It’s 6:30 p.m., an unusual time for me to fire up the NEO, but I have been ambushed by the horror of the Philippines once more: karaoke. I don’t know how people in this country can live like this. I find the tension is like living on top of an armed nuclear weapon. You never know when the darn thing will go off. It can happen at any time and there is no way to prevent it or predict it. You can’t even rely on just avoiding large groups of people. The karaoke that has driven me out of my room is being performed by one extreme moron just sitting out there in the dark shrieking into the microphone. I don’t know how a person can imagine that anyone else wants to hear them do that. Why not go into the forest and sing in solitude? Does he imagine he is a pop star sitting there with his microphone? What else can explain it? The volume is extreme enough for everyone in the entire neighborhood to hear it. He is forcing an open-air concert on everyone around him. It’s pretty clear though that I am alone in this abhorrence. I left my room and came to the little coffee shop of this lodge to vent on this NEO. I couldn’t help myself and I expressed my extreme annoyance to the sisters that are currently running this place. They could barely hear me over the horrific singing even here at the very front of the lodge. Yet, they showed absolutely no comprehension of what could be bothering me. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the distorted bass from this karaoke machine was so powerful that my entire room shook from top to bottom. The saving grace is that as far as I can tell, there is only one person doing the singing. He was sitting in the back courtyard all by himself wailing away. The hope is that he will tire before five hours have passed. The reality is probably that many more people will join him and I am going to have a night of horror yet again. I’m not kidding when I say that something like this could drive me right out of the country. It is, as they say, a deal breaker.

The other deal breaker might be the incessant questioning about my personal life and the giving of unwanted advice. When I came to this little café, one of the sisters began the questioning. I was so annoyed over the karaoke that I pulled no punches with her. I told her that girlfriends and wives are far too much trouble to bother with. And too expensive. She just said that I hadn’t found the right woman yet.

Anyway, since I am typing away, I might as well account for my day. It won’t be as detailed as it would be in the morning, but that’s okay. I had a rough plan to visit the local barangay in the morning and then go to the local resort in the afternoon for a dip in the pool. That didn’t quite happen because I found my trips into the barangay so rewarding.

I set off with the 50mm lens on my camera and took a bunch of great pictures. I came across a group of men cutting open coconuts and setting out the copra to dry. They had the whole operation underway. One man had a big steel blade stuck in the ground. He used this in a very practiced series of moves to remove the outer husk. He first plunged the coconut onto the blade and impaled it. Then he twisted the coconut to the side and down and tore off one side of the husk. Then in three more thrusts and twists, he removed the entire husk. He tossed the husk into a pile and the inner shell into a different pile. Two men sat on the group and used machetes to cut the coconut shells in half. They just let the coconut milk pour onto the ground and then threw the halves with the bright white coconut center onto a platform to be dried by fire. Occasionally, there would be a small growth inside the coconut, like a fruit or a seed. This was good to eat and they would cut it out and hand it to the local kids to eat. The larger growths were added to a stick and I assume saved for later – either for cooking or for eating as a snack. If I were on a travel show, I’d likely have asked to try my hand at removing the husk and then splitting open the inner shell. And, of course, I’d find it to be very difficult to do. These guys had been doing it their entire lives and made it look easy.

I then switched over to the 90mm lens. I was finding the 50mm lens to be a bit too wide. With the 90mm, I got some great pictures of some women having a little picnic nearby. There was one little girl there with big eyes, and I took a series of pictures of her.

I wandered through the barangay snapping pictures and chatting with people until I made my way to the far end where the beautiful cove with the limestone rocks was located. I then switched over to the 24mm lens and tried to capture some of the beauty of this spot. In the end, I think my pictures made it look better than it was in real life. My pictures artfully managed to miss the giant piles of garbage everywhere. I was amused when lots of people told me about how beautiful it was in Legaspi but then how some people ruined it by throwing garbage into the ocean and onto the beaches. There was so much garbage that I’m sure it was “most people” and not “some people”.

On my way out, I happened to hear a voice speaking natural English. I turned around and saw a Western man. This turned out to be someone I had already heard about – an American man named Gary who was married to a local woman and now lived in Legaspi. I learned that he had been in the American military until he had been injured in a beach landing exercise and was now retired on a medical pension. He had a home back in the U.S. and he was building a house in Legaspi. His wife was also here, and they were staying with relatives until his house is completed.

Gary gave me a tour of the place. It was a sizeable two-story cement structure with beautiful views over the barangay, the surrounding cliffs, and the ocean. I have no idea what is involved in building these houses, so I don’t know how close it was to completion. To me it looked like a concrete shell, but it had all the windows in place, doors, wiring, the roof, gutters, and downpipes plus, I think, some rough plumbing. There was no finishing work done, but I’m not sure what kind of finishing work is done here. I know that in Canada, the wood frame of a house can go up very quickly, but then the finish work can take a long time. Here, I imagine it is a lot simpler.

Gary praised the eastern coast of Samar for its beaches and beautiful scenery and some very nice towns. He got me thinking that I really should continue my cycling to complete a circuit around Samar. However, I’m only one day away from Tacloban, so I really should go back there first. Then I could backtrack to Samar or head down into Leyte as I planned. One fly in the ointment is this crazy idea that the rainy season just started. Everyone is telling me that. Yet, I thought the rainy season just ended. I just sat through months and months of heavy rain. If that wasn’t the rainy season, then what was it? It sure seemed rainy to me.

After chatting with Gary, I returned to the lodge to review my pictures and relax. I must have fallen asleep on my tiny bed, because it was suddenly after three in the afternoon – too late to go to the resort. I decided to go back out into Legaspi instead. I put the 150mm lens on the camera this time. I had to wait for some heavy rain to stop before I could go out, but I had a fairly successful outing with my camera – probably my last in Legaspi. I met up with Gary again and got some more information from him about the east coast of Samar.

I picked up some fixings for another meal of spaghetti, but I found that I didn’t have enough fuel to cook the spaghetti I bought, It seems to be some kind of heavy-duty brown spaghetti that takes ages and ages to cook. I could tell that I didn’t have enough fuel left to cook it. I still had oatmeal, and that takes no time at all to cook so I had a simple meal of plain oatmeal. I wouldn’t call it a feast, but it was filling. I got hooked on the banana/honey oatmeal in Tacloban. This oatmeal had no flavoring, but I didn’t mind that. I’ll carry my spaghetti fixings with me and cook it back in Tacloban.

I left a pile of gear behind in Tacloban, and I have to reunite with that stuff before I move on. I also am overdue for an Internet session. I also have to buy something to back up my pictures – probably some flash drives.

And that is it for the day. I cleaned up after my oatmeal dinner and then settled down in my room to relax and go over my pictures when the karaoke began. It seems that my complaining – it was pretty over-the-top – had an effect. While I’ve been typing here, a group of people appeared at the door as they filed out. They were the group that had shown up for a night of karaoke. I suspect that one of the sisters had told them that the foreigner was freaking out and it might be better if they cut their evening short. I feel a bit guilty about that, but not much. They are neighborhood people, and it appears they come here all the time to sing. They can take a night off without it harming their social life too much. Now I guess it is somewhat safe to go back to my room. In fact, it would be an improvement. I escaped from the karaoke, but they have a TV here in the café, and the young daughter turned it on and now that noise is annoying me. I’m easily annoyed by noise apparently.

 

 

Tags: barangay, fire, fly, NEO, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, South Coast of Samar, Tacloban, TV