January 01, 2005
Luckily in Philippines
When we took off from Leijonakaupunki on 26th in the morning, we didn't have a clue what was happening elsewhere around here.. No news, no papers, no tv, no earth shaking, nothing that could have warned about the disaster. Kaj started getting messages asking if we're ok on Monday morning, "what?.." we didn't have a clue... I forgot my phone at home, so I got to check the missed calls and messages only when we returned home yesterday... Also we saw the pictures and read sories only yesterday.. All the news that we got were from Kaj's friends and family reporting from Finland.. Scary, we also thought of going to Thailand, there were very cheap flights available, but I needed a visa and there was not enough time to organize it. I also insisted that it is boring since we've been there twice.. Aggh.. choices we make in life.. Missed the event of a century, but couldn't be luckier than that.. Funny, Philippines seemed to be so much more dangerous choice, because of all the kidnappings, troubles with muslim and communist rebels, vulcano eruptions, taiphoons.. At this point, it couldn't be a more peaceful place on Earth..
Philippines is an interesting place, very different from other South East Asian countries around here. Thanks to Spanish. Or should I say, damn the Spanish.. They brought catholic religion to Philippines, so the country is very devotedly Christian (except muslim minority in the South). When we took a ferry from Cebu to Dumaguete, they showed emergency information (made in a very high-tech manner) and asked "the angels to guide the captain and the crew of this ship to our destination". Christmas seemed to be a very big thing still (on the 2nd day of Xmas), lots of decorations, lots of poeple participating in the mass..
The architecture is very different in Philippines, at times we thought with Kaj, that you could easily imagine that you're in some Southern American country (I can see now all the latino girls saying, no no, it doesn't look anything like this, but you know, I'm judging this on my knowledge aquired through National Geographic channels and the like :). There's also a strong tradition off guitar music and I'd say that you can notice some spanish influence in the way people look. 400 years of opression (and it probably wasn't much easier than it was in the South America, btw, there's some gold (I mean the mineral) in the ground in Philippines too, no wonder Spanish were around). When they arrived local people had some kind of own script and literacy, but after 400 years not anymore.. Most of the local people's names are also Spanish: Mario, Sandra, etc.. and you hear an ocassional Spanish word, such as "keso" for cheese or "hamon" for ham.. (Btw, Magellan ended his trip around the world in Cebu, he died there after being shot with a poisonous arrow by Lapu Lapu town people.. Maybe Magellan was just bossing around too much? I could imagine..) Yeah, and after all this, over 50 years of Holywood, being an American colony (from about 1900).. Everybody still speeks quite good English here and I'd say that jeepneys (some form of public transportation in the picture below) have quite Americal aesthetics..
Philippines (or at least Cebu city) also stroke us as a much poorer country than Thailand or Malaysia, its not uncommon to see a whole family living and sleeping on some cardboard on the pavement, or completely naked children or slums or children begging for money.. Fortunately we didn't fly to Manila, they say Cebu is completely relaxed compared with Manila..
Our trip was somehow very easy and very well organized. Just hopped on a fast ferry from Cebu to Dumaguete, stayed overnight and continued to our final destination - Apo island (you can see it on the picture on the left, further away in the sea). I don't know, since our holiday was great and very easy, I'd recommend anyone to go to Philippines, but could also be that we're just very lucky to have it so hassle free. There seems to be quite a lot of American tourists or American youngsters, NGO workers, not much of Australians, like everywhere else in South East Asia. Also many many more middle aged (or plain old, pot bellied) men, completely drunk (beer is good and very cheap, have you heard of San Miguel?) hanging out with tiny slender beautiful filipinas. So sad. Philippines try hard to sustain their "independence" from the US, but it seems that there's still a lot of military bases and American presence in the country (they pay the rent for their army bases and substantially contribute to the Philippines national budget..) But of course this has nothing to do with the pot-bellied sex-tourists..
Finally going to Apo island was the best choice that we could ever make. We just found their website on the web and, basically Kaj wanted to go there, so we did, the place looked quite nice on the web.. But when we arrived, we discovered that it was absolutely fantastic! (The boats in Philippines also look very different, they're very narrow and long (and have a very tiny motor) with this kind of spider-like construction for keeping balance on the sea surface. You get completely wet every time you take a boat ride, waves just splashing over, but it is amazingly stable even on quite rough seas (after a boat ride, Kaj said that whenever there's not enough salt in your meal, you just need to lick some off your face.. :)
We got an amazing room with a terrace that wraps around with magnificent sea and sunset views (I could just sit there for hours, looking at the sea, the boatmen, the sun..) The resort appeared to operate in very sustainable manner, there seemed to be a lot of community thinking around the way things were organized. All the staff were from the fishermen village, one of the owners was actually a granddaughter of a man who started the village, we used to refill our plastic bottles with water, the garbage was not dumped on the island (like in many other places, for example, in Thailand), but taken away to the main island (and aparently processed somehow), the resort was arranging scholarships for children that went to study to the city, and so on...
When we started with diving, we were completely amazed how beautiful and alive the coral around the island was. The people of Apo island decided some 20 years ago that they will not do dynamite or cyanid fishing, but protect the reef. They established a marine sanctuary and gave fishing rights only for the people from the village. Aparently there was quite a bit of work of education, working together, guarding and patrolling, but right now the results of this effort is more than obvious. So much of fish everywhere! We heard that they made surveys of the fish quality and the amount of time that the people spend fishing these days and discovered, that it takes significantly less time to get the same catch. So the people actually didn't start fishing more, but just enough, spending less time so that they can do something else on their free time. This probably wouldn't work out in any western country where you always need "more and better" until you completely exhaust the resource that you had.. Probably people don't get very rich on Apo island, but maybe they have a just a bit better and easier life..
And that was true. We somehow felt that people (especially children) were happier on the Apo island than in the Cebu city. It was a very happy place, I would say. And the "family planning" seemed to be working perfectly on the island - I've never seen such hordes of children of about the same age, at any time of the day, messing around on the beach, playing, jumping swimming and laughing most of the time.
I was delighted to see the girls playing the same games (shokinejancias gumyte!!) that we did as children, I don't have any idea how these games spread, but aparently it is truly global! And doesn't involve multinational corporations or massive marketing strategies, what you need is just a piece of rubber string and then at least 3 more good friends (or a tree, or a chair if noone is around). I also tried to befriend this shy kid, Kaj thinks it looks very colonialist, well yes, I'm loading rocks on his "boat" or "truck".. :)
Otherwise the children were very friendly and you couldn't get rid off them once they saw that you have a camera. It was a definitely very good spirited place.
We may be completely spoiled by our gourmet life here in Leijonakaupunki, but food in Philippines wasn't anything spectacular.. Well, maybe we just didn't encounter anything better, but the best we had, I think was french fries.. ha ha.. With ketchup.. (As I understand it gets especially difficult if you don't eat meet, since I eat fish, I had no problems on the island..) As I mentioned, beer is cheap and good, but my margarita had some 80% of tequilla.. yewk..
The last night some guys from the village came to play some (happy versions of) Christmas songs (also feliz navidad.. :) and continued circling around the village, some people joining in to dance, girls screaming, clapping, a true Christmas fiesta.
And the full moon. Kaj took this picture at night, there's some light from the shop, but mostly the moonlight. I was sleeping soundly, so I missed it.. We got up at 5am next morning and continued safely and successfully our trip back to Leijonakaupunki..
Posted by gkligyte at January 1, 2005 06:32 PM