Filipino Feasts

July 29, 2011

Cagayan de Oro seemed like your typical large town in the Philippines, even though we had not seen much of the country. Better yet, it seemed like your typical large third world town. A little bit crowded, plenty of traffic, trash, a distinct dichotomy between rich and poor. We arrived in time for breakfast, but having slept very little on the overnight bus, we didn’t mind spending most of the day sleeping. Before we did, though, we had a beer. Call us crazy, but it doesn’t count as a breakfast beer if you haven’t gone to sleep yet.

We had arrived in town just in time for their weekly night market/street festival. Most of our activity in Malaysia had been at night markets, so it seemed fitting to hit one up here asap, and this one was supposed to be good. We hit the town a little too early though. All the food stalls were getting ready to set up, firing up the barbecues, and putting liters of beer in the coolers. We were hungry already, so we waited for the first stall to display food and we were on it. We shared one of the Philippines’ signature dishes, sisig and a plate of something that could be described like a Filipino ceviche. Sisig is basically hacked up pork face fried up with hot spices and served on a sizzling plate with an egg cooking on top. It was spicy, greasy and delicious. Obviously. The ceviche was a little lighter and fresh, and a real shock to the palette. The flavor was intense, and we needed more. Unfortunately by the time we were finished we had a limitless supply of food stalls serving all sorts of dishes. The rest of the night was another food party of grilled meats, flavored drinks, fried snacks, and Red Horse beer.

By 9:00 the street party was packed and bands were playing on two different stages. It wasn’t the anything goes wild festival that it had been described, but it was still an admirable effort for a city to put this on twice a week. That is almost a party every three days on average! Forever! When we were full, we took a stroll through the non-food half of the market, as Lise was in need of some new sandals and I was in desperate need of a new shoulder bag as mine had been falling apart since Mali. At a stall full of secondhand bags from developed countries, we both found exactly what we needed. I got a bright orange bag from Korea that had piano keys on the outside pocket and Korean script. I just found out yesterday from Korean travelers in Kolkata that the bag is for some sort of music academy. Makes sense. Lise’s bag was to promote the Japanese bullet train, and had cartoons of the train with cute faces on it.

We headed out of the market, looking for some sort of nightlife. We found an awkward night club with lasers and fog and a big screen with a light show. It was awkward because we were by far the oldest people. We stayed for a bit, but there was nothing there for us. Before turning in for the night, we tried a local karaoke bar. We were all but ignored, and when we did get a beer served to us, we were overcharged. Other than the market, it was not our night.

The next morning we decided to try out Jollibee’s, the Philippines’ original fast food restaurant. The Philippines has more fast food restaurants, both local and foreign, than any country I have seen outside of North America. It is also the only country with McDonalds, in which McDonalds is not the most successful. Jolliibee’s was a little bit creepy. They greeted us at the counter in a big bright smile and a bubbly voiced accent that reminded me of Hawaiian ditz. “Hello, welcome to Jollibee’s,” the girl shrieked superficially. I had thought this greeting was reserved for foreigners, but that was standard, Filipino or not. In fact they would operate with everyone almost entirely in English. Of course, this worked because, unlike in America, the fast food restaurants are popular among the educated upper class, and especially college students. They are also far cleaner and well-managed than those in the states. The chicken sandwiches were nothing too interesting, but a step up from McDonalds in my opinion. I was curious about some of the Filipino sections of their menu, like the silog, which is a choice of meat served with an egg, rice, and unusually a side of gravy. It was actually closer to Hawaiian Loco Moco disassembled than to authentic silog.

The rest of the day we wandered different parts of the town. I wanted to see the river, so we just went in a straight line towards it. As can be typical in developing country cities on rivers, the river was hard to access because it was lined with slums. We went through the narrow paths until we either felt too awkward with all the stares of “what are you doing here” (because we wouldn’t have a good answer) or we hit a dead end. We decided to get a view of the river by crossing the bridge. This made a little more sense.

This half of the city was far more loud and chaotic than the center. We had to constantly be on the lookout to not get hit by one of the barreling jeepneys or zooming little motorbikes. By this time it was about beer:30 so we found a humble little drinking hole with a couple of sleepy looking men smoking cigarettes and ordered a cold one. Of course, it wasn’t actually cold, like normal in the Philippines. We were brought some chunks of ice to melt some freshness into our beer. It makes a lot more sense in these circumstances why everyone drinks the strong, 6.9% alcohol beer. We exchanged small talk with the men hanging around. They were amused with our presence. The only foreigners we had seen in town were a couple of dirty old men with their terribly young Filipina “girlfriends”, and that was during the night market. It seemed that foreigners would be a pretty rare sight in this part of town.

We made a point of not getting to the night market so early the second time around. Basically it was about the same as the first night. I was tempted to try the balut (google it if you don’t know, but Lise said she wouldn’t support me in my attempt. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, so I passed again. Later in the night we stumbled upon a karaoke bar that was friendly and lively. There was barely room for us, but we found a spot towards the back. The girls at the table in front of us mostly had short hair and boyish clothes with a lot of black. I am not one to assume someone’s sexual preference based on these stereotypes, but I can’t say that I didn’t notice that about five or six of these girls did fit that stereotype. It wasn’t long though, that we started to notice some handholding and subtle kissing. I noticed that it wasn’t just them, though, but there were a few other gay couples scattered through the bar. The most interesting thing, though, was that this was not an exclusively lesbian bar by any means. I can honestly say that it was the most affection I have ever seen gay women show in public (including on Capitol Hill and Seattle Storm games), and nobody seemed to take notice. It was something that would become a common thing throughout the Philippines, that it appeared to be one of the most gay tolerant places I have ever been. It was so impressive, especially considering the ignorant and narrow-minded views toward gays I am used to encountering when traveling in developing countries.