Wednesday February 17, 2010 8:45 a.m.

San Vicente, Palawan

You haven’t lived until you’ve delivered bread in the Philippines by pumpboat.

I was a little bit worried about my day on the pumpboat delivering bread. For one thing, I’m overdue for a bout of stomach sickness. I haven’t been sick at all since I got here and I thought it would be terrible to be sick and stuck on that boat. I got lucky, though, and despite eating some pretty dodgy food since I arrived in San Vicente, my system is still doing fine. It’s partially because I haven’t been eating very much. I tend to do that at the beginning of a trip. I put on a lot of weight in Taiwan these past few months anyway, so losing a few pounds wouldn’t be a problem. I had stores of fat to draw on for energy if my body needed it. I also prefer to have a cup of coffee and nothing else in the morning. I hate all the fuss that comes with having to eat before you start your day. I think that is partially why I have such trouble traveling with other people. All the delay drives me crazy, since most people start their day with breakfast. By the time everyone has showered and packed and had breakfast and all of that, half of the day is gone. I prefer to have a cup of coffee at most or nothing at all. I also worry about getting sick, so I’m not always eager to eat. I like to treat my system gently and just give it little bits of food now and then to deal with.

There was the usual vagueness when it came to the time that the pumpboat was going to leave. The idea originally came up over dinner at Jason’s place the night before. He introduced me to Beck Beck, his landlady, and he told me that she, among other things, ran a bakery. Once a week, they load up their pumpboat and make deliveries to all the islands in the bay. Jason went with them on their bread run last week. He asked if I’d be interested in going with them on this week’s run, which was the very next day. Of course I jumped at the chance.

That’s the great thing about people like Jason. They simply throw themselves into living. I mentioned that he is larger than life. Well, that phrase hardly captures him. He’s larger than larger than life and he has no problem at all inviting people into his world. He thrives on noise and chaos and shouting. The more the merrier would always be his motto. He has a booming voice and calls everyone “Boy” or “Girl.” All the local children and teenagers have picked up his mannerisms and everywhere he goes people shout “Hey, boy!” in this interesting lilt. And he replies. He made chili that night like a man inspired. No recipes for him. He just wings it, and the chilly ended up being delicious.

The place he’s renting from Beck Beck consists of three bungalows on one property. They sit side-by-side. The main one, the one that Jason occupies with his son Eldin consists of two rooms with a verandah connecting them. A stove, table, counter, sink, and freezer are all on this verandah, so it serves as their kitchen and dining room. I didn’t see inside Craig’s bungalow. He occupies the second bungalow beside the main one. I believe it was more standard.

To look at this place you would not believe that Jason has only been there for two months. He has enough bric-a-brac there to suit someone who has been there for two years. I’m sure some of it was there when he rented the place, but I’m sure he picked up some of it himself.

Here’s a story that captures a little bit of his nature. When he first arrived in San Vicente and rented these bungalows, there were seven- and eight-foot waves at Long Beach. Jason has always wanted to learn to surf, and he instantly went to Puerto Princesa and flew to Manila to buy a couple of boogie boards and a couple of surfboards. He brought all this back to San Vicente, but when he arrived, the waves were gone and they haven’t been back since.

Jason looked all over the Philippines for a place like San Vicente. He mainly wanted an inexpensive place on a nice beach. He said that finding a place like that was much harder than you’d think. There are thousands of beaches in the Philippines, but most of them are like the beach in San Vicente or the village Panindigan. People live on them and they are working fishing villages. The beaches are full of boats and nets. To walk along the beach is to fight your way through an obstacle course of ropes and nets. There are also thousands of empty beaches, but these are truly empty. There is nothing on them or near them – no towns, no stores, no cottages. In San Vicente, he found a compromise. Long Beach – the 14-kilometer beach I rode my motorcycle along – is a perfect tropical beach. Like most of these beaches, there is nothing at all on it, but nearby there is a small town. I believe this town is called New Agutaya, and it is where Jason rented his bungalows. These bungalows are just a couple hundred meters from Long Beach, so it is perfect for Jason. He isn’t living right on the beach itself, but it is the next best thing. And he is getting a lot out of where he is. He has been adopted by Beck Back and the larger community. Two nights ago, for example, there was a celebration of some kind (there always seems to be something to celebrate), and a hundred people were in Jason’s front lawn for a big pig roast. Jason and his family was part of it. Jason got drunk and gave Beck Beck his laptop computer as a gift. He said he had no use for it. Jason was very glad, however, when Beck Beck returned a string of pearls and his passport, which were inside one of the laptop bag’s pockets. That’s Jason all over. He roared (literally) with laughter when he told that story.

The night that Jason made chili, he called out to Beck Beck and asked her if she wanted some chili. Who cares that there probably wasn’t enough for all of us, that there was no place to sit, that there were no more plates or bowls or spoons? “Hey, girl!” shouted Jason. “Come have some chili.” And Beck Beck came over and spooned some chili into a plastic container of some kind and started to eat. It’s always that casual around here.

It was while Beck Beck was eating her chili that Jason told me about her bakery and about the deliveries to the islands. Beck Beck was more than happy to let me go with her delivery team. I made noises about not wanting to be a bother and all of that, but there was no problem. Beck Beck said that the boat was going to leave at 8 in the morning and come back at 5. All I had to do was show up at 8 and we’d go.

Later that night after chili and after we’d hung out on Jason’s front lawn chatting, Jason said he’d show me where the bakery was and where the boat would be on the beach. He’d also show me his boat, the one that had been christened Rose after a local beauty.

It was such a great night. Me, I’m so strait-laced and organized, it’s nice to hang out with a guy like Jason who just wings it and doesn’t care about anything. I was worried that it would be a bother for him to go to the bakery. It was now around eight or nine o’clock at night, and it was dark. But he didn’t even give it a thought. The next thing I knew, we had both jumped on our motorcycles and were racing away down the dark rocky road. Never mind that I still barely knew how to drive the thing and that I’d never driven it at night before and that it was pitch black and that the road was a deadly mix of rocks, potholes, wandering pigs, sleeping dogs, and careless children. Off we roared into the night.

Jason, among his many other purchases, bought two actual motorcycles when he first arrived on Palawan. One was for himself and one was for his son Craig who was going to join him later. They were both beat-up old clunkers and his bike rattled and banged and crashed just as much as mine did. I felt like I was in the middle of a scene from “The Motorcycle Diaries.” I asked Jason if he’d seen the movie, and I told him that what we were doing felt very much like that movie – banging and crashing down a dusty road on a clunky old motorcycle.

We managed to drive side-by-side for much of the time and we had a shouted conversation as we raced and crashed along. Jason took me all the way to the street outside my hotel in San Vicente, and then started from there just so that I knew exactly how to get where we were going. It turns out he didn’t have to do that, because the bakery, the delivery boat, and Jason’s boat were all in that fishing village which I’d explored that very morning – Panindigan.

We entered Panindigan like conquering heros. Almost like conquering dead heros. Just before the village, there is a very steep and rough chunk of road, and I got careless and nearly crashed into a tricycle which was racing up from the other side. Even in the dark, the Filipinos can tell that you are a foreigner on a motorcycle. Our very shape gives us away, I guess. People didn’t know me yet, so they all called out, “Hey, Joe!” But everyone knew Jason, and cries of “Hey, boy!” came at us from all directions.

The bakery was about in the middle of the village right across from a basketball court. You’d never know what it was from the outside. It was just a typical building in Panindigan. Jason walked around like he owned the place. He brought me through an alley and around to the back where the heart of the bakery was located. This was a fairly small room with a baker’s oven heated by a wood fire in one of the walls. There was a large table where the buns, cakes, and other bread products were made. Every other wall was made up of rows of shelves where trays of cookies and baked goods were cooling – all for the delivery the next day. A single man in a dirty white t-shirt was in there sliding metal trays in and out of the ovens. He had obviously been doing this for years and he moved like a master. He knew his ovens intimately and just where the heat was best. His trays had to be spun around at certain times and then reinserted to give his bread just the right even heat.

Everyone in the place was shouting greetings back and forth with Jason. He was “Hey, boy”ing all over the place and giving people high-fives. A woman pulled out a big cake tray that had just come out of the oven. Did we want a piece of cake? Of course, and she cut us each a big slice. It was still warm from the oven. A little boy was crying out that he wanted some cake, too, but the woman ignored him. Jason, like he was the owner, grabbed a slice and gave it to the boy. I would never be able to do stuff like that. I’d be so worried about making a mistake and offending people. I’d be worried about the relationship between us and what things meant. But Jason is so generous with himself and with his things that he can do that. He gives as much as he gets – probably a lot more. The laptop he gave away is just one example. The invitation to chili another. He also bought a thousand-dollar boat from someone and then hired complete teams of carpenters and painters to fix it up, and I’m sure he is paying a good salary. Later that night, when Beck Beck said that it would be a good idea for Jason to buy the carpenters a bottle of liquor that night, he said sure and bought it. The next day, the carpenters planned on finishing the boat and putting it in the water, so it was a night to have a drink and a small party. I looked into the room where the carpenters were hanging out, and I saw that they were watching cock-fighting on TV.

After our tour of the bakery, Jason took me down to the beach. It was dark, and Jason walked into the store that made up the front of the bakery and asked for a flashlight. Again, I’m the kind of guy that has his own flashlight. It’s not like I’m going to go out into the dark in the Philippines without a flashlight in my bag. But Jason would. And if I didn’t have a flashlight, I’d search around until I found out that I could buy. Not Jason. He was part of the family, and if he wanted a flashlight, he’d just borrow one.

We had quite an entourage by this point, and we all poured onto the beach to look at Rose and the delivery boat. There was a lot of laughter over the naming of the boat. Jason had been introduced to Rose and he joked later in a flirtatious way that he should name his boat Rose. He wasn’t serious, but they thought he was, and they painted Rose on his boat. I met Rose last night when I got back from the deliveries, and she was just as pretty as everyone said. The name suited her, because she really did make me think of a flower. And she had flowers in her hair. These Filipinas really have a presence. There’s something extremely sensual about them. They walk about simply giving off this feminine aura. They seem to know that they are a force to be reckoned with, and they walk the streets like queens, accepting all this admiration as their due. At least that’s how they strike me. Of course, I can’t forget that all these women are really girls. Rose, for example, is 18 years old. A long time ago, 18 years old was an attractive woman. At my age now, 18 years old is a young girl.

Jason wanted to get my passage on the delivery boat settled, and he started calling out for Jack-Jack, the driver of the boat. Jason did not stand on ceremony. He simply turned to the crowd of people around us and said, “Where’s Jack-Jack? Can you get Jack-Jack?” Enough of that, and eventually Jack-Jack was produced. Jack-Jack was a young fellow. I’d guess he was 16 years old at most. Good-looking, pleasant, friendly, with just a tiny amount of English. Jason told him that I was coming with him on the delivery run. Jack-Jack said that they were leaving at 3. This didn’t make sense to Jason and he asked if he wasn’t really leaving at 8? Jack-Jack said maybe 8. Maybe 3. This seemed perfectly normal to me. In the third world, the harder you tried to pin something down – especially the time when something was going to happen – the more vague it became. It can drive you crazy. I thought that my passage on the delivery boat was going to vanish in this vagueness. Luckily, Beck Beck, the boss, made an appearance. Jason turned on her for some information, and she said that the boat was leaving at 7. Maybe 7:30. Maybe 8. That was close enough, and Jason said that I’d heard it from the boss, so it was all set.

From activity I saw at the bakery later, I realized that there was going to be a lot of work involved in just getting the baked goods ready and then loading the boat in the morning, so arrangements were bound to be loose. I gathered that they would start loading the boat at 7:00 or 7:30 and that they would leave at 8:00. I timed my arrival in the morning therefore for around 7:20.

I decided not to have breakfast. I figured there would be plenty of opportunities to get food during the day. If at no other time, I was sure to be able to get food at Port Barton. Port Barton is Palawan’s third backpacker haven, and there were lots of restaurants there.

Beck Beck was waiting for me at the bakery, and she directed me to park my motorcycle in the alley behind. We then sat at on a low wall and talked and she got someone to bring me a cup of coffee and a couple of rolls. I was in heaven.

Loading the boat was as big an operation as I imagined. I thought I would help out with all of that kind of stuff, but no one really expected me to. And I knew so little about what was going on, I’d have been more hindrance than help. Their system turned out to be very simple. All of the baked goods were individually wrapped – one bun, one set of biscuits, one piece of cake, in a single plastic bag. This made sense since all of these things were for individual resale in shops. People did not buy packages of dozens of buns and put them in the freezer for the week or the month. They bought them as they needed them and as they could afford them – just like how they bought cigarettes and other treats – usually just one at a time and for a few pesos each. All of these individually wrapped baked goods were then poured into full-sized rubber garbage cans with lids. These were then hoisted onto their shoulders and they waded out to the boat and piled them up there – some in the small hold and the rest on the deck towards the back.

I had thought that Jack-Jack was a bit young to be in charge of this operation, and I was correct about that. He was in charge of driving the boat. Two other boys came along to help carry the garbage cans. And an older woman came to deal with the money and the sales and the organizing and scheduling. At first, I thought there wouldn’t be enough room on the boat for all of us and the garbage cans, but these boats are bigger than you’d think, and we all fit on with tons of room to spare. We could have carried another ten people with ease.

When we were fully loaded and ready to depart, I was in a buoyant mood. Who wouldn’t be when you are faced with such a day? Just driving from island to island and delivering bread? Getting to see all these remote villages and see how everybody lived? And meanwhile, simply being in the middle of tropical paradise. Each island, each beach, each village was stunning. I was in a very good mood as we raced away from Panindigan through the blue waters.

There were, however, a few difficult things to deal with. For one thing, these pump boats and mufflers do not go together. The engine was completely unmuffled and the sound was the equivalent of a jackhammer right beside your head. I remember that from my previous trips to the Philippines. You imagine that you will spend the day lounging on a boat and chatting with people, but in reality, you can’t hear a thing. Conversation within twenty feet of that engine is impossible. You’d better be content with your own thoughts, because that is all you will have. You might also imagine that you will be lounging and reading. However, you can’t do that either. The movement of the boat is too rough and there is too much water splashing around. Everything you bring with you had better be waterproof or disposable, because it is all going to get very wet – including you. I knew about this from previous trips as well, and I had been careful to pack everything valuable into a waterproof stuff sack and then put that sack into my knapsack. The sun was extremely powerful, as well, but I had prepared for that and had slathered on the sunblock. I was prepared to reapply the sunblock all day long. I did not want to come out of this day sunburned. A sunburn from a day on a boat like that could hospitalize you.

 

 

 

Tags: Beck Beck, Jack Jack, Palawan Motorbike Trip, San Vicente