Sometimes there is no quick way to shake someone that is set on making money off of you. Sometimes, though, there is, and it is just a matter of knowing what to say. This was a time when I did not know. We had walked into the port in Cebu City to buy our boat tickets. We had an hour to kill, so we walked back out of the gated area to look for some dinner and caffeine. As soon as we walked out, a guy ran up to us, offering us his taxi services. I said no, but of course that meant nothing to him. Then he started asking where we were going. “Nowhere”. “Just over there”. Or just ignoring him. Nothing worked. He kept following and offering suggestions of hotels. So I tried to put a stop to it by saying, “we’re just looking for something to eat.” His eyes lit up as he realized he had made progress. “Oh, I’ll take you to Jollibee’s!” the local fast food chain. Then I realized that I should have made it clear from the beginning that we had not just gotten off a boat, but were simply waiting for our boat to leave. As soon as I told him, he smiled and said goodbye. I have become so secretive and mistrusting of taxi drivers that I have completely forgotten that honesty is sometimes the best policy.
When we bought our boat tickets, we had to give our names, which would be printed on the ticket. I decided to give them my assumed false name for the Philippines: Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. Of course, they had no reason to know why it would be funny. It was a delight to actually see that printed on my ticket. Then I got nervous, though, because there was a lot more security at this port than the others and not only did we have to check in our bags like at an airport and give our names a second time, but go through security where they checked our tickets and our ID’s. Luckily, though, nobody caught on to the minor fib.
We were disappointed to find that our boat was what I described as a rocket-ship boat in Malaysia, or as Edward Gargan called it a cigar tube. No ventilation, loud movie, AC (though being the Philippines, it barely functioned) and nearly opaque windows. Not to mention, we were still a little rattled from a recent boat experience and we were hoping for the biggest, most unsinkable-even-by-god-himself boats. The couple hour hop to the Camotes, a tiny group of islands between the larger islands of Cebu and Leyte, was, thankfully, unremarkable.
Although the little town of Poro on the island of Pacijan was not our actual destination, we had arrived after dark, and decided to stay there for the night. We pushed through the hordes of motorbike taxis (there’s no public transport on these islands except for on Sundays) and walked to the most budgetty hotel. It was a tiny little guesthouse in a family’s home. The reception area was indistinguishable from a living room. Out back there was a nice view of the sea. The price was a little higher than expected, but Lise managed to get us a bit of a discount by lacking interest when we first saw the room, although there was really nothing wrong with it.
With little going on in this tiny town, we did as we normally would and followed our ears to the sound of karaoke. It always sounds hideous, but when you are waiting your turn to sing, it becomes quite tolerable. The only things open in this town at this hour were two convenience stores. They also had karaoke machines and served beer and liquor to customers at the plastic tables and chairs out front. And best of all, they were right next to each other. It really made no sense. Unless you were just a couple feet in front of the machine, it was impossible to distinguish one song from the one playing on the other machine. It was ridiculous, but since nobody else seemed to care, we played along. We ordered some rum and coke and looked through the songbook. One of the young girls from the karaoke machine on the right invited herself to our table and chatted us up for a while. It was nice to talk to her, but really, we just wanted to get to singing. I knew my days were numbered. That is, my days to shamelessly sing whatever song I wanted incredibly poorly and not even care because I would receive applause anyway. Yep, I knew it would be hard to find that luxury outside of the Philippines.
I had the pen and paper and wrote down the song numbers that Lise wanted to sing as she read them to me. When her song came around, she had a weird look on her face. She glared at me. She started to sing, but the words did not match what was on the screen. “I’ve never heard this song before, so I don’t know why I am singing it,” she improvised, “It’s probably because somebody is an idiot and doesn’t know how to write down four simple numbers.” She actually fooled me for a few seconds. But it was true, I had written down the wrong number, and Lise was none too happy with me. She continued improvising lyrics, berating me for my incompetence, through at least half the song, and nobody caught on that she had never even heard this song before. Apparently I had made an unforgivable mistake and needed to pay for it.
When we got up the next morning, I walked outside to a pleasant surprise. For the first time on the trip, which had been spent almost entirely on islands, I felt that quintessential island feel. The kind of vibe you get that tells you to walk slower. If you have ever been to islands off Caribbean Central America, you know exactly what I am talking about. You know that nothing will get done that day, but it does not matter in the slightest. You can sleep at work. Nobody cares, not even the customers. When we went out to find breakfast, we went to a bakery for breads and Mountain Dew. There were four people sitting outside around the couple of tables and a guy on his motorbike. Everyone was either sleeping or in a weird dormant stupor, even the people with empty Mountain Dew bottles in front of them. The woman operating the bakery didn’t even seem awake and it took a while to get her attention from whatever cave she was hiding in in the back. Lise got a piece of chocolate cake because she had had a dream that featured incredible chocolate cake. This, of course, could not compare to that of the manifestations of French person’s imagination.
When we finally pulled ourselves together to get moving, we had a small problem. As I said before, there is no public transport on these islands. Most people just hire motorbike taxis to get around. Sure the fares are not exorbitant, but they are considering what we would normally pay for a 10 km ride. It was still hard to believe that a couple of islands with 70,000 people between the two of them had no public transport. We decided to just walk in the direction we were going and hope for a hitchhike or perhaps a random jeepney. Within ten minutes we walked past an empty jeepney with a guy sitting in the drivers seat. We asked him if he was going to San Francisco or Tulan Baku, or anywhere at all. His English was rough, but he offered to take us the 12 km to Tulang Baku for about $12. We refused. Then he offered to take us to San Francisco, just a few km away for free. He was going there anyway. It was a start. San Francisco was actually on the other island, Pacijan, but a bridge that goes over something of a mangrove swamp connects the two islands. It was actually hard to even notice where one island became the other.
When we got dropped off, we just kept on walking. When we got out of town and onto the main road around the island, a young guy on a motorbike came up and offered us a ride. He wanted something that we deemed to much, so we just kept walking. We still figured we could hitchhike eventually, but he eventually lowered the price to something so low we figured it was worth it for our time. Then we realized that with my gigantic bag and Lise’s modest bag we would not all fit on the bike together and we would need two bikes. Five minutes later the guy showed up with a friend on a second bike. He said we could still go for the same price. We were surprised that he would agree to that price so easily, but we didn’t complain.
It was the first motorbike ride of the trip, and it was nice. Lise particularly enjoyed it. It is a cliché thing to say, but I really can relate to all that talk of the feelings of freedom that come from riding motorcycles, even though I was sitting on the back.
All along this trip, Lise and I had been toying with the idea of finding a deserted island, getting a bout out to it and just camping for a few days. I know it sounds to idealistic to be possible, but there probably isn’t a better place for this than the Philippines with some six or seven thousand islands. We knew that there was a tiny island called Tulang off shore of the island we were on, and we had heard that it is possible to hire a fishing boat to take you to snorkel in the waters off of it. We assumed that the island was too small to be inhabitable, so as long as there was some beach, we would be set with a comfortable place to hang out for a couple days.
We rounded a bend on the motorbikes, arriving to our destination village, and I could already see that the island had a pristine stretch of white sand. I could also see that it was very much inhabited. We were a little disappointed, but then again, finding a deserted island is rarely that easy. Regardless, we negotiated a fee of about a dollar for a boatmen to transport us across. It took about five minutes. We stepped off the boat into the shallow, turquoise water and onto the powdery white sand. The beach stretched back about 50 meters, where it met the quiet village. We didn’t see anybody around, so we ambled across the sand to a small shack that looked like it could serve as a shop if you caught the shopkeeper at the right time. We noticed a big gallon jug of tuba (coconut wine) and decided this might be a good way to introduce ourselves to the village. A drowsy woman idling in a nearby chair eventually took notice of us. We motioned that we would like to sample some of their finest grog. Eventually a young man emerged. He turned out to not having anything to do with his shop. He was just the nearest person who spoke some English. He was quiet and nervous at first, as he inquired what we were looking for. We knew it was an odd sight on this little island for foreigners to just show up out of nowhere and casually ask for a glass of coconut wine. But this is exactly what we were doing. He said the stuff at this shop was no good, but would take us somewhere else.
We walked a short distance along narrow sand paths through a neighborhood of bamboo and thatch huts until we arrived at another little shop. A couple of women were hanging out there, and one went inside to serve as the shopkeeper. Our friend, who had introduced himself as Martin, explained to her that we were looking for tuba and she brought us out two glasses of the dark brown liquid. We offered a glass to Martin, but he politely declined. He sat there quietly as we sipped from our cups. One of the women asked if we were hungry, and that when we were they could cook something for us. We weren’t hungry yet, but said we would come back later.
When we were finished, Martin said he would show us around the village. His English was improving rapidly and by now we were making casual conversation. We were pretty off the beaten track, but we still wondered if Martin’s self-appointment as our guide would turn into something we weren’t looking for (i.e. “now you need to pay me an exorbitant rate for being your guide…and my mom is dying and can’t afford her medications…and my little brother can’t afford school fees, etc.). Something about him, though, really seemed genuine, so we didn’t worry when our “tour” started going on and on. When we had seen the whole village and waved hello to everyone lounging in their hammocks or playing mahjong, Martin asked if we wanted to see the school. Sure, why not? Just outside the village, on a little hill, there was in fact a school, and a church. Then he asked if we wanted to see the…. And I don’t remember what the word was, but we did not understand it. I asked him to repeat it a couple times, but we had no idea what he wanted to show us. We asked him what that was, and he said “it’s over there, not far.” Ok, we thought, I guess we might as well walk just to find out what this word means. The small path led through a variety of gardens and small farms. He pointed out all the things that were being grown, saying the names in English, and then in the local language. Most of the words, though, where actually borrowed from Spanish. “Onion,” Martin would point out. “Cebolla.”
I was extremely impressed with how much they managed to grow on this tiny scrap of land. The only other island I have been on like this one produced almost nothing for itself. Little Corn Island, off Nicaragua, also had a population of about 500 and a similar size of land with a similar climate. I am sure there are many more variables than this, but they seemed to produce little more than coconuts on Little Corn. The major difference I could see, was that Little Corn Island relied mostly on tourism, while Tulang Island had to fend for itself.
The gardens all seemed productive, probably because they had rich, volcanic soil. They also had a wide variety of fruit trees. They also had pigs, chickens and I think I might have seen a cow or two. I was really inspired by the self-reliance of this island. It seemed that the only thing they needed to bring from outside was petrol and water. Yes, unfortunately there is not enough fresh water on this island to support the population, so a boat filled with plastic containers of water arrives every day to make a delivery. I don’t know what they were using to cook, but I did see some people collecting firewood in the bits of forest. I imagine that if they can cook over charcoal and not exhaust their small forest resources, it would be very impressive.
We had been walking for about thirty minutes by now, and I was wondering when we would be out of island. Then Martin offered to show us a cave. We walked off the path, through the forest and all of a sudden we were standing in front of the mouth of a huge cave. I could hear the squeaks of bats inside, but Martin insisted that there were no bats in there. I saw a huge spider dangling among some branches, so I suggested that we move back to the original mission.
The trail got narrower and rockier. Eventually it turned into just a path along jagged and porous volcanic rocks. I was glad my sandals were made from tire rubber, otherwise I was sure the stone would just slice right through. Finally, we emerged at a small clearing, and right in front of us stood a modest lighthouse, about 20 or 25 feet tall. Unfortunately we could not climb up, but from where we were standing we had a decent view of the expanse of ocean in front of us.
By the time we passed the school on the way back, it had let out and we were walking through flocks of adorable little kids practicing all their pre-set English phrases. Some of them only knew “what’s your name?” so they would just repeat that until we just stopped answering.
It had been a long walk, so Martin invited us to go to what he referred to as the “relax spot”. Basically we were down to follow him as much as he was willing to show us around. What else did we have planned for the day? We walked along another trail out of the village. It passed over some jagged volcanic rocks, and we soon arrived at a little bamboo and thatch cabana, which sat on a ledge overlooking the water. It was slightly elevated, so we could catch a nice breeze. We climbed onto the rickety bamboo floor and just…relaxed. It was quiet as the three of us sat calmly, leisurely taking in our surroundings. He said during high tide we could jump from the cabana into the water and climb back up the attached rope ladder.
By now we were hungry, so Martin took us to another little shop, where there was some food for sale. They only had one dish: adobo pork. It looked like some of the worst cuts of fat and skin, but we didn’t have much choice, so we ordered enough for both of us. We had offered to buy some for Martin, but again he declined. We went back to the shop where we had had tuba, and the woman there brought us huge piles of rice to have with our adobo. The pork turned out to be far better than it looked and the vinegary sauce was surprisingly flavorful. We tried to offer some money for the rice, but the woman refused.
We asked Martin if it was ok to camp on the beach that night. He said of course, and that many people actually sleep out on the beach because it is more comfortable and cooler than inside their homes and there are fewer mosquitoes. We knew that there was no electricity in the village, but knew that there must be at least one generator. We asked the obvious question: “Is there karaoke here?” Martin said there was one machine, but the generator for it is only turned on every once in a while. He offered to arrange it for us, but we figured it would be alright to take a night off.
We walked towards the beach and we noticed that they had a basketball court. So now it was official, this town could pass as being truly Filipino: they had the possibility of karaoke and basketball. And this was an impressive court, considering the circumstances. It had decent, smooth concrete, painted lines, and I think the hoops even had nets. There was a game going on when we passed by, and Martin asked if I wanted to play. I did, but was a little intimidated. It looked pretty intense. Then we walked past a beach volleyball game. Martin insisted that we join in. Lise wasn’t interested so she went to relax on the beach while we played.
The remainder of our evening was spent hanging out with Martin and all the kids on the beach. It was a pretty relaxing time, and although we had been looking for a deserted island, this still felt like paradise. After dark, the kids went home, while others came down to the beach to get ready for bed. We spread out my tarp and and laid down our sleeping bags. Sleeping under the stars is always a fine situation.
This was our evening:
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