and I just had to ask for it. So I walked over to the main building to see about getting one. It was evening and it was dark. I walked into the main building. It is just a big rambling structure with a thatch roof. Inside, I found a group of about seven or eight young men just hanging out and watching a movie on a small TV. As usual, I had no idea what was going on. Did they work here? Were they customers? Who were they? I didn’t know. I never know who is an employee and who isn’t, so I never know who to approach. It’s not like someone jumps up to see what your needs might be. So I wandered around in the dark trying to get my bearings. I asked one or two guys about getting a beer. They jumped to their feet and ran away and there were frantic conversations all over the place about me. I waited for the confusion to settle down and for someone to stand out as an employee, but it never happened. In the end, I had no choice but to just turn around and leave. This always happens to me. The owner or manager will say that everything is available and I just have to ask. But it isn’t so simple. Whenever I ask, nothing happens. I don’t know the secret to cracking the code.

 

 

Tags: bike, Biliran Trip, Clark Airbase, Hey Joe, John Grisham, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Tacloban