Cebu and Malapascua

Arriving at the Cebu airport after a short flight, we approach a couple of other travelers to see if they would like to share a taxi ride to the city center.  Not having a place to stay ourselves, we tag along with our new friends Megan and Lorna to their hostel.  These two are originally from Georgia and Scotland respectively, but now live in Guangzhou, China.  Megan has been teaching in China for the past three years while Lorna is studying Chinese and business at university.  They have a fluid travel dynamic, and Nicole and I spend the evening stomping around Cebu with them.  They only have one night here, so they want to optimize that time and get down to it!

First order of business, as decreed by Lorna Gayle Doctor, is to acquire copious amounts of beer.  We eat a quick meal and find cheap, enormous bottles of San Miguel at a 7-11 across the street.  This convenience store also serves as a popular hangout point for the locals.  One moment we're surrounded by your average hipsters, fitted out with fixed gear bicycles, to later be in the midst of a gang of motorcycle enthusiasts.  People are nuts about their bikes here in the 'Pines.  Our two new friends are great conversationalists.  Megan is exuberant and animated as she shares her experiences from China, and Lorna lets her Chinese language skills fly as the beer starts to loosen her up.  At some point they both break into song, delivering an impressive Chinese rendition of the Backstreet Boys hit Everybody.  Seeing them be silly together makes me really happy to be travelling with a good friend, too.  We latch onto each other's goofy vibes and flex our collective acerbic wit.  Not that the alcohol makes everybody funny, or anything like that.

The alcohol continues to flow for hours and we make friends with a few of the locals (from the motorcycle "gang"), some of which take us to a nightclub for a long evening of dancing.  The crowd atmosphere inside the club is pretty friendly, and I have a great time dancing with Megan, Lorna, and whoever dares approach my gyrating hips.  I burn out after an hour of dancing and decide to walk back alone, mostly to metabolize some of the alcohol but also to dry to inordinate amount of sweat I accumulated in the humid club.

Having such a blast together, I ask if we can tag along to their next destination, where ever that might be.  They agree to let us follow for a bit, and as we only have three days left in the Philippines I'm more than happy to be on the move without having to actually plan anything.  It's a treat to coast in other people's wake and let them call the shots, especially when the people are well-travelled and know how to have fun.

Speaking of fun, we arrive to the bus station and cram about 18 people into a ten person minivan heading to the northern tip of Cebu to catch a boat to Malapascua.  It's a tough ride even though it's only four hours, but we all handle it without griping too much.  Megan keeps spirits high by asking questions and keeping the conversation flowing.  She's remarkably personable, and I admire her people skills.  I guess that comes with being a teacher.  From here we hop onto a boat and by nightfall we're coming up to the Malapascua shore.  It doesn't take long before we find our way to a high-class dive resort and book our dives for the next day.  Want to see thresher sharks tomorrow?  Cool, wake up at four am and we'll sort out your gear then.

Thus begins a fun day of diving and paradisical island living.  I rise and I shine, casting a luminous glow across the 4am horizon.  Or maybe I just slump out of bed, regretting everything ever.

It's not actually that bad, but I've gotta have something to complain about!

It doesn't take long for us to get going.  We cruise out into open water and enjoy some nice predawn luminescence.  I still haven't seen Malapascua in the daylight, and I feel like I have to rub my eyes emphatically to make sure I'm seeing things correctly.  Wow.

Lorna joins me for the first two dives, and we make some new friends on the boat.  Most people haven't had a proper breakfast, but I come prepared with copious peanuts.  One gentleman points out how American I am with my nuts, but proceeds to help himself to my bounty.  Yeah, how American of me to bring along such a nutritional and convenient snack.  I don't mind, but it is amusing to note how easy it is for people to slag America.  Yeah, it's got its share of problems, but the perspectives tend to be skewed to the negative side when it comes to external perspectives.  Well, and internal, too.  I guess it might be in our nature to comment on the flaws, but anything that goes well isn't really worth mentioning.  I have my cynical moments, but America is pretty gosh darned neat-o for many reasons, too.

Anyway, diving.  The objective of such an early dive was to see the thresher sharks during their typical mealtime, which is around first light.  Their feeding grounds are about 30 meters deep, so ideally we descend to about 20 meters to conserve our air, only then moving down after a confirmed sighting.  We show up just in time to see a couple of threshers in the deep blue.  The encounter is fleeting, and not nearly as up close as you'd like in order to get that holy moment, but it's still pretty remarkable to see such beautiful sharks.  And that's the nature of scuba.  On one hand, it preserves the peace by minimizing disruption of wild animals' behavior, but this means that sightings are never guaranteed.  It's tempting when you hear about opportunities to dive with whale sharks, (or see tigers for that matter *ahem* Tiger Kingdom...), but when you hear about the high volume of tourists and scheduled feedings it somehow loses its appeal.  It becomes a zoo attraction, which isn't inherently bad.  It's just sad to me.  I always feel that little tug of dissonance, and with diving I think it's best to minimize our flipper-print as much as possible if only for the reason that it retains that feeling of a chance encounter.  Another compelling reason would be to keep the ecosystems in balance, but regardless of human intervention these things will fluctuate enormously over time.

We spend as long as we can on the bottom waiting for the threshers to reemerge from the blue, but I can't make anything out.  I have some fun fiddling with my GoPro but otherwise we start our ascent when I signal that I'm low on air.  Our divemaster extends our bottom time a few more minutes by letting me share his air supply, and then we're already back on the buoy line for the 3 minute safety stop.  That's that.  We come back to the surface and I'm treated to a nice view of Malapascua in full daylight for the first time.  Not too shabby.

Here's a little clip of a flatworm that our DM spotted while waiting for the threshers.  Nicole spotted one of these while diving back in Thailand, and I'd say it's one of my favorites.
 

Our second dive site is located at a known manta ray feeding ground.  We suit up all over again, drop down to the bottom, but find nothing much of interest.  No mantas today, it seems.  The dive is uneventful in that sense, but I enjoy it nonetheless.  It seems like every dive I do just increases my comfort, relaxing my breathing.  I guess it would be much nicer to focus on something you can't see anywhere else; after all I could just go diving in a pool to achieve the same effect.  But there's something strangely social about going into the ocean with a bunch of people you barely know.  I enjoy looking around and watching the divers do their thing: some kick a little too frantically, reminding me to slow down my movements; some alternate kicking styles, dolphinkick, frogkick, etc; many float through the ocean with their hands clasped together, modeling the ideal relaxed posture, as if making every breath count, every calorie.  A nice dive, but I'm ready for a proper breakfast.

Back on shore, I cross paths with Nicole as she heads out for the 10am dive.  I'm content on taking a break from the choppy water for a while, so I opt to hang about and scope out our new digs.  The dive resort, Thresher Cove, is easily one of the most versatile hotels I've been to.  They accommodate to backpackers on a budget with a simple dormitory while still offering cushy villas to people on proper vacation.  Aside from slightly pricy food options, this place is golden.  They provide us with free snorkel gear and I take the afternoon to explore the cove with Lorna and Megan.

 A short clip of the baby puffers.  They're so dopey!  Who would've thought the lack of any instinctual self-preservation could be so darned adorable.

Snorkeling around with my GoPro.  My back got a little sunburned after hours of wandering.

Braaaaiiins...

Keepin' it classy.  Lorna, Megan, and some unknown hairy dude.

I "caught" a jellyfish.  The sting didn't hurt on contact, but I felt a nice warm tingling radiate through my arms and chest

Norm the jellyfish didn't appreciate my rude hands on approach, but I got the message.  See ya later, little guy!

Megan enjoys the spa.

Derpin'

A banded sea snake caught in a fishing net.  Judging from the tangles I'd say it struggled before suffocating to death.

Didn't test out the stinging capabilities of these guys, fortunately.

Crammed into the back seat of the bus.

I wouldn't mind staying a while.

The 100 peso accommodation.  That's about two dollars.  Worth every penny?

After a relaxing afternoon of exploring the shallow water I turn in for a quick nap before the night dive.  The dive site for the evening happens to be on a much denser coral bed, making for some nice sighting of even more exotic looking flatworms, octopus, mandarin fish mating, and so on.  We have a small group for this dive, only five people, which means it's a bit easier to move around and explore the reef. Diving at night is still a trip; it seems so tough to keep track of your divemaster but somehow everybody manages to stay together.  The depth is no more than 10 meters at most points, so we get quite a long dive in.  We surface with very contented looks on our faces, two of the girls now having earned their advanced certification.  Getting scuba certified was a good move, and it's cool to know that there's room to progress into more technical aspects of diving if I ever feel like it.

After a satisfying day of diving, especially with an early morning and a bit too much afternoon sun, I'm ready to turn in for the night.

But that isn't in the cards.  What is in the cards, you ask?  The disco, of course!

Every weekend the local villagers get together at the primary school and throw a big party.  Lorna, Megan, our new friend Jenny, and myself all hop on moto-taxis and head to the village center to check out the hype.  The music is already pretty loud before I'm even within sight of the school.  The corridors are packed with people of all ages, and upon entering the quadrangle I am greeted by a massive congregation of locals and foreigners alike, all dancing and sweating together to loud electronic music.  Initially I can't find Lorna or Megan, but I feel the need to dance so I just excuse myself from Jenny's company (recovering from a bruised tailbone) and get my groove on.  Just as the club in Cebu was very friendly, the villagers here seem pretty happy to get down with the foreigners.  I dance around like the fool that I am, eventually coming upon a group of three little toddlers who are just wicked adorable.  They beam up at me and I smile in kind back at them.  Maybe we look equally absurd to each other, and that's half the fun.  Lorna and Megan eventually show up and acquire some large bottles of beer without much effort.  For some reason at this point, I don't feel the desire to get drunk even to loosen up.  The vibe is just so friendly that I don't need any social lubricant, and it feels nice to let go of inhibitions with a natural high every once in a while.  At some point the music shifts dramatically to something salsa-like, and suddenly the dancers become possessed by some new-found adeptness.  One of the matriarchs of our "corner" of the quad takes a fondness to Megan and Lorna and shows them some proper dance moves.  Before long they are all moving in step, but I just can't manage to figure it out the moves.  For some reason I just can't mimic movement so well.  Maybe my sense of copycatting is stronger for things like climbing, but even then I'm probably making up my own dance on the wall.  I'm content to watch other people have a good time for a while, so I take a short break.

Alas, having been up since four in the morning, my body can't take any more.  After a couple of hours of alternating shuffling my bum to parking it on the concrete and watching other people *actually* dance, I find a ride back to my sweet, tiny Filipino bed (seriously fit for a child).  I got so dehydrated that I might as well have been drinking alcohol all night.  But I'm glad I really packed in all of the activities into one day.  It didn't occur to me then, but we'd be leaving so soon that it really made sense to sacrifice some sleep in order to spend more time diving, more time with new friends, more time dancing like a buffoon.  Sleep can happen later, and I somehow managed to stay pretty cognizant throughout the day (although admittedly the tail end of the disco was inducing some delirium).

The following day I go out for another round of snorkeling, but that about does it for Malapascua.  Now Nicole and I have to head back to Cebu city to catch our flight to Jakarta, Indonesia.  We make our goodbyes to our excellent single-serving friends, Lorna and Megan.  They were truly some excellent companions, and if we had more time I am certain we would've aligned our trajectories for a while longer.

Coming soon on Things, Stuff, and Junk: Nicole and I have about a week to get from Jakarta to Bali for our flight to New Zealand.

Malapascua sunrise.

Manila (AGAIN!?) to Anilao Beach and Tagaytay

Following our adventures to northern Luzon, we hop on more jeepneys heading for Manila and end up on a comfortable long haul bus once we're down from the mountains.  The transportation schedule works out so well that we don't really have to research anything; it all aligns without much waiting in between.  People are also quite helpful and they point you in the right direction.

We spend yet another night with Katy and try to figure out where to go next.  At some point I'm describing the caving experience to Katy and she asks me if I've ever read Infinite Jest.  This prompts the literature geeks to come out in full force and we talk about all the good things for hours.  I love talking about books.  We run some errands at the mall and Katy buys a copy of Kafka on the Shore, which was the first of many Murakami novels I read.  My friend Jen turned me on to this author, and he has since been a part of my life in so many ways.  I hope she gets a similar feeling from his novels, as we both certainly did from Wallace.

After one short but sweet night with Katy we head south to Batangas to investigate scuba diving opportunities.  We arrive without a plan and just ask jeepney drivers where to go.  Someone mentions Anilao Beach and it sounds promising; perhaps I gleaned the name from some cursory reading beforehand.  We make it to the beach and I'm a little disheartened by what we find.  We wander around for a few hours looking for accommodation and dive schools but the pickings are slim.  As the sun goes down and options remain limited, we're concerned that we might be shelling out hundreds of dollars just for accommodation and a handful of dives.  One woman shows us a room that's an absolute dump and asks for the equivalent of 75 USD for it.  Nobody seems to be very up front about dive pricing either.  It's all sort of hush hush, and I notice how this little bit of turbulence is starting to color my entire opinion of the Philippines.  I go for a walk and have to laugh at myself for having such a ludicrous thought.

Nicole talks on the phone with the owner of a dive shop (using a local man's phone) while we're sitting at an overpriced backpackers hostel that might be our best fallback option.  She hangs up the phone and tells me what she found out.  Wait, what?  Three dives and free accommodation for about 75 USD each?  Dude, did we just luck out again?  Even when all the options seemed so bleak, Nicole managed to land us a killer deal.  It may have taken several hours of waiting around with those uncertain thoughts swilling around, but eventually everything worked out.

The room is nothing special, but it's far better than the overpriced rooms we had previously looked at... Because it cost us pretty much nothing.  We meet the owner, Roy, in the morning and he gets us set up with a vegetarian breakfast and the gear we'll need on the boat.  He even has his mother whip up a special lunch for us as we'll be out all day long.  I was under the impression I'd be living off of peanuts, but they insisted on feeding us even though we had previously negotiated a lower cost by removing meals from the dive package.  It's a funny feeling to go from such bleak prospects to hitting the jackpot.


And what a beautiful day it was.  I make a new friend, Louis from Guam, and he loans me a prescription mask that improves the diving tremendously.  Louis is a former Olympic archer and it shows: his shoulders are built like he tears apart phone books for amusement.

Despite the choppy sea and overcast sky, the diving is quite excellent.  I get a taste of my first drift dive which involves little effort.  You just set your buoyancy and let the current push you along, maybe fighting it momentarily to get a closer look at some critter.  We spot a banded sea snake and a mantis shrimp among the abundant ocean fauna.  On the third dive we explore a wrecked casino boat, the remains of which are now home to many interesting organisms.  On the underside of one of the steel girders the fish have curiously inverted themselves, making the ocean bottom effectively their ceiling.  Gravity's effect is temporarily subverted when diving.  I have fun playing around and inverting my own sense of direction.  It's neat to think that going down into the ocean so closely resembles the disorientation one might experience in outer space.  Maybe I'll scuba dive up there one day.

Scuba diving is enigmatically exhausting.  I guess I haven't yet reached that equilibrium even though I feel relaxed underwater; I may think I'm expending very little energy but perhaps the pressure has an effect I'm not consciously aware of.  At any rate, I'll say it's exhausting to justify the inordinate food consumption to follow.

And boy did it follow.  Nicole and I pack quickly to catch the last jeepney out of Anilao, but Roy and his friend Lee approach us with a better idea.  It turns out Lee lives in Tagaytay, so they propose that we join them for dinner and simply hitch a ride with Lee after a nice meal.  I'm blown away by their kindness, especially after feeling like a cheapskate.  We enjoy some of Roy's mother's home cooking: potatoes, eggplant, green beans, and rice served with sides like kim chi, pickled radish, seaweed, soy beans, and sesame leaves.  They show us how to peel a sesame leaf and form it into a makeshift rice pouch in one fell swoop.  Now I must say that the sesame delivery system is both efficient and delicious, and this meal leaves me craving more delicious Korean food in the future.

We make our goodbyes and enjoy a swift ride directly to Tagaytay with Lee.  Although not well versed in English, his skills are good enough to have simple conversations.  I ask him about his relation to Roy and the dive center.  He explains that Roy took over the family business when his father died suddenly due to a heart problem over a year ago.  Having known the family for some time, he frequently dives, windsurfs, and fishes out of their beachfront property.  Having learned more about the close family atmosphere, I feel even more honored to have come into orbit with such a cool place.  And out of sheer luck.  Of course.

Lee drops us off in Tagaytay and we begin the usual hunt.  I previously made note of a cheap hostel, but upon arriving to the correct address we find that it is just a large house with no visible signs of life.  It's already a bit late, perhaps 10pm, so we imagine the inhabitants might just be sleeping.  The place was listed as a 24 hour hostel, but something about the scene just doesn't add up.  We give up on that prospect, and fortunately find short term apartments for rent directly across the street.  Nicole gets us a bargain price from the homeowner, and she shows us to our new digs.  This home is a proper home, rife all sorts of items you might procure when "making a house a home."  The antique furniture and family portraits remind me a little bit of my own parents' home, too.  We have the upper section of the house all to ourselves.  Two beds in the living room, a small dining area, and a partially operational kitchen.  Many of the attached closets are now used for storage of personal items.  Our landlady explains that this part of the house used to be her daughters before she moved away.  I like looking at the family portraits, identifying our landlady at various points in her life.  There's a photo of her in front of the Eiffel Tower, photos with a woman I guess might be her daughter, and various others.  She's at least in her thirties for most of the photographs I can find; I wonder where the others are.  Of her childhood, or even more current ones.

Maybe they don't take so many family photos anymore, and I can relate.  My mom has oodles of photos from my childhood, but with the onset of digital photography and the internet, there seems to be a bit of a gap in the record.  There are other factors, like our natural dispersal from the household, the center.  And now there are certainly photos of the family, but it seems like they're scattered to the winds of various e-mail server farms.  I might come across a few attached to messages, but they certainly lack a unifying location.  Which, I suppose, is the case for ourselves at the moment.  Laura is at home but Steven and I are out and about.  As for the extended family, our meetings are far and few between.  So it goes.  At least we still have these electronic means to get in touch.  It feels a bit watered down, but it's something.

Tagaytay turns out to be a bit too expensive for me, so being the cheap bastard I am we lay low and catch up on rest.  I don't know why, but diving all day seems to take a lot out of me.  Nicole sleeps in one morning and I make my way down to the shoreline to see if I can hire a boat to the volcanic cone.  Traveling in a pair really cuts the cost of most things, and I'm reminded of this when I try to go solo for the day.  The tricycle rides to and from the shore were reasonable, but the boat alone was close to 40 dollars.  As cool as it would be to hike up a volcano, this exceeds what I'd be willing to pay for an unguided hike.  I'd rather spend that money on diving or climbing, but admittedly I had to pass on something that could've been special.  My only consolation is that I didn't have to witness the horses carrying people up the steep terrain.  I understand that beasts of burden aren't many levels apart from simply owning any animal as a pet, a practice I'm quite familiar with, but somehow the idea of monetizing their labor puts a sour taste in my mouth.

So I spare myself that thought for the time and just spend the day walking around town.  As comparatively modern as the Philippines is, the smog/exhaust regulation of vehicles is deplorable by my exalted standards.  For some reason I could tolerate it better in India when it was far worse, but now the ubiquitous fumes seem to make me feel ill in an instant.  It might also have something to do with the fact that sidewalks don't really exist in most cities, resulting in my lungs being in closer proximity to exhaust pipes than I'd prefer.  While the walking exploration isn't the best, it's still nice to be out and about.

We head back to Manila for a third and final time where we wait out our flight to Cebu.  What better way to wait for anything than to spend our time with Katy!

Jeepneys all day, e'ry day.

Furby companions eases my spirits as we twist down the mountain via motortrike.

Ah, fuck it.

Taal Volcano.

World War 2 memorial cemetary in Manila.

Our scuba mascots from Anilao Dive Center.

The science museum in Manila.  Worth a visit!

 

Welcome to Anilao Beach.

The here and now.

I thought it might be a good idea to take a break from the backlogs and focus on the present moment.  Travel blogging can become sort of dry at any time.  And when I'm feeling most invigorated to write I am likely doing something else.  Having a figurative mobile writing desk is a mentality not easily achieved.

The benefit to writing about happenings long past is that the rosy feelings subside and I can reflect a bit more on observations rather than feelings.  But feelings are fun.  They're enigmatic and novel, giving birth to metaphorical thinking and hopefully into new language.

The more I travel the more I appreciate language.  Even if we spoke the same literal language we can find vast differences in our thinking, and sometimes you may not share a single word in common with another person but you understand some basic need or desire.  Moving through all of these countries with their diverse and runic languages is humbling.  I will never know more than a smattering of each, and maybe I'll know a handful well enough in this lifetime.

English is my preferred mode for now.  It seems like the best thing I have to capture that erratic stream of consciousness.  But sometimes words fall short.  And that's okay—because if words did all the work then we wouldn't need those ineffable qualities of music and drawing and whatever we might call art.  They are other languages in this long standing transmission of thought.  We're playing an infinite game of Telephone or Super Pictionary.  We take one phrase or picture and mix it up into another, sometimes engendering another form altogether.  I use language in a loose sense, but words seem to be a combination of music and painting.  Letters are just little symbolic paintings that are associated with sounds that come out of our mouths.  In that sense, even different styles of art might be considered other languages of art.  We're pretty good at categorizing the physical symbols.  I may not be able to differentiate Chinese and Korean, symbolically or sonically, but I might be more inclined to interface other cultures through painting or drawing.  There may never be a universal language, but there are myriad connecting threads to be discovered yet.

But alas, I love my words from time to time.  I get lost in my head often.  Sometimes the monologue rambles on about puerile nonsense.  But occasionally it'll turn to something interesting, unbidden.  There are too many ideas to capture, but I try to pursue more and more ideas just in case they strike a rich vein.  Is a nugget of truth better than a nugget of gold?  Sometimes words and poems are just fun to admire, not really offering much long-lasting value.  But sometimes they sit with you for a long time, maybe even guiding you.

My impulse is often to follow what is immediately rewarding, but some things require a vast amount of time to blossom.  In this sense we must carry the torch and revel in what small victories we witness in our short lives.  Humanity is just an atomic pin prick on the needle of geological time, and within this unfathomable vastness we must find our purpose.  What a daunting thought, I think.  But most days, I feel up to the challenge.

And now, my friend Janet asked me to finish a poem.  She gave me the first line, and that's usually enough: "She sat by the window."

She sat by the window,
Not waiting for anything in particular,

but these scenes usually stir feelings of pensive anticipation.
 

She sat by the window, staring blankly, sinking into her memories.

She's the type who has a way with words,

but moments like this tend to leave her speechless.

Her mind runs in circles,

staring through this window

into an interminable sea of dilapidated homes

spotted with yellowing, grassy brush.

She feels strangely paralyzed,

robbed of any inertia or will to move;

The view is both disheartening and enticing.

She can't look away.

It's as though a thousand eyes are staring

right back at her,

through the window,

the discolored glass flowing downward

after years of sunlight—

yet she sees nobody.

It was in this brief, fleeting moment that she caught a glimpse of herself.

Not a reflection in the glass,

but instead she saw her body in the empty suburban city streets below.

She shuffled about in her sundress,

barefoot, pausing at intersections,

looking not only left and right, but behind,

her expression unreadable as the breeze tossed her hair about.

Her movement made no indication that anything was wrong,

yet her listlessness revealed a deep sadness,

a longing for some sort of direction to follow.

A goal to obtain.

The girl turns a corner, uncertainly,

and disappears from view like some ghostly apparition.

The woman sat by the window,

waiting for nothing.

She smirks to herself and turns back the way she came.

Filipino Boi

Nicole and I spend a couple of days in Bangkok before our flight to Manila.  We expect we'll be a little under stimulated, but some downtime in a comfortable place is always welcome for a short period.

It's a nice feeling to anticipate a sort of homecoming.  It's not so much Bangkok but specifically our hostel that has been our base of operations for southeast Asia.  Also, we're really looking forward to eating at our favorite kitchen across the street.

The anticipation grows as we make our way to the hostel.  Strangely, it feels good to go through our little routine again.  We hop on to the familiar Skytrain with ease (we've memorized the pertinent fares and stops by now—Murakami would probably tease me for remembering such useless details), make our way through the Lotus shopping center to fill our water bottles, walk across the same bridge we've walked across countless times, again pausing to look for water monitors.  I might even exalt this routine to a sort of beautifully mundane ritual.  It's such an ostensibly ordinary place, but when imbued with good memories it really does feel like another home.

It's doubly nice when the staff light up when they see us again.  I got to thank the woman who arranged my emergency hospital visit and her smile makes me melt a little.  They even made a home for my mandolin near the bookshelves and guitar, writing my name on it in lovely cursive.  I'm pretty darn touched.

We clean everything we own.  Our clothes, our backpacks, our bodies.  Maybe I should say we attempt to clean everything.  Some things just refuse to look nice again, and there's considerable deterioration when you wear the same few things for months on end.  Nothing needs replacing yet, but I look forward to changing a few things out when I get to New Zealand.

And a new body would be nice.  When do I get to upgrade this thing?  I wonder how much the latest model costs...

I don't know if it's my aviacentric upbringing, but I love air travel.  Sure, going through security and customs is a bit exhausting, but flying itself is always a thrill for me.  I still marvel at the technology at work around me when I get into what some people call a steel coffin.  I don't feel the same ominous confinement, but I can't coin a new term that doesn't sound ludicrously sentimental and kitschy.

Everything goes smoothly.  We make it to the correct airport this time.  I might've failed to mention previously that we missed our flight to Cambodia because Bangkok has two international airports and, well, we're just kinda stupid sometimes.

We board the plane and have a small world moment with some of the passengers sitting across the isle.  We share some travel stories and the flight passes too quickly.  Marina, from Los Altos, moved to New Zealand when she was fifteen and now she's traveling back to the states via Manila.  Katy, hailing from Palo Alto, tells us how her parents lost their home recently and she's now working abroad as a business consultant for an international company in Manila, sending back money to help out when she can.  She previously spent three years in Africa starting up a nonprofit to improve living conditions by using existing technology to bring vital services to those in need.  All this by age 28.  What am I doing with my life again?

For reasons I can't comprehend, this remarkable person invites us, two stinky travelers, to stay with her in Metro Manila at her apartment before we move on through the country.  Well, that saves us a bit of a headache.  Oh, and we get to revel in a new friendship!  It's never a dull moment talking with her, and we get cozy in her fancy high rise apartment before going out to a Filipino comedy show with some of her coworkers.  We glean some ideas of what to see in Luzon (the largest main island of the Philippines) from Erica and JR as we drive through traffic to the comedy club.  We make a loose plan to check out the mountainous northern end before heading south to the diving sites.  We decide that this will be our only night in Manila, so we make it count!

The club is jam packed, but there are seats reserved for us (through another coworker) nestled right up against center stage.  The show is already under way as we squeeze into the front, and the crowd is erupting in laughter.  The performers are speaking in Tagalog, but that's not what made us so perplexed.  Rather, it was the woman laying supine across two tables while men dressed in drag did obscene things to her.  The climax of the scene (and perhaps this poor girl) comes when one man puts his mouth on her breast and proceeds to suck her nipple.  But it's over her shirt so this is pretty much rated PG by American standards, amirite?  Given that most of the population is Roman Catholic, I was not expecting any lewd sense of humor.

She's laughing so hard by the end that she starts crying.  My mouth is agape but I'm laughing, too.  She needs assistance getting off stage as she's almost buckling from laughing so hard.  It's a beautiful thing.

Then the five performers turn their attention to the newcomers.  Oh shit, that's us.  And suddenly the show is carried out in English.  They ask our names and our hometowns while making pretty innocuous jokes, renaming us Katy Perry and Paul McCartney, etc.  It was just their way of welcoming some foreigners to their country, I thought, and my apprehension derived from the previous scene starts to dissipate as they move into their next bit.  "Want to see a trick?" they ask us.  The same man from the nipples shenanigans then demonstrates his ability to grab objects with his ass.  He's wearing slim-fitting hot pink jeans, so I imagine that makes it a little tricky at times.  But he pulls through and flexes those gluts shamelessly.  What a fun night, I thought.

But of course, "This next trick requires a participant from the audience" and I'm back in their sights.  Fuck it.  I jump up on stage and wait for them to dole out some sort of twisted punishment.  What did I do wrong?  Oh well, might as well have fun with it.  Our hot pink friend assumes his ass-clenching position again while I want to clench into fetal position and hide from the hundreds of people in the room.  Feeling awkwardly idle as they're building up the suspense on stage, I decide to look busy.  "What am I supposed to do with this?" I ask as I move in and playfully grab this gentleman's tight behind.  Admittedly he is one incredibly sexy little man, and I now have the first hand experience to back it up.

They laugh as I play along with the skit.  To further demonstrate the colossal crushing strength of Pink's arse, they demand that I put my hand in his taint to feel what those poor objects felt.  I don't object.  It's easier to lean into these sorts of situations, and before I know it I have a fistful of crotch.  Most action I've had in... (Anyway)... They count down from three and Pink engages that fanny.  It's so powerful that it brings me to my knees and I flail dramatically and beg for mercy, or at least that's how we play out the scene.

I wouldn't have expected to have such a good time being teased on stage, but I feel like I ran the gauntlet and earned some international acceptance by improvising along with them.  But what is any bonding experience without reciprocity?  They ask me to show off what all those Kegel stretches have done for me, so I point my ass at the crowd, hike up my pants, and wait for instruction.  Pink fondles my junk as he places his hand in between my buttcheeks, and I tell him to at least buy me a drink first.  The countdown begins again and I deliver the finishing blow, bringing an end to their skit.  They thank me and assist me back to my seat.  Yes, I was also laughing too hard to walk straight.

And I'm spent.  We leave the show early (they typically run until 2am) so that we can all get a proper rest before we move on to Baguio the following day.

We decide to push our bus departure back to an overnight haul so that we can spend the day with Katy.  We take advantage of her little kitchen nook and make ourselves smoothies.  I join Katy for a short workout and run for the first time since... Chiang Mai?  Sometime in May.  I make it about three miles with little complaint but my endurance is certainly not all there.  I am looking forward to building it back up in New Zealand.

We have a beautifully lazy day; finding vegetarian food at the mall sweetens the deal.  Manila is crazy about their mega malls.  I'm a bit overwhelmed by the city but Katy keeps things interesting with fantastic stories about travels, romance, and literature.

We get on our late night bus which arrives early in the morning to Baguio.  The temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius.  I love the weather, but there's nothing much of interest here from our cursory search.  We can't find accommodation for under 15 dollars so we assume that food and other activities will cost proportionately higher.  Well, let's just keep going then.  After a short breakfast at Chowking (Chinese fast food) and a walk in the central park, we board a bus heading to Sagada.  Now that it's daylight we are able to see to drastic change in our surroundings.  Aren't you sick of mountain passes yet?

Upon arriving to Sagada we easily find a room for 6 dollars each.  We're the only guests in this lodge.  We grab a bite and check out the local tourism office, which has a queue of guides available for a number of different activities.  It's too rainy for climbing or biking, so we decide to do some caving.

Our guide is a man of few words.  I couldn't get a read on him during the long walk to the cave, but I eventually stopped engaging him.  No matter; he volunteers information when necessary.

The cave entrance was once used as a burial ground during times of paganism.  The coffins are rather small; the bodies lie in the fetal position.  I peak into a few cracked caskets as we go inside.  The rain is picking up a bit now, but the sound stays behind at the entrance as we go deeper.  Our guide pauses to light his gas lantern, and a loud hiss cuts through the silence.  The spooky atmosphere gets really fun as we continue our descent, necessitating the use of all limbs to traverse slippery rock surfaces.  Every time our guide moves around a corner I have to lower my body and move precisely.  At times I can barely make out the contour of the fragmented boulders below my feet, but our guide is cognizant enough to tilt the lantern back periodically.

We move through some rather tight spaces and I get completely turned around.  At this point I'm feeling stupid for not bringing a flashlight in case of emergency.  One of the tight passages requires going feet first, constricting my rib cage and shoulders as I barely squeeze through.  It has nothing to do with how much peanut butter I eat.  I wonder if they have any alternate descents for people bigger than myself.  It seems advantageous to be on the daintier side, although a greater reach can be beneficial when climbing down some of the tricky sections.  In some ways this is a good replacement for sating my climbing fixation.  Or rekindle it.

Eventually the runoff from various points culminates into an underground river.  The erosive effect on the limestone leaves a brilliant, finely-etched wave pattern, similar to the convolutions of a brain.  Despite walking in the water, the surfaces offer remarkable traction.  We walk barefoot down slopes that would otherwise have us slipping.  Even rubber on asphalt would have trouble maintaining static friction at these angles.  This amps up the fun as it feels like we have the superpowers of a half-assed Spiderman wannabe.  We romp all through the cave and check out the impressive stalactites, some of which have formed mushroom shaped domes rather than pointed columns.  I begin to feel the effects of the abrasive limestone surface on my hands and feet, but by then we're finally ascending to the exit.  We emerge about 2 kilometers down the road and begin the walk back to our guesthouse.  Having a considerable amount of unexpected exercise not usually offered by sight seeing (this was more like sight doing), we stuff our gullets and hit the sack.

The greenery looked especially delightful after the sensory deprivation, so we make it a point to walk down this road again in the morning to confirm that Sagada is indeed as beautiful as we think it to be.  It lives up to the expectation.  A dense fog slowly fills the valley as we make our long goodbye with this place.  Short and sweet.

We hop on a few jeepney and head to Banaue.  The jeepney system seems to work out pretty well, linking up many of these small villages very efficiently.  It seems to be the preferred mode of transport second to motorcycle.  Fast, timely, and usually capable of traversing the bad roads better than a bus can, I can see why this system works so well.

Banaue is a quaint little town with very little to offer other than sight seeing.  We go through our usual routine (eat food and dump our bags somewhere) before exploring the town on foot before sunset.  As beautiful as the rice terraces are, there is something simultaneously ugly about the human presence here.  It's uglybeautiful.  One can't help but notice the ample trash in the streets, the dilapidated housing, the broken down tricycles and jeepney slowly rusting over.  Yet it still has its charm.  The people seem happy and the living looks simple.  That's about all there is to Banaue, on our first glance anyway.  We walk back as the primary school is letting kids out at the end of the day (around sunset) and call it an early night.

According to Nate Hagens, the Philippines uses the least amount of energy per capita in relation to the reported happiness levels of the population, the latter being on par with America.  Being a somewhat subjective statistic, the relationship is debatable.  But the energy consumption speaks for itself.  As Hagens says, what are they doing differently?  There are many forces at play, but I think about the times when I've thought/heard/said you need a car to get around a place back home.  Maybe it's because the states are so spread out, and even some city layouts aren't conducive to a good public transit or ride sharing system.  I've had friends in San Francisco tell me that it can take two hours to go across town, making the city seem much larger than it really is.

Well, population density has an effect there, but there seem to be fewer cars on the road for how many people we see here.  Sure, it's less populated than Manila (which suffers from pretty bad traffic jams), but still more than Monterey for instance (which also has its slowdowns during certain times of the year).  But come to think of it, we had only two or three commuter vans at the last job I had.  I lived with four people who work at the same company, and we would rarely carpool together.  It just doesn't occur to us that even though we're willing to budget for our own gas, this sort of thinking might be contributing to the problems we're facing today.  Part of it is because we can afford it with our paychecks.  We like convenience and comfort enough that we'd rather pay more to have our own vehicles.  They represent a sort of freedom.  Nobody really revels in the freedom of taking the public bus somewhere.  I admit that my view is pretty skewed, never having to resort to public transit very often while growing up.  I had plenty of friends who had to pack into the public bus to get to high school every day, but I never really got a taste of it myself.  Maybe getting a "taste" of anything is not something you'd want to associate with a public bus.

Yet the people in the Philippines rely on jeepneys packed to the brim with 20 or more people, some riding on the roof or hanging off the back doors.  Safety standards?  Nahhh!.  Maybe it's just that I'm traveling in another country that I subject myself to less comfortable modes of transport.  But I also couldn't afford renting a car on my current salary of zero dollars.  But does that mean when I have a job that I should immediately blow a significant chunk of my income on a hunk of metal to get me around a bit faster?  Even before traveling I severely regretted buying my Subaru.  I got plenty of utility out of it, but I could've easily gotten by with carpooling.

Why are personal vehicles so ubiquitous at home?  Sure, even replacing them with public transit merely postpones our energy consumption issues, but let's imagine how hard people would cling to them.  They're not purely utilitarian in many cases, often being extensions of identity.  I've got my own penchants for some inanimate objects so I can't judge too harshly, but I accept that even those things are temporary.  Could I live without my iPod or even this phone?  Hell yes I could, but I'd be sad to let them go.  They've enabled me to get lost in my head and communicate with my friends.  But that also means that I don't really love the devices, but music and human connection.  And in some way, cars brings people together in some way, making large distances seem smaller.

So what does that have to do with Filipino transportation?  Meh, nothing I could prove.  My observations are already so narrow, but it's my impression.  It's remarkable to see people living off of very little and being so happy (or friendly to foreigners), yet here it is.  Kids playing with tops in the street and old ladies toiling in the rice fields.  Maybe they're miserable and having a car would solve all of their problems.  You've gotta have aspirations, right?  So let's buy some more shit.  Problem solved.

As you can see, I spend plenty of time using the jeepneys in the Phillipines.  It's great that things link up so well, and despite how ostensibly disorganized things are they actually function on or ahead of schedule.  After our romp in the north of Luzon we had back to Manila for a night to regroup with Katy.

I wonder if my boss frequented these ubiquitous meatshops.

The Filipinos are remarkably pro-'Merican.  We brought them guns and bald eagles, evidently.

Yes please.

Heading up to Sagada.

Rice terraces in Sagada.

Banaue, with the Immaculate Conception School in the center.  Kids conceiving left and right!

Our incredibly cool friend, Katy "Diggs" Digovich.

Vientiane

As an added bonus, I happened to bump into Reese (Penny's brother) in Vang Vieng and exchange contact information.  I was a bit regretful that I hadn't made this effort when I had the chance in Luang Prabang, so it made me happy to be able to send a note along to Penny and thank her for making a thirty hour bus ride into an enjoyable use of time.

But that chance meeting was almost unnecessary as we all ended up in the same hostel in Vientiane regardless.  Laos is a small country and it seems to send the tourists down the same path.  I give Penny a big hug and we commence with the festivities.

Sihome Garden Backpackers Hostel is staffed almost exclusively by other foreign travelers who just happened to stick around for a while.  The walls are plastered with murals and famous quotations as well as what looks like an apology wall for owning up to drunken mishaps.  As we enter our room we meet the overnight front desk attendant, Andrei.  Originally from Belarus, this young guy has hit the road to improve his English and meet other people.  He shows us the copy of Harry Potter that he's reading, and you can see the level of effort he puts into learning just by his translations in between lines.  And what's especially remarkable to see is how the annotations and footnotes get thinner and thinner as you flip pages, presumably as Andrei picks up the language.  He is inquisitive and not afraid to make mistakes, making for a good attitude toward learning.  He doesn't fuss with grammar and syntax, but rather is more concerned about semantics and relating new words with ones he already knows.  Conversing with him is a delight, and we spend one evening playing guitar together.  What a sweetheart!

We check out a few of the sights with Penny while getting caught in some dramatic downpours, but most of my days in Vientiane are dedicated to figuring out the New Zealand immigration stuff I've already mentioned.  Having a mountain bike to get around was loads of fun; I didn't realize how much I missed biking until I had some mobility again.  A crazy idea popped into my brain to do some long distance cycling trips in New Zealand...

We ate lunch at the same place every day.  Yes, we happened to find a Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant here.  That food didn't stand a chance!  Nicole and I wonder why we've never encountered these sorts of restaurants back home, and I hope it's not for lack of their existence in the states.  Maybe we need to explore our old home a little bit more.

I wonder what my mentality will be like when I get home.  Will I still have lingering wanderlust, seeking out novelty in previously overlooked places?  Or will I just go back to business as usual?  I suppose the key is to find the balance of novelty and comfort.  I have to remember that I was never really bored when I lived in Monterey.  Some things grew stale, but that just translated into letting go of them to make way for new interests.  But I wonder if I'll be more inclined to dive into new activities if I have the option of comfort sitting in the corner of my mind.  When traveling abroad you don't necessarily have those fallbacks, so the choice is obvious: press onwards into new territory.

In short, I hope to maintain this momentum.  A lot of the fun of travel is handling logistics and working through obstacles and seeing what sort of whacky shit emerges as a result.  It's about keeping your expectations in check and accepting that any given moment might not deliver that coveted euphoria.  The pleasure usually comes in retrospect.  "I can't believe our luck!"

I want to keep those channels to chance open.  Open sesame!

After Vientiane we make our way back to Bangkok by overnight train.  Nicole and I stay up all night gabbing and I make a mental note of how well we've been doing as travel partners.  We haven't lived together in so long, and the last time that happened we had a sort of quiet falling out.  I try to remember what was going through my head at the time, or all of the circumstances that might lead to our alienation, but the only feeling that emerges is a sort of shame.  Trying to figure out what past Paul was thinking only makes me cringe in embarrassment.  Was I really so heartless, so thoughtless?  I may not have actively driven the wedge between us, but I certainly let toxic thoughts chip away at me until I was complicit in the death of a friendship.

Fortunately the Phoenix that is Nipple (Nicole + Paul = Nipple) was rekindled with very little effort, and I have some fond memories of rediscovering the friendship over long sessions of Geometry Wars and gory horror films.  But this leaves me perplexed in other ways, namely how it even happened in the first place.  Nonetheless, it's a relief to say, "What was I thinking?" and move on from it.

But I still don't really know my motives.  And what's keeping it from happening again.  I can think of a few other moments that sting with a similar remorse.  I don't yet know how to face those demons, or even if I can do anything to banish them.  I use them as life lessons at best, but is that just a copout?  I've spent countless hours attending to these matters but the mental stalemate just appears more and more enigmatic as time goes on.

I imagine most people can relate.  We've all been there, right?

Anywho, traveling and such.  Vientiane is quaint enough but I've already mentioned that I used this city to handle some more administrative tasks with New Zealand immigration.  Occasionally I have to put travel mode on hiatus to figure out where the pieces will fall for the next... few years of my life.  That's just eerie.  It scares me a little but I think these are the sorts of challenges I need: making meaningful commitments and seeing them through.  Maybe I need it as a way to redeem myself, or at least prove to myself that I'm not all the bad things those inner demons tell me I am.

Vientiane sees a significant step up in hip aesthetic.  Designer doggie on a designer scooter.

Tuberculosis free!  I'll reward myself with a croissant after riding out to the Australian Embassy.  Because the x-ray film was too large to take with me, I left it Andrei's care with a note: "You take my breath away."

Sihome Backpacker's Hostel: Andrei's guitar with Marceline shredding in the background.

Central monument.  I think I've reached over-saturation with Laotian architecture.

 

Lost in Space

And where am I now?  It feels like weeks have elapsed since Laos, and something like months for Vietnam.  The memories seem to move away at an exponential rate, but returning to them feels warm and fuzzy at times.  They've been aging nicely, I like to think.

It's tempting to gloss over the last bits of Laos, so that's what I'm going to do!

Vang Vieng didn't have a whole lot to do in the rainy season.  It's supposedly a rock climbing paradise, but I've given up on the idea of sating my climbing fix for the time being.  I miss doing what I love to do, but I can postpone gratification for a little while longer.  My body's conditioning is shot anyway, so it'll likely be frustrating to hop on the walls at this point.  I'd much rather take time to hit my stride again.

Due to the rainy/sleepy atmosphere, we are consigned to lounging around indoors.  Sam and Michael pay us a surprise visit after we thought we had made our final goodbyes, so we just continue to bask in their glow for a while longer.  They'll be heading out to California in September which prompts much future daydreaming.  I share a few of my favorite things and get lost in the memories.  I want to have a vicarious homecoming through them.  Maybe they will have the delicious cider at Rabbit's Foot, or maybe they'll go climbing at Planet Granite.  Would it be too presumptuous to invite them to stay with my parents?  My mom can tell them to go to bed early and they can hike the PG&E loop with my sister.  I want them to go in my stead and send all of those good sensations across the Pacific Ocean.

I know what I'm going to do but I still feel the pull of nostalgia's gravity.  I'm still caught between the two possibilities.  There are many others, but their influence isn't as apparent.

As far as I look into my hazy future, I'm going to orbit with New Zealand for a little while.  I'll take extensive readings and head for homebase when my curiosity is quenched.  I'll create mental maps of the local geography and take some samples (especially food) for further analysis.  But eventually I'll whip back around to California, to my family.

I wonder if it will grow old quickly, or even if I will grow old there.  Will this trip satisfy me for a while, or will it plant too many potential futures in my head?  I have trouble knowing myself that far in advance.  I concede that the things I'm driven to do now may change considerably, but I just can't make sense of those nebulous future desires.  What will make for the best life spent?  How do I even begin to quantify those things?  I've been accumulating so many experiences while traveling, but I still can't tell what will stick years from now.  Maybe this is a new lifestyle, this constant movement, not just an excursion.  I won't rule it out.

Besides, I'll have plenty of time for sedentary activities when I'm older.

Up next: the capital city of Laos, Vientiane.