Philippines Travel Log 3

Tagaytay

Well, we managed to escape from Manilla, at least briefly.  We caught an aircon bus down to a small, sleepy town called Tagaytay.  We could not really get too far away, since we still had to come back to Manilla to pick up Manius once he finally arrived. 

The Lonely Planet guide billed Tagaytay as a small town with one primary attraction:  “A lake with an island, with a volcano, with a lake, with an island.” Yes, we were intrigued by this as well.  We spent a good time of our trip down there trying to figure out exactly what that meant.

It seems it is pretty self explanatory, and Craptastic to boot.

A small, one-stop-light town, if you consider a round-about a stop light.  It was up on top of a giant cliff which had a long winding road that leads down to a large lake.  A rather tumultous lake with what could be considered surfable waves.  In the middle of this large oceanesque lake is a long island with an old volcano at one end.  Inside the volcano is a crater lake.  In the middle of the crater lake is a small island.  Chad and I greatly debated the possiblity of that tiny island also having a lake, and maybe even a smaller island in that lake, so on and so forth.  It is enough to boggle the minds of greater men than us.  (Chad is sitting next to me and does not like me questioning his mental prowess.  He should start his own blog, because in mine, he is a dumb ass.)

We lost a day due to a nap that raged out of control.  We ate some breakfast, walked around the area a bit and then decided to have a quick nap to prepare for some late night adventures.  The nap began about two pm, at around six pm I woke up and nudged Chad, “This nap is raging out of control.” Chad barely lifted his head up and just said, “I can keep going.” So we did. 

We woke up again about eleven pm.  We lounged about in our beds while watching episodes of the old campy Batman and Robin; I never realized just how bad that show actually was.  It did have Vincent Price and Liberace as guest villains, so it must have been the height of pop culture in it’s day. 

We actually went back to sleep at three am and finally left the room around seven am.  Breakfast was had, and we chalked up that day to poorly contained nappage. 

We decided we would check out this island in a lake, within a volcano, on an island in a lake, but we did not want to use any of the thousand scraggily looking guys on the side of the road holding “boat ride” signs.  We just knew that if we could get down to the lake side there should be a dozen cheap boat operators who will just ferry you to the island, without committing to a day long group tour.  We don’t like group tours, other people suck.  They always want to take pictures of stupid shit and get angry when I take my pants off. 

We even decided to forgo the many offers by Jeepney (bizarre elongated jeeps that pack people in like sardines for fifty cents) drivers and Trike (a small engine motorcycle with a covered cart welded to the side, it can often be seen hauling four to five Filipinos and all their livestock in one single cart, but for me it is a tight single fit) drivers.  We instead opted to walk, because the hand painted sign said it was only five kilometers and it was all down hill.  I am a newly minted fitness expert, so I knew I could walk downhill all day.  I am still aching.

It turns out a hand painted five kilometer sign is not to be trusted: the son of a bitch.  After walking for over an hour steeply downhill, which can be more grueling than you would think, we saw a second hand painted sign which informed us that the lake was only a short four and a half kilometers away. 

We managed to make it to the bottom of the mountain, just shy of two hours.  Once there we were accosted by many of the exact same boat operators.  It seems there really is no cheaper way to get over to the island.  The whole operation has been hijacked by inflation and greedy bastards. 

They wanted nearly fifty dollars (US) to ferry us across the rough, tumultous waters, in small outrigger boats, then we could ride horse back to the crater edge (or walk the “four kilometers”, but we already had seen the local ability to judge distance).  The apparent greatest selling point was that with our purchasing this package, we could have unlimited use of their special cabana.  Which from the much ballihooed photos it appeared to be a small, shitty gazebo. 

Needless to say, we opted to skip the original plan of journeying to the center of the volcano lake island to explore for the presence of an additional lake-island combo.  Instead we began the process of finding a reasonable price for riding back up the mountain.  Surprisingly the price for going back up is much steeper than the price for coming down.  Greedy Bastards.

We ended up paying a trike guy to tote both of us back up this steep moutain, but with much trepidation as to whether his small bike could actually pull off the task.  He amazingly succeeded, but he did so by always driving in the wrong lane, even in blind curves.  I knew that I was going to die in a shitty motorcycle side car on the side of a mountain in a crappy town in a third world country.  I think that is how James Dean died.

We made it to the top, had him drop us off in town, we found what might be the only bar around and got drunk.  Sore of foot, lighter in the pocket book, but very happy to be alive.

Don’t go to Tagaytay.

•   Comments(4)    Posted by killer on 08/16 at 06:59 PM
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Philippines Travel Log 2

Manila in the daytime is much dingier than Manila at night.  Surprisingly there are fewer little kids begging for money, but they are replaced by cabs and motorcycles with side cars begging you to let them to take you someplace.

We cruised around our local area on foot to check out the surrounding scene.  Manius doesn’t arrive for almost a week and I don’t want to spend three hours standing around waiting for him at the airport.  We managed to find a nice hotel that would be known to all cab drivers.  Not for us to stay in, but to sit in the lobby bar, drinking and waiting for Manius to show up, via cab, from the airport.

We found an English style pub, and popped in for a few beers.  Then went back to the room, cleaned up, applied some fresh powder to the balls and hit the town to check out the night life. 

This part of town did not have the little kids begging for money, but it did have a lot of guys trying to sell us what must be the most popular products in the Philippines:  Viagra, Cialis and wrist watches.

Every guy had the exact same sales pitch.  He would quickly walk up on my side and hold out a small blue box and say, “Hey buddy, Viagra?” I would laugh and say, “No thanks, not that old yet.” He would do some slight of hand changing the box to a yellow one saying, “Cialis?” He wanted to make sure he was offering the right brand of sexual enhancement drugs.  I would still say no as we kept walking.  He would pause for a second and then try again.  Blue box, “Viagra?” “NO!” Yellow box, “Cialis?” I would finally exclaim, “I don’t want to buy shit!” Then the other hand would come out with several watches, “You want watch?” At first this seemed like an odd grouping, but when you think about it, once you buy some sexual enhancement drugs, you will need a reliable time piece to determine how long they are working.

After I would decline the watch with great displeasure, he would quickly run around and repeat the entire sales pitch to Chad.  Often during the pitch to Chad a new guy would jump in and start trying to sell to me again.  He was certain that guy number one just did not properly display the boxes or discuss the finer points of his black market watches.

Chad informed me that on his first day he was repeatedly hit up by guys selling sun glasses.  When he went out later wearing his own sunglasses, no one accosted him any further to purchase sunglasses.  My immediate thought was, If having a pair of sunglasses on was the best way to ward off sunglass salesman, it was obvious that the best way to ward of Viagra/Cialis salesman is to walk around with a huge erection. 

This might take some concentration, but I think I can pull it off.

•   Comments(11)    Posted by killer on 08/14 at 12:12 AM
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Philippines Travel Log 1

I’m alive.  It has been a while since I checked in, but I have survived the arduous 27 hour journey from Jackson, MS., to Manila, Philippines.

As is always a wise maneuver, I shall start at the beginning. 

I boarded the plane in Jackson on my way to Detroit with great excitement because my trip was officially underway.  The pilot quickly informed us that Detroit was having heavy “mist” so we would not be able to land until it cleared.  We were asked to get back off the plane, but were repeatedly asked to “stay near the gate for a swift departure.” We did.

After only fifteen minutes of cursing Detroit for screwing my travel agenda again (I have always had horrible luck flying through Detroit) we were asked to re-board.  They then spent the next thirty minutes trying to find the pilots.  They did not appear to heed their own advice.

Luckily, I already had a four hour lay over in Detroit.  I was the only person on the plane not fretting over a missed connection.  I eased back into my seat with my Ipod and prepared for an enjoyable afternoon of watching people have melt downs at the airport while trying to reschedule their flights.  I enjoy other people’s turmoil.

My favorite episode, while sitting at an airport bar across from the airline help desk:
A man was screaming about how he needed to get his “very sick child” home for much needed medical treatment.  Meanwhile, right behind him his child was running in circles screaming, “Daddy, I want ice cream!”

The plane ride from Detroit to Nagoya, Japan was a fifteen hour testament to my endurance.  I had awesome seats: exit row on the bulk head.  I could prop my feet up.  I was in the middle row with four seats.  Next to me was a mother and her two daughters, aged nine and twelve.  The entire plane ride they would wait until I was asleep and wake me up to move my legs so they could get out into the aisle.  Despite the fact that they had an aisle, all their own, on the other side. 

I wanted to kill them all. To make matters worse, the twelve year old was an amateur boxer in her sleep.  She slugged me several times each hour.  I couldn’t get too upset, however, since I can relate to that sort of behavior. 

I landed in Nagoya, had an uneventful hop to Manila, and then spent two hours in line to get through immigration. 

Unfortunately for Chad, who had arrived earlier in the day, he had to spend three hours standing outside with a very chatty cab driver.  The cabby loved to talk about the NBA and was depressed to realize American Chad did not know very much about American basketball. 

The cabby took us to our guest house, we gave him roughly ten dollars for his four hours of work and then did what any traveler worth his salt would do after only two hours of sleep in 28 hours.  We went to get some beer.

We walked around our surrounding blocks checking out the bars.  Every one had loud live music--not what we were presently looking for.  We finally found a dive bar that was relatively quiet and entered to have a “few” beers.

After about four beers each we decided we should check out a more happening locale.  We chose a loud, hopping joint across from our hotel called, “the Bedrock.”

Yes, all the waitress were wearing cave man skirts.  The band was really good.  Musically they didn’t miss a beat and one of the singers did a great version of DMX’s “Ya’ll gonna make me lose my mind.”

Finally at about three am we stumbled across the street, crashed into bed and slept soundly. 

Already drunk. Already in love with the local ladies. And we haven’t even been here for twelve hours yet.

•   Comments(7)    Posted by killer on 08/12 at 08:46 PM
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