Leaving the Philippines

August 16, 2011

Lewis, our couch surfing host, had to go to his first day of work. He left early and gave us the key. Now that I had finally tried balut, seen a cockfight and sang lots of karaoke, I felt like we could leave the Philippines. We would be leaving in the afternoon to go to the airport. Unfortunately, though, Lise was feeling as bad as the day before. She had a high fever and intense muscle aches. There wasn’t much she could do but take the paracetemol and get rest. We were so fortunate to have Lewis’s hospitality. It was a complicated situation because we had to arrange a hiding spot for his key. We would leave before he returned from work, but he welcomed us to hang out in his place all day. This was a godsend for Lise. She spent most of the day sleeping, while I hung around the apartment, also relaxing. Unfortunately because we had both gotten sick, we had not gotten to experience much of Manila. I had been excited to see the chaos of this notorious metropolis, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Luckily when was time for us to leave, Lise was feeling a little better, but not great. Getting to the airport would be a major transport adventure. To save money, we were flying from Angeles, an hour north of Manila. To save more money, we would be taking a jeepney, a light rail a bus and a tricycle to get there. I estimated that we could make it there in three hours, which, in reality was optimistic, as we would be doing it around rush hour.

Finding the correct jeepney to get to the light rail was a bit tricky, especially with our enormous backpacks. It took us a lot of walking and asking around, but we eventually found it. It took us to a short walk from the light rail. We were already behind schedule, so the huge crowds around the light rail were frustrating. We climbed a couple flights of stairs and found a huge line to get through security. When we finally got to the front, they took a surprisingly long time going through my backpack, having me take out a lot of stuff, only to repack it all afterward. When we got to the ticket booth, we found that we had come to the wrong side of the station. We had to fight back through the crowds, go down the two flights of stairs, cross the huge boulevard with a concrete barrier in the middle, and climb the two flights of stairs again. Then there was security again. They searched our bags thoroughly before lettings us through.

The crowded light rail was sweaty, and hauling our bags wasn’t making it any easier. When we arrived at our stop, we found ourselves in an overwhelming mess of wide, crowded streets, pedestrian mobs, and a maze of catwalk-like pedestrian overpasses. Somehow we asked directions to the bus station from a woman who was going on the same bus that we wanted, so she invited us to follow her. We walked up stairst onto suspended walking platforms that crossed large intersections and continued above sidewalks. We seemed to twist, turn, ascend and descend so many times that there was no way we could have done this without her. As soon as we reached the station, we saw our bus getting ready to leave. There were three spots left, so we hopped on and continued on our way. Now we could breathe easy.

I was not so excited to pass through Angeles. It is the prostitution capital of the Philippines, with an estimated 10,000 sex workers. It is estimated that before the American military left the country there were about 100,000 women employed in the city. Needless to say, I did not want to linger here. We tried to get a tricycle to take us to the airport, but the drivers near the station were demanding too many pesos. After a walk around some of the streets, we discovered we could take a jeepney to the airport for far cheaper.

At the tiny terminal, we found our check-in counter (the only one open) and stood in line. I had tried the day before to change my baggage allowance online. When I bought the ticket, I had purchased 15 kg worth of bag. I had realized that I would definitely need more. Unfortunately, it seemed difficult or maybe impossible to adjust this on the website. When my bag was weighed, it came out to 23 kg (50 lbs.). I was told that would be an additional $75. I explained that I had tried to change it online, and she said that changing online was impossible (obviously so you would get grossly overcharged at the counter). Lise took over, arguing assertively that this did not make any sense, and I should only have to pay the difference that I would have paid online (about $7). Perhaps it was from the leftover stress from our journey to the airport, but Lise got impressively angry, leaving the attendant unsure of what to do. So we took the opportunity to start unloading my bag, and moving my heaviest items into Lise’s bag and my carryon. The attendant saw that this was going to be a bigger hassle than she wanted to deal with and the line behind us was growing. She gave in and said to repack my bag and send it through, warning me that next time I needed to remember to buy my bag online next time.

Next we had to pay an unexpected “airport fee” of 750 pesos (close to $20). We had already gotten rid of most of our pesos and there was no ATM at the airport, so we tried our luck making a big angry scene at this booth as well, since we had never heard of this (and usually this fee is included in the ticket prices). The man in charge of collecting the money would not budge. He never got rude (although we may have crossed the line), he just apologized and smiled, saying we could change US dollars nearby. We claimed not to have any dollars, but he still wouldn’t give us a break. We were forced to go find the money changer. The rate was not good, nor was it negotiable. I changed enough for both of us to get through. Somehow I had accumulated handfuls of peso coins, and used this opportunity of bitterness to unload all of them with the man at the “airport fee” booth. As he counted the pile of coins, he seemed to actually think it was kind of funny.

The waiting area was predictably appalling. As we were going between two of the world’s major sex industries, Manila and Bangkok, we were surrounded by some of the world’s sleaziest. Lise was the only (seriously, the only) white female taking this flight. About two thirds of the people were white men (most middle-aged or older and overweight) while the other third were young (at least half the age of most of the men) Asian women on the arm of one of the men. Some men were traveling with multiple women. Most of the foreigners we had seen in the Philippines were of this sort, but seeing them in such volume in an enclosed space was truly depressing. At one point I saw what was most certainly a father-son sex tourism vacation. The father in his fifties had a girl in her twenties, while the son, in his twenties had a girl that I hope was in her twenties. I ignorantly wondered why so many of the men shaved their heads, while Lise pointed out that it was to seem younger. They all were yearning for a time when they were younger and being free and wild was more accepted. Most of them had tattoos and a large gut, a symbol of their hedonistic consumption. Everyone acted like it was all normal, while Lise and I felt awkward. As much as we had avoided traditional backpacker hangouts, we actually looked forward to getting to Bangkok, where tourists of all varieties flock, and the sex tourism, while still huge, tends dissolves into the mix.

A Manila Hospital Tour

Makati Medical Center, I believe, is the Philippines’ finest medical facility. I was caught off guard, as my introduction to a notoriously chaotic city was a hospital that on the surface appeared to possess as many western luxuries as you would get in an airport. There was wi-fi, Burger King, filtered water in the taps, comfortable waiting rooms and even a Seattle’s Best Coffee. It was nearly the first time we saw westerners that weren’t sex tourists.

We made our way to the lab, where I would get tested for malaria and Dengue fever. Maybe the proper procedure should have been to go to a doctor first and follow his instructions, but I was almost certain it was malaria, and if it wasn’t then I probably didn’t have much to worry about. When my number was called, I explained that I wanted to get a malaria test and a Dengue test. When they told me that for the two tests, it would cost me about $80, I reconsidered the Dengue test. I decided I would start with the $20 malaria test, and go from there. By the way, a malaria test at a hospital in Mali cost about $3, so I felt like I was getting a little ripped off for the five minute procedure.

After the nurse drew my blood, I asked her how long the results would take. She said that it took eight hours, and since they close at 5 PM, I would have to come back the next day. When I brought the news of the long wait to Lise, she was outraged. After all, it is malaria, not a head cold. She went. She went to the counter, bypassing the whole number system, and demanded to know why it would take so long to process my test results. (In Mali the results took about 30 minutes to an hour). She was told that I could get it processed in two hours if we paid an extra 50%. This seemed like a completely ludicrous way of conducting the business of medicine, but we didn’t have much choice. We anted up, and sat in for the wait.

I was still feeling somewhat feverish when I got my results. I was a little disappointed to find that I did not test positive for malaria, since now I didn’t know what was wrong with me and there was still a possibility of Dengue, which is no picnic either. I couldn’t afford the expensive test her, so we figured out where the public hospital was and got a taxi. It felt awkward to be taking taxis when I knew we could probably figure our way around with the public transit system, but Lise insisted this wasn’t the time to be penny-pinching.

Before we even reached the ER at Manila’s largest public hospital, we could feel the chaos. Family’s were rushing in or hobbling out around us as we approached. Outside the doors of the ER, dozens of people were sitting around at various stages of treatment. Some had bandaged wounds, while others were still waiting to be attended to. Sickness hung in the air. As crowded and overwhelming as it was, we were given attention almost immediately. As a young doctor came to ask me some questions, a body wrapped in gauze was carried out the front door next to us. A young nurse joined in and I was answering rapid-fire questions from two directions. They were collecting information about my symptoms while another person came to take the details about my name, address, etc. Somebody also seemed to be gathering information from Lise. I was kind of in a daze, trying to figure out which parts of my body were in the most pain, and whether I had experienced any congestion in my sinuses. Somebody came with a device to check my blood pressure, but did not use it for this purpose. They wrapped it around my arm extra tight, pumped it up as high as it would go and left it there for about five minutes. This is a quick and dirty way of checking for Dengue, I would find out. After taking off the device and examining my skin for small bumps, they determined that I probably didn’t have Dengue. In the end, there were probably four people, all medical students, working with us. The whole thing took about ten minutes. They told us that because my condition was too serious and they were (as always) so overwhelmed with patients that we would have to go to a different hospital. I didn’t mind this at all. This hospital was inundated ­with the poor masses that couldn’t afford better treatment. As much as I was on a budget, I knew that if I had stayed there I would have been taking the spot of someone in much more need than me.

So now, still hauling around ever-growing backpacks, we asked around for directions to another hospital. After a twenty minute walk, we arrived in the afternoon heat to a hospital that was somewhere between the opulence of the first hospital and the squalor of the public hospital. After speaking with a couple different nurses and doctors, they seemed unsure of what might be my problem. They insisted that I get a few tests done, including the Dengue test. They sampled my blood and urine, and then it was a matter of waiting for an hour. Although this hospital was not nearly as modern as the first one, it was far more personal and I felt the care seemed adequate.

I was actually kind of nervous when the nurse came to give me my diagnosis. I had expected the tests to be inconclusive, but they weren’t. I did not have dengue, but I did have a urinary tract infection. That was unexpected, as I didn’t know that would give me days of fever and muscle aches. They agreed it was odd too, since I hadn’t experienced any of the typical symptoms of this. Apparently it can be common for westerners when they come to hot and humid climates, especially if they are chronically dehydrated. They prescribed me some antibiotics, I paid my bill ($77? Not too bad) and sent me on my way.

Now we were on the hunt for a hotel room. We were close enough to the neighborhood with most of the cheap hotels to walk there. We ended up settling for a sleazy place with thin walls and dirty shared bathrooms at an unimpressive price. The neighborhood, being a major area for tourists, was less modest than what we were used to with a healthy red light feel. Our hotel was on the third floor of a building, and walking up the stairs we passed a girly bar advertising with skanky portraits of their lineup of dancers. Outside, there were swanky malls, western restaurants, a variety of bars, alongside tacky, neon-laden strip joints, thinly veiled brothels and over-sized karaoke clubs.

In the evening, we wandered around in search of the Philippines that we had grown to enjoy after dark, but it was nowhere to be found. The karaoke bars were big and showy, where customers would rent a private karaoke room and buy expensive cocktails. Basic eateries, food stalls and a humble, locally made videoke machine were nowhere to be found. We walked through the neon jungle for an hour, considering a splurge on Korean BBQ or Middle Eastern food. Everything was just too expensive, though. We finally found a guy with a food cart attached to a motorcycle. We bought some cheap noodles from him and headed in from our lackluster night in our lustrous neighborhood. On the way back, scantily clads from the strip joints called out to us from the entrances, trying to get us to come inside, while the occasional lady boy made passes at us.

The next morning, Lise was feeling in bad shape. She had a fever and muscle aches. So we packed our bags, checked out, and walked back to the hospital. Now that we had been to three of Manila’s hospitals, we knew the routine. After spending most of the day at the hospital, and going through various tests, it turned out that she didn’t have anything. The doctor couldn’t really explain what was giving her the symptoms, so he just gave her some paracetemol and told her to get some rest.

That evening we met up with Lewis, our couch surfing host from England. He was spending a few months in Manila for an internship with Unilever. He lived in a neighborhood much more of our taste than where we had stayed the night before. Plus, his three-bedroom apartment was far more comfortable than most any hotel room we had stayed in on the trip.

One of my major impressions of many British people, even the traveler types, is that they are exceptionally proper. Lewis was no exception. He dressed well, kept his shoes shined and his apartment tidy. Although we knew we were dirty, he still made us feel welcome. More importantly though was that beneath our contrasting appearances, we all had a similar thirst for adventures and rugged traveling.

He was brand new in the city as well, so when he was showing us around his neighborhood, he was still getting to know it. He showed us a place where he had enjoyed dinner the night before. It was a humble, hole in the wall eatery with a few plastic tables and chairs in front. They specialized in “silog”, the dish of rice, fried egg and some variety of meat. We chose our respective “silog”. I chose the classic, tapsilog. I had had this a couple times before, and was usually under whelmed. This time, though, something was different, and I was excited about Filipino food once again. The biggest difference was in the quality and rich flavor of the meat. Something about the simplicity of the rice and egg alongside it was enjoyable as well.

We wandered through various streets on the way back, getting a feel for the neighborhood that, for a big city, felt like a small village-like community. Many people were out in the streets, enjoying life and being friendly with each other. Just as we decided to find a beer to take back to the apartment, the rain came without warning. It poured so strongly that it didn’t make much sense to try to stay protected by storefront awnings. Five seconds of exposure would have you soaked to the bone.

After getting the beer, we passed a balut vendor. Now, balut has become quite famous as one of the world’s most…unique foods. For those that don’t know, it is a hard-boiled fertilized egg with a partially developed chicken fetus inside. Over the years I have built a decent resume of strange foods consumed. Bugs, bush meats, offal, unexpectedly fermented items, etc. This was a new step, though. For weeks I had been avoiding one of the biggest items on my to-do list in the Philippines. Knowing that there might be tiny bones or feathers in that little egg would be bad, but the juice that needed to be slurped out of the egg first truly terrified me. Worse yet, Lise said she would not join me on this culinary quest. I asked Lewis if he had ever tried balut. He casually said that he had the last time he was in the Philippines a year prior, and it wasn’t so bad. He was very casual about it and said he would try it again. I asked him about the juice that floats at the top. He said to think of it as chicken soup broth. Lise continued along as we walked up to the balut vendor. She didn’t want to see or hear it. A Filipino man had also arrived to have a snack, so we followed his lead. We punctured the top of the shell, and squeezed in a bit of the sauce that it came with. We knocked the egg back and sucked out the hot juice from the hole. He had been right. The juice was like a rich chicken broth. That was the easy part. Now we had to peel the rest of the shell off to reveal the horrific insides. I tried not to look (or think about) that recognizable shape of a baby chicken as I bit into it. There wasn’t much of a crunch, but it definitely did not have the uniform consistency of a hard-boiled egg. We chowed it down to the bottom, which was an inedible lump of cartilage. In the end, the flavor, to me, did not seem too far off than a regular boiled egg. It wasn’t bad at all, but the different texture would be something to get used to.

A Glorious Return to the Rooftop Bus Ride

I felt a little disoriented when I heard a knock on our door at 7 AM. It took a moment for me to remember that I was in a military barracks and that the night before had been so intense. I rolled out of bed, discovering that we were being summoned for breakfast.

Sergeant Jovie was a Seventh day Adventist, and therefore vegetarian. He seemed to be imposing his diet on his troops. He said that he only ate bananas and, I think, vegetables. Perhaps it was just bananas. The table outside the barracks by the river was set with a plate piled high with bananas and some scrambled eggs mixed with vegetables. The chief sat down with us and plowed through a mess of bananas while we ate. He said that there was an officer that would be passing by soon that could drop us off in the next town. Things were just getting better and better. First we got a free night’s stay, now we were getting free breakfast and a free ride to town. More importantly we had found out that there was a big festival in the city of Catbalogan, our destination. It was the “Samar Days Festival” (not the Summer Days Festival), and it was the biggest festival in the city all year.

The officer was a friendly chap and seemed to be glad to have company for the ride. He offered to help us find a place to stay. He took us to a hotel that we told him was out of our price range. We found out why he insisted on taking us there anyway: his wife is the receptionist and he wanted to say hello to her. We explained that we usually go for the cheapest place possible, so he found us a place that was cheaper than any place we knew of.

Although we were still exhausted, we felt the need to get into the town and see the festivities. We found the parade, and, well, it was a parade. High school marching bands, dancers in cultural costumes, and at least one mullet passed before crowds of spectators.

Please note the sponsor of the parade: Colt 45

I was on the mullet hunt

Later that day, while we were foraging for snacks at the festival, Lise, as usual, predicted that the rain was on the way. We found a place to sit in a covered area and within minutes, the city was getting drenched. It didn’t last long, so when it was finished, we continued our way around the crowded streets. The city of Catbalogan was unremarkable, but the people seemed different than in other places. For whatever reason, everyone reacted very strongly to our presence. It seemed as if most people had never seen a foreigner in town. In our 24 hours in the town, we didn’t see any other foreigners either. We got plenty of stares and it always seemed that people were pointing at us and talking about us. We were a little on edge anyway, so maybe we were creating feeling in our heads, although we were both noticing it. Suddenly it seemed that we didn’t feel like trusting anyone around us.

We couldn’t really get too into the festivities, for whatever reason. The live music seemed uninteresting, the food was just an assortment of various fried doughs and processed meats on sticks. At one point we tried to find a quiet place to sit away from the chaos, but found ourselves among a bunch of drunken teenagers giving us devious glances.

By evening we had had trouble getting into the groove of this big festival, and ended up at our usual spot: the karaoke bar. The crowd of mostly middle-aged men were a little too stone-faced for us to feel welcome, but we sat down, ordered our liter of Red Horse and grabbed the karaoke book anyway.

We cheered loudly for the singers we liked, and after Lise’s rendition of White Christmas, the crowd seemed to warm to us a little. When I sang my karaoke classic, “King of the Road”, and I got to the line, “I ain’t got no cigarettes,” there were several people that actually pulled cigarettes out and started waving them around for me. It turned into a pretty good karaoke night, although this middle aged crowd was definitely not matching our silliness. They sang the classics and some of them sang them well. One of the men, who had already made an impression with his quality voice, stood up to sing, and I was shocked at the song choice. There is an obscure social phenomenon in the Philippines known as “The My Way Killings”. Apparently in the last decade there have been a remarkable number of people that have been shot and killed some time in the night after singing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”. The reasons, supposedly, have something to do with the machismo tone of the song rubbing other men the wrong way. Either that, or possibly that the victim has disgraced the popular song by singing it so poorly. Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have banned the singing of the song. Apparently, though, this bar didn’t get the memo and this older gentleman with the smooth voice was diving into the most feared karaoke song in Asia. I am not a huge fan of the song itself, but this guy could croon. He received a big applause, and, as long as we were there, no bullets.

By this time in our trip, we had to set our sights on Manila. Our visa was wearing thin and we still had a long way to the capital. The day after the festival, I was feeling feverish and achy, but we moved on anyway. We weren’t able to get a bus to the next town, Calbayog, until the afternoon. We had wanted to get all the way to Allen, on the northern tip of the island, but we were too slow.

We arrived in Calbayog in a downpour just as the sun was setting. Lise fixed her trash bag onto her backpack for protection and I strapped my tarp around my pack with bungee cords. We set off looking for a place to stay. A few people pointed us in different directions with suggestions for cheap hotels. They usually assumed that our definition of “cheap” was a lot different than theirs, and we would find ourselves at the step of modern and clean hotels that were out of our budget. We found a place that was about $12 for a double. It was more than we would like to pay, so Lise waited there with the packs while I ventured around town in search of something cheaper. Thirty minutes later, I came back empty-handed and we settled for this place after negotiating the price down to $10.

Calbayog was about as uninspiring as it could get in the Philippines. A town too big for any of the rural charms, but too small for anything too interesting. There were plenty of food stalls serving burgers, fried chicken, and fried other things. The fried chicken looked good but was surprisingly expensive. We found one stall that had cheaper drumsticks then all the rest. We bought a couple, but after a couple bites, I realized why these “drumsticks” were so cheap: they were fried chicken necks. Not much meat, just a lot of fried batter, gristle and cartilage.

We explored the town and found ourselves crossing a bridge leading away from the town over a filthy river. We heard the telltale moans of nearby karaoke. The main part of town didn’t seem to have much nightlife, so we continued across the bridge toward a couple of dim lights at the edge of a dark alley. The alley was damp and dark figures lurked in the shadows. Even I was wondering if this would be a worthy place to sit down for a beer. When we were within sight of the people in the alley, we were waved in, so we scooted in. There was a tiny turo turo café with empty food pans. A young girl looked at us nervously and we asked if they had beer. She went and got us a big bottle of Red Horse. A young guy, presumably the girl’s brother was hanging out and watching TV. He was slender and wearing clothes that were just this side of women’s clothing. He moved very flamboyantly and when he came to have small talk with us, his demeanor reminded me of the lady boys from Camiguin. Within a few minutes, he was joined by a friend with a beer. As they shared the beer, I noticed that these two young men could not have looked more different. The friend had tattoos all over his arm, a goatee, sunglasses and a tank top. He made the other guy look downright dainty. I was judging them based on appearances, but it made me want to know more about their friendship. They seemed so interesting.

Before long we found ourselves next door in one of the most ramshackle karaoke pubs we had seen. The karaoke machine was in a pretty sorry state. The screen was black and white, the speakers crackled and the mic had a bad connection, leaving your voice cutting in and out if you didn’t handle the cord correctly. The bathroom (which should have taken the British term Water Closet, as it was pretty much a closet with a hole in the ground) was right next to the karaoke machine, and the door did not lock or latch and had a couple of holes in it. The few tables were crowded into the tiny space and the rowdy yelling occasionally drowned out the singers. It was all worth it, though, when our effeminate friend from the café next door stood up to perform. When he opened his mouth to sing “You’re Just Too Good to be True”, Lise and I were both shocked. He had a strong, deep voice, with which he gave a commanding performance. Everyone there loved it. I admired the fact that the macho, tough guys in the joint could cheer for their queer friend giving a great performance. He was probably the best karaoke singer I had heard in the Philippines. I am certain that he needs to get out of Calbayog and find the nearest audition for Filipino Idol ASAP.

The next morning my fever and muscle aches were back with a vengeance. I wanted to brush it off, but Lise insisted that I should get tested for malaria, since I was experiencing two of the main symptoms. We found the local hospital, and said I wanted to get tested for malaria and they said I would have to wait until Monday (it was Saturday), because I would have to buy a test at the pharmacy, which was closed for the weekend. So that was it; we would head straight for Manila. From Calbayog that would be 16 hours by jeepney, boat and bus, not including wait times. We walked out of town to the bus station, and found the first jeepney leaving to go north. It took a while for it to fill, but when it did, we decided we preferred to be riding on the top. As expected, this was far better. We had fabulous views, natural A/C and more leg room. It was the way the Gods are meant to travel.

We got to the port in Allen in the late afternoon and my fever was completely gone. The rooftop ride seemed to have been a perfect remedy. The port area was littered with behemoth modern buses. Various men tried to coax us to their vehicles, so we took a quick tour to see what our options were. All the buses seemed about the same, as did the prices. We chose one of the buses that had a sign in the window reading “Free Meal”. Of course, we didn’t expect much, but we figured it would be a nice bonus.

We were all waiting for the ferry, and nobody seemed to know when it might leave. The wait was only an hour and as we waited aboard the boat, we hung out on the rails and watched as kids on the docks below dove into the water for coins that the passengers were throwing to them. Much later, I would find out that these children belong to a unique Muslim community that can be found in port towns throughout the Philippines. They live on the fringes of society and are most known for their showmanship at ports with their diving abilities.

We reached the island of Luzon by evening, and loaded into our bus to head north for another 12 hours to Manila. Not long after getting into the gratuitously air conditioned bus, I started feeling worse. The fever was creeping back as were the muscle aches. By 2 AM I was wearing my jacket, my only piece of warm clothing, and fully immersed in my sleeping bag with the drawstring cinched. I was feeling awful and the bumpy ride and A/C wasn’t helping. I was almost certain at this point that I had had malaria. I felt like Jonathan had looked when I had seen him with it months before. I also followed the same pattern of having it come on slowly, seem to leave, and then attack with full force. I was fully committed to Lise’s plan of getting right to a hospital as soon as we reached Manila, even if that meant taking a taxi.

At 3 AM I was in a groggy state when the bus stopped. I couldn’t sleep, but I wasn’t fully aware either. Somebody was making confusing motions at us from the front of the bus. Lise went to investigate. When she got back, she handed me a small packet of crackers and a very artificial cup of orange juice in a pudding cup type of container. I was confused and asked her what this was. She was obviously annoyed as she explained that this was our “free meal”. As much pain as I was in, I couldn’t help but laugh. I wasn’t in any condition to eat anything anyway.

Our early morning arrival to the mega city of Manila was less than momentous. In fact, for all that we had heard of the size, the congestion, the crowds, the hustlers, etc., it seemed pretty mild by world standards. However , this could easily be because of the particular part of town we landed in, but it still did not overwhelm us like we had expected. We didn’t have to fight too hard to get into a taxi with a meter and get to the only hospital we knew the name of.

Filipino Bus Holdup

Sometimes I wonder how universal certain aspects of our methods of communication and expressions of emotion are. For example, why does the whole world seem to understand smiling as meaning, more or less, the same thing? Does everyone use kisses and hugs to show affection? I am almost certain the answer to that one is a no. Handshakes as a form of greeting? That is far from a standard greeting around the world. Our world is filled with a variety of cheek kissing and praying hands used to say hello.

But what about things that are only relevant in more contemporary scenarios? How universally understood is gun etiquette? Is it only because of movies that I know to put my hands up when the gun is in my face? Do the Filipinos know why my hands are up? Have they been watching the same movies? Am I confusing them? Nobody else has their hands up. Except of course for Lise, who apparently has watched the same movies. Now the trigger has been pulled, and someone is shot. Is this because their hands were not up? I am not privy to the meaning of the language going on around me, so I can’t know. I leave my hands up.

***

8/10/2011

The bus ride started like any other. We left Tacloban on the island of Leyte in the early evening, crossed the bridge to the island of Samar and we were on our way to the city of Catbalogan. The bus was quite full, but plugging along as usual on the windy roads, stopping to drop folks off, picking others up. As usual, Lise and I had snagged the bench seat in the very back with a few others. I struggled to get the window closed. It was jerry rigged with a puzzle of random wires and clips. It took me several tries to finally get it down to keep out the cold, dusty air.

When seats opened up in front of us, the men sitting next to us moved into them. I took this opportunity to pull out my laptop. I have the Philippines guide book on my computer, so I was using it to look at the map of Catbalogan and get an idea of where the cheapest hotels would be. Pulling out this kind of flashy device isn’t my typical style on a cheap bus in a poor country, but I didn’t want to be completely lost when we arrived.

I heard Lise whispering my name. It had a sense of urgency to it, but it seemed odd to hear her whisper. I looked over at her and she was staring in front of her, nodding for me to look. It took a moment for my brain to believe what my eyes were telling it. I switched into a dream like state, as my mind seemed to race and freeze up at the same time. The man who had been sitting next to me, and had moved to the seat in front of me was now standing up in the aisle. He had a gun in his hand. It was pointed at the head of a man sitting two seats in front of Lise. He clutched his young boy close to him as he scrambled to produce his wallet. I slowly shut my laptop. Part of my mind starts to try to remember the kinds of things I had always imagined myself doing in this situation. Hero stuff, escape stuff, whatever. All of this, however, was thrown out the window when I noticed he was not the only gunmen. There was another man with a handgun trying to take a woman’s purse. In the front of the bus there was a man with a shotgun. The woman with the purse was struggling with the man, refusing to hand over her purse. Suddenly it flew in the air, coins and contents fluttering about and crashing on the floor.

The bus stopped.

Halfway up the bus one of the men had a gun pointed at two women. I could only see their motionless silhouettes as the orange flash bursted from the gun. Everything went completely silent and the women remained motionless. Before I could figure out what was going on, one of the gunmen had approached us. Lise had placed her hand bag in an easily accessible place. The gunmen kept the gun pointed at her as he nervously edged towards her. He stretched out his arm slowly towards the bag, plucking it up quickly and pulling back in the same manner that one would pick up a wedding ring out of a snake cage. For a man with a gun, his hesitancy surprised me. Then the he came to me, the gun pointed at my forehead. My hands, of course, were in the air. He spoke to me in a language that I am not even sure was Tagalog, but instead a local dialect. He reached for the Macbook still sitting in my lap. He looked at me as if to ask permission to pick it up. The look in my eyes told him that the gun was permission enough. He lifted the laptop off my lap, held it up high, examined it each side of it with a perplexed look, then handed it back to me. I left my hands up so he set it in my lap. He said something in his language, which I did not understand. He repeated it then turned back around.

In most holdup situations the obvious rule is that you give them what they want and you won’t get hurt. I thought back to all the stories of banditry I had heard about in Central America. Awful stories where they will randomly kill people on the bus to scare everyone, or even execute rival gang members in sight of everyone. And there is no doubt they will take every bit of everyone’s belongings. I didn’t know how it worked in the Philippines, but they had already fired one round at a woman. I didn’t want to be a random victim.

I looked over at Lise. Like me, she still had her hands up. She looked nervous but still. I got her eye contact and nodded toward the window, asking if she would follow me out. She nodded in agreement.

I move my hands toward the window. That puzzle of a window that wouldn’t come down. Now I was hoping to discreetly get it back up, and get it to stay. I pushed out a piece of wire, and slowly slid the window up. Just as I heard it click into place, a miracle in itself, I saw the man with the shotgun notice me, and swing his cannon around at me. My hands went back up.

A passenger in the front of the bus shouted.

The man with the shotgun turned back around. The three gunmen descended on the man who had shouted, reigning blows on him with the butts of their gun. Then the guns started firing. We jumped behind the seats. I looked over at Lise, but a man from somewhere in the back of the bus was now squeezed between us, hiding behind the seats with us. Lise climbed behind him towards me. As the shots continued, I pointed at the window, and she agreed.

I thought it would be more complicated, but I just put my body to the window and somehow landed on my feet. I couldn’t tell you now if I went head or feet first.

I turned around to look for Lise coming out of the window. Before I saw her in the window, I heard more gunshots, only now they were outside of the bus. I got the feeling that more people were fleeing the bus, and now they were punishing us for our mistake.

I turned and ran as a couple more shots fired. I ran about ten meters into the 4 foot tall grass and dove inside of it.

Just as I landed, I saw the bus speed off suddenly. Everything got quiet. Lise! Lise must not have made it off the bus. I assumed that all the robbers were out of the bus, but at this point I did not even know how many there were. Perhaps some of them had been waiting for the robbers here and this is why there seemed to be people shooting people inside and outside of the bus.

Either way, I assumed that at least Lise might be safer on the bus. At least there was a chance there were no thieves where she was. I was certain they were around where I was, and almost sure that if they saw me they would shoot me.

I felt that they might not have seen me, so I just had to breathe calmly and stay quiet. As my breathing got heavier, either from being nervous or my short sprint, I noticed something flat and hard against my chest. My Macbook. Although I don’t remember this, it seems that it was easier for me to escape the bus with my laptop rather than take it off my lap. I think of it as one of the more bizarre things I have done under pressure.

I had never thought about death on this level before. For a few moments, I was forced to ponder those last minute details regarding your life and your afterlife. These thoughts flashed in my mind between my contemplation of what I needed to do now. Surely I should stay put. At least an hour, perhaps all night if I hear any other action. The thieves had, for whatever reason, abandoned the bus here. Perhaps they were wandering the road to the next place they could flag another bus and escape. Or maybe they too would wait until morning to make their way home. Should I try to flag down the next vehicle? Go to a village? No, not yet. Definitely stay put for a while.

“Joey?!”

As soon as I heard her voice, all my previous decisions went out the window. I poked my head out of the grass.

“Lise!?”

I didn’t hear an immediate response. I stood up and looked around. Everything was quiet and still. The road, the trees, the night, had completely forgotten our gun battle and panic.

“Lise!?”

I ran out into the street, and finally heard her respond with my name again. I ran after it, and followed it over the guardrail and into a deep ditch on the other side. She was standing in a gravel turn out that was hidden from the view of the road. We hugged and made sure we were each ok. I didn’t feel that our situation had improved, but it was so much easier to deal with it with her right there. We started to explain to each other what happened. As we started, though, I saw the glint of an approaching vehicle. I knew that if the robbers were still around, and did in fact mean us any harm, that we had just revealed ourselves, so we had to go after this vehicle and hope they stop for us.

It was a minivan bus. They go on the same routes as vans, but they don’t stop to pick people up, thus making a faster trip. We stood in the middle of their lane, flailed our arms around and shouted. They did not make an exception for us, but simply swerved around us frantically. I turned around to see in their headlights, about 50 meters in front of us, two men also flailing about trying to get a ride. I knew those had to be either the robbers, or perhaps other passengers that had jumped off. We didn’t want to take a risk, so we ran the opposite direction, where we had noticed a street light.

Just around the bend we could see the few dim lamps at the entrance of a tiny village. We also saw a light pointed straight at us in the middle of the road. As we got closer, we saw that it was a flashlight. At this point we were both in the mindset not to trust anyone. I saw the glint of a machete in the man’s right hand. It alarmed me at first, but then I felt relieved that it wasn’t a gun. It didn’t ease me, though, when he came towards me with the mammoth knife, raising it up.

He rattled off angry sentences in his local dialect as he waved the machete around. When we heard the word “holdup”, we put up our hands up and displayed that we were the victims, and that we didn’t have any guns.

The man was just an old guy on the edge of town, taking care to protect his family and home from whoever had been responsible for the gunshots he had just heard. A few people were hanging around us now. We didn’t know where they had come from and the old man didn’t seem to certain of anyone as he waved the machete around. Lise noticed one of the men reach deep into his shorts pocket. She waited for the gun to come out, but it never did.

Eventually a large crowd formed. They all seemed to be talking at once, though we couldn’t understand them. Eventually we could understand that some of them were asking if we spoke Tagalog, the national language. Apparently only some of them could. We told them English is all we spoke, so someone went running for the town English speaker. They told us that we would meet them in the Captain’s House. We were led there by dozens of children, a gaggle of teenagers and a sprinkling of adults.

As we walked I started to find out about what had happened to Lise. She had indeed followed me out of the bus, but hadn’t made it out by the time I started running from the shots. She basically landed as they were shooting, and had not seen where I had gone. She turned around, and saw, what she thought was me, under the bus, behind the wheel. She moved towards the figure, but then the bus started driving away, revealing that it was not me, and the man ran away. She continued to run and jump over the guardrail. She thought maybe I had somehow jumped back on the bus.

As we waited for the English speakers, we realized, probably because someone pointed it out, that we were barefoot. We usually take our sandals off while on the bus, and this time was no different. We had been running around this whole time barefoot and hadn’t even noticed.

The people in the village surrounded us in the community building/Captain’s house (whatever it was), just staring and giggling. They brought us some water. Lise got worried because had hit her head on the way out the window and also felt pain in her back. They asked us to sign the guestbook. I wasn’t sure if this was to record our incident, or if they were excited to have us as guests in their village.

Two women arrived, and told us they could speak English. We were so surprised that it was this hard to find an English speaker, since so far, the Philippines had had the best English speakers I have encountered in any foreign country in the world (including Canada). The women spoke passable English, but communication was still a little slow. We explained everything to us, but they seemed equally interested in the irrelevant questions like countries of origin, whether we are married, professions, where we have been in the Philippines, why we are there, etc. The standard questions upon introduction in plenty of places. Usually the island of Mindanao is considered the most dangerous area, especially for banditry, so we asked if this happened often in Samar, particularly in this area. The girl said it is more common around August, as it is the season where food shortages become a problem. That bit of insight really changed my perspective of what we had been through. Of course, I don’t condone violence, but it was really significant to know that these men could have simply been going to extremes to feed their family, even if it meant stealing or killing.

Most people seemed exceptionally calm, even in good spirits, considering there had just been a hold up at the edge of their village. Lise was nervous, though, and we asked if we could go to a doctor to get her checked out. They said a police car was on its way to pick us up. It took quite a while, so we were subjected to quite a bit of little-kid-staring in the meant time.

When the police truck came, we were instructed to get in the back seats. One of the seats had a big streak of blood across it. We avoided that one. We asked the driver when that had happened. “Just now. A police officer was shot”.

At this point, we still knew very little about what had happened on that bus.

The officer brought us to a small 24-hour clinic. It wasn’t even in a town, but probably in a place that was accessible to several other towns. We were told we could stay there for the night. The doctor checked out Lise’s wounds and gave her some painkillers. It didn’t seem that anything was too serious. They took care to set up an inflatable mattress in a small common area with a TV and dining table. They asked us if we were hungry, but we said no. A little while later, though, another doctor stopped by to drop off a couple of McDonald’s hamburgers. Apparently he had come from the nearest city and had picked up extra for us. Finally, after being curious about McDonald’s for weeks, we got our burgers. Cold, but now we didn’t have to go to McDonald’s again.

Eventually the doctor on duty and a nurse were the only people there and they closed the front doors. A few minutes later the nurse had disappeared into a room, I am guessing to sleep. The doctor was in the bathroom, when somebody started knocking on the front doors. Lise was still spooked and considering the fact that the thieves were still in our vicinity. She didn’t want to open the door, so we just sat quietly as they banged away on the door. Finally the doctor emerged, and opened the doors. It revealed a family with a young girl, maybe 16 or 17, about to go into labor. It felt natural that all of a sudden, as part of our crazy night we would be present for the birth of a child. The family stared at us as they were escorted into a separate room. We noticed a chart on the wall showing all the due dates of all the pregnant women in the area.

Within minutes, a police officer entered and spoke with the doctor. He said we had to go with them to get our bags from the bus. We weren’t sure what had happened with all our stuff. People had said that we would get our bags back, but we were not convinced. We were both prepared to finish our travel with the clothes on our back, and of course my laptop. I had my money belt with my cards, passport, and a healthy stash of cash. Lise’s passport, and money was all in her backpack, so we were already ready to spend some days in Manila at the French Embassy sorting out these issues. Now we were learning that we would almost certainly recover our backpacks.

We walked out with the police officer to find about five different police vehicles, most of which were pickup trucks with about eight armed soldiers in the back. I had never seen guns this large, and part of me wanted to assume that, consistent the DIY culture of the Philippines, they were locally made. They appeared much larger than AK’s and M-16s. We were put into the back seat of a truck and moved onto the road with the rest of our convoy.

We finally got a few answers about what had happened. He confirmed that a police officer had been shot. Apparenltly there was an officer on the bus. He was off-duty, but when one of the gunmen fired a shot at the woman, he spoke up, saying to just take what they want and not to hurt anyone. Somehow the gunmen realized he was a cop and started beating him up. I don’t know who shot first, but he ended up taking three bullets; one in the shoulder, one in the cheek and one in the side of his head. Apparently he had also gotten a shot off on one of the robbers and managed to chase them from the bus. The cop, was recovering, and we were told he would be fine. Apparently their guns were pretty obsolete. The woman that was shot had taken a bullet in the stomach, but would also be fine. We asked if other people had gotten off the bus, as it had appeared to both of us. He thought that was a silly question. Only the thieves had left the bus. Apparently the Filipinos don’t scare as easily as us westerners, even when there is a gun battle going on in an enclosed space. In fact, one thing that seemed so surreal to us was the level of silence that seemed to envelope us throughout the incident, only to be occasionally punctured by the gun blasts. In a movie (or maybe in a different cultural setting) there would have been a lot more screaming. The officer also told us that he did not know how many gunmen there were, but thought there could have been up to six. They had already identified a few of them and officers were out looking for them. Although we had only seen three gunmen, it explained why it seemed there were so many people outside the bus when we jumped out. It did not explain, though, what they were shooting at outside the bus. Some things we would never know for sure. We also learned that they had chosen that spot as the place to hold up the bus because they lived in the area, making for a quick getaway. Yes, we definitely made…no, I definitely made a bad decision to jump out of the bus at that moment. Part of me feels silly and ashamed for that decision, while part of me feels good that I was at least trying to be proactive and didn’t simply freeze. People were being shot, and I wasn’t about to fight. I guess I chose flight. Either way, we both agreed that since we had survived, we could feel good about making the night a little more interesting.

We arrived at a military checkpoint within ten minutes, and saw our bus parked there with all the passengers of our bus standing around outside. They seemed a bit bewildered, but it almost seemed like that came from confusion over us, rather than the night’s violent episode. We imagined the kinds of things they were thinking about us. “Are those the crazy foreigners that jumped out of the bus?! Where have they been? Where are their shoes?” Perhaps they were also annoyed that they had had to wait for us to come get our bags before they could continue the bus ride.

We went onto the bus to retrieve our things. Our sandals were still there and so was my small shoulder bag. Unfortunately, Lise’s small bag was never recovered. Our backpacks were still there. It seemed that the thieves were only interested in cash, jewelry and cell phones. As we walked out of the bus I noticed blood splattered on a few of the seats. Seeing the blood moved me, but at the same time I was a little surprised that there were only splatters and no large pools of blood. I saw a holster laying on the ground and picked it up. I considered shoving it in my bag as a bizarre, but unique souvenir. Then I came to my senses and dropped it, regretting putting my fingerprints on what might have held an attempted murder weapon.

When we got out of the bus, the Sergeant in charge of the military base next to the checkpoint approached us. He told us that we were welcome to stay at the base for the night if we didn’t want to get back on the bus. Lise and I discussed it. It was about midnight and if we got back on the bus, we would arrive in our destination at about 2:00 AM. If we stayed at the base, not only would we get to go to sleep soon, we would score a free night! And in all honesty, getting back on a bus at this point did not seem like an attractive idea, especially heading to a new city in the middle of the night without a place to stay.

As we left the crowd of our former travel companions, it felt a little weird to be getting the special treatment, but we didn’t mind too much. The sergeant, who introduced himself as Jovie, showed us into the base. He sat down with us, had someone bring us biscuits, and we had a long chat. He told us all about his job, and how they have been having increasing problems with holdups recently. He was new to the area and seemed to be taking the increasing crime very seriously. At the same time, though, he seemed so casual about it. We asked him if this would make the newspapers. He thought for a moment and said, no, probably not. “But an officer and a woman were shot!” “Yes, well, maybe it could be in the local newspaper, but probably not.” There had been two holdups in the previous two months in his jurisdiction. I didn’t know if it was a lot for the Philippines, but perhaps violent crime is just so common that the newspapers don’t bother with relatively small incidents.

He brought out one of the female soldiers, who brought us towels and showed Lise to the shower. He seemed proud to have a few women at his base. He had encouraged her to speak with us, but she was very shy. I made small talk with a few of the soldiers as we watched professional wrestling on the fuzzy TV. I showered next. It was a wooden outhouse next to a river. We chatted a little more with sarge, and then we were shown to our room. It was obvious that two of the soldiers were instructed to sleep in hammocks outside and give us their room. We would have been fine sleeping in hammocks as well, but challenging their hospitality would have been foolish.

When we finally got to our room at 1 AM, we finally had some time alone to talk about all that we had just been through. So much had been going on that we didn’t have the luxury to discuss every minute detail of what had happened. We were tired, but wired. We stayed up for a while, just laughing in disbelief of it all. Especially the fact that at the end of it all, we were staying in the barracks of a military base! Then we remembered that it was just the night before that we had been welcomed into the home of the Captain of the village in Santa Rosa. The night before that we were sleeping on the beach on Tulang Island with our friend Martin. Along with our various hitchhiking rides lately, our days of late had been completely unpredictable. The Philippines had proved that it could surprise, welcome, terrify, amaze, and confuse, while at the end of it all, no matter what had happened, leave you wanting more.

Since this incident, whenever we told any westerner about the incident, their mouth would predictably drop open and their eyes would get wide in disbelief. On the other hand, whenever we told Filipinos about our first experience under fire, they would casually nod their head, responding with something to the effect of, “yeah, that’ll happen.” We would respond to make sure they understood. “Well, you know, they shot a cop and another woman.”

“Yeah, welcome to the Philippines.”