Puerto Part 2

That wasn't the end of the night, I remember! I think it was the guy working for Dive Instructor who invites Potential Diving Mate and I to see the nightlife in Sabang.

I don't remember his name. Only that I had called him up after I had seen a poster about diving. And then when I had met him he said he didn't really do any diving work and was just paid to do marketing, which I suppose means pasting posters around.

Potential Diving Mate says that him and his roommate had transferred from Sabang (he pronounces it sabaang) to White Beach after one night because of the overload in sex tourism. There's nothing that puts me more off, he says.

But I want to have a night out and so he agrees to take me along with Guy working for Dive Instructor.

Sabang is instantly recognisable with its bright lights and neon signs. The resto-bars creep into the sea and the streets are narrow and busy. Posters of travel and tours, bars here and shops there.

We enter what they call a girlie bar and sit ourselves at the bar near the stage. The girls are in bikini tops and mini skirts and sway ever so slightly to the music as they walk up and down and around the stage. I don't know, maybe too many MTV music videos, make me expect more (movement) and I am disappointed not to be seeing more action. Employer of Dive Instructor explains that they're all from Manila. That the locals don't really 'work' and that you can take them upstairs for something like 1,000 pesos. Or was it 500?

[note, the writer returns to this blog entry after about 3 weeks. Googling pictures of Sabang led to the discovery of a live show room... lol. But no, it didn't go further than that because you have to pay to see some real action]

Anyway, I am both sad and curious for the girls. Prostitution is an option I think every woman has thought of at one point (or maybe that's just the loose cannon thinking that is me).

I wonder if they feel ashamed having me there watching them from the front row... I wonder how long they will be in this... and how they got into it in the first place...

Girlie bars have many kinds of girls, I will discover later. Girls who you buy drinks for, girls you watch dance and then girls who work (who might also do either or both of the former duties). Single women (ie. not accompanied by a man) are not allowed to enter girlie bars. They would be competition, I'm guessing.

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When I get back to my adorable bamboo hut of a hotel room, I am greeted with a bill. I pay it and then realise I am out of cash. But I reassure myself that I can just pop into town again tomorrow and get some out of the ATM.

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The next morning however is pouring with rain. And Former Belgian Investment Banker texts me to tell me that the hiking trip is cancelled due to the rain. I figure I should go to town anyway to get cash but when I get there the ATM is offline and I am advised to go to the next town to try the ATMs there.

I ask a trike driver for his price and he says something exhorbitant. I say no thanks and try a jeepney. The driver says, P700 and we leave now. With just 1000 pesos on me, I say no thanks, I'll wait till the jeepney fills.

After about an hour it eventually fills and I only pay something like 50 pesos. The ride takes about an hour and my seat mate is nice enough to lend me his bag to lean on for napping.

I thank him when we get there and get into a trike and ask him to take me to the nearest ATM. We get there and it's offline. He takes me to another. Offline. A third and fourth. Offline, offline, offline!! By this point I'm pouring tears [melodramatic me is trying to express the potential gravity of being broke and stranded] and the poor trike driver doesn't know what to do with me. I also tell him that I need to pee and so he takes me to his house (maybe he needed to pick something up). I meet his wife and family, pee and we're off looking for ATMs again.

This time he takes me to Philippine National Bank and tells me that if any ATM will come back online, it's this one and why don't we wait in the guard house since it's still pouring and I shouldn't get any more wet than I already am.

I agree and the guard makes sardines with rice for all of three of us in that little guard house. We down it with Nescafe instant coffee as he talks to the guard about how sorry he feels for me. I had told him that I had travelled alone and that I wasn't Filipino.

Eventually it stops raining and the PNB ATM goes on and I withdraw my cash. YAY!! Finally.

Trike Driver advises me to buy dry clothes at the nearest shopping mall and that he'll even take me there. I'm not too fussed about being wet as I'd planned to head straight back to White Beach but I'm so touched and charmed by his efforts to take care of me that I agree for him to take me to the mall and so we go shopping, my trike driver and I :)

I choose a grey puff skirt, which I still own and love to this day and a simple black t-shirt. It costs something like P400 in total. And then he says he'll take me to this hotel to rest until the next jeepney back to White Beach. Again I agree to his suggestion and stay at the hotel he takes me to. I pay him P200 for all the driving around and he promises to be back in the evening to take me to the bus stop. But as neither of us have cell phones we rely on his word.

But I'm not able to sleep at all. And so after about 2 hours of trying to, I leave a note at the reception and some money for My Trike Driver and head to the bus stop.

It so happens that there is a jeepney waiting to go. And so I board it and as soon as it fills up, we're on our way back home.

Recollecting Puerto (June 2006)

I used to do order entry (soulless, soulless job) for an American company, in their newly-opened European account. My team leader had so far not given me neither American nor European holidays. So I rioted and they eventually gave me European public holidays. The first one that came along would have been my first long weekend since starting.

[Note: On hiring, when I asked how many days of leave a year I would get, they said, ten and I actually laughed in their faces!... and they still hired me! lol]

So anyway, I ask my cousin to come and she says yes with a hint of foreboding disappointment. I do some research online and decide on Puerto Galera, Batangas. A two-hour bus ride and one hour boat ride away.

Come Friday morning (the buses leave from 6am) and I'm still thinking of whether to go... alone now since the cousin called to decline (i knew it!) because she's already been "sick" twice this week and our grandmother "died" for the last, last-minute leave she took.

... 3am... 4am.. I'd hardly slept. But then I begin to pack. I think, why the hell not, I've been working like a robot. Let me use every free time I get.

It is always that moment before you decide to do anything that's the hardest. The moment before you get up to leave the warm bed to jog or to go to work. The moment you sit down and commit to writing a story or an application or a letter....

But now I've passed it and I'm sneaking out of the box of an apartment I share with my housemate. He called me cold. Said I didn't let him in on my life. But the truth is that I felt more lonely with him than with myself. I'd actually prefer to watch movies alone than with him. Eat out alone, go to work alone (we worked at the same soulless, soulless place).

And so I steal away and catch the bus and the day breaks as I head to Puerto.

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The bus arrives at the port and there are boats ahead that go to the different beach spots of Puerto Galera. I take the boat to White Beach. Internet reviews say that it's the quieter of the beaches and not one for overcrowded places, I decide on White Beach.

I take a bangka of about 12 people. I'm the only person travelling alone but I'm not bothered by it. I feel free. There is pure ocean ahead and I feel free.

An hour later, the boat lands on the shores of White Beach, I hadn't booked a hotel as it seemed, you could find one on arrival. I walk into a compound of bamboo huts and take one of them. For something like 800 pesos you get a quaint little bamboo walled room with a double bed, aircon and shower. If I remember correctly, it was on stilts even because I remember having a little balcony from which I took photos the day I was leaving.

There are women offering braiding on the beach. There are henna painters of 'tatoos'. I get a free tat of the sun in tribal design because I'm the first customer there. Henna-man gets his henna from Dubai. His sister works as an airhostess or something.

I walk the length of the beach and then catch a trike into town. I heard there was a festival there so I want to catch it.

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But there is no festival and no one seems to know anything about it! lol (trust the internet). And so I amble into the nearest resto bar and order a drink. There is a mixed group of men that invite me to join them. Two hungarian sailors who regale about touching whales, one Belgian former investment banker who gave up his businesses to really live life, watch his children grow, one local who seems suspiciously keen to offer me a bike ride around Puerto and the boss of the place whose wife keeps visiting the table with more San Miguel beer.

But after several beers, I take suspicious-acting man's offer to ride his bike and off we go around Puerto.

I would be punished by my boyfriend, if I had one at the time for doing such a thing. But my unsatiable curiosity cum naïveté blinkers all warning signs. And I throw myself head on into potentially compromising situations.

But suspicious-acting man turns out to be less than suspicious. Because after an hour of riding up, down and around the peninsula he takes me back to the resto-bar and that was the end of that.

The group is still there and so I arrange with the former investment banker man to join his hiking group the next morning. I also meet a dive instructor on the way back to my 'hotel' and arrange to go for a class the next day. He invites me and another potential diver to dinner at an Italian resto and after two huge pizzas we retire to the beach front for San Miguel (or is it Red Horse?) beers with a trannie who joins us.

She is very proud of her hormone-induced breasts and invites me to prod them. I poke them and say wow that's nice (because it IS quite an achievement) but they feel rather hard and scare me quite a bit. Two years, she tells me, I take these pills. Ok, I see, that's nice.

Eventually (one slow beer drink for me afterwards) we part ways leaving Trannie to look for new 'friends'.

planning turkana (and maasai wannabes)

i like to believe in 'last frontiers', what may seem like far-flung places that serve as goal posts (until you find another frontier).

turkana is that place for me. and i'm finally planning a trip there for the turkana cultural festival 2010.

on a random note, it appears maasai wannabes are increasing in popularity. i saw one today in java. he had all the get-up of a maasai but gave none of the impression of one... funny huh?

update: 9/6/10: i booked the car. yay!! a prado tx limited for 9,000/- per day.

update 14/6/10: bought two tin jerry cans for 2,600/- each at motor boutique. supposed to buy a fan belt too but didn't know the dimensions.

location headed to: Rift Valley and Eastern, Kenya. 2:23-4:35N, 35:50-36:44E; 360.4 m above sea level.

engrish makes me happy

'kenyan'

i was at the department of immigration today to renew my passport. they sell them by the number of pages. something like 24, 32, 48 page options. with the 48 page passport costing a little over 4,000/-

a temporary permit (valid for one year within the EA community) can be purchased for 300/- with 2 passport pictures (costing 200/- for 4 at the booth behind the tent).

there is a man who checks the validity of your documents... he told a somali-kenyan with his 'son' in front of me to go to KRA to get verified, to which the man, upset, responded;

we're being segregated for being somali!
but i thought you said you were kenyan?
yes, somali-kenyan
sir, do you want to talk or do you want to be served?
i want to be served
then go to kra and get verified
but why didn't you send anybody else there? we are equal (he began to walk away) we are equal...

what is to be kenyan? when somalis, dubbed 'foreigners' are rounded up in eastleigh, when the nubians languish in kibera and we are tribesmen before countrymen?

what does it mean to have a blue passport, if you are required to give references, if privilege and education mean none the more responsibility but the opportunity for more wealth.

we fail each other. by not living up to what it should mean to be kenyan. by not starting out with being honourable.

druv and shruti

i don't know druv and shruti but i am at their engagement as somebody's plus one. i woke up at 7am the day before to be at my neighbour's to have her wrap the saree around me. she said she needed me to come before 8:30 because she leaves for work then. i come at 8. she meets me at the door in her jammies and her poor baby is rubbing his eyes muttering to himself.

i had ironed the 6 metres of saree. i now lay it on the bed in the spare room and don the blouse and petticoat. she then wraps, pleats, pins and smoothes folds. and in less than a few minutes, is done.

(mental note: make her cookies to say thanks)

still half asleep myself, i go back next door and lay as still as i can until 11am, when the affair is supposed to start, only to find out on arrival that i had come a day early. (why don't i check these things?)

so i come back the next day, today, in a different saree that i have wrapped around myself and i'm so proud when the ladies ask me who'd helped me. "oh myself," i say casually, beaming inside.


i love to see sarees. i love the way they choose the design and colour of the blouses. i love how the lighter materials like georgette and satin fall on the body.

i'm the only non-indian there (other than the nannies and one very dark man, whom i had mistaken for being black) and everyone seems to know each other so i remain the happy but quiet observer.

the food is aptly vegetarian. though there really isn't any vegetable at all in it. and they serve it on metal plates. the men doing the serving behind the buffet are quick to warn me what's hot and what isn't. though i like chilli food.

i don't know druv and shruti but i congratulate you and thank you for sharing your day with me.

walking home

when i was about 10 or 11, we were still at the bus stop - more than an hour after it had left, my sisters and i. and for some reason, we decided we would walk home. a 12 year old, myself and an 8 year old.

armed with a prayer and our trusty hockey sticks, we set foot to cover what would take a car some 10-15 mins to drive. but instead of the shorter, more trafficked main road, i convinced them, the longer, more serene route would be better. turns out, it would be the route my dad wouldn't drive up and down frantically lookin for us.

we walked for more than an hour. the hold on our sticks-cum-weapons losing force. and the "ugly face(s)" my older sister advised us to put on (distort/contort the face as distastefully as you can) to deter anyone that might harass were giving way to fatigue.

our father finally caught up with us when we joined the main road again, a stone's throw away from our house - mad as hell - at our folly. "you could have been raped!" he yelled - which is true. but by 6.45 when dark was already setting in, we were just glad to be home.

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i walked home again yesterday. this time, as an adult, stranded. or as an adult deciding to take things into his own hands, or should i say feet. and like forrest gump, i just started walking.

i walked for about an hour and a half before i considered what i might look like. that i must look desperate or out of place because a kindly young man, stopped to offer me a lift and instinctively, i declined. it was only when he drove off that i realised, he might have been sincere. bless him. bless people who do kind gestures.

as the road began to climb on that last stretch home, it hit me - this sadness - the solitude of doing it all on my own. the realisation that no one - in the duration of that walk - was looking for me.