The Philippines - part one, Mabuhay

The first voyage to the rest of the world

Can you recall a specific moment in your life that changed you? A person who you met who opened your mind to a whole new world? An event that warped your perspective? A place that was so packed with amazing things it left a lasting impression?

For me, that place was the string of more than 7,000 tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean- The Philippines.

My first taste of the world beyond Australia was landing at the Manila international airport at 4.15 am. I had bright eyes, despite the fact I had been in transit via Bangkok for 18 hours and still had a long way to go. My sister-in-law, who is philippino, was there to greet me and together we took the most exciting taxi ride of my life. The main highway had no distinct lanes, and yet 7 lanes worth of traffic busseled and honked their way through. Among the cars and taxis were types of vehicles I had never even seen before. I thought we were going to die in a crash for certain and as I held on with white knuckles for dear life, I looked accross at my
sister-in-law who sat calmly laughing at me. "Mabuhay to the Philippines!"

A "jeepney" is a major form of public transport in The Philippines, they were originally made from left over US military jeeps in WWII. 

The sun was just rising when we got to our destination in the centre of the city, and we still had an hour or so to wait for our bus to the sea-port in Batangas. It was in this hour I think that my life, perspectives and values changed significantly. 

I have an image burned into my head, it is an image of what poverty looks like. As the dawn broke, I became aware of how many eerily thin bodies were spread across the streets of Manila. There were people everywhere, hollow faced men slept on dirty torn cardboard boxes, women cradled their newborn children in the gutters, the lucky few had a worn out pedicab, half the size of a toilet cubicle, to take shelter in with their entire families. In Australia, you see the odd homeless person nearby train stations begging for money from commuters, in Manila, there are more homeless people than there are commuters. I realised then exactly how much so many people take for granted, and how fortunate I was in so many ways. 

I also felt a resounding amount of helplessness. I wanted to help these people, I wanted to feed them and clothe them and build them houses, but there were so many. I could help one or two, but to help a few was to neglect the rest. This was the most confronting moment of my life, I will never forget that image and the feelings that came with it.  

Mmmmm chicken intestines on a stick..

As we walked through the streets, people were waking up and the city was coming to life. I watched men thread chicken intestines onto skewers to barbecue and sell, I watched people bathe in the streets. A lady running a little stall grabbed my arm and told me I had beautiful skin. Taken by surprise I said, "no you have beautiful skin. I would love to tan like you!"  The reply I got was that " brown skin is dirty, people with money have white skin." 

This little lady made a valid cultural point. In the Philippines, people who work outside or do not work at all are poor and have darker skin from exposure to the sun, whereas those with higher paying office jobs have lighter skin. They have skin whitening products at the chemists in the Philippines where we have fake tanning products at home. 

In Australia, we all want a nice tan so badly, and I think that comes from the idea that people with money can afford to take vacations and spend leisure time in sunny places getting a nice tan. That's my theory anyway. What we see as beauty is seen as dirty. A classic case of human nature wanting what we can't have.

The day was fully awake by this stage, and we returned to the bus stop to continue our journey. Where an hour ago there were people sleeping on the streets there was now an intense amount of traffic and the street vendors had come out to play. Street vendors swarm anyone who looks like a tourist and attempt to force their products onto you. Products range from imitation designer watches and bags, to cheap jewellery to peanuts. I have a story for a later blog about a feisty gentleman coined  "the peanut man". 

The trick with vendors is not to show any interest at all. Don't even look at their products because they lock on to you, follow you and hassle you. I learnt the hard way when I saw a pearl-style necklace I thought I liked the look of but then changed my mind, the vendor and his friends chased me and surrounded me pushing their jewellery in my face, yelling about discounts. I tried to take refuge on the bus when it came, but they followed me on there too. The bus driver eventually had to kick them off. It was a pretty intense experience. 

Imagine if every time you went shopping and tried a shirt on only to decide it wasn't what you were looking for you got chased down the street by the cashier.. 

Off we went, on the bus to Batangas where i learnt another very important lesson about travelling - do not expect public toilets to have toilet paper! The public toilets in the Philippines have little squirty hose things to clean yourself with, I had no idea what i was supposed to do with it and almost missed my ferry as a result of being stranded in the ladies room.
As a result, it took me about a month or so when i returned to Australia to stop carrying a roll of dunny paper in my handbag when i left the house.

Stormy waters between Batangas and Sabang

The ferry landed in the little dive village Sabang, my home for the next month, and I took my weary head, filled with a completely rewritten view of the world, to bed.

To be continued... 

Open Parachutes

One tip I could give any traveler is to never hold any expectation of a destination.
Go somewhere prepared to indulge in whatever comes your way, never for an expected experience.

People talk about traveling to areas of Australia to experience the traditional aboriginal culture and have come back disappointed because of the indigenous violence and alcoholism.

My expectation of London shot me down, I wanted that "British" feeling which i thought would be awesome. in reality I found that the people were not very nice and Big Ben was not that big. Where as my lack of expectation towards La Paz, Bolivia, literally it was just going to be a stop over between Argentina and Peru, had me loving it because I had hopped off my bus with an open mind.

I first saw the quote in the picture above on a guy's t-shirt. We were sharing a ferry between islands in the Philippines while it was bucketing down rain around us and the boat was rocking so ferociously I forgot was stillness felt like. I landed in Manilla in the midst of a typhoon a year before the devastating Yolanda. Prior to leaving Australia I had been googleing images of my island destination, with excitement I had painted a picture of bright turquoise waters, white sandy beaches and some of the best scuba diving in the world. Mother nature brought me down to earth very quickly. the skies were cloudy, the seas were grey, the storm had washed broken coral all over the beaches and jelly fish swarmed all over the best dive sites.
What I hadn't been able to find out on Google images was how beautiful and accommodating the Philippine people were or how good Adobo Baboy tastes (the national dish of the Philippines, if not then it should be).

I had a similar earthly lesson in Ireland when I traveled across to the west coast to see the the Cliffs of Moher, I was looking forward to seeing something like this:

But instead I got this:

 

 

Go somewhere, indulge in the opportunities that are presented to you and avoid expecting a certain experience. Be content in building your experience as you go and you will find that when you leave, looking back memories will be fonder. I may have had shit luck at the cliffs, but that day I shared a hot meal and some Jameson with a lovely Irish man, and the next day he showed me around his family's farm.

Didn't expect that.

Of dreams

To all my fellow travellers and dreamers, explorers and adventurers. Those who have taken a deep look at the places and people who make up our world and those who have held planet earth in their hands. To those whose memories are filled with strange and magical journeys and whose hearts are heavy with foreign faces.

And especially those who are eager to open their minds to the beauty of travel.

I have one million and one stories from my time on this earth, as many others do, and I often struggle to find ears that have time to listen. Loved ones grow tired of adventurous tales, people from far away lands do not excite them and they do not dream of climbing mountains, exploring deserts on camel back or learning of other cultures as I regularly do.
Our common interests dissolved as I walked into the departure lounge awaiting my first international flight.

I need a space to share my stories, and maybe connect with others who have returned home and felt a similar way. Stories of kind strangers, life lessons, colourful celebrations, personal struggles, harsh confrontations with reality. Stories of treks through history, and foreign languages. Stories of loneliness and stories of friendship. Of border crossings and long bus trips. Of perspective and of food.

But mostly, of dreams. And how they come true.