My first night in Matnog at the Richwell Beach Reort did little to ease my pain. There was a restaurant at the Resort and I had been assured by everyone that I could order what I wanted. But when I tried to do that, I found it impossible to fight my way through the vagueness once more. Our conversation (if you can call it that) went around and around and around in circles until I just gave up on the idea of ordering any food. Food was available, it seemed, but I lacked the secret to making it appear. I knew that Filipinos would be able to get food out of that restaurant. I didn’t know how they could do it, but I knew that they could. I simply lacked the secret and magic key.

After I gave up on the restaurant at Richwell, I got on my bike and rode back into town to continue my hunt for food. I had a little bit of luck this time, and I found one or two small eateries. They did not have seating, but I figured I could take the food back to my makeshift camp at Richwell. These eateries even had vegetable dishes. I was all set to order my dishes for takeaway when, as a formality, I asked about rice. “No rice,” the woman said. My spirits plummeted. No rice? How can there be no rice? The Philippines lives on rice. Every meal includes rice. I got on my bike and went to the next eatery. “No rice.” And the next. “No rice.” I found myself all the way back in the chaos of Matnog proper riding up and down the same streets that I seemed to have ridden along a thousand times already, and I found no rice. I had brought along my water bag on this excursion since on my previous trips, I had seen a water refilling station. I thought that at least, this story could have a happy ending. I had to think again. “No water,” the woman happily told me. “Maybe tonight.”

What was going on? Was charmless and hopeless Matnog just out to get me? I knew that I didn’t have to have rice with my meal. I could just get some bread or I could eat the vegetable dishes by themselves. I was just being stubborn, because it made no sense to me that this entire town would be completely without rice. I just assumed that I hadn’t found the rhythm of Matnog and that if I kept applying myself then things would come clear and smooth. A laudable attitude perhaps, but it got me no closer to rice and I had to settle for bread – sugar-laden sweet bread, of course.

It had taken some effort to set up camp in this unusual location and now eating my food in the dark surrounded by mosquitoes and other annoying insects did little to help my mood. I was exhausted and irritable, covered in bug bites and drenched in sweat by the time I finished my meal. I took a shower in the public bathroom and then collapsed in my tent already covered in sweat just from the effort of unzipping my tent and getting inside. Then I lay there on my mattress, completely naked, with the sweat just pouring off me in rivers and soaking the inside of the tent. Despite being right on the ocean, there was no breeze at all and I baked inside my tent. Time passed slowly and I got nowhere near any kind of sleep as the temperature refused to drop. Then, my night was capped with the ultimate horror – someone fired up the Richwell videoke machine. The drunk off-key caterwauling begain. Worse, this particular machine was programmed to end each song with a massive fanfare – a fanfare that seemed designed to shake the earth and impress everyone in a ten-mile radius of the power of its amplifier and speakers. I had witnessed this before, and I knew that with each fanfare, the screen would light up with words like “You’re a superstar!” I lay in my tent and uttered my own profanity-laced commentary on each song.

Perhaps even the evil gods of Matnog understood that I could be pushed only so far, and the horror of the videoke machine did not continue until three in the morning as I fully expected it to. It stopped blissfully even before midnight and I managed to doze off into some semblance of sleep before the roosters began crowing at 4:00 a.m.

Tags: bike, eatery, Legazpi to Matnog, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, tent