Notes from Boracay
"I'm leavin' on a jet plane … don't know when I'll be back again," sang the near-toothless Philippino, strumming his guitar with a sad smile. The song sputtered as he and the others first labored through the chord changes, then quickly gained momentum. My hands were worn from playing all night, but everyone in the bamboo-walled, sand-floored bar joined in and there was a palatable burst of energy. This was my song, they said, Dallas' song, a song they really wanted to sing for me, because they'd miss me and my playing.
"So kiss me and smile for me; tell me that you'll wait for me … Hold me like you'll never let me go … 'Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane … Don't know when I'll be back again … Oh, babe, I hate to go …"
It was my last night of a nine-day visit to the remote Philippine island of Boracay. And of course I'd brought my doumbek.
The morning of March 4th found me at home, finishing my packing and deciding on a whim to verify my departure time. The San Francisco to Los Angeles shuttle left at 11, didn't it? No -- it arrived in LA at 11, it turned out. I'd have to hustle to make the shuttle and my subsequent connection to Hong Kong.
My belongings were few and as compact as possible. I didn't want to check baggage on any flight in order to speed my connections and minimize the chance of anyone tampering with my bags. Philippine law puts drug smugglers to death. The last thing I wanted was for someone to slip something into my luggage. A few shirts, shorts, disposable underwater cameras, mask and snorkel, current music & lyric projects and books, lots of books (okay, the GPS and Palm Pilot … but no computer.) It all packed into one knapsack. A soft carry case made the doumbek more transportable than it's ever been. Finally, a wicker sun hat that proved its mettle by surviving two years of Burning Man in the Nevada desert traveled best on my head. Three easy carry-on pieces.
Other preparations included a quick refresher on my world time watch. I learned effective negotiation of time zones and date lines and figured out a way to use the circular slide rule on its bezel to convert between U.S. dollars, Hong Kong dollars and Philippine Pesos, which turned out to be quite handy. Sometimes the most appropriate technology is low-tech.
The taxi driver, as they all do, ignored my urgency and got me to the airport only to his own schedule. I made my flight, but due to a departure delay, just barely made my connection in Los Angeles. I was one of the last aboard the United 747 bound for Hong Kong, stowed my magic three pieces and settled in for the ride.
Weeks before, when the reservation agent excitedly offered me the extra legroom of an exit row seat, he neglected to point out the (to me) substantial compromise: yes, the exit row had extra room, but no window. So my window seat was minus the window. Nothing to look at but the solid bulkhead. All 14 hours to Hong Kong. I felt I was traveling in steerage locked deep inside one of the steamers that plied this route a hundred years ago. I took a lot of walks to look through windows in the rear galley as we flew over the frozen North China coast on our way to Hong Kong.
They kept serving meals and showing movies, some three of each. I felt mollified and suspicious. Between broadcasts I read of Redmond O'Hanlan's misadventures in tropical Borneo and South America to help set the stage for my own travels in the tropical Philippines.
I tried to resist the temptation to form notions of what I would do and see. I really had no idea what to expect about either Hong Kong or my ultimate destination of Boracay. This was a spontaneous trip, and I'd been working hard in the days leading up to it, so had done little research on either and was going essentially on word of mouth. What were the best things to do in Hong Kong? What would I enjoy most on Boracay? Would there be too many people for the kinds of getaways I enjoy? All in due time, I thought, and tried to sleep.
(Note to self: Galaxy Quest isn't nearly as funny the second time around.)
I knew ahead of time that the airport we were flying into in Hong Kong was not the venerable Kai Tak … the traditional downtown Hong Kong airport requiring jetliners to make dramatic low-altitude turns on landing. Kai Tak closed in July, 1998. The new airport at Chek Lap Kok is actually something of an engineering marvel. Construction crews flattened two small islands, filled in the surrounding sea and created a mammoth flat space upon which they built one of the largest, most efficient airports in the world.
I was really impressed. It's one of the few large airports entirely free of legacy issues: runways are long, wide and well-spaced. Everything seems designed to accommodate the forthcoming next generation super-sized passenger airliners like the Boeing 777. The inside was large, clean and well-signed.
Hong Kong appears to like its officials formal and imposing. Not only do the immigration inspectors, customs officials and police wear vaguely military-inspired black suits, silver epaulettes, buttons and trim, but all the examples I encountered were squeaky-clean, well-groomed and seemed proud to be in the positions they were. They're quite the study in contrast from U.S. customs and immigration officers -- who seem to become more dried and hateful the longer they stay in their jobs. U.S. border officials are like the lost souls of Las Vegas … their lives sucked out of their bodies the longer they stay.
I negotiated with a machine and purchased a ticket to the automated rapid transit Airport Express tram, and some of the things I'd heard about Hong Kong started becoming apparent. It's a very mechanized, modern city. While many parts are quite dirty, considerable effort was put into a modern, clean infrastructure. The tram was impeccable, complete with electronic trip status boards so travelers always knew where they were in relation to the next stop, and monitors built into every seat serving up prerecorded news, weather, financial and entertainment information.
The office towers of downtown Hong Kong gleamed, and seemed unreal in the distance. They scraped the bottoms of the clouds, and were lit more dramatically by night than any I'd seen in North America: rose, pastel blues … yellows. Modern skyscrapers here seemed more innovative, more organic than elsewhere. Buildings curved impossibly and defied gravity, clinging to steep grades. Elsewhere, dirty, crumbling communist China-era apartment complexes squatted. Laundry hung from balconies. Bamboo scaffolds enclosed buildings lucky enough to be renovated. A study in contrasts.
I was met by a Hong Kong friend, Bien, who escorted me to my hotel -- a surprisingly good place as relatively inexpensive as it was (800 Hong Kong dollars, or approximately $150 U.S.) It was early evening and I was dead tired from the flight, but I didn't want to waste time sleeping, so Bien led me on a walking tour of Tsim Sha Tsui, the bustling, open-market commercial heart of the Kowloon district where I was staying. Tsim Sha Tsui combines equal parts narrow streets, late-night shoppers, party goers, neon, funky fashions, bargain electronics and fast food restaurants and shakes them well. TST could very well have been the inspiration for the art direction of Blade Runner.
I loved the quirky women's clothing -- refreshingly un-California. Big, thick shoes with long dark socks. Or mid-calf boots. I couldn't decide whether the look was "neo-schoolgirl" or "neo-giraffe"! Many teens seemed dressed right out of anime cartoons. Hair was often pinned with colorful berets. I wanted to buy one of every outfit I saw for Annalisa.
It was quickly obvious that Chinese cell phone adoption is even more extensive than North America. Not only does everyone carry a cell phone -- absolutely everyone -- but they're considered much more fashion accessories than they are here. And not only does everyone's phone look different, with more colors and styles than commonly seen in North America, but they sound different. The Chinese seem to love cell phones that play distinctive ring tones. In my total of three days in Hong Kong, I only heard maybe three traditional cell phone ring sounds. Bien's phone was small and silver and played a traditional Chinese song (not unlike "I'm a Little Teapot, Short And Stout") when it rang, which was at least once an hour in the time we spent together. And she had her fingernails painted to match it.
We walked along the shops, Bien rescuing me from the perils of traffic (well, everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road, and I was tired.) It felt like Yonge Street on a coolish summer's evening, but with a lot more Cantonese/Mandarin signs and a lot more neon. Again, very "Blade Runner". We dropped in on bars at the top of tall hotels and admired the views. We walked along the harbor looking at the buildings of downtown from the Hong Kong Space Museum, past the Museum of Art and past the Kowloon Public Ferry pier. We found the lovely little alleyway nestled with restaurants and bars where friends Sean & Nancy used to have the Hong Kong offices of their company, The Jupiter Group, and had dinner at an Italian restaurant. We met friends of Bien's at a bar next door and drank until late, playing a popular Chinese dice game in Cantonese and broken English.
The next morning, while Bien put in a half-day at work before joining me for afternoon adventures, I struck out on my own, found a foul breakfast and negotiated the MTR subway to the Sham Sho Po district, recommended by Sean & Nancy for its computer shops. Nothing was open by the time I arrived, so I explored. I discovered a video arcade with next-generation games from Sega, etc. that can't be found yet in North America (one of which was a drumming game complete with electronic pads and drumsticks used to follow drum patterns on screen. The better your drumming, the higher your score.) The neighborhood was a few notches down from Tsim Sha Tsui and quite dirty … similar to Toronto's Chinatown East on Broadview. People washed their animals in the streets. The driver of a meat delivery truck slung a whole dead, gutted pig over his shoulder, and carried some unplaceable but glistening other carcass in his free hand into a meat store. Vendors sold clothes out of their bulk cardboard shipping boxes -- the ones with the sideways blue diamonds -- to crowds of middle-aged and elderly Chinese women who groped for unlicensed Pokemon or Hello Kitty clothes for their toddlers, or two shoes that were the same and approximately the same size. All the while, laundry hung over the street, threatening to rain down from the sky.
About this time Bien called, able to leave work early. I re-boarded the MTR to central Hong Kong and met her. We took a double-decker city bus, which wound its way through the core of the city, around skyscrapers, skyscrapers in progress, the thinnest, most impossibly shallow apartment buildings (apparently just big enough for a single apartment; 20 units stacked on top of another) tiny alleyways crowded with vendor stalls just slightly larger than phone booths and more of the most expensive, highest-priced boutiques than I've seen in virtually any city in the world. We emerged at a shopping mall. Real estate being what it is in Hong Kong, this mall was vertical -- about 10 stories. After a bit of window-shopping, we bought a bathing suit to replace mine, forgotten at Andre's chalet in Tahoe. It was to a cab to take us to the base of a tram leading to the top of Victoria Peak, a local mountain overlooking the city.
Hong Kong taxis are cheap and efficient. And it's easy to tell when they're available … in addition to lights on top, there's a distinctive red dot illuminated in the windshield which disappears when hired. Taxis are one of the four types of vehicles on the road. The other three are buses, trucks and luxury cars. There are no bad cars in Hong Kong.
Zipping along in our cab, it was apparent that Hong Kong is out of space. People and buildings are sandwiched together. We passed graveyards on terraces, cut into the sides of hills. Not even enough space for the dead.
The Victoria Peak tram is the steepest in the world. Luckily it more resembled a San Francisco streetcar, gripping an underground cable and not a suspended ski gondola, otherwise I would have been a lot more nervous. Inexorably it climbed the mountain, without switchbacks; just a slow, steady linear ascent. Views from the top were spectacular. We took the opportunity to take lunch there and gazed at the city and busy harbor, which was largely free of haze. Upon descending, another double-decker city bus -- this one's top level completely open to the elements -- wound us back through the city to the main central station, where we boarded another bus bound for the beach town of Stanley, over the mountains to the coast. The Stanley bus launched us at high speed along a twisting road just wide enough for two cars abreast. When two buses met, both slap-slapped the trees that lined the highway, knocking off branches and leaves. To sit at the front of the bus was tough. Drivers missed obstacles such as road signs and other busses by, literally, inches. And when they brushed against branches and leaves, it looked disturbingly like they'd been aimed at you, personally.
Stanley consisted of mostly a tented market and handful of restaurants. It was clearly not a high season, and shopkeepers were aggressive in approaching us. There was a wealth of poor merchandise, but a few good nuggets. My only two purchases this trip were made at the Stanley market: a new leather belt and a knapsack/bike courier bag. Both were outrageously good deals and small enough to pack easily. Dinner was at a surprisingly upscale pizza parlor in the Stanley market run by an Asian Canadian.
Once back in Hong Kong proper, we made for the Causeway Bay district and the Excelsior Hotel's upper floor restaurant and bar TOPPS, overlooking the bay and downtown skyline. Here, the subtly shifting neon rings around one of downtown Hong Kong's signature buildings could be properly observed, the whole building's color and character changing minute by minute. We staying for happy hour just long enough for Bien's cheeks to assume a telltale alcohol-intolerant flush and to properly confirm the suspected poor quality of the band that was to represent the evening's entertainment.
Venturing back to Kowloon, we joined Bien's friend Mimi in a local basement bar, where I instantly stood out as the only occidental. Mimi, rebounding, had a number of beers already in her tiny system and was cheered by our company. She spoke no English, but the three of us still had a surprisingly good time. I was moderately surprised to venture to the washroom and not find any toilets … there were only holes in the floor of the stalls, with just the smallest suggestion of porcelain bowls where toilets should have been. Squatting seemed obviously the technique that was called for here.
The next morning I woke early and packed for my trip to Manila, where, if all went well, I would transfer to a plane to Caticlan, from where a boat would take me to Boracay. If all went as planned, I'd be in Boracay before sundown.
After a quick breakfast, I took care of something I intended to do at some point the following day but hadn't had time for: take the Star Ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong. It was inexpensive, was only a 10 minute or so ride and was a great way to sample the harbor air and swelling ocean. Looking over the edge of the boat I couldn't decide whether the Hong Kong harbor was more or less polluted than other city harbors I'd seen. Either way, I was hoping it would be a lot different than the water I'd soon see in the Philippines.
The ferry took me to the central station, and the Airport Express tram was only a short walk. Sixty Hong Kong dollars and 25 minutes later, I was checking in on a Philippine Airlines 747. Due to overbooking, they bumped me up to the upper deck on the 747 … my first time upstairs on a 747.
A flight attendant sat across from me on a fold-out seat for taxi and takeoff. She and the crew were based in Manila, and she'd seen me reading about Manila hotspots in the in-flight magazine. We talked, and though it was against Philippine Airlines' rules, she managed to get me to the flight deck after we were enroute. My first time on the flight deck of a real 747! Not a simulator! It's fun to plow through clouds sitting in the pointy end of a heavy jet…
I was warned to expect transportation vendors in Manila to be aggressive, and upon arrival, I wasn't disappointed. I was solicited by dozens of cabbies who offered to drive me to the regional airport and/or carry my bags. I paid a fair price, got to the new airport, claimed my ticket to Caticlan -- fending off would-be porters and new best friends at every turn.
The air was thick in Manila with heat and car exhaust. And the streets were noisy; drivers seem to use their horns every minute or two, apparently just to tell other drivers where they are, in the same way that birds call to each other. There were official city buses, but far more plentiful were private jeep transports, "jeepneys", most of them gaudily decorated with chrome trim and fittings and brightly-colored bible quotes or religious epithets. Christian iconography is very prevalent in the Philippines, and is all over their billboards, print publications, TV and homes. The country apparently went nuts when the Pope visited.
The 40-seat Dash 7 aircraft to Caticlan may have once had air conditioning, but not this trip. Moisture in big, cool drops dripped regularly on me from the ceiling, waking me. The plane seemed to be in great shape otherwise … but the ground crew gave me quite a scare. After engine start, the plane started taxing to the runway with an oversized safety pin complete with red "remove before takeoff" ribbon still lodged in the landing gear. And I could also see from my windows that one of the engine start hatches had been left open. I was just about to identify myself as a pilot and alert the crew when the plane paused before the runway. Ground personnel, who'd obviously been walking with the aircraft, made final preparations and fixed my issues. We were soon airborne and landed in Caticlan without further concern.
A young boy from my resort met me at the airport, took my bags and loaded them into something I was to become quite acquainted with over the next week and a half: a sort of motorbike with an oversized metal cage sidecar. These were light, maneuverable and ubiquitous on the island we were on as well as the much smaller Boracay. The local taxis on the beach of Boracay itself were oversized pedaled tricycles that seated two to three, powered by a tired, sweaty local who would take you anywhere on the beach for 5-10 pesos (15-25 cents U.S.).
Minutes later we were plowing through the ocean on a native outrigger boat for the 15 minute journey to Boracay. The warm ocean water splashing into my face as the boat cut through the waves was welcome after the hot flight. The crew's English was poor, but my boy (!) took care of everything. The boat alighted on the island's main beach, a several-kilometer stretch of white sand, on a perfectly sunny late afternoon. I was whisked to my native-style hut and was left alone to muse over where I was, how exactly I got there and what I was going to do next.
By the end of the first night I'd explored a good stretch of the beach, selected a dive school ("Calypso", one of the highest-rated on the beach), made preparations to start in the morning, had dinner and met several people -- including two fellow Canadians living in the Philippines: Peter, a bartender at my resort, and Nicole, a resident of the Philippines. They were to both become quite the pub-crawl companions.
The next morning, the dawn of which I heard through the chirping of beaks before I saw its first rays through my mosquito netting, it started becoming apparent that Boracay was likely going to be a lot of fun, but not necessarily the total escape I'd hoped it would be. Not only was the main beach area built up more than I'd expected, but there were a substantial number of visitors -- even though this was off-season -- and an uncomfortable number of locals hawking merchandise, offering massages on the beach and trying to come up with as many ways of separating tourists from their money as possible. The main beach was besieged by boats; at any given time there were as many as 50 boats anchored just off the beach, making the main stretch of sand undesirable for swimming. Even the Internet, which I'd come to escape as best as possible, was available everywhere.
None of this mattered much my first few days. The first morning on Boracay I began my four-day, one-on-one scuba course with my instructor Gabrielle "Gaby" Banister, which brought a convenient structure to my days. I spent more time with Gaby this trip than anyone, and not only learned well from her fine teaching, I believe, but enjoyed her friendship. Gaby first visited Boracay 5+ years ago, and while she's taken trips elsewhere since, including Sweden, she has since called Boracay home. Much like many of the other dive instructors I met this trip … many of them came to the island as students, discovered how easy it was to live inexpensively, and stayed. We divided our time between class, the shop's pool and the ocean.
I started to realize that diving was going to be a lot of fun on many levels. Yes, it's another technical, geeky, hobby like flying, with rules, certification, interesting hardware and the challenge and thrill of being responsible for your own life support. And there's the obvious novelty of breathing underwater as a new experience. However it was also an opportunity to rid myself of a latent fear of large bodies of water -- plumbing the depths of an ocean with relatively good visibility is a good way to see for yourself that there are few creatures, none if your instructor is to be believed, that will aggressively seek you out unless provoked. Visiting the bottom of the ocean, well, specifically, the shallow bottoms that I was able to, was a great way to demystify the water and actually see what lurks beneath with my own eyes. And in my case, after the total of 12 hours of time I spent underwater this trip, there wasn't a lot to get really nervous about (okay, I'd prefer not to see more sea snakes in the future, but the sharks were neat!)
Another appealing aspect of diving, one which I wasn't really expecting, was the ability to defy gravity and "fly", in a sense, underwater. When a diver has made him or herself properly neutrally buoyant, he or she can simply stop swimming and hover at whatever depth they happen to be at by regulating their breathing. This doesn't sound nearly as other-worldly as it is until swimming a foot or two off the ocean floor and it suddenly drops off, as when one swims off the edge of a shelf or over a large hole. Unlike on land, you can just hang there and look down without fear of falling. It's a superhero-like effect, being able to place your body anywhere, in any position you like (head down and feet up, for instance) and just hang and look, suspended.
Finally, what engaged me most about diving was being able to go where people weren't intended to go -- and therefore being able to see things that most people do not see. Like flying, diving opens up vast, unfamiliar areas of the world. Flying and diving make the world larger, something that's very welcome to me given how small it's gotten in recent years. In these comparatively rarely-visited areas of the planet, I find important perspective: as big as the land seems, for instance, it seems dwarfed by the sheer volume of biomass beneath the surface of the oceans. Schools of fish, small and large, aren't things found rarely in nature documentaries. They're everywhere down there. An examination of coral reveals a staggering number of creatures. Night-time visits to the ocean reveal even more species, some pretty spooky. There appears to be vastly more living down there, from microorganisms to corals to small fish to big fish to mammals, etc. than even begins to be found on dry land. Flying home from my Philippine adventure I found it impossible to regard the water as the wasteland I'd previously taken it for on all my journeys, instead perceiving it as the living soup absolutely teeming with life that it appears to really be.
The limited pictures I was able to take with my shallow-water underwater camera don't even begin to do justice to the quality and quantity of what I saw diving. I don't believe a camera is capable of capturing that what we most want to capture in our lives, and at no time in recent memory was that more apparent for me than this trip. I wouldn't even want to try to invest time and effort in underwater photography. The brilliance, majesty and mystique of the underwater world is full of not just outrageous color and action, but subtlety and constant sound. The dead spaces, the calm, the pace, the incessant crackle … these which would be the most tempting to edit out, or not photograph or mask with a soundtrack, are an important part of the magic of diving to me. I'm now able to get out there and see it for myself in context instead of only being spoon-fed some producers' vision. I'm glad for that.
My fourth day, the day of my formal diving certification, I joined an overnight dive trip bound for an even more remote island, Menenguin, a tiny atoll where residents supported themselves by fishing and cultivated seaweed for the Japanese market.
Captain George and his crew welcomed us aboard at 10 p.m., the evening of the day I was first certified. I and about eight others were shown around the boat, a sturdy vessel but the apparent bastard child of a squat tug and archetypical Russian trawler, and bunked down for the evening. As hard as it was to stand in our berths in the rolling boat, the rocking lulled us to sleep. Me, anyway.
I awoke before six and watched the sun rise over the razor-sharp horizon where ocean met sky, as we plowed southwest over the open water.
We did four deep dives that day, an ambitious schedule for someone freshly certified, all along a dramatic shelf that dropped into dark, inky oblivion outside our sight. Initial dives were to 40+ meters, but subsequent ones slightly shallower (safe diving is done with an understanding of the variables which affect absorption of nitrogen by the body and the length of time it takes to return to safe levels, which can all be governed by modern dive computers such as the ones we were using.) Aside from swimming along the side of the shelf itself, a dramatic drop-off to deep, dark nothingness at the depth we were at, we saw outrageous things like sharks and schools of barracuda and large tuna.
We made a grisly find after one of our dives … floating along the surface of the water was the bloated, stinking body of a dog someone had apparently tied to a weight and thrown overboard. The weight didn't hold, and it appeared the currents of the ocean, out of some possible sense of justice, may have been returning the body back to the island from which it no doubt came. I mused to myself that it'd be entirely consistent with the ways of the world if the body were to wash up in front of the house of the same fisherman who first dispatched the dog. Ah, the stuff ghost stories are made of.
Bitten by the diving bug and out of a loss for anything else to do with my days, I signed up with Gaby for more instruction to pursue an advanced dive rating on top of my basic certification. This rating involved more lecture-type instruction, open-book tests and additional dives -- among them, deep diving (something I found old hat after Menenguin), drift diving (i.e. diving with a strong current and emerging somewhere other than where you put in), and night diving … which I found intimidating but rewarding. It was easy to see things at night, as everything's eyes luminesced in the light of our dive lights. Night diving, like night flying, appears to have its share of rewards.
Studying and writing my diving tests were good opportunities to study the music played by the local bar and restaurant at Calypso. Locals working there spent a good amount of time listening to well-produced, well-performed formula pop by a handful of Philippine artists. While I didn't understand the words, I didn't need to; they seemed to be universal songs of lust and love, perhaps a notch or two more maudlin than most. Which got me wondering to myself about the apparent dichotomy of religion and the lust of everyday life in South East Asia, South America, Mexico and likely other former Christian missions elsewhere -- people in these areas, on one hand, can be God-fearing, churchgoing and righteous, and on the other hand, many of the very same are more lusty, guttural and sexually irresponsible. I wondered to myself what failing of Christianity, what restrictiveness has been responsible for the same churchgoing folks to justify their passion, to get pregnant all the more often. Then I wondered if Christian missionaries worked hard to convert these areas in the first place because of what they thought was a regions' inherent lustiness, because of some perceived propensity for sin. And then I thought of a Christian sex fiend I came to know recently quite well, who maintained that one of the fundamental tenets of her faith is that sins, no matter how outrageous, are all forgiven if properly repented for. What a convenient faith for lusty people, I thought. Idle thoughts.
Western music played on the local Boracay radio station was often of the sappy love song variety as well, but more recognizable high school dance ballads. Lionel Richie and Foreigner songs I'd not heard in at least 10 years were in regular rotation. For whatever reason, the radio station and locals also played a disturbing amount of Phil Collins (and at least one Philippine artist whose music and voice seemed highly influenced by Collins.) As a friendly gesture I'd brought some CDs, as I understood the island might be wanting for some contemporary music, but after the first few tracks of the Chemical Brothers (including everyone's favorite "who is this doin' this synthetic typa alpha-beta psychedelic fuckin'? ") they politely switched back to their own CDs and didn't seem to have the heart to even try listening to my Seal, Third Eye Blind or Sprit Of The West. Ironic that they tried the Chemicals first. I turned out to be the one that felt like the uncultured fop. Oh well.
At the end of our third day of additional instruction, I received my PADI Advanced Open Water certification. A pretty neat thing to have.
I only stayed three evenings at my original resort, "Nigi Nigi Nu Noos e Nu Nu Noos", which was just as well. Nice enough place, but silly name. After three nights at Nigi Nigi, I moved into an air-conditioned room above the Calypso dive shop offered to me by Richard the manager, a charming fellow who partied harder, more consistently and later than any other local I met, for less money than the fan-cooled room at Nigi Nigi's. But at night, the bar at Nigi Nigi's, outdoors like most, with white beach sand underfoot and jazz on the stereo, continued to be an important gathering place for friends I met this trip. Fellow Canadian Peter, the manager, and I got along well.
Neat people from around the world that I met at this bar included the lovely Slovenians Ines and Marina, South Africans Kirsten and Barbara, Frenchmen or Israelis (we weren't quite sure) Thomas and Hede, Koreans Paula and Lucy, Finns Sirpa and Mila and Canadians Nicole, the conspicuously-tattooed Victoria and local school principal Michelle. Other fine folks included Doris and Duncan from Australia, and Manuela and Jan from Germany. Other interesting folks included a self-professed millionaire diaper-disposal-machine inventor and his (at least) 30-year junior trophy wife, whose names I didn't quite commit to memory, and two English couples, one from Hong Kong and one from London, who took dive lessons from other instructors at Calypso at approximately the same time I did. The South Africans and British, who I could most effectively communicate with (the Canadians weren't so hard to talk to, either) gave me some new expressions, including women as "birds" and "I'm so hungry I could eat the leg off a low-flying duck." You had to be there.
Bars were a good vantage point from which to observe other nocturnal activity on Boracay, including the large number of older North American/European men and their young Philippine mistresses/wives. This eventually got hard to watch. Mostly old, sad, unattractive men who'd apparently failed in love elsewhere seemingly come to the Philippines to whisk away young women anxious for a way out … women who are lucky enough to have one. Age gaps tended to be substantial from what I saw, and the men were often large and overweight, the woman small and slender. I didn't have personal evidence to support this, but was led to believe some families encourage their daughters to primp and preen and find rich tourist husbands in an effort to infuse money into the family. I'm not sure why I was as bothered by this as I was. Perhaps it's a misconception of mine, my belief that common contexts and world views need to be at the root of sustainable relationships. Or maybe it's distain for the mutual desperation that both parties seem to bring to the equation. I wouldn't want to make life plans with someone -- and I guess I'm shocked that anyone would -- in such circumstances (maybe I'll see things different when I'm also 60, fat and single…)
Far be it for me to overly-characterize Boracay as an island of debauchery, but there were a few interesting sex-related stories… Sure, there was a lot of the standard cross-pollination between fellow travelers -- there always is -- and there were more than a few ladies, accompanied sometimes by (what appeared to be) their daughters, offering "massage", or "special massage" to single males like me walking back home late at night, but, lo, there was evidence of further kink! Finnish friend Sirpa recounted how she and a friend had been approached independently to possibly participate in threesomes with other couples. She suggested there seemed to have been some sort of underground swinging scene at one of the resorts at a neighboring beach. Also worthy of note … one of the local discos, Bazzura, was not only popular for tourists to hook up with locals and other tourists, but was widely recognized as a transvestite/transsexual hangout. A couple of which happily preened for, giggled and chatted with me on the beach early one morning as I made my way home. Boracay is a fascinating place stumbling back to your room at 4 in the morning, as was sometimes the case when I didn't have a 9 a.m. dive.
I was advised there'd be opportunities to play music on Boracay, so I'd brought my favorite hand drum. And I'm glad I did. In one memorable episode, I'd sat in a darkened, quiet area of the beach late one night and began to play. About 10 minutes later, a group of children who spoke very little English appeared, attracted like moths, and sang and danced at the foot of the waves while I played. They then took turns tapping the doumbek, fascinated by its transparent head and unusual sound. Then, while I played more for them, we were joined by the lithe, ubiquitously-tattooed French Canadian Victoria, who danced very effectively, entertaining all of us. It was a very good time.
There are lots of places to drink late on Boracay, and the "Bom Bom Bar", (pronounced "Boom Boom") was one of the better ones. Popular not only for its lounge area on the beach with swings and hammocks, but for its live music jams, this is where I spent a lot of late night hours. The several nights I played with fellow musicians were pretty special. Few of the locals who played there were formally trained, but everyone made up for it with enthusiasm. Two players in particular, Butch and Boi, were great fun. Butch was a very musical guitarist, with a powerful sense of dynamics and aggressive and gentle strumming. We synchronized perfectly. Boi had great love for the material and the group dynamic, and would chat with me enthusiastically, smiling his toothless smile and waving his hands between sets. He's the one that organized, introduced and lead the group in "Leaving On A Jet Plane" that made them, me and lots of other friends in the bar with me that last night a little misty-eyed. Traveling can be so much fun, and that moment underscored just how sad as well.
"All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go … now the time has come to leave you … but the dawn is breakin' it's early morn … every place I go, I'll think of you … the taxi's waitin' he's blowin' his horn … every song I sing, I'll sing for you … so kiss me and smile for me; tell me that you'll wait for me … hold me like you'll never let me go … cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane … don't know when I'll be back again … oh, babe, I hate to go"
Out longer than I should have for the time I had to get up, the next morning I accidentally slept in and had to pack in a whirlwind … I barely settled up my various tabs and got to the boat in time to get to the airport to guarantee my seat on the flight which took me to Manila.
This time in Manila, I got a chance to see more. Completely out of Philippine pesos, I'd resigned myself to having to walk between the airport terminals and had more than enough time to do so. So I declined the 20+ cabs that were offered to me as I exited the terminal, their fares decreasing in price the further I walked. Not far out of the terminal I found a bank machine that would accept an international card, chose to resume my walk, and the character of Manila changed.
People smiled at me as I walked by them on the smog-choked streets. Locals out on lunch breaks, who must not often see backpacking Canadians strolling by with their three carry-ons, actually said hello in their best English, smiling without (apparently) wanting anything. No-one attempted much of a chat, perhaps realizing I seemed to be in somewhat of a hurry. Or perhaps language was a barrier. Either way, I relished the contact and shuffled off through the heavy air and arrived at the international terminal in an hour and a half.
Then, one of those curious tableaus which you suspect at the time that you'll likely remember and cherish forever: as I was checking in, a man remarked "you sweat a lot". He was right -- it was a long walk and very hot outside. I had lots of time before boarding, so I slipped into a "comfort room", the Philippine euphemism for bathroom, and had a quick wash, fresh application of deodorant and after-shave and change of shirt. As I sat in the boarding area eating a sandwich and cookie, I was overcome with happiness. I was safe, clean, tired but well-fed, head swimming with adventures. Yes, I'd actually been to Boracay, heck, just earlier that morning -- and it already felt so far away. I felt curiously serene and proud of myself, and relished it.
Back in Hong Kong, I checked in again at the Kimberly Hotel, and perhaps sensing that it was somehow deserved by this epic traveler, they upgraded me a premium suite on the top floor instead of a standard room. I met Bien downtown after work and we walked around the Wan Chi district, full of international restaurants and bars where expats apparently meet and mate. Out of coincidence we found the F-Stop, and in having drinks there, essentially finished the list of places to see and things to do given to me by former Hong Kongers Sean and Nancy. I was tired and the evening finished early.
In the morning Bien took me to a favorite Dim Sum restaurant in Kowloon near the old Kai Tak airport and saw me off. I'd never had Dim Sum with anyone Chinese before, I noted.
Twelve hours, three movies and three meals later, I was home.
Dallas Kachan is a onetime, and now re-inspired, traveller. He lives in San Francisco but is now unclear for just how much longer. Visit him on the web at http://www.11010011.com/dzk