Back in Makati

If I ever won the lottery, so I don't play the lottery, but should I ever play and win.....Makati is the first place I'd go.  Maybe the Philippines in general.  Maybe this is the first place I've visited where the US dollar stretches so far.  All of southeast Asia is probably in a similar situation. 

This place down the street where the Berjeya Hotel is, is a melting pot, sort of.  It's two business's down from the hotel.  Its a restaurant, but very open.  Run by women, as far as I have seen, the kitchen is sunken but almost street level.  From the street you walk up an area full of tables until you reach a counter full of similar items they sell in the Philippines.  Individual cigarettes, small candies, and other individual small stuff you can eat.  That counter is waist level for the patrons, but head level to the lady cooks.  Its on a corner, and its all open.  No walls except the back of the kitchen. So the roof is several different levels put together as time went on. 

Sitting at the higher level near the counter you can see everything the tables at the street level  even though they are about two feet lower.  Its just a great spot for watching all the different sorts of people go by without getting so close that you get solicited for stuff.  Its a gathering spot for local Algerians.  Last night one was arguing and insulting one of the waitresses.  I've got no idea really what was going on, but it was loud, she was mad, and he was insulting.  They were there when I was here the first time.  Many have told me they are very social.  The only real complaints I've heard is about the "Arabs" and how they treat women.  "They come here to do things to women they can't in their country".

The first time I came here in early November, it was afternoon, and I sat and had a few beers.  It's such a great place to people watch.  There was this lady there, mixed Philippino and something darker, pretty, but emotionless. She was sitting facing me against the wall in a bench seat.  I was trying not to stare even though there was little else to look at.  She had a beer in front of her and she was just chillin at the table.  I went up at some point to get another beer and she walked up and introduced herself as Jane.  So a bit later some strange shaved headed white guy showed up and sat next to her.  He looked a little hollow eyed and acted odd dancing around a bit.  I kept eye contact with her, smirked a bit at the crazy man bothering her...which shortly after is when she introduced herself.  Ok, well fix the timeline yourself, the crazy guy came up at some point before she introduced herself.

After returning from Palawan (pronounced Puh-LAUW on) to Makati, I went out to get something to eat and maybe find another good people watching place.  I ended up returning to the Resto Bar down the street from the Berjeya.  I bought some old guy selling hats dinner, but told the waitress not to tell  him where it came from, the other waitress didn't get the memo.  Nothing came of it, I mean of her pointing at me and telling him who bought his dinner.  I know he would have spent the 350 pesos ($7) better had I just handed it to him, but he seemed to enjoy the meal. 

So after a few beers on my part, Jane showed up and sat down in the table in front of me.  I got up and sat down in front of her at her table and said hi.  She told me her name wasn't "Jane"...."my name is Rose".  I argued a bit with her, she recognized me from 3 weeks ago, she thanked me for the dinner, but insisted her name was Rose.  I gave up on Jane, kind of.  I'm pretty good with remembering peoples names, and knew she introduced herself as Jane.  We talked awhile and at some point she gave a little concession and said her name was "Rosie-Jane".  I'm not sure how she couldn't have confessed that a little earlier, or didn't get that connection, but, well, whatever.  She told me she was homeless in Makati, that she slept next to "that building" and pointed somewhere behind me.  By the way she was dressed, with a lite blue dress on with shoulder straps that looked new, it was hard to imagine she was homeless.  It wasn't just the dress, it was the way the waitresses interacted with her, and she was pretty.  While sitting in front of her, across the table, talking I noticed a few things.  She kept wiping sweat from her forehead, and it wasn't that hot, it was comfortable, maybe 75 degrees and lower humidity.  I was wondering if she was nervous talking to me.  It was kind of cool to find out she was.  She kept taking the shoulder straps of her dress and pulling them down to the sides of her shoulder, and the waitress kept complimenting my looks in front of her.  It felt good, I'm not going to lie.  Then the guy from before came in and started talking to her.  The hollowed eyed white guy who it looked like was bothering her 3 weeks ago.  She directed him to sit at the table behind her, and he did.  Apparently they were friends and both homeless.  George sat back there and I ordered beers and food for him.  We sat apart like that for a while, until some late 60 something Finnish guy sat at the table next to us and got a little disrespectful.  He started out just interrupting our conversation, like she wasn't even there and was talking to me.  "Are you Finnish?" ....."in Finland we learned everything about all the states and the U.S. in school, but what do you Americans know about Finland?".  I told him I was German to which he told me there is a lot of "Finish" blood in Germans.  I agreed that American schools are not up to par with the world, and geography and all.  At some point he said something about "getting a little pussy will............", and I told him I'm not talking to him anymore.  "I'm done with you"......"Why because of the way SHE reacted when I said that?"......."No, because what you said is completely disrespectful, regardless of how she took it".  He kept trying to talk.  I got up with her and went to her friends table behind us.  The Finnish guy got up all frustrated saying "Jesus Christ" and walked off. 

George, Janes' friend was an Australian.  He was a bit off, but mostly normal, but hard to understand.  He kind of had this fast cocaine mumble.    I bought them a few more beers as we talked.  The old Finnish guy passed back thru and held his hand out for me to shake and said he was sorry.  I shook it. 

Before I left that night I gave Jane and George, 1000 pesos ($20). 

I walk down the street the next day around 8 am past that Resto Bar looking for breakfast not really paying attention to the place.  After breakfast, heading back to the hotel, I passed the place again.  There was Jane and George sitting there with their heads down and their arms over their heads on the table I left them at the night before.  I sat down and said their names.  There was no movement at all.  I looked over at the guy selling Viagra or Cialis and IPhone 5's on the street and he was smiling. 

I ran across the portable pharmacy/apple store later after coming out of the 7-11 down the street the opposite way from the hotel.  He held out his little box of pills in front of me, then made eye contact.  I told him I was good and that I didn't want the pills, but asked if "they" woke up.  He said they did, and left the place....

Nagtabon Beach....November 14th

 Ok,  apparently it was actually the 13th I was there.  A Sunday.  I didn't really get it at first, why it was so crowded, and I was nearly the only white guy there.  I didn't get it mostly because of just wanting to learn to get on the 6'4" surfboard they had for rent there and try to surf what little break they had.  It wasn't about surfing, it was about learning to get on a smaller board.  What a beautiful place to learn.  Nagtabon beach is this beautiful valley about 30 minutes from Puerto Princesa.  You have to travel through rural countryside to get there, a lot of curvy kind of  uphill and rural but concrete roads to get there.  Once away from Puerto Princesa the road goes down to two lanes, not that anyone here really cares about what a lane is.  The rural people dry there rice on the roadways.  They put tarps down, half past the white stripe that is the official edge of the road and half into the grass that is what we would refer to as the berm.  So 4 feet into the road in a place like Hocking County in Southern Ohio  where the roads are all curvy and hilly, they would have a tarp halfway into a lane or nearly so, with rice on it.  It seemed the only flat dry sunfilled, windfilled area they might have available, so they use it.  The sun provides the heat, and the passing cars and scooters, and tricycles, and etc provide the wind.  It just seems odd, from the Ohio boy standpoint, that someone would clog up half a lane on a blind curve to dry their rice.  They also use the side of the road to graze their Ox.  Nose ring tied to a tree or whatever, you come blasting around a corner to see what, as far as I know, a 2000 pound water buffalo standing next to a road you could be doing 45 mph on.  The Ox don't care, neither do the goats they tether there.  Dogs here on the other hand bring new meaning to "don't care" as far as roadway etiquette might be concerned.  Near the city or out in the middle of no where, the dogs just chill.  Halfway thru the lanes, in the middle, they just seem not to care.  Many of them, probably are wanting suicide, most I've seen are fairly healthy, none are overweight.

So the last bit of journey into Nagtabon is way downhill.  When going today, I stopped to take a picture from the roadway before heading down the hill.  It was too tree covered to really get a good shot, but I tried.  While I was standing there, a silent scooter went by with a Filipino guy on it.  The engine was off, he was saving gas.  I followed suit, didn't start my motor and coasted downhill to the beach.  The locals, I'm guessing, have a spot for cars and such, but the tricycles and motorcycles and scooters just kind of squeeze into the end of the road before the beach starts and before the two huts that kind of mark the beginning of the beach.  I'm guessing its all privately owned.  You go between two beach huts (picture what you might consider a well built tiki hut) and there is the south china sea.  To the left there are a few more beach huts that sell stuff, canoes with outriggers, and more "rental huts" that are basically a picnic table covered in Tiki hut style.  To the right there is the same except more huts that sell stuff.  I settled in on one to the right.  This beautiful Palawan girl missing all her front teeth had a kind of big stand with 4 picnic table size tables under shade/rain cover all palm leave covered like most of them.  Her daughters and mother worked it all with her, I'm guessing they all just lived right there under the cover from rain.  The bugs are not really an issue except maybe the flies, but they go away at night.  Flies/ bugs must not be too big of a deal here because many ride their cycles full bore with no eye protection.

So Nagtabon Beach is around 6km long, if one were to walk it from the one side cliff to the next.  The beach at low tide and high tide is still much larger than what I've taken for granted living in the Marshalls.  (yes I feel cool saying that).  The sand is a dirty blonde.  They report no sharks, but the whole valley beach has no reason to have a bunch of fish that sharks may feed off of...so no sharks.  This place is probably the most beautiful beachy spot I've ever witnessed in my life.  Its just the remote untouched feel of it mainly I'd guess. 

So today, Sunday, I came here to rent the surfboard from the guy who rents surfboards, kind of.  Dominic, my friend from the hotel, helped me find him.  The waves aren't really good for surfing, but they are good for learning to get on/ride a shorter board.  After spending two hours in the water today, I went to the beautiful lady missing most her top front teeth.  She had some food that looked kind of good, chicken based.  I can see why Americans are so big, versus the Asians.  The servings here are more realistic based on the energy output of the Philippinos.  They are small, very small even if you include the rice. Its been no secret to me that we eat too much, that I eat too much.  Even given my active nature, my caloric intake is more than I need. 

So the beautiful jet black haired, nearly thirty something Philippino beach lady missing most of her top front teeth, with several cute kids, and a mother working the hut too, gives me grief about not having a smaller denomination than what I have had.  I give the grief back.  All is good.

After spending a few hours surfing, returning the board, then getting something to eat, I sit and wait, just watching all the people on the beach.  Its then I realize that its Sunday and the Philippinos are big time family people and that is why the beach is so crowded.  It starts to rain.  It rains hard for a long while.  I'm under cover, half of the people are under cover of tiki huts made of palm leaves, just like you might picture from a perfect beach deal.  The other half of the people just don't care.  They play volleyball, they continue to play in the water.  The group in front of where I'm sitting tries to avoid the rain for a while, hiding under their hut and the tarp that covers the area in front of me. They are drinking beer as evidenced by the empty Grandes under their benches in the hut.  Then they kind of embrace the rain.  They use the water off the tarp to do their dishes, after hiding under the tarp long enough to realize the rain is not going to stop.  Women with jeans on, that were initially trying to stay dry, gave up and come back from the ocean soaked.

After a while, I give up, and ask for a San Miguel Grande.  Its a fourty ouncer of San Miguel, a Filipino made beer.  So the toothless woman says.."so you're drinking now".  It continued raining until I finished the beer.  A Spanish couple was under the cover of the toothless girls hut also.  The rain continues and rather than try and drive my motor bike home in it, I decide to go body surfing.  The body surfing was going well, but these kids around 14 had a 4 seater kayak with two paddles.  They were trying to surf the waves in.  It was kind of working.  I yelled at them when they were out there perched to catch a wave, and screamed for them to paddle as a wave approached.  It was hilarious.  They kind of rode a wave in, but mostly the kayak just turned on them and they wiped out and dumped everyone.  They offered me a seat....and hell yea I took it.  One asked me if I spoke Taglog.  I only recognized that one word and said no.  He said "English" and after that I was guessing he was yelling "paddle white dog" although I doubt it because they are so nice an respectful.  There was a lot of screaming going on as we tried to catch waves.  It nearly always ended in the kayak full of 4 or 5 of us side shifting and dumping and more screaming.  A few times there was pain, but mostly it was all just a bunch of laughing as we came up.  Others came out and wanted to ride.  They had to, we were the loudest things on the water.  I saw some people throwing a Frisbee and was quick to say thank you and leave.  Trust me, I was sooo happy to play with them on the kayak.   So I gave the guys on the beach firs thing my light up Frisbee.  It was middle of the day, I don't think they got the coolness of it.  We had a huge Frisbee circle going then a midget field of ultimate started.  Perfectly awesome!  Playing ultimate in a foreign country on the most beautiful huge beach I've ever been to with a bunch of guys who just scream a lot for fun. 

So this one give no justice to the view, but as my time here progressed and I kept returning to the beach the little pile of gravel pictured here on the outside of the road, all safe and stuff, continued to grow and get dangerous.  The piles showed up on the inside of the steep curves going to the beach, more than halfway thru the roadway.  Gravel is bad for two wheel vehicles, very bad.  They don't care.

Chicken and Hen islands.  Not sure if that is the name of those islands, but I got it from somewhere, and besides none of you will know anyhow

So, this was NOT family day, but you can see the beauty.

So gorgeous.

The Philippines.....Makati

Beginning of November...

It took a while to get here, even from Kwaj.  The United flight stops at Pohnpei, Kosrei, and Chuuk, before getting to Guam.  I might have the order wrong, along with the spelling.  Amber told me I could get off the plane on each island.  I boarded the plane with a guy I barely knew from Kwaj that works with San Juan.  I convinced him we need to get off the plane, and have a beer at each island. The islands were about an hour away, and it took around 45 mins to exchange passengers each time.  The first stop, we started to deplane, but the announcement said basically that you shouldn't,  so we sat back down. We both noted that others got off and came back anyhow.  So the next little island, we both got off the plane.  Dom is a smoker, and that had to be his motivation.  There wasn't a place to smoke, but they did sell beer.  He forgot his boarding pass, and started to wig out a bit after I asked him about it.  I think the wigging out was the nicotine withdrawal.  It worked out of course and we got back on the plane after around 45mins in the terminal.  The next stop he said he wasn't going to get off the plane.  I pushed. He stayed, well for a bit.  There was a smoking part outside at that airport. 

Dom and I were heading to the same final destination in Manila...well Makiti in Manila.  So in Guam we ran together thru the airport to make it to the final flight to Manila.  Dom was only spending the night there and heading to Thailand the next day.  Turns out his hotel was right around the corner from my hotel in Makati.

Makati/Manila is a huge area,....a huge city.  Manila probably has around 1000 buildings over 30 stories high.  I would guess its bigger than New York.  After spending 5 days in my hotel in Makati, its safe to say its  a dirty city with  nice people, and a ton of homeless and desperate people.  That part of it has to be worse than New York because the weather is so much warmer.  The exchange rate here is great for the dollar.  48 Philipino Peso's for one US dollar.  The hotel, a very nice 50 story hotel downtown was 250$ for 5 days.  The doorman and staff were super super nice and cordial.  The streets were full of people asking for nearly anything at night. It seemed every store had a security guard in front of it.  The guards all had police looking uniforms on, navy blue pants with a dress white shirt and the belt full of implements.  Many had shotguns leashed in a way around their necks that they rested their hands on them. So they looked ready to be used at any timetime.  The bank guards had M-16 rifles.  It was fairly depressing in the beginning.    After the second day, after sitting in an outdoor corner open air restaurant drinking beer and just watching people, a few women stood out.  One was in the place when I got there.....and I kept making eye contact with her as this strange (American) guy sat next to her and kept bothering her kind of.  She was Philipino, he was sunken eyed, dancing strangely and sitting next to her.  She was facing me, and he was facing her.  It looked uncomfortable for her.  She didn't really waver, she just looked at me (at least for the few seconds I let my eyes meet hers) with a blank stare.  Later when I was getting another beer a the counter she was too and introduced herself as Jane.  I went back to my seat, and at some point the weird guy left.  I ordered and ate dinner, which was a great chicken curry, while she sat there and brought something out of her purse to eat. I couldn't really figure her out, she was there way too long, but had a beer in front of her the whole time.  At the same time another girl came around in front of the place begging for money. She approached a few people with with no luck.  She stopped after a while and just sat in the chairs of the restaurant closest to the street.  The chicken curry was good.  I ordered another meal and asked the server to split it between the two women.  I paid and left.  It felt really great to do something nice for those two...it felt even better cause I didn't wait around to get a thank you.  Hell, maybe they didn't even get it.  It was GREAT chicken curry. It was $6.  The grin lasted at least a few hours, the good feeling, a while longer.

The next night, maybe my 4th night there, after finding my way to the "Tequila Bar" that overlooked a very busy sketchy area in Makati, but had a security guard there ushering away street people.  It was an open air bar/restaurant with a great view of the bordellos, and the skinny little street children, the skinny little street vendors, and just all the activity not seen in most of the Midwest or the states.   I ordered a meal, then a second meal that first night.  There was a guy, that couldn't have weighed more than 120lbs selling some feathery kind of thing.  I couldn't tell what he was selling.  He was incredibly small, and had some wares that he laid out in front of him on the corner. He sat in front of them on his feet, the way most adults in the US can't, still on his feet but his butt was resting on them.  After watching him for a while, his (?) kids came by and he gave them some of what he was selling and he ushered them off.  These kids were like 5 and maybe 8 years old.  They got my second meal.  I just walked out of the place handed it to them and walked back in.

The next night was very different.  Ten pizzas went out.  I passed them out so quick their reactions were missed. I wonder if altruism can also be hedonism.  The next night I didn't go so far, there was a Korean restaurant that had the most THE MOST incredible seafood cake.  It was a meaty 14 inch egg based pizza shaped deal.  After first looking at it and thinking that'll make a great meal tomorrow too, I ate the whole thing.  Across the street before I went in the place, there was this nearly seventy year old woman sleeping next to her probably older husband on a concrete stoop to a place that looked abandoned.  The other seafood pizza went to this lady.  It felt really good.

After getting a ride in the hotel cab for what someone told me later was a ridiculous price of 600 pesos, I used my "Uber" app on my phone for the first time.  Pretty cool.  It showed me how much the fare would be, who would pick me up, what the license plate number was, and the kind of car.  So for around 3 dollars you can go nearly anywhere in Makati which translates into about thirty to forty five minutes on a weekend.  The "Mall of Asia" was my first destination, with getting a decent pair of sunglasses in mind.  I am pretty sure I've never been among so many people and been the only one with blonde hair.

Traffic in Manila is crazy.  The main form of public transportation is these Filipino made buses with no windows called a Jeepney. To be more precise, they have windows, but no glass.  Built anywhere from 1945 to present, they are half bus and half jeep.  Most are pretty colorful and ornately finished.  They just look like they are from a different era.  They would make a great "coffee table" book, if someone took the time to photograph a few hundred of them. All Jeepney's have the same basic design, the same look, but they are customized by the owners sometimes very ornately.  "Multicabs" are another form of privately owned public transportation.  Smaller than the Jeepneys, they are basically a Toyota van with benches running along the sides and window openings with no glass in the back.  Its amazing how many people can fit in one of these.  They aren't as nearly ornate and colorful as the Jeepney's.  Tricycles also carry a few people.  These are 155 cc motorcycles with a roof covering the sidecar that can hold 3 small people.  These little engines are way overburdened.  Scooters and two wheel motorbikes are pretty popular too, and the people that drive them are insane.  They don't wait.  If they can squeeze between a semi and a bus to get to the front at an intersection, they will.  They will fly between two cars going 45mph like it was a tunnel all to themselves.  None of the above listed forms of transportation have any sort of emission control, and the smog shows it.  I was told when leaving for the airport, since it was on a Monday, that I should leave the hotel 5 hours early to be safe.  If there were no cars on the street, that's a 20 minute ride.