Our second full day on Camiguin island was a little ambitious. Inland from the road that circles the island there are quite a few attractions. We wanted to visit a waterfall and a hot spring, but supposedly you need private transport to reach both of them. We had had good luck with hitchhiking in rural areas, and the fact that there were villages near these things always means that there will be someone going there.
We tried asking at the tricycle stand in town if anyone was going to Itum, a village on the road to the waterfall. From there we thought we would be in walking distance. Most of the people acted like they had never heard of this village (bad pronunciation?) and nobody seemed to be going there. So we took a public tricycle to the turnoff for the hot spring instead. From there it would be just a few km walk, or we could hitchhike. Well, we walked the whole way, which wasn’t bad, but it was gruesomely hot that day. The walk was worth it, though, as we got to meander through some tiny villages and rural settlements. We were shocked to see, at the entrance to the hot springs, tons of souvenir stalls. The whole walk had made us feel completely off the beaten track, and now we were arriving at a series of tables and stands with people selling handicrafts, t-shirts, cheap Chinese toys, etc. Even more surprising, this was not some wild hot spring but a resort with bungalows, several pools, a restaurant, etc. For what it was, though, the dollar entrance fee seemed reasonable, and after debating it for a while, we decided to go on in.
Everything except the swimming cost money. To bring your own food or drink, you had to pay corking fees, or to use one of the gazebos there was a fee. Luckily we didn’t need anything. We surprised ourselves with how much we enjoyed it. I thought a hot spring in this weather would be an awful idea, but in the jungle shade, they felt nice. Most of the people there were Filipino and Chinese tourists, with a few old white men with their Filipina “escorts” and one girl who I would have guessed was in the peace corps, though I don’t know how she managed to stay so pale. Desk job, I guess.
We gave up on the waterfall, and decided to lounge a little longer. Our ambition was dwindling. We did manage to drag ourselves out, though, with enough time to accomplish our last goal. We were thoroughly wrinkled when we made our way back to the road. On the walk back, we saw a couple of Chinese tourists buying coconuts direct from the source, and, naturally we wanted in on that. An old man was cutting them open and we said we wanted two. He sent a young boy into the palm grove behind him to shimmy a hundred feet up the trunk and haul us down a few coconuts. They were something like $.35. Philippines is the #1 (or maybe #2) exporter of coconuts in the world, and I considered it a crime that I wasn’t drinking them every day. After finishing the milk inside, we had the man chop them open, make a spoon from the husk, and we scooped out the gelatinous meat, letting it wriggle down our throats. No lunch necessary.
Our next mission was the so-called “Sunken Cemetery”. Apparently back in 1871 an earthquake on the island sent a cemetery sliding into the water, and now it is a popular snorkeling spot just off shore. Lise isn’t the biggest fan of snorkeling. She considers it on the same level as bird watching, which is a mortal sin in our relationship. But this actually sounded appealing to her. We managed to get a jeepney to the other side of the island by late afternoon. Again, there were plenty of souvenir stalls at this place as well. It seemed so odd to have them, while we had barely seen any tourists on the island. We only had one snorkel, but the restaurant there was renting them out. They said $5 at first, but we bargained them down to about $2. Then a man came up to us and said that we needed to pay the “entrance fee”. We said, “what entrance fee?” He said it was 100 pesos per person (about $2.50) to go to the sunken cemetery. At first we thought, “jeez, that’s expensive, do we still want to go?” Then we were like, wait a minute this doesn’t make any sense. We explained that we had never heard of any entrance fee, and even the sign out front that says “Welcome to Sunken Cemetery” does not mention anything about a price. Furthermore, “who are you? Do you work here? Where is the ticket booth or something official?” He gave some sort of official title of a city council seat or something from the nearest village. I asked if we would get a receipt, and he said yes. I said that it used to be free, and he said something about “new official ordinance”. I think he thought those big words would fool us. He vaguely motioned to a nearby sign explaining some sort of new ordinances. I read through all of them, but they were all regarding fishing laws. I asked why there was no sign saying the prices and he just said there was no budget. I wondered where they had gotten the very well-made sign simply welcoming us to the Sunken Cemetery. He said he would go to his office and get the papers showing the prices and the laws and everything. Lise was on the ball with this one, and she insisted that we go along with him. He said, no, it’s far, in the next town, which was a kilometer or two away. We told him simply, we are going to go snorkel now, and if you want to prove to us that there really is a fee, why don’t you go get the paperwork and the receipt book and we can talk when we are done.
We figured we wouldn’t see him again, and we climbed down the stairs and rocks into the ocean. The water was a little rough and we swam out a hundred meters to a giant concrete platform with a 30 meter tall white cross coming out of it. This marked the spot and the new memorial for the graves that had fallen into the ocean more than a hundred years ago. The waves constantly crashed into us, making it difficult to climb up the slippery steps. After a short rest from the swim (neither of us are expert swimmers) we slipped back into the water, looking for what we expected to be a collection of gravestones, perhaps some skulls, you know, real morbid stuff. All we saw were some colorful fish, some coral, and lots and lots of dead coral laying along the sea floor. The Philippines has a bad reputation for trashing their dive sites, usually, I think, with relentless dynamite fishing. We swam all the way to a nearby beach, wondering if we had missed it. On the beach there were two men, one younger, one very old. They were preparing their spear guns for fishing. They didn’t speak much English, but I tried to talk to them about the Sunken Cemetery. They just pointed in the general direction we had come from. Then I checked out their spear gun. Like most awesome things in the Philippines, it was home made and looked pretty dangerous.
We swam all the way back to the platform, staying a little farther from shore this time. We saw more typical snorkel things, but nothing resembling a cemetery. We circled the platform and still nothing. At this point we could see the man up on the shore, waiting for us. We took our time. We weren’t completely certain that this guy was trying to fleece us, but we were not going to part with any money in such suspicious circumstances. Plus, we were disappointed to have not seen any sunken cemeteries!
When we arrived at the shore, the man started to come down the stairs, but I told him to stay where he was and that we would be up in a minute. He seemed too eager. When we got up there, Lise went directly to the bathroom to change, while I sat down with him to see what he had brought me. He wrote out a receipt on an official receipt paper from the village of Bonbon. The village name was printed on it, but it still said nothing about the Cemetery. Still I was getting worried. Then he showed me a stapled together packet of papers that had a cover page about new ordinances in Bonbon, dated June 2009. He kept control of them, and turned right to a page with some numbers on it. I didn’t get a chance to fully read everything, but I did see the words “Sunken Cemetery”, “foreigner”, and “100 pesos”. My heart sunk, not only feeling bad about giving this guy a hard time, but also about the money we might have to pay. Still I wasn’t fully convinced, and I wanted to read the details. Could this scam really be so elaborate and was everyone standing by silently getting a piece of our $5? Before I got a chance to examine it further, Lise emerged from the bathroom, and headed straight for the exit. She didn’t even look at him, and just said curtly, “Come on, let’s go.” I looked at him, and I looked back at her, and followed her out. I thought the man would cause a fuss, but he just sat there silently. Of course, I expected the worst, and thought we might get in trouble for this. We were hoping to flag down a passing car or jeepney, but the road was quiet. We later found out, from asking several locals including someone at the tourist information office, that there was absolutely no fee for visiting the Sunken Cemetery. This was just some conman trying to scam the tourists. I imagine his persistence was evidence that it usually worked on people, especially since, for most westerners; the fee he was requesting was not worth arguing over. In fact, if it wasn’t for Lise just walking away and saying, “let’s go”, I might have considered paying up.
We walked until we came to another cemetery, so we walked in to have a look. It was completely overgrown, and it was nearly impossible to walk through without accidentally stepping on graves. Two women were also walking through and I spooked the younger one when she stepped around the corner of a mausoleum to see me standing there. She was very friendly, though, and explained that she was visiting from abroad (I forget where she worked) and was coming to visit her father’s grave. After chatting for a few minutes, we moved along and I came across her father’s grave. They had left some candles burning, but one of them had fallen over, so I stood it up and relit it. We hobbled back to the road and flagged down a passing semi-truck, since we had been told there were no jeepneys after 5PM. There was only one seat left in the cab, so we lapped it all the way back to town.
That night we knew we couldn’t go back to the same bar as the night before. Mr. Tourist Office might grill me again for not consulting him first before setting out on our day. Then again, he might have had a point as we had almost gotten ripped off at the snorkeling spot. Karma? No, just the travel gods making fun of us.
Just around the corner, though, there was another bar that I had seen the day before when I was looking for a Coke. It had looked far more makeshift and sketchy than the one we had been to the previous nights. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure of the gender of the staff/clientele hanging out there. Lise said it sounded like a good idea. That is why she was a great companion for the Philippines. When I say, “Lady boy bar?” she says, “how high?” So off we went. The place was empty save for a few lady boys hanging out. They got downright giggly when we said we wanted to sit down and have a beer. Now, these were not the elegant, and convincing lady boys that fool many-a-drunk men into bed in Thailand. No, these were rough and tumble dudes in ladies clothing with too much makeup, bad skin and skanky clothes. But they were so sweet and so welcoming. One of them, who seemed in charge, but was relatively new there, came and sat with us for a while. She spoke great English and was very charming. She was so excited that some foreigners would even want to come into their bar. I am guessing it is not even that popular among the locals. After our long conversation, the three of them came up to the table and ceremoniously presented us with the karaoke song book. They desperately wanted us to do some singing with them. We were only halfway into our first beer, though, and we knew there was no way we could do it at this point in time. We had promised each other that we would try to make this night a little more calm, but when ladyboys say “sing karaoke,” you say, “how high?” The night before we had tried karaoke for the first time, but had accidentally selected from the “music video” book, so basically we just watched the videos of the songs we had wanted to sing.
So we promised them that we would definitely sing, but we just needed a little more beer. Meanwhile, they sang songs by Beyonce and Alicia Keys while we gave generous applause for them at the end of their songs.
Finally, Lise and I made our debut with Poker Face, sharing the microphone as we didn’t have the confidence to go solo yet. Even though the audience consisted of three ladyboys and a younger boy (in training, or just a barback?) they made us feel like rock stars. And out the window went our promise for a low key night. Even the fact that the karaoke cost a few cents more per song didn’t hold us back. We sang that Spice Girls song (do I have to remember the name of it?), which was a big hit, and we even went solo. Lise sang a Tracy Chapman song, and I sang King of the Road. It was a lot more fun than we had expected, and basically from that moment on, our daily itinerary in the Philippines was more or less decided: Take a bus, drink a beer, sing a song. And that was about it, and we were happy with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment