Saturday March 15

It’s eight in the morning and I’m living the life of a privileged beach bum. I slept long and hard and just recently rolled out of bed. I’m now having a cup of coffee in the quite luxurious restaurant of this resort.

I use the word “luxurious” in a relative sense here. It’s luxurious only in comparison to the other places I’ve seen along the beach. Had I been thinking, I wouldn’t have taken my penthouse here. It costs twice as much as the other cottages along the beach. Of course, we’re still not talking about a lot of money. It costs only 800 pesos which comes to about NT$500. You wouldn’t get anything for that in Taiwan, but here you get paradise.

I guess hanging out with the boys has quickly gotten me thinking like a backpacker. We were always discussing prices. They were quite proud of some purchases they made such as some imitation Converse sneakers which would have cost ten or twenty times as much back in Germany. I mentioned over dinner that I had purchased a couple of T-shirts and they instantly wanted to know how much I’d paid. I told them they cost 180 pesos each. Marick commented that he bought his T-shirts in Manila for 110 or 100. I don’t think it is a concern for economy only. Always thinking about how much something costs also comes from a sense of being out of your element. Never knowing how much something costs can be unsettling. You’re not quite sure of your footing, and you have the nagging feeling that you’re being taken for a fool. So you always want to know how much people have paid for things. I often overcompensate by paying too much or paying too readily. When we hiked along the Monkey Trail and that man offered to ferry us across the river, there was clearly a feeling amongst the boys that we shouldn’t pay him. It didn’t feel right to them, and they felt we were being lied to. I took it one step farther, though, and I just thought it through and assumed we were being lied to and assumed that this guy was taking advantage of us. However, he would have been quite happy with any kind of tip – 20 pesos would have been fine, and that is only about NT$15. It’s difficult to get worked up over that amount of money. As we were being ferried across, I dug out my wallet to prepare some money. That’s the funny thing about me. I never mind paying for something, but I hate the uncertainty and confusion that can sometimes surround it. So I like things to be organized. I only had 50-peso notes in my wallet, but that seemed fine to me, too. 50 pesos is a bit more than a US dollar. I palmed the note and handed it to the guy when we got out on the other side. When we came back, we found it was true that we could have just waded across the mouth of the river, and the man could have told us that, but for all we knew, he could have been assuming that we didn’t like to get our feet wet. It’s hard to say what he was thinking. So I felt it was best and easiest and nicest just to pay him and not worry about it.

 

Yesterday, when the boat dropped us off, the boys and the other passengers going on to El Nido went to have lunch. I put my pannier bags on the bicycle and decided to go find a place to stay. I figured I could find a place and then come back in time to see them off.

A local man named “Babes” adopted me as my unwanted guide and walked with me as I rolled my bike down the hard-packed sand. This is a situation that I’m never comfortable with. I hate it when a person forces his company on you as a “guide.” There is very little you can do to control that situation. There has been no agreement, so you have no control. This guy just tries to do things for you, and the more he does, the greater the sense of obligation he creates. It’s very annoying because in his desire to do more, he ends up doing too much and driving me crazy. In this case, he carefully stepped on all the ropes that led from the boats to trees and anchors on shore. The ropes were about knee high, and we had to step on them to roll my bike over them. I could easily do it myself, but he insisted on doing it. All the while, he babbled about the local area telling me about waterfalls and mangroves and things like that. I kept a carefully neutral expression that showed no interest at all, and I told him quite clearly that I wasn’t interested in boat trips to anywhere.

I knew next to nothing about Port Barton and didn’t know where to stay. As we came in on the boat, however, I saw a set of large and interesting-looking A-frame structures at the end of the beach. I had fallen in love with my cottage right on the water in Sabang, and wanted to repeat that experience. Those cottages looked to be right on the water, and I thought I would check them out first. It turned out that that place used to be called Swissipini’s, and it was considered the best place in Port Barton. It had a different owner now and a different name. I found that all the cottages right on the water were occupied. They had other cottages behind them, but they didn’t have such a nice view, and they cost something like 1,200 pesos. Then they showed me the penthouse. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for, but it intrigued me. It was up on the second or third floor completely by itself and had almost a commanding view of the ocean. I say almost because there were a lot of trees and leaves blocking some of the view. Given some patience on my part, I probably would have looked around a bit more, but I thought I’d just take it and see how it worked out.

So far, it has worked out fine. I feel a bit isolated up there, though. I enjoyed my Sabang cottage partially because of the combination of the spectacular view and the amount of foot traffic. I had lots of company walking past either right in front of my cottage or along the beach. I also had my neighbors on both sides to talk to. I didn’t have much luck with the cool tough guy in the cottage on the left, or the people who replaced him, but some very nice people passed through the cottage on my right – including the rasta rapper and his stunning girlfriend. I chatted with them for quite a while one afternoon and enjoyed hearing their stories of their travels. The boys talked to them a bit more on the boat, and I learned that the rasta rapper made his money for this trip as a bartender. He also sang and rapped in a band. This band was professional enough that it went on tour through Germany. I didn’t quite make out whether he was in the band as it toured Germany. I was very curious to hear how the two of them met and all of that. They clearly came from the same world – or at least I assume they did. They shared interests and a world view. They had the same basic look, and she passed a lot of time on the balcony working on his dreadlocks. Most of the time, he covered them up in one of those knitted hats that guys like him wear. When he took it off, he was quite the sight with his short dreads sticking out like porcupine quills. The local people stared at the two of them quite openly. I suppose they looked as close to classic hippies as one gets these days. The one odd thing, and I’ve noticed it in many people like them, is the tendency to use military-style camouflage gear. The rasta rapper had this strange military waist belt in which he kept all of his important stuff. It was military in style and looked like it should be filled with ammunition and hand grenades. I associate rasta types and backpacker types with peace, love, and understanding. The military dress seems out of place. It probably has a simple explanation though – that military surplus stuff would be cheaper and it would be different. They can save money, and stand out from the crowd with their North Face packs and things.

I think I was writing earlier about how I enjoyed cycling partially because it did take me outside of the normal travel patterns. I really felt that in Sabang, as I got ready for the boat. My cottage was quite close to the pier, so I didn’t have to leave until quite late. As I sat there on my balcony, I saw lots of backpackers going past toward the pier. They were either going on the boat to Port Barton and El Nido or taking a jeepney to Puerto Princesa. It was like watching a seasonal migration of a herd. I felt a bit odd that I would soon be joining that herd. I had the same feeling when we all gathered at the dock to get on the boat. We were all of a type distinguished only by the name and style of our backpacks. The idea in everyone’s head was to go and see the Philippines, but when you are that deep into the backpacker world, it’s hard to argue that you are even in the Philippines anymore. You are on the backpacker trail – people restlessly moving from one popular spot to another and bleeding money along the way. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with it. Why not meet all these people from around the world and enjoy yourself and have these adventures? This boat to Port Barton was purely an exercise in tourism, but it was still an adventure.

I was thinking yesterday evening about my penthouse. By then I had seen a number of places along the beach. All of them would have been cheaper by quite a bit, and some of them would probably have suited me better. More people were staying there and it would have been easier to find some company with which to pass the time and exchange stories. So I was wondering what exactly I got for my extra 300 pesos compared to the 500 pesos I paid for my cottage in Sabang. I suppose in the end, I got quite a bit. All the windows had good mosquito netting on it. It was about double the size of my Sabang cottage. It had windows all the way around which let in quite a bit of light. My cottage in Sabang also had windows, but it was still quite dark inside. The penthouse is also fully furnished with lots of shelves, a wardrobe, a desk with a large mirror and chair. The construction was also much better. The cottage in Sabang was a bit thrown together with lots of large gaps between everything and openings to the outside world. The bathroom in particular was pretty rough-and-ready. It was essentially a narrow space made out of two cement walls. The toilet was at the end and was just the bottom porcelain portion. The bathroom in the penthouse is more complete. It feels like a regular bathroom with a nice sink and a mirror, a full toilet with seat and lid, plus a shower enclosure with even a shower curtain. The best feature of the room for me is how the bed sits directly under a window that takes up almost the whole wall. I can lie there with my head on the pillow and look out over the beach and ocean.

When you add all of this up, it ends up being a much better deal than the cottage. Of course, one doesn’t really need any of these things. I was perfectly happy in my Sabang cottage. I can go either way. I’m just having these thoughts because there is such a concern for prices amongst the people I’ve been hanging out with. Everyone is always talking about how much things cost and comparing what they paid. The boys managed to get a discount on the boat trip to El Nido. The normal price was 1,500 pesos, and they paid 1,300 each. They also saved money by staying all three of them in one cottage. I think in their case it is a concern because they are all students and likely don’t have much disposable income. I don’t have to worry about it as much. And unlike the rasta rapper, I’m not trying to take my money and stretch it out over as long a time as possible.

I have to say that I’m also enjoying the design of this place. From the point of view of a simple cottage on the beach, you can argue that it’s all a bit much. The restaurant and reception area looks like something that was cut out of a travel brochure. It is all very well-made with thick timbers and elaborate high ceilings. Hundreds and hundreds of short pieces of bamboo are strung all over so that when the wind blows there is much clicking and clacking. It’s a pleasant sound. A less pleasant sound is the crowing that comes from the many many roosters around. I remember waking up at two in the morning or something like that when one rooster seemed to crow right in my ear. I lay there hoping that the other roosters wouldn’t take up the challenge, but they did, and I lay there for thirty minutes listening to the wildlife explode around me. Eventually, they came to their senses and realized that it wasn’t morning yet. At sunrise, they started up again. I surprised myself by sleeping through much of it. I was thinking about cycling out of Port Barton this morning, but I wasn’t in the mood when I got up. I don’t have any great desire to do things in Port Barton like hike to the waterfall or go on a boat trip, but I think my body needs as much downtime as possible.

The tale of my body is certainly an interesting one on this trip. I have never trained for a cycling trip. I figured that on a long bike ride, there is no point riding beforehand. You can simply get in shape as you ride. You just go slowly at the beginning and cover the distances that feel comfortable. This shorter trip is turning out to be a different story. If I had a definite schedule and had to be somewhere by a certain day, I’d likely be in trouble. It was simply too much to ask of my poor body to go from zero activity to cycling the road to Sabang, from no exposure to sun to hours and hours of brutal tropical sun, from no walking or hiking to hours of climbing along jungle trails, and from no bugs to bugs. I barely had the strength to ride to Sabang, when in the past when I might have been in shape, it probably would have been not that hard at all. The fatigue, however, is just the beginning of the story. My skin is also a terrible mess. I’ve got burns across my nose and forehead and parts of my back. I’ve actually gotten off pretty lightly in that regard since I was so careful with sunscreen, but still the sun has taken its toll. My legs still haven’t recovered from the hike to the underground river. My calves have tightened up like steel and I stumble around like a ninety-year-old man. My sandals rubbed blisters into both my ankles, and they have all gotten infected. Last night, my entire right heel was throbbing with the infection. It was extremely painful just to touch the area. I’ve been applying various lotions and ointments and I’m hoping it will get better. Because of those blisters, I haven’t been able to wear my sandals. I bought a pair of flip-flops in Sabang to wear instead. Flip-flops, though, also take getting used to, and the space between my toes is rubbed raw and bruised. I can’t even walk in my flip-flops right now. It hurts too much. I ended up having to walk everywhere yesterday in my bare feet and today the bottom of my heels are bruised and sore. The worst thing, however, has been the heat rash. I’ve been treating it with Katialis cream. The cream really does help, but the rash comes back again and again, and it has been driving me crazy. That probably isn’t even a complete list of my physical problems right now, and to add to them I now have jellyfish stings.

The stings aren’t bad at all. Today, I can’t even feel them anymore. Yesterday, however, they hurt quite a lot and the surprise of it was such that I won’t be going back in the water here at Port Barton. I was sitting up on my balcony reading a book and working on the bike off and on during the afternoon. I waited until the sun was lower in the sky and thought I might as well go for a dip in the water. I got my snorkel and mask and went down to the beach. I hadn’t seen anyone else in the water. In fact, the only people I had seen even near the water were two foreign girls in tiny bikinis sunbathing just outside this resort. They had been down there on the beach for hours and I wondered how their skin could stand that much exposure to the sun. One girl while lying down had adjusted her bikini top so that it was little more than an inch-wide strip across her chest. She apparently wanted to get as even a tan as possible without being completely naked. I had to wonder how the local people reacted to things like that. At one point, a group of ten or twelve teenage schoolgirls walked past. They were all fully clothed in shirts and skirts that went past their knees. They stared at the bikini girls like they were creatures from another planet, and they shrieked with laughter when they got a little bit past them. I find that I’m always looking for a chance to chat with people, and I was half-hoping to strike up a conversation with these bikini girls. I had seen them go in the water up to their waists and then come out again, and I thought my going into the water would be enough of an opening to say hello and chat. In the end, though, even I was intimidated by their almost nakedness. It seemed almost impolite to notice them, so I walked past making a conscious effort not to look at them. I glanced briefly to see if there was any eye-contact, but they did not look up, and I went into the water.

I put on my mask and slipped the snorkel into my mouth. I had used the mask and snorkel a couple of times in Sabang already. There wasn’t anything to see there but sand and a few leafy plants, but I like using them. It keeps the salt water out of my eyes, and it makes swimming much easier physically.

The water here in Port Barton is much different from the water at Sabang. The ocean at Saban was much more open, and largish waves crashed onto the shore almost all the time. The water was clear and a beautiful blue and green. Port Barton is much more sheltered and the water is much smoother. There are almost no waves at all. I don’t know if that is the reason, but the water ends up being much murkier and cloudier. It was full of sediment and I couldn’t see very far. I was extremely startled then, when directly ahead of me loomed a massive jellyfish. I don’t have much experience with them, but I have enough to take them very seriously. I also wasn’t expecting such a thing to appear, and I hit the brakes hard and tried to backpedal away from the monster. As I was flailing around, my arm went back and hit what felt like a solid balloon. It was another jellyfish. Then I saw a third large one, and then some smaller ones. I was seriously out of my mind by this point and I just got the hell out of there as fast as I could while keeping my eyes peeled for more. I hardly dared kick my feet or move my arms. I kept all my limbs in tight and just sort of wiggled my toes to give me some forward momentum. It wasn’t until I got close enough to shore to touch the bottom that I started to feel the burning on my arm. I was lucky, and I guess I had come into contact with the tentacles of only one of the jellyfish and that only lightly. Even so, the stinging made all my sunburns and heat rash feel like nothing. When I look out over the water now, I don’t see an inviting ocean, but a dangerous place. There is no way I’m going back out there. I might have just been unlucky, but from chats with other people, I got the impression that these waters are known for jellyfish.

I had two meals in Port Barton yesterday and had both of them at a little place called The Green Bamboo (I think). It is set away from the beach just a little way into the town. I had wanted to eat at one of the places on the beach, but just as in Sabang, I didn’t find any of them too welcoming. No one was eating in them and I didn’t see any staff at all. It felt like if I went in there, I would just be bothering them. Once in Sabang, I tried to eat at a different place than my cottages. I walked up to it, and two little girls out front asked if I was there to eat. I said I was, and they invited me inside. Then they went to a prone body lying on a wooden platform and tried to wake it up. They pushed and prodded and rolled this guy over. I assumed he was the cook. They told him that there was a customer. He opened his eyes and got up. Then he looked at me and mumbled that there was no food. He sort of flapped his hand at me to tell me to go away, and then lay down again. It probably isn’t entirely the way things are. I also have a habit of wanting to do things at odd times. I never quite manage to be interested in breakfast at breakfast time and lunch at lunch time. I miss those periods and try to get something to eat at off hours. It rarely works out.

After walking the full length of the beach, and seeing nothing that looked welcoming, I turned inland and saw the Green Bamboo. Two foreigners were already eating there, and they had a big sign that said “Open” and “Welcome.” There was also a woman there who greeted me and beckoned me to come in. It appears I had stumbled on the one really popular restaurant in town. I had a wonderful chicken curry and then for dinner I went back and had another spaghetti carbonara. I also ordered my first banana shake – usually a staple of mine. I drank about a third of the shake when I had a sudden thought. So far (knock on wood) I had been lucky as far as my stomach is concerned. I never have a healthy stomach, but normally within a few days of arriving in another country, I fall ill and experience days of savage stomach cramps which lead to a reluctance to ever eat again. This time, I haven’t gotten sick like that (knock, knock, knock on wood). I wondered why that could be. I hadn’t done anything different. That was when I glanced at the banana shake. That banana shake was ice cold and obviously had ice in it. That melting ice would probably be the first non-purified water to go into my system on this trip. I wondered if these fruit shakes are what do me in all these trips. The thought was so strong, that I couldn’t drink the rest of the shake. Now I’m waiting to see if the little bit that I did drink will make me sick.

I found it hard yesterday to say goodbye to the boat containing the boys, the rasta rapper and the beautiful woman. They were all going up to El Nido, and I reflected that it would be nice to go with them. Then I’d have some people to go on the snorkeling trips with. However, I felt that I needed to add something different to my trip. I think I needed the cycling to add a counterpoint to the beach life. Going from Sabang to El Nido would put me too solidly on the backpacker/beach resort trail. And that trail isn’t comfortably traveled on your own. Almost everyone is part of a happy couple or a happy group of friends. That’s what these places are designed for. On my own, I didn’t quite fit in, and being around all these happy couples made me feel a bit on the lonely side. I needed the pain and discomfort of the road to keep me happy and distracted.

I did see off the boys and the others. They came back from lunch and I shook their hands and watched them get back onto the boat. They had five or six more hours ahead of them. I wasn’t sad to be missing that! Perhaps it is a sign of insanity, but I almost prefer six brutal days on a bicycle to six hours on a boat. I had given the boys my email address. They had taken pictures with their digital camera on our trip to the underground river, and they promised to email them to me. They loved to get together, the three of them, and take self-portraits with the timer or with someone else taking the picture.

During dinner our last night, they showed me the pictures on their camera. Mace was the photographer and he had a slim Canon Isus or whatever it’s called. The screen was much larger than the screen on my camera and the pictures looked nice. I wasn’t too pleased with any of the pictures of me. I don’t know what it is, but the pictures never match my mental self-image. I always look much bigger in pictures. I looked huge compared to these three boys from Germany.

Mace also showed me some video that he had taken in a club in Manila. These boys are definitely not drinkers or drug-takers, but they like to have a good time on the dance floor. I had to laugh as I watched the video. Mace enjoyed tormenting poor Marick, who was obviously nowhere near as outgoing and extroverted as Mace and Dane. They videoed Marick on the dance floor, and of course he looked silly. All men look silly dancing. That’s just the way it is. And they look even sillier when you can’t hear the music!

On my walk along the beach, I’d seen one place that advertised Internet and e-mail. I really wanted to get on the Internet and was going a bit crazy without any Internet access in Sabang. Somehow, I had just assumed that all these beach towns would have Internet. It seems like it is the one service that would attract backpackers. I went into this place, and then I got lost in that odd world of crazy misinformation that one often finds overseas. They said that they had Internet, but there was a problem with the generator and it wasn’t working. They had no idea when it would be fixed. They suggested I try again at 5:30. I went back there at 5:00 and asked again. They said that there would be Internet access at 5:30. I ordered a beer and sat down to wait. At 5:45, I asked again, and they said there was no Internet. Now the story changed. The problem wasn’t that their generator wasn’t working. They said that they got their power from a central grid. This grid didn’t come on each day until 5:30. So that was why they didn’t have Internet until then. I’m not sure why they didn’t tell me this at the beginning, but there it is. I pointed out that it was now 5:45, and they said that sometimes the grid didn’t switch on until 6:00 or even 6:30. This, too, I thought they could have explained earlier. Six o’clock came, and I asked again. Now they started saying that today there would likely be no electricity from the grid. They said it was no problem though, because they could turn on their generator. At 6:30, I made some more noises, and they said that there would be no power on the grid today. Then I heard the generator start up and all the lights came on. “At last,” I thought. I asked about the Internet now, and they laughed and said that the Internet was impossible. They could run their computers off the grid, but their generator didn’t supply enough power to run the computers. So they can’t have Internet with their generator.

I thought back over this long almost 5-hour exchange and I remembered how many places at which they could naturally have inserted all this pertinent information. I’ve never understood this lack of clear thinking that I’ve encountered overseas again and again. They simply don’t inform people of things or they don’t think through the logic or something. I think to an extent, they have had so little experience of anything else, that it doesn’t occur to them that we don’t know these things. They probably don’t even know how unusual it is for these white people that show up at their door. They can’t see it from our point of view since they have experienced so few points of views themselves. It is like in Sabang when I was looking for Katialis cream. The woman said I could find it at E.T.G. That was all she said. E.T.G. is one of the larger mini-stores in Sabang, and it has probably been there her whole life. It never occurred to her that I would have no idea what she was talking about. I asked her what E.T.G. was and I asked her where it was, but I got no answers that made any sense. I don’t think my questions made sense to her because how can anyone not know about E.T.G.? I finally found E.T.G., and they didn’t have any Katialis cream. They sent me to Auson’s. Then I had to go through the whole process all over again. What was an “Auson” and where was it? How far away was it? I got no answers to these questions, and I just had to wander around until I found it. I saw this again at the loading area for the tours of the underground river, then again when finding out about the boat to Port Barton, and the loading process for the boat. Everything is just assumed, and nothing is made plain or explained. Of course, this is just part of the experience of traveling in this part of the world, but it does make me wonder.

In the end, I did not get on the Internet. While I was waiting though, I struck up a conversation with a backpacker from France. He said his name was Allen, and he had a job as a cook in the tourism industry in France. As such, he worked eight months a year, and then during the winter off-season, he went traveling for four months. He’d been doing this for seven years. He went to lots of different countries usually, but this time he’d spent all his time in the Philippines. I thought he said “we” when he told me his stories, but it turns out he was traveling on his own and always did.

The conversation got around to my bicycle eventually. He had taken the bus from Puerto Princesa to Port Barton, and I asked him about the road from Port Barton back to the main road. His stories were not encouraging. He said it took over two hours for the bus to cover that little distance. He indicated that the roads were muddy and the ruts were as deep as three or four feet! I was thinking once again that there was no way I could cycle on roads like that. Then he had an idea, and he got out his Sony handycam. He had videoed the road at the worst parts. My jaw dropped when I saw the video, and I finally understood what everyone was talking about. It’s hard to really imagine these ruts on these roads. You need that image for it to make sense. The road was a quagmire, and it looked like the bus hit bad patch after bad patch where they all had to get out and the bus guys worked for a long time to put rocks and branches and things in the mud to get the bus across. His video also showed them getting out the cable and the hook attached to the winch to pull other vehicles out that were stuck.

I wasn’t completely disheartened when I saw the video, though. Sure, there was no way I could cycle through those mud patches, but unlike a bus, I could just walk my bike around them. In between these bad patches, it sounded like the road was almost cyclable. On the video, it looked like there were parts of the road that I could cycle along. It’s hard to say though. It’s clear that I should have gotten a mountain bike if I was serious about this, or at least gotten much fatter tires.

I will be attempting the roads, so all this speculation is a bit pointless. Still, it is kind of fun to get all these stories and imagine what it will be like. Over breakfast this morning, I was chatting with a Filipino named Chad. He was an accountant and he was here to audit the books of this resort. We talked about the roads. I asked him about the road from Roxas to Taytay. I wanted to know if it was rocky like the road to Sabang or muddy like the road to Port Barton. Perhaps not surprisingly, he said it was both rocky and muddy! Then I asked him about the road from Taytay to El Nido. That road, he said, was rocky and muddy, but also sandy. It had a kind of thick lime sand. That was the worst news yet. The rocky road to Sabang was hard, but just barely possible. The muddy road also sounds hard, but possible. Sandy roads, however, are impossible for bikes with narrow tires. They’re impossible to cycle on, and they’re almost impossible to push a bike along, too.

It will be interesting to see the reality of these roads that I’ve been obsessing about. I’m almost eager to get going, but I’m also glad to be spending another day at Port Barton. I will try to get on the Internet again tonight. I also got another book that I found at the Internet place. I was pleased to see that they had a copy of one of the Sharpe books, one that I hadn’t read. I will pass the afternoon reading and resting up for tomorrow. I plan on leaving as early as possible. I want to have as many cool hours as possible for cycling. On top of the mud, the road goes up and over several mountains. Chad said that there are lots of long climbs and long descents. It ought to be an experience worthy of a bit of blournal.

 

Tags: bike, El Nido, Palawan Bike Trip, Port Barton