Where's Scott?

Our gay neighbor has decided to play with fire, and has complained to the house’s owner about the generator. The Pepitos are up in arms about it, and the owner has dismissed the complaint and encourages us to use and abuse the generator as often as we need. After Seb’s “heroic” effort to placate the situation, this complaint really ticks him off, and he decrees that we’ll run the generator as late as we can take the noise ourselves.

It’s a beautiful day (ok, they’re all beautiful, but this one especially so), and we decide to walk the island and see what we can find. We spend several hours strolling through “villagettes,” watching fisherman organize their nets or lining up all their hooks on the side of a box of fishing line, stroll under the myriad of laden palm trees (being careful not to hang out too long below them lest we get brained by a falling nut!), and generally admiring the lengths of white sand beach and the innocence of it all!

We find a small i-cafe and catch up a bit on our browsing, and wander the stalls to do a bit of shopping. Our Las Vegas casino playing cards are starting to swell and fray from the hours of use by us and the family, so we pickup a couple new sets. By the time we get back, a marathon Rummy session is in full swing, and our new cards are warmly received.

I’ve become passable at the game, and I decide to buy a couple large bottles of 5 year Tanduay (for a grand total of $4!) to liven up the game. Pretty soon it’s “winner drinks,” then “loser drinks,” and finally “winner and loser both drink!” (thanks Seb!). I keep a glass for drinking between hands for good measure, and it’s not long before I’m properly sauced – I don’t recall what happened much after that (total memory loss, oooo that Tanduay is evil!) but apparently I was the life of the party, and was seen staggering into the ocean and eventually helped up to bed by some kindly souls (ah, the sacrifices I make to improve international relations!)

For breakfast, Noel makes a wicked dish called Kinilaw; it’s a spicy mixture of very tiny de-boned raw fish mixed with chopped onions, hot peppers, vinegar, and a thick coconut milk created by combining the milk with shredded coconut meat and then squeezing it out so that the milk is almost white and much richer than normal (the coconut meat is discarded – the very part of the coconut we usually use in the West is junk here!). The mixture is very tasty and has a nice spice burn lacking from most Filipino fare; I love it! Seb can barely take a bite though; in addition to hating fish (culinarily crippling on an island of fisherman!), his throat is still sore and he’s almost unable to swallow.

While Noel’s “cooking,” Seb and I get a lesson in opening coconuts with a machete from generator man. We hold the husk and cut-and-twist the top until the nut spills milk, then dump the milk into a flask and split the whole thing in half to get at the tender, sashimi like meat inside – all the while trying not to chop off a finger! The closest doctor’s several hours away (and there’s not exactly a lot of ice about), so any mishap and my typing would be degrees worse than it already is. The meat is scrumptious though, and easily spooned out of the shell and slurped up.

There’s a bit of a ruckus, and we find that our neighbor has come by to complain about the noise the generator was making the previous night. The family, and especially our generator man, get very excited at the complaint, and the situation quickly deteriorates into a shouting match with fists waved and small items thrown. Seb wisely steps in and tries to reason with this Canadian ex-pat – he’s apparently moved here with his gay Filipino lover to live a quiet, environmentally friendly lifestyle (complete with solar powered stereo) and feels that this huge, diesel monstrosity that’s been installed by his bedroom must be caged. The Pepitos (the side of Mabel’s family he’s dealing with) are fiercely independent, and think he has no right to tell them what to do, doesn’t understand the Philippines or their island lifestyle, and should run back to wherever white-man land he came from! Seb does his best, and since neither the neighbor nor his lover speak Visaya (despite living here 5 years!), Seb is really the only one he can converse with sensibly anyway. The man doesn’t want to back down, and it’s clear we’re going to be dealing with him for the duration. However, Seb comes away hoping he’s calmed the situation enough to prevent the Pepitos from burying the guy in a shallow grave…

Seb’s making dinner! We’ve been subsisting of a traditional diet of fried pork, fish and rice for several weeks now, but our recent Bogo trip has allowed Seb to stock up with enough Western delicacies to make Spaghetti Bolognaise. It goes over quite well (even with massive amounts of garlic!) but I catch a few family members sneaking some dried fish and rice a little after dinner – some things you can’t change; I guess a Filipino’s dinner is one of them.

(edit 3/14: dive after Bogo)

Seb’s suffering from a bit throat infection though, and our cash reserves are also running dry; it’s clear we’re going to need to hit the mainland for a little ATM and clinic help.

The nearest town with facilities is Bogo on Cebu island, about two hours by boat and bus. We leave early the next morning on a very small fishing boat crewed by “generator man” (who hangs out all day to turn on/off our generator at our request), and soon learn that the roads on Cebu are about on par with those near Basud – very, very rough and dusty!

Bogo’s fairly small, and we quickly locate a local hospital and get Seb diagnosed and prescribed for, and head to the market to stock up with goods and cash (oooo, and visit Jollibee! :P). Everything is cheap… really, really cheap, and Seb loads up with dozens of toys for the kids and kilos of pork (recall he can’t survive on the fish). We’re soon laden with heavy boxes of loot!

By the time we get back to the boat, it’s sunset, and the weather’s turned a bit dodgy; loaded with both us and our bulk purchases, the crossing in our tiny boat promises to be a thrilling experience in flood avoidance. By half way, in the rain and high waves, I’m soaked through and loving it (it’s actually quite warm). The slim boat creaks and the stabilizers bend, and eventually the engine stalls; but I’m comforted at the thought that our captain can’t swim, so things can’t be as bad as they appear! I just hope we don’t swamp though, as poor Mabel can’t swim either!

Mabel tells us that we’re renting a house down the beach – a little two story, 3 bedroom with a sleeping porch and a kitchen. The place is cute and certainly cheap enough, about $20 a day for the whole family! There’s a generator out back to power up the evenings, and a open well with a few plastic buckets to pull up some bathing/flushing water… and location! We’re _on_ the beach, which means you walk out the door and you’re _on_ the beach, waves are crashing 20ft in front of you, sand and palm trees on either side, and a few small fishing boats here and there that the local fisherman take out after nightfall.

We drop our bags, and stretch out on the bamboo benches under the house’s small detached hut and enjoy the gentle afternoon breeze. Mabel’s family breaks out the cards and starts a marathon session of 3-man Gin Rummy, which they’re all excellent at and school us well (ie. we’re handed our heads). Rummy is apparently the game of choice on Malapascua, and everyone plays it from childhood… Mabel is an old hand and holds well with the best of them.

We’ve brought a snorkel set, and so we’re set for a little exploration, and Seb and I make plans to make a trip out to a rock or two a few hundred meters off shore. The family’s well convinced we’ll be eaten by sharks (there’s an unreasonable fear of them here, despite even the rumor of an attack), but since we’ve been swimming with them for a couple weeks, neither of us are much concerned.

All our cooking and cleaning is handled by Mabel’s sisters Raquel and Rotel, and her aunt Gemma. Rotel especially is a workhorse, anticipating our needs and popping up out of nowhere with a towel, some fried pork, or a bottle of Coke just as the words are passing our lips: “I’m a little thirsty, I’d love a… oh! Thanks Rotel!”. The men, on the other hand, are a different story; while the women work tirelessly cooking, washing (there appears to be an endless stream of dirty clothes that need washing), cleaning dishes, sweeping, scolding kids, hanging laundry, or fetching food or sundries from the store – the men hang around the bamboo shack to chat, play cards, drink coconut wine or Tanduay and generally, well, lay about.

Noel wants to know if we’re up for dog again, and we explain that “dog is a friend in the West” in as polite and respectful a way as possible. In a convenient accident, a dog is “hit by a bike and killed” just that evening! (A bike doing 20 hitting a dog? Hahaha) We still decline 😉

Seb and Mabel finally have it out over the house project… since nothing was prepared ahead of time (despite Seb’s efforts to organize the project for 3 months!), itemizing of the parts, pricing, and ordering is just starting 6 days after our arrival… and Seb has had enough of Basud, and wants to move on to Malapascua – where he had planned to spend all but a couple days of the Philippines trip.

The tension is finally broken when Mabel relents, and the family makes plans to head to Malapascua the next morning. Next morning we pile into the truck and head for the dock. In the Philippines, it appears, when there’s a trip, everyone goes, parents, uncles, kids (school? jobs? can’t seem to get a straight answer, but I appears all are put on hold w/o notice). Immediately, there’s new tension – Seb hadn’t expected everyone to go, and he knows the implications: he’ll need to transport, house and feed the entire extended family for as long as we’re on the island, and Seb’s pissed that he wasn’t asked (or even told!) about it. In addition, our cash reserves are limited since we’re still 2hrs plus from the closest ATM, and we’ll be out of cash in a hurry with such a large posse

We load on the “large” variation of the standard canoe-with-stabilizers (_all_ the boats here use the same blueprint, from 8ft single man paddlers to 60ft diesel monsters – two bamboo stabilizers on arms parallel to a narrow, open hull, tarp sunbreak optional). The trip to Malapascua is about an hour, and I spend the time blogging perched up in front of the captains cabin while Seb spots dolphins (only 1 week behind at this point!). Our trip’s a “special,” which means we’re dumped at the closest point on the island to the boat’s continuing voyage to Maya. We wade ashore and into a little cemetery full of Mabel’s relatives – did I mention that Mabel has about 500 Pepito relatives on the island? Ah, well, basically she can identify everyone on the island, “my uncle’s sister’s husband’s aunt, and her kids…” etc etc.

Bikes! The taxis here are proper motorcycles, you pickup your bags, hop on back, and they whisk you the 2km length of the island for 10 pesos (20c) a head – providing you can avoid the low branches and being burned by the tailpipe (Noel’s got an exceptionally impressive scar from one such burn!). After a quick candle-prayer in the church, the family makes the trip to the far side of the island, and is soon comfortably lounging on a bamboo platform under a shade tree on a pristine, postcard white sand beach – I can’t fathom why Mabel’s family doesn’t live here, true paradise… we have to just take a load off and let it soak in.

Tensions have been rising between Seb and Mabel over the house project (and the lack of planning and preparation that’s been done for it), and Seb grouses about the lack of cost estimates and general lack of cash planning while Mabel gives him the silent treatment and generally pouts. Seb’s tried to keep cash in check, but we’re running low and the closest ATM is over 2 hours away on a very bumpy road! Finally he opts for a trip to Western Union, but soon discovers that despite the fees, crappy exchange rate, and tracking number requirements, there’s also a 24 hour waiting period before the cash can be collected. Still, the trip into San Isidro to visit the WU affords us a chance to have a nice pork and mango lunch in the central park.

One of Mabel’s uncles, Naning, who rented us the truck, has also offered to take us up to his coconut farm in the hills above Basud, and it’s such a nice afternoon we take him up on the offer. We hightail it through the mountain roads admiring the view of the sea below us and happen upon a local cockfight arena… we insist on a quick pit stop! The arena is a professional affair, about 150 locals crowded around a well constructed covered wooden cage and stands – we’re immediate ushered up past the crowds and through the fight floor to the VIP box! Suddenly, we feel like the show! Seb and I trade (half serious) jokes that we may be asked to jump in the bloodstained ring as the next attraction as we realize that nobody’s eyes are on the birds, just on the two of us! We play it as cool as we can, and lay a few bets while a local explains how Filipinos and blacks share the same discrimination is the states, and can’t walk into stores or get jobs (his information obviously dating from another era!). The cockfights are very bloody, starting out with the handlers getting the birds to bite each other around the neck while wagers are taken, odds calculated, and the crowd screams various taunts at each other and the birds. It’s mostly a male affair, but there are a number of women of all ages peering in, and we spot an old women with a huge spliff eyeing us. The fights themselves are fast. Once the poisoned claw blades are uncovered and the birds dropped, the start to leap over each other literally chopping each other to bits. The birds fight until one goes comatose (or dies, which apparently most do later anyway) which rarely takes more than 60 seconds; blood and bird bits are everywhere, and Seb and I are nearly splattered a few times. The crowd revels in it.

After a few fights (and a winning bet on our part, despite our attempts to lose), we’ve seen enough and make a swift exit hoping we haven’t understayed our welcome. We push through the fish mongers and dozens of motorcycle youths and jump back in the truck feeling very out of our element! About 600 yards down the road, we hit a series of dirt piles blocking the road and wonder if the motorcycle gang plans to ride up behind us for an ambush; but our fears are baseless as the piles are just incomplete road repair, and we jump out and clear enough for the truck to ride past (whew, we weren’t worried, really! Uncle Noel later tells us that it’s very dangerous in the mountain roads – kidnappings and whatnot – and he told us to never go there 😉

Naning’s farm is in a spectacular location straddling the top of a hillside overlooking the sea and the interior valleys of Leyte. Someone scales a nearby palm tree to fetch a few coconuts, and we’re quickly all learning to climb the trees (key: there are small footholds in the stalks!). They crack a few open, drain the milk and scoop out the thin, almost transparent meat – very different from the meat of the coconuts I’ve seen before. The then create a mix of coconut milk, regular milk, sashimi-like slivers of coconut meat, sugar, ice and a Tang like juice to create a very slippery and tasty evening drink/snack. Naning tells us how he’s fortunate to have title over his land (unlike many of his neighbors) and has made a fortune in the land appreciation, 10 times in as many years! He tells us how most of the land between the rows of palm trees is planted with rice or corn, but that this year most farmers planted rice instead of corn, and when the rains didn’t come, their crops all failed… for a society that eats rice with breakfast, lunch and dinner (Noel’s family goes through a 50kg bag of rice every month), that’s a tragedy!

Burikat tasted like a nice cross between beef and chicken, and Noel (Mabel’s cousin) did an excellent job of spicing it! We bought (or more to the point Seb bought) basically the whole extended family San Miguel (beer) and Tanduay (rum), and while Mabel, Seb and I sang Karioke with Noel’s wife and kids (who shamed us tirelessly), they sat out front on a bamboo platform and talked, yelled and occasionally cheered us on as we all got progressively more drunk!

The next day we were all mercifully spared the hangover we so dearly deserved, and Seb requests a visit to the beach. The truck pulls up to Mabel’s parents house, and as the minutes tick by, more and more of Mabel’s family pile into the vehicle until it’s clear they’ll need to be more than one trip! Seb suggests I ride Patton-style in the back of the truck, standing up in the flatbed in a small gap provided by the family, and we motor off to Rotel’s house (one of Mabel’s sisters) beachside. With blond hair blowing in the wind, I quickly discover that I’m quite a spectacle in Leyte – kids and adults all stop dead with mouth gaping as we drive by; we’re definitely in a part of the world were white people just never make an appearance! I’m loving the ride, no way I can ride standing up in the back of a flatbed overflowing with people in the states ;), and waving to the locals becomes a challenge to catch them early enough for them to shake off their stun-lock, and gather themselves enough to smile and wave back; I’m about 50% successful.

The beach is fabulous. A quick walk down a palm-lined trail reveals a small grouping of 4 or so small houses (including Rotel’s) nestled directly on a white sand beach with a view to die for. We take a short stroll down the beach while Mabel’s family gathers near Rotel’s house for a cookout, and find a wonderful spot near some drowned trees for a snorkel. By the time we return, giant squid is roasting on the fire (Seb’s treat of course!). Squid I’ve had, but giant squid served in it’s own ink I’ve somehow missed; squid ink is fabulous! It’s thick, black and buttery, and has a mild chocolaty flavor that’s difficult to describe, but equally difficult to forget! (Why is the ink never used in Western cuisine? What a loss…)

After lunch we watch as a local craftsman expertly cuts some straight boards out of a fallen tree with a long, handheld chainsaw, something I would not have though possible if I hadn’t seen it myself. The boards are destined for Mabel’s parents house, and it’s fascinating to experience the project progress is such a tactile manner, especially as the sun sets around us on an isolated beach in paradise…

I feared I’d never sleep between the roosters crowing and the monster fan thundering by my bed (without the fan would be mosquito city), but I slept better than I had in days and woke dreaming of Mangos. We didn’t. have any formal plans for the day, and as soon as I mentioned Mangos, a bus to San Isidro trundled through town; “Go, no go?” We jumped the bus, half at the thought of more of the perfect Mangos we’d had in Cebu, and half just to see how a full bus navigated such a treacherous road. The bus really appears to be a lifeline here; it makes frequent stops to collect or drop baskets of goods as well as people (everything from power line cables to open buckets of fish) and everyone comes out to grab an item or swing something up on top. The bus is also, by far, the smoothest ride around, coming close to comfortable!

San Isidro isn’t much more that a two street town, with an obviously colonially inspired park in the middle complete with a fisherman statue. The fish market (for a fishing town) was very discouraging, having space for thousands of fish and sporting an inventory of 3 (2 small, 1 medium). We founds our mangos though, and Seb embarked on a small shopping spree for Mabel’s family (plates, shoes etc). Our “rental” truck tracked us down a few hours into our adventure, so we had an easy return ticket, and after a nice pork and mango lunch, we headed back to distribute our loot.

Have wheels, will travel, and we’re soon in Tabango to buy dinner and visit the closest icafe. Seb makes short work of contacting all his pilot buddies on Skype when we hear what’s on the dinner menu: Burikat (meaning “callgirl” in Visaya based on how she walked as a puppy) – yes, you read that correctly, roadkill, doggy roadkill. Hey, this is the Philippines, and if we’re here to experience the rural lifestyle, that doesn’t mean we stop with the local “rhumm” (Tanduay, foul stuff but 70c a liter!) or the Karioke (which we’re terrible at, but at least we try 😉

First order of business next morning is getting Mabel’s dad a doctor’s appointment. He’s been sickening over the past year, but hasn’t yet had a checkup, so we’re going to make a trip back or Ormoc to get him evaluated. We also plan on getting the truck Seb’s arranged for us to rent a few well needed repairs; the starter’s out (it has to be push started ;), there’s no fan (let alone AC), and the windows are stuck down. Mabel’s also got a bad tooth, so we a dentist visit to the iternerary. We gather with the truck out front of Mabel’s parent’s house, and as we gather them into the truck, we can see that the truck will be taking all (if not more, since we don’t have the bags) from the previous night’s trip with us. We hear through the grapevine that everyone thinks there’ll be another Jollybee, so they’ll make the trip to find out.

About an hour into the trip we have feel fortunate for the company, the truck blows a tire and we trundle to a halt. Several of the crew jump into action; flats must be a daily occurance, as they whip out the spare and get it installed in less then 10 minutes! They’ll get the flat vulcanized in Ormoc so we’ll have a new spare for the trip back (I wonder how many cycles of use-flat-spare these tires have seen; they’re almost bald, and for 4×4 tires, that’s a lot of mileage).

In town we drop dad at the doc, and Seb and I go on the hunt for an ATM and an icafe. After a few hours in line, the doc hands Mabel a long list of prescriptions for her dad, and Seb figures out that he’s going to need a bigger pile of cash for the pills. We coax Mabel to the dentist and find out she has 14 cavities, and the dentist promises to stay late so he can fill 8 while we wait (Mabel pretty brave to face 8 fillings in one sitting!). Seb’s running around between projects, hair on fire, bleeding cash and getting a bit testy, but by sunset we’ve settled on a partial prescription fill and an open air BBQ dinner for the whole crew by the bus depot, and Mabel with most of a new mouth. With a rough 2 hour trip home in the dark, we pray we can miss all the nails!

Arriving in Basud, Mabel’s village, we finally get a chance to see Mabel’s home. The family quickly unloads and gives us the peso tour. It’s a two bedroom, about 400 sq ft (half inside, half outside), and sits on 3ft stilts over the high tide (it’s in the tidal plane, but the area is overgrown with trees so the sea is clearly out of sight, even if it were daylight). It’s comprised mostly of split bamboo for the walls and floor which has the benefit of allowing the cool evening breeze to whisk through the house and up from below. Only Mabel’s parents and a few siblings live here, so it’s not too crowded, but it does look like it could use some love! One of our goals here is to repair this little fix’r’upper, and we can see it needs a lot of work! It looks a bit like a Dr. Suess house. Nothing’s square, and it leans decidedly back and to the left. As we slip off our sandles and walk in, Seb and I (fat gits that we are) start breaking through the floor and have to make quick moves to walk on the floor beams! The corregated steel roof has a number of gaping rust holes, and as we sit there, a piece of the wall conveniently falls off (probably for our benefit! ;).

It’s been arranged for us to stay in a friend’s house (for a nominal fee 😉 and it’s one of the few houses in town made of brick, and has a working (well, occassionally working) shower, which saves the town from some very smelly white men. The whole town is about 1/2 mile long along the main road, and actually has a few hundred feet of cement paving in the center. Chickens and dogs abound, and as we unpack past midnight, the roosters crow every few seconds; these guys don’t wait for dawn, anytime is a good time to crow. Our host has moved out of their bedroom to make room for Seb and Mabel (who get AC) and I’m in the next room (without, nice fan though!). The bathroom spots a number of large cockroaches, mosquitos and an interesting flush mechanism using a ladel and a bucket of water. We make a note to get some bug spray 😉