My trip to the immigration office was successful. They remembered me from before, and I was greeted with the question, “Visa extension?” Pretty much any foreigner who shows up at their office is there for a visa extension.

Every time you get a visa extension, the fees are different. The first time is really expensive. The second time is less so. And the third time, the price creeps back up again. The final bill was something like 4,240 pesos, which is just shy of $100. And an additional 20 pesos for a photocopy of my passport. With all the stories about corruption in the news, I can’t help but feel that a good chunk of the money I’m paying goes to fund the expensive lifestyles of corrupt politicians somewhere in the Philippines.

I asked them about my ACR card – the card I didn’t need but was forced to buy the first time I got a visa extension. That was four months ago, and they said the card still wasn’t ready. They keep blaming it on a “machine” in Manila being broken. They even claimed that their boss went to Manila to see about this and fix the problem. I don’t believe a word of it. They said that if I wanted my ACR card, I could go to Manila and get it. They would issue it in one day. That, to me, means that whatever “machine” makes these cards is working just fine. The card comes from Manila anyway. That’s why there was such a long delay. They have to send to Manila for the card and wait for it to be delivered. If I could go to Manila to get my card, then obviously the “machine” is working just fine. I presented the immigration officials with this argument, but they didn’t grasp the logic of it. I don’t think they were listening particularly hard. The important point for them – the point they kept hammering home – was that it was not their fault and there was nothing they could do about it. It was always the “machine is broken.” It seemed to me that something could be done about it. They certainly had the time to do it. Working at the immigration office appeared to involve little more strenuous than sleeping at your desk with the occasional bout of Internet surfing. And when a foreigner like me comes in, they can then talk about whether or not I’m married and discuss the advantages of my marrying a Filipina. In fact, I think yesterday broke a record for the number of times I had that conversation. I lost count at about the seventh time. The last occurrence was the most intense of the bunch. I was even given reasons why Filipinas made great wives. Apparently, they work very hard. I’m not sure what they work at, but whatever it was, it was to my advantage to marry one as soon as possible.

Despite my complaints about the immigration office, I can’t argue with the final result. I got my 2-month visa extension in less than half an hour and it was totally pain free (aside from the 4,240 pesos leaving my wallet). A person from the Philippines can only dream about getting that kind of service from the Canadian embassy.

The rest of the day passed pleasantly with trips to the bike shop and to two sporting goods stores. The bike shop is a very good one and carries a healthy range of high end mountains bikes and road bikes from Specialized, Kona, and others. They also carry a wide range of accessories and tools and spare parts. You can pick up pretty much anything you want or need from a headset to a complete drive train to a GoPro camera. My main goal in going to the shop was to locate a rear light for my bike. The one I had was broken when I shipped my bike here to the Philippines. My dance with death cycling into Carigara at night impressed on me how important it was to replace that light. I had looked at rear lights at this shop before, but they didn’t have anything that would fit my bike. Standard rear lights are designed to attach to the seat post and come with special mounts for that. I can’t mount a light to my seat post, because it would be covered up by the tent and sleeping pad that I put on top of my rear rack. I needed a light that can be attached to a pannier rack. It’s a bit of a specialty item, and I didn’t think I would find one in the Philippines easily. However, the owner of the bicycle shop seemed to think that his mechanic would be able to find a way to adapt the Infini rear light they stocked so that it would attach to my pannier rack. I decided to let them give it a try, and the mechanic did a pretty good if rough and ready job. He ended up building a completely new mounting assembly. This involved cutting up the mount that came with the light and cutting and bending a short piece of steel to make a bracket. The shop did all this work free of charge. I only had to pay for the light. That is certainly one of the great things about Asia in general. Labor has not been priced beyond the moon as it has been in Western countries. In many cases, labor is not even considered a cost. Anything I buy in that bike shop will be installed free of charge. In Canada, you would not only have to pay outrageous amounts for installation, but also have to wait for a long time for the work to be done – probably weeks. Here even a custom job is done on the spot cheerfully and well.

I waited in the shop while this work was being done, and it occurred to me that I could also get new brake pads while I was there. I knew that I had replacement brake pads with me, but since I was in the shop and they would install them for me, I figured I could just get them right then and there. It was a good idea particularly since I was gaining more and more trust in their mechanic. Unfortunately, I’m an idiot. I didn’t think things through properly – as usual. I saw some brake pads on display and I chose some to be put on my bike. What I totally overlooked was that these brake pads were not just the pads. They were the entire metal part of the brake with all the nuts and bolts. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was only when I paid for everything and rode my bike away from the shop that I realized what I had done. I had totally forgotten that I didn’t need to replace the metal parts and the nuts and bolts. I simply needed to remove a small cotter pin, slide the rubber pad out and slide a new rubber pad back in. My spare brake pads (which I’ve been carrying around with me forever) are just the rubber parts with new cotter pins. So I purchased brand new parts that I didn’t need to replace. On the bright side, at least they weren’t expensive. I’ve found that parts in the Philippines are quite cheap. The prices seem significantly lower than prices in Canada for high-quality bike parts. I think what happened is that these shops have ordered in some high quality parts and have had trouble selling them and end up selling them heavily discounted.

While I was there, I asked the bike shop owner if he would mind using their special shop tools to remove my pedals and grease the threads. I like to do that from time to time so that it will be easier to remove the pedals when the time comes for me to box up the bike for another airplane trip. I realized I hadn’t removed the pedals since I arrived in the Philippines and there was a good chance the pedals would be quite tight and the threads even rusted up a bit. The mechanic loosened my pedals easily with their giant pedal wrench and then oiled the threads and put them back in place. This was also done free of charge.

I wandered around the shop for a while longer looking at everything they had for sale. I contemplated buying some insulated water bottles for my bike, but I resisted the urge. I do find that the water in my bike bottles gets very hot as I ride and drinking it is unpleasant. Insulated bottles might alleviate some of that problem. The problem for me was that these bottles were heavier than regular bottles. They weren’t heavier by much, but every little bit makes a difference, as I’m learning to my cost.

I also had thoughts about changing over my entire stove system to make it lighter. The idea was to pick up a Trangia mini plus a new regular stove. At least, I wanted to look into the possibiiity. It took me a while to remember where the camping stores were located, but I finally tracked them down (after much cursing under my breath at the snarl and chaos of Tacloban traffic). Unfortunately (or fortunately), neither store had any kind of stove that would work for me. They were all designed to be used with butane cartridges. They didn’t carry any of the brands that I was familiar with, such as MSR and Primus.

Thinking about stoves got me interested in testing my Trangia X2 with gasoline. I’d tested the stove with a butane cartride and with white gas. It worked perfectly with both. However, the most common fuel available is gasoline. I had resisted trying out gasoline for the simple reason that I had this idea that it wouldn’t work that well. I assumed it would be very sooty and make everything extremely dirty. All my associations with gasoline come from my childhood and teen years when gasoline was used for the lawnmower and for cleaning things. I’ve developed a distaste for the very smell of the stuff. I even had the idea that kerosene was better than gasoline. That is why when I had my MSR Dragonfly stove in Guinea, I insisted on using kerosene – with such disastrous results. I could never get the Dragonfly to work properly. It was nearly impossible to get it to light. And the few times that I did get it to light, it left so much soot over everything that I learned to hate it and I never used it. I still have the Dragonfly in storage in Canada and I could have used it on this trip, but I had no confidence in it, so I decided to go with the Trangia system that I have now.

I realize now that the problem wasn’t the Dragonfly stove. It was the kerosene. Had I used gasoline instead, I probably would have had a much better experience. I say that because my test with gasoline and the Trangia X2 was very successful. I dropped by a gas station while I was cycling around Tacloban and I bought some gas. I had to ask a few questions first, though. The problem was that the Trangia should be used with unleaded gas. Leaded gas would leave deposits in the fuel line. But I wasn’t sure which gas was leaded and which wasn’t. The most common type of gas is the stuff I see being sold in Coca-cola bottles at the side of the road. This is used in all the motorcycles. I asked about this gas, and I was told that this gas was “premium”. That sounded good to me. “Premium” sounds like very good gas, and I have the idea in my head that unleaded gas is better than regular or leaded gas. So I assumed premium was unleaded. It made sense. But the guys at the gas station directed me to a different pump when I asked for unleaded. They said that premium gas is leaded. So I guess that what they call premium is what I would call just regular. It’s confusing, but I eventually got it all sorted out, and I learned that I won’t be able to use the Coca-cola gas for my Trangia. I would only be able to buy unleaded gas at gas stations. That shouldn’t be a problem since I don’t use it much anyway. Food is inexpensive in the Philippines and it is better and cheaper just to buy meals rather than cook them.

I read through the instructions for my stove carefully when I got back to the hotel. Then I brought my stove out into the hotel’s courtyard to do my test. I primed the stove quite easily, and to my delight, the burner fired up the very first time and without a problem. I was even more delighted to see that the stove powered down just as it was supposed to (you simply flip the fuel bottle over and it turns off after burning all the remaining fuel in the fuel line) and it left absolutely no sooty deposits anywhere – none on the pot and none on the burner. Finally, there was no gasoline smell. The gasoline appeared to burn very clean. I was astonished. I also kicked myself because had I known how much better gas was than kerosene, I probably could have been happily using my MSR Dragonfly all these years instead of spending yet more money on another stove. Both the Dragonfly and the Trangia X2 are among the most expensive stoves on the market. (By the way, the security guard at the hotel kept me company as I tested my stove. He grilled me incessantly about my lack of a wife. It was he who offered up the incentive that Filipinas were very hard working.)

While at the camping stores, I also pondered the clothing they had for sale. This is a real sore spot for me right now. I bought some high-tech clothing while in Taiwan, and I’ve learned to hate it. At least I think I hate it. It’s supposed to very cool and light and fast drying. I find it to be extremely hot and sweaty. It might dry fast, but it gets wet so fast with sweat that it hardly seems to make a difference. I just feel icky in it all the time. I’ve felt awful ever since I landed in the Philippines. I blame it on the heat and humidity, but I keep suspecting that it is this clothing, too, and that I’d have been much better off just wearing my regular cotton shorts and cotton T-shirts. It certainly would have been cheaper! Plus, these high-tech shorts came with a belt and this belt gets soaked with sweat and some kind of red dye in the belt leached out and into the shorts and shirts, so I have big red stains over all my brand new expensive clothing. I just make so many mistakes when it comes to this sort of thing.

Anyway, I looked at some new clothing in these camping stores. There were a couple of shirts in large sizes that were similar to mine but better brands. One was from Columbia Sportswear and the other was a North Face. Unfortunately, they were also made of 100% nylon, and I think that is the problem with the clothing I have now. I think I’d like to just try cotton clothing again.

It’s fairly typical that I began the day yesterday writing about making the load on my bike lighter and more compact. And by the end of the day, all I’d managed to do was add a bike light, a pound or two of gasoline, a tube of toothpaste, and a bag of oatmeal. So I just made things heavier.

I went back to my favorite eateries for my meals yesterday. I had lunch at Reina’s Food Spot. They make wonderful local food and have the most comfortable seating and best service I’ve found anywhere in the Philippines (for an eatery, that is). For dinner, I went to a local eatery just around the corner. Their food is also very good and much cheaper than at the other spot. I’m very much a regular there and everyone knows me. There is a young boy always running around the place. I’ve had lots of encounters with him, none of them pleasant. Last night, I had another one. When I walked up to the door, I saw the tiniest and cutest kitten you can imagine. It was old enough to be walking around away from its mother, but it had to be just barely old enough. It was very small and extremely thin and unsteady on its feet. I can’t get enough of kittens and puppies and I instantly knelt down and made friends with the kitten, touching it lightly under the chin with my fingertip. It rubbed against my finger and I petted it the length of its bony little frame. It was a very friendly and trusting little creature. When I stood up, the little boy ran over to the kitten. He then reached out with his foot and started to press heavily on the kitten’s back and tail. He was wearing flip flops, and the kitten was clearly in pain and mewed pitifully. The boy liked that and pressed harder. I couldn’t help myself and I spoke to the little boy sharply and told him to be nice to the kitten. I never understand little boys and what they do. They’re so hard to like. Why are they so cruel and so vulgar and so annoying? It could be that this is just one of the many “young princes” that you see all over Asia – the spoiled young son. This boy certainly seems allowed to do anything he wants. He behaves badly every time I see him, and yet no one corrects his behavior.

 

 

Tags: bike, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Trangia, Trangia X2, visa, visa extension