I am at the free Yahoo internet station in Narita terminal 2, for my 3 hour stopover. Japan, I love you!
My last day in Manila was every aspect of my trip rolled into one: bureaucratic hell to the point of comedy (e.g. 3 hours to mail a parcel to myself), friendly chatty people, a relaxed dinner of mediocre greasy food while stretched out on a restaurant's rattan couch on the seawall overlooking Manila Bay while Independence Day fireworks explode overhead in the finally just-hot air. Some chats with friendly people, endless hawkers. Some live bands strung along the baywalk, mostly cover bands but also some baklas (lady-boys) who are watched appreciatively by many families with children. And up to get to the airport for 6 am.
Not enough time to get anywhere, so I'm mostly milling about Narita airport trying to see how much Japanese I can remember from my crash course. I'm doing okay, asking people a bunch of unnecessary questions just to try it out.
Vancouver-Tokyo-Manila-Naga, Naga-Manila-Tokyo-Vancouver. I have a sense of going in reverse on this trip, like I should be walking backwards, just more quickly than when I walked forwards. And when I get home, I'll have undone all my steps, and be right back where I started. Maybe like I never left, except I'll see all I have done on my trip as if it were still ahead of me, but on a route that I can't take, like in a painting. I'm not sure where this feeling of disconnection from experience comes from. Or whatever. Whatever.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
and the evening and the morning were the third day
A slice of life in peaceful, beachful Aninuan: A late-afternoon stroll a couple of kilometres down the road. The first half cement, the remainder rocky dirt. At this point, a boy walks with me just long enough to ask if I am a missionary (why does this keep happening?). A ways further, I stop to search out what was shaking way high in a mango tree, when mangoes started dropping down. Monkeys? No, small children, surprisingly high up. A man standing by and watching with me picked up one of the green missiles and offers it to me. "Very sweet." This surprises me, as I thought the green ones were sour. But it is the most delicious mango I've ever eaten. Indian mangoes, he said they were.
I stroll further, a little nervously past some aggressive-looking horned but tethered goats, their ropes stretching well into the road. A water buffalo is tethered a safe distance away. Finally I am at the next beach down from mine, over some rocky promontories, which is even less populated than Aninuan where I am staying. I have heard about the one restaurant here; it is Italian and supposed to be good. I find it, and also at it the large English family who spent the whole day hogging the best beach chairs back in Aninuan. They appear to have chartered their own outrigger canoe and pilot -- no dirty rocky road for them -- and thankfully are about to leave. Unsurprisingly they had the best table, which I claim victoriously. The spaghetti puttanesca is genuinely Italian, like The Man Of No Words at the restaurant; the service, like the two waitresses, is genuinely Filipino. I practically have to beg to be given a menu, despite that there are only two tables occupied. But I get to sit beachside and watch the twilight turn to night, eating my first non-Filipinized non-Filipino food in weeks, and it is Good.
My company at the restaurant arean intermittently loud Filipino family who mostly keep to themselves, and a table of drunkish, late-middle-aged, haggard-looking mixed bag of European men accompanied by a couple of silent, younger but nonetheless uxorial-looking Filipinas. One man, Sebastian, says nearly nothing but eventually gets up and staggers off in that deliberate, zombie-state way of someone who is not new to heavy drinking. Later, he reappears and sits down at my table; almost immediately his wife (?) locates him and looks into my eyes while apologizing repeatedly with deep and urgent desperation, gradually herding him away to Somewhere Else.
320 pesos later it is 7 pm and dark when I hit the road for the trip home, surrounded by the hushy night sound of crickets and the occasional firefly making its dotted-line way across the tree-canopy black holes in the starry sky. Sometimes a bat puts an end to this dotted line, which makes me melancholy.
Back at Tamaraw (= "water buffalo"), where I am staying, I quickly change into my bathing trunks, wander down the strand as far away from beach lighting as I can get, remove my trunks again and slip into the womb-temperature ocean for a weightless escape under the night sky, which continues to be starry; over all, the sound of slowly crashing waves. Eventually I return, re-clothed, to the little table and chair outside the door to my room, my gaze hovering dreamily just above no point in particular over the night beach, and am soaked with the sense of a day well lived.
I stroll further, a little nervously past some aggressive-looking horned but tethered goats, their ropes stretching well into the road. A water buffalo is tethered a safe distance away. Finally I am at the next beach down from mine, over some rocky promontories, which is even less populated than Aninuan where I am staying. I have heard about the one restaurant here; it is Italian and supposed to be good. I find it, and also at it the large English family who spent the whole day hogging the best beach chairs back in Aninuan. They appear to have chartered their own outrigger canoe and pilot -- no dirty rocky road for them -- and thankfully are about to leave. Unsurprisingly they had the best table, which I claim victoriously. The spaghetti puttanesca is genuinely Italian, like The Man Of No Words at the restaurant; the service, like the two waitresses, is genuinely Filipino. I practically have to beg to be given a menu, despite that there are only two tables occupied. But I get to sit beachside and watch the twilight turn to night, eating my first non-Filipinized non-Filipino food in weeks, and it is Good.
My company at the restaurant arean intermittently loud Filipino family who mostly keep to themselves, and a table of drunkish, late-middle-aged, haggard-looking mixed bag of European men accompanied by a couple of silent, younger but nonetheless uxorial-looking Filipinas. One man, Sebastian, says nearly nothing but eventually gets up and staggers off in that deliberate, zombie-state way of someone who is not new to heavy drinking. Later, he reappears and sits down at my table; almost immediately his wife (?) locates him and looks into my eyes while apologizing repeatedly with deep and urgent desperation, gradually herding him away to Somewhere Else.
320 pesos later it is 7 pm and dark when I hit the road for the trip home, surrounded by the hushy night sound of crickets and the occasional firefly making its dotted-line way across the tree-canopy black holes in the starry sky. Sometimes a bat puts an end to this dotted line, which makes me melancholy.
Back at Tamaraw (= "water buffalo"), where I am staying, I quickly change into my bathing trunks, wander down the strand as far away from beach lighting as I can get, remove my trunks again and slip into the womb-temperature ocean for a weightless escape under the night sky, which continues to be starry; over all, the sound of slowly crashing waves. Eventually I return, re-clothed, to the little table and chair outside the door to my room, my gaze hovering dreamily just above no point in particular over the night beach, and am soaked with the sense of a day well lived.
Friday, June 8, 2007
I'm gonna live forever...
I've just had an e-mail from one of my recently former group-mates that we were on TV in Naga, a special clip on the news about our presentation on transportation and land use. Good thing I wore my nice shirt! We've been in the newspaper and on the radio a few times, too -- and a blog as well. It's strange being an Event.
mains
Lunch and dinner options are more or less interchangeable, in my experience, depending on when you want to eat your big meal of the day. Food is mostly meat, mostly stewlike or grilled, often sweet, and always with rice. I wasn't so crazy on it at first, but have gotten used to it and even developed some favourites.
Fresh lumpia ubod, for example, are large non-deep-fried spring rolls stuffed with palm hearts, usually served with a burnt-sugar-syrupy sauce, and are quite a crunchy and refreshing change from the stews. Once I discovered the hidden vegetable dishes of Filipino cooking, I started ordering spinachlike kankong, usually sauteed in garlic, as well as pinakbet -- a kind of vegetable stew, which in Naga usually meant mostly okra and ampalaya (a bitter melon).
On the meat side of things, fried and deep-fried rule the day (with grilling as a runner-up), and pork is king. Notable is barbecued pork with the skin (rind?) grilled crispy hard, then cut up into chunks which are one- to three-quarters fat. Maybe it's an acquired taste. Grilled tuna tail is surprisingly tasty though.
The Bicol region, where Naga City is, is famous for certain foods, notable Bicol expres, which is shredded pork with lots of chilies, cooked in coconut milk -- these last two ingredients are hallmarks of Bicolano cooking. Laing, a bitter leafy vegetable like kale or chard and cooked in (of course) coconut milk, is I think a Bicol specialty, and one of my vegetable mainstays.
Fresh lumpia ubod, for example, are large non-deep-fried spring rolls stuffed with palm hearts, usually served with a burnt-sugar-syrupy sauce, and are quite a crunchy and refreshing change from the stews. Once I discovered the hidden vegetable dishes of Filipino cooking, I started ordering spinachlike kankong, usually sauteed in garlic, as well as pinakbet -- a kind of vegetable stew, which in Naga usually meant mostly okra and ampalaya (a bitter melon).
On the meat side of things, fried and deep-fried rule the day (with grilling as a runner-up), and pork is king. Notable is barbecued pork with the skin (rind?) grilled crispy hard, then cut up into chunks which are one- to three-quarters fat. Maybe it's an acquired taste. Grilled tuna tail is surprisingly tasty though.
The Bicol region, where Naga City is, is famous for certain foods, notable Bicol expres, which is shredded pork with lots of chilies, cooked in coconut milk -- these last two ingredients are hallmarks of Bicolano cooking. Laing, a bitter leafy vegetable like kale or chard and cooked in (of course) coconut milk, is I think a Bicol specialty, and one of my vegetable mainstays.
getting away from it all...
Well, the Naga Experience is Over. The last several days were pretty hectic but our presentation seemed to go over okay, and our report is submitted. And I am now staying in lovely Aninuan, near Puerto Galera in Mindoro. For the next three days I intend to do as little as possible except prepare myself for the reverse culture shock of going back home. (Ah, I have a group of teen girls beside me giggling and reading my post as I type it. Almost as joyful for me as the kids playing shooting games beside me with the volume turned up to max. Maybe they will read this part and stop snooping.)
Anyway notable features of Aninuan include: the typical ensemble of pleasures and annoyances, though relatively few of the latter as it is not near the main tourist area: white sand, warm water, bananas and mangoes, as well as touts and hawkers, and oppressive heat from about 9 to 6, offset a little by the sea breeze. There's also the sound of the waves crashing on the shore which are audible from my bed pillow. Very nice.
But, back to food...
Anyway notable features of Aninuan include: the typical ensemble of pleasures and annoyances, though relatively few of the latter as it is not near the main tourist area: white sand, warm water, bananas and mangoes, as well as touts and hawkers, and oppressive heat from about 9 to 6, offset a little by the sea breeze. There's also the sound of the waves crashing on the shore which are audible from my bed pillow. Very nice.
But, back to food...
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