Camiguin was nice, but with visas limiting us to only three weeks in the Philippines (stupid policy Philippines!), we had to get a move on. The ferry schedules that we had were a little vague, and nobody could give us a certain answer about times and from which port and to where. Supposedly we could get an early morning boat to Cebu, smack in the middle of the country from the port near the town we were in. So we woke terribly early, as all the kids were making their way to school and hired a tricycle to take us to the port. Of course, he could have told us there were no boats leaving at this hour (taxi drivers know these things), but then again, why would he? The next boat would be in the afternoon on the other side of the island. Back to the hotel, back to sleep for a few more hours. Score another point for the tourist office worker who said I would regret it if I didn’t visit the tourist office.
Instead of going to Cebu, we would be going to the smaller island of Bohol, south of Cebu. We had little interest in Bohol, mostly because it is a get-in, get-out tour bus kind of destination where people come from all over the world for two bizarre, and probably overrated little attractions. One is the tarsier monkey (you’ll recognize it if you google it), and the Chocolate Hills, a weird geologic phenomenon that has created a landscape of small hills, which in the dry season turn brown. While these things are probably interesting, we felt doing karaoke with lady boys was more worthwhile. But still, going to Bohol was our only option.
The three-hour boat ride to Bohol started off normal enough. For some reason this was a nicer boat, and we were in a big air-conditioned cabin with a typical absurdly violent movie on the flat screen TV. Up ahead, though, the sky was looking dark. Before we knew it, our boat was rocking increasingly violently. Lise, who has a tendency to get seasick had to stay calm and focused, but she was taking it pretty well. Then the swells got absurdly large and water came crashing up onto the decks. I casually laughed and acted like I was enjoying the whole thing (which I was for a few minutes). I looked around to see if anyone else appeared worried. I assumed that if this kind of thing was normal, nobody would be reacting and I would have nothing to worry about. There weren’t many people on the boat, but I did notice a young couple, the husband holding his wife tightly as she kept her eyes closed. I didn’t get really worried, though, until I saw the crew start to assemble in the cabin, some of their faces looking downright panicked. They appeared to be manning their stations for some sort of emergency. My faux giggles disappeared and I gripped Lise’s hand tightly. It didn’t help that I had just read My mind raced, imagining the most logical escape and survival plan if our boat did in fact capsize. I was probably more panicked than Lise. The boat rocked violently as the waves crashed in all around us. I looked into the distance, wondering where the end of the storm was. It definitely was not in the direction we were going. I knew it was typhoon season, but I couldn’t imagine that a captain would knowingly take passengers directly into a violent storm. I looked out the window and saw a swell that dwarfed our boat, and I thought, “If we are going down, it’s going to be on this one.” Somehow, though, we rode over it safely and sighed relief. The most violent parts of the storm went on for a good hour before the island blocked the storm’s momentum. At this point in time, I think I can honestly say that that was the second most scared I have ever been in my life. Funny thing, the first would also be in the Philippines.
When we got off the boat, everything seemed absurdly calm, as if our new environment was mocking us for having some leftover adrenaline. We spoke with that young couple we had seen. They said that they had never been on a boat ride that crazy in their lives.
We were in the town of Jagna, like a good percentage of towns in the Philippines it was a medium-sized port town. Although the relatively small island of Bohol is touristy, this town was pretty off the radar. We considered moving across the island to the town where we could get a boat on toward Cebu, but it seemed that all the buses had stopped running for the day. So we tracked down the town’s only hotel.
On our walk through the town towards the tiny night market, we passed a strip of tiny makeshift bar/restaurants with karaoke machines, all battling for sound space. We saw one that had a few large jugs of a brown liquid. I asked what it was and they said, “tuba”. A young girl stepped forward, and in impeccable English clarified that it was coconut wine and that glasses were only 5 pesos, or about 12 cents. So we sat down and asked for two glasses. I noticed that the three walls of the diner were all made from different materials: bamboo, an assortment of plywoods, and corrugated metal. Its back hung over a filthy river that drained into the sea a hundred meters away. When the girl and her mother stepped outside for a few minutes, and we quietly sipped our home brew, we noticed a dozen cockroaches creep out from hiding places all around us. When the girl came back in, the all skittered back into their crannies. The wine was nice and although a different flavor, reminded me of other home brews I had had in other places. The girl suggested that our next glass was mixed with Pepsi, which was the way most locals drink it. This would be one of the weirdest combinations I have ever heard of for alcohol, but we figured why not. And yeah, it was good, but preferred the straight version in the end.
We went over to the tiny night market to track down some grilled meats served with sticky rice cooked in little woven raffia pouches. We ordered an array of sausages and pork skewers. For the first time, we tried one of the most ubiquitous skewered meat: chicken intestine, intricately kinked back and forth and intricately impaled. Neither of us were excited to try it, but it was everywhere and also so cheap at about 7 cents per intestine. And actually they were quite awesome. The hardest part was psychologically, but if you get that past, the meat was tasty and tender.
And now that we had built up a bit more confidence with karaoke, we chose one of the various karaoke bars and took some seats. To my delight they screen on the videoke machine was playing what we referred to as “basketballaoke”. Unlike the more offensive “bikiniaoke”, this was a series of basketball highlights from the 1990s. All my favorite players and some of the most memorable moments from the NBA in the 90’s were flashing across the screen before me. Sometimes when I would sing, I would improvise songs about Michael Jordan relating to what he was doing on the screen. Nobody seemed to notice or be amused, but it entertained me. Some of the other popular background videos were “chateauaoke” which featured aerial footage of many of Europe’s finest castles, “Animalaoke” which showed either incredible feats of the world’s most impressive creatures, or perhaps the cutest animal antics, and “natureaoke” which was footage of some of the world’s more beautiful landscapes.
In the morning, we had hoped to take a bus to the opposite side of the island on the road that goes directly across the center. Unfortunately, we found out that this route would actually be slower and more expensive than taking the coastal road all the way around. The first bus, that led us halfway to our desired port, was expectedly slow. Something like two hours for 60 km. At the bus station in Tagbilaran, the island’s main city, all the bus touts would not leave us alone, demanding to know where we were going. Usually we are very adamant that we will not answer these people. In many places, these people receive commission from a certain bus company for bringing customers their way, which naturally will inflate your ticket price. The weird thing in the Philippines, though is that in these situations it didn’t add up to this always. Sometimes, when we really couldn’t find our bus, we would ask one of these people and they would casually point us in the right direction, or maybe even to two different buses going that direction. The commission thing didn’t seem to be coming into play. So it made us wonder who was paying them, and for what service exactly, and why they were being so aggressive. We had also noticed that the phrase “where are you going?” was so regularly asked to us that it seemed almost like a greeting, like “what’s up?” Usually it was moto taxis and the like who were asking this, but we even heard random people greet us with that either out of curiosity or perhaps to help. One of the biggest challenges for us in the Philippines was figuring the difference between the truly genuine people and the people trying to rip you off. In the end, though, the fact that these two group’s behavior was so similar, unlike in other countries where the difference is obvious, made it seem like far more people were not on our side than those that were being genuine. This could not be further from the truth, and the aggressive nature of the Filipinos made me completely mislabel them from the get go. After a week, though, we were really getting into the social tempo of the place, and appreciating the people far more than before.
So by this time, we were more likely to trust these guys to actually help us, and we made it to our connecting bus. The next leg of the journey was another two hours and we arrived in the late afternoon to Tubigon, a really scruffy little port town. We walked past all the cycle rickshaws and tricycles wanting to take us to the port. It was about a km, but we figured we would save our money. When we got there, though, we were told we needed to go back to town to buy our tickets. So we slogged back in search of the ticket booth and some dinner.
There seemed to be tons of places to eat, though there was little of interest. Lots of fried chicken places, a couple of basic diners with leftovers from lunch (which meant the worst dishes, served cold) and some surprisingly expensive rotisserie chicken. We wandered through the market and arrived on the other side into an expansion of makeshift market. The place truly wreaked and even I would have been hesitant to eat anything served among the garbage and open sewage around here. We did find a really down home little drinking hole, and decided to bide our time with some tuba, the coconut wine. We crowded into the little wooden shack, our bags obstructing walking space. They served all the “other” alcohols here. Coconut, “Chinese Fighter wine” (which is basically like “bum wine” like Cisco), homemade liquors and Tanduay rum by the shot to go. Even their beer wasn’t the usual San Miguel but some weird off brand that simply said “Beer” in the same font as the San Miguel. After a glass of wine, and some chatting with the local drunks stopping by, we went back on our food search. We settled for the rotisserie chicken. Although they had several chickens on spits, we were served a cold half chicken. If I was alone, I would have passively eaten it, while shooting dirty looks at the vendors. Luckily Lise doesn’t work like this and she took it back them. They acted surprised as if they didn’t realize that they had decided to serve the cold one to the ignorant foreigners. They simply chopped up a new half chicken and the problem was solved. Now my real problem, though, is not if the chicken is cold, but if there is no chili sauce or anything. Filipino food is not spicy and usually the only chili sauce is almost like a syrup with an unperceivable amount of chili flakes. Sometimes there is a real chili paste, but it is rare. By this time, I was getting into the habit of just taking bites of fresh red chilies as I ate. It gave me the heat I became addicted to, like a smoker being forced to eat nicotine gum instead of smoking.
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