Day 375: Sick in Saigon

It seems I caught a cold during my last days in the Philippines, and today I really felt its effect. So, with a fever and body aches I decided to stay in the hostel and do nothing except sleep and read. The only time I left the hostel was to walk to the supermarket to get some food and water.

Walking from the hostel to the supermarket involved crossing two streets. I had read a lot about crossing streets in Vietnam, but as usual reality was something else entirely. With streets in Saigon, the concept of a 'lane' doesn't really make sense. It would be much more helpful to think in terms of water: about half the street's width flows in one direction, the other half in the other direction. The only difference being that the flow doesn't consist of water molecules, but of motorbikes.

To continue the water analogy, you can't wait for any gaps when trying to cross the street: there never are any. Instead, like when you cross a river, you just start walking and hope that the flood of motorbikes will flow around you.

Standing on the side of a street and knowing that all you have to do is start walking, it is quite terrifying to look into the oncoming traffic. But once you start moving, as long as you walk confidently at a single speed in a single direction, it's not bad at all - somehow the drivers know just how to avoid you. Fascinating!

Day 374: Good morning, Vietnam!

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at two in the morning and didn't see very much of the city during the swift transfer from the airport to my hostel. So when I woke up after a few hours of sleep, everything was new and exciting. I didn't understand any of the language anymore - there are no bits and pieces of English interwoven into Vietnamese, and next to no English signs or advertisements. The air smelled fragrant instead of smoggy, and people were wearing nón lá hats. In short, it finally felt like I had arrived in Asia!

One thing I noticed immediately when I started wandering around was the amount of foreigners in the streets. There are definitely more tourists in Vietnam compared to the Philippines. I was almost a little disconcerted by how many tall, pale people there were.

Strolling through the popular Ben Thanh market, I came across a booth with a somewhat odd assortment of wares on offer: coffee, tea, nuts, some liquor, ... and Buddha statues. I felt oddly comforted by the smiling Buddhas and thought "wow, that booth sells everything that is good in life."

And then I got to thinking about Christianity and Buddhism, or more specifically about Jesus and Buddha. Have you ever noticed how different their expressions are? Jesus is always a picture of anguish and suffering, being nailed to a cross and everything. Buddha statues, in contrast, convey an image of smiling contentment. So I wondered - what mindset does it put you in if the idol of your religion, an image that you see every day, looks at you with an expression of pain and suffering? I think the mindset created by an idol that is smiling contentedly is vastly superior, healthier and more conducive to positive interactions with yourself and others. I might even go so far as to say that this could be an explanation for the differences between the way Christians and Buddhists treat other cultures and other nations, and how they have treated them in history - with fear and war, or with acceptance. 

A little later, my wanderings took me to the gates of the Independence Palace. Originally, a wooden palace stood at this site. During the colonial time, it was rebuilt by the French to something grander, and then, after it had been damaged during the Vietnam war, it was rebuilt again with its current design.

The architecture is quite interesting because there are Chinese characters represented in many of its features. The layout of the entire building, for example, represents the character 'good luck'. The front of the building is designed so that you can see several characters, for example prosperity, intelligence, education, and free speech.

Inside, the palace has all the amenities you'd expect from the president's residence (and maybe even more): living quarters, banquet halls, bomb shelters, a movie theater, and a rooftop ballroom. The living quarters face an open courtyard with a beautifully designed feng shui garden:

Opulence was visible in pretty much every single room, but especially in the representative rooms that were used to receive foreign guests, such as this magnificent 'room of credentials':

Day 373: Goodbye, Philippines!

In the morning, I did some last chores in Cebu City - things like finding a post office to finally mail the postcards I'd written a week ago, and finding replacements for some items that had reached the end of their life: a bag, a toothbrush cover, and a pen. I was quite surprised that I was able to find all that in a fairly small amount of time. Malls be praised, I guess ;-)

Cebu wasn't quite as chaotic as Manila, but that doesn't mean it's a nice city. There were several kinds of pollution at work - air, noise and garbage come to mind. Still, the bus terminal, my hostel, and downtown were all in walking distance which - in the absence of good public transport - was something to be grateful for.

When I left the hostel around noon, the guard calling a taxi for me warned me that some flights might be cancelled due to the typhoon Ofel. Luckily, the flights to Manila were not affected; there were few cancellations overall, and they concerned other parts of the country. As I'm writing this, however, googling for the typhoon's name brings up headlines like "Hundreds flee as typhoon Ofel hits Mindanao," (Mindanao being an island in the south, while I was trying to travel northwest) so it doesn't seem to be a matter to be taken lightly.

With only two flights to catch, I wouldn't have thought it possible that I would experience another chapter in the 'Public transportation in the Philippines' story. Unfortunately, I was proven wrong at the airport in Manila, where I had to change from the domestic terminal 4 to terminal 3. There is a shuttle bus that connects the four terminals of Manila's airport with each other. The bus is supposed to run every 15 minutes. Being consistent with the level of service of most public transportation in the Philippines, however, it didn't: I waited for well over an hour until a bus finally made its appearance. Since I had plenty of time and a book at hand, I didn't mind much. But still - a terminal shuttle should be something rather basic and important, wouldn't you think?

To end my goodbyes to the Philippines on a more positive note, I have to say that I really liked the Filipino people. They were always friendly and smiley, and whenever I smiled back at a souvenir vendor and said "no thank you" they were actually content with exchanging a few friendly phrases and then leaving me alone without pressing the vending matter any further. I also liked the Filipino language. It sounded very gentle and melodious; so much so, in fact, that I found it almost impossible to imagine people swearing or cursing in their language.

Day 372: Back to Cebu

Sadly, today was another chapter in the 'Public transportation in the Philippines' story. I had purposely split up the long trip from Malapascua to Vietnam into two days - going back to Cebu today, and catching two flights to Manila and Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow, and my experience today proved that I had been right in doing so.

But I'll start from the beginning. At 9:30 in the morning, I arrived at the beach where the ferry back to Maya leaves. The ferry is supposed to run every thirty minutes. Guess when the next ferry left?

If anyone of you guessed 1pm, then you deserve an award. I surely didn't expect a 3+ hour wait at the beach, and I definitely would have freaked out if I had had to catch a flight in Cebu. As it was, I only had to get back to Cebu sometime today, so I could relax and read instead of freak out ;-)

Having arrived in Maya, I was thankful that the bus to Cebu left directly, without another long wait. However, it still took five hours to get back to Cebu, so when I arrived it was already dark and raining (the rain possibly an effect of the typhoon that had been incoming yesterday?).

On both journeys to and from Malapascua, I was the only foreigner on bus and ferry. I wonder how the other foreign tourists I saw on the island got there? I'm guessing that most of them had private transportation arranged by their resorts, and that could maybe explain the sloppy ferry service - more money can be made with tourists buying private transportation, and if they are stimulated to do so by the randomness of public transportation, then there's no need to improve it, right?

All in all, I have to say that this is the most annoying country so far where  public transport is concerned. In all of South and Central America, I was pleasantly surprised by pretty much everything connected to public transport: especially its punctuality, comfort, speed and frequency. The Philippines, in contrast, fulfill every single warning that I had had in mind for the Americas. Transportation is slow and infrequent, there are no timetables, seats on both buses and ferries are uncomfortable, and so on and so forth.

Another thing I've noticed is that there doesn't seem to be much awareness of environmental issues in the Philippines. I've seen people throw garbage out of bus windows, and the amount of litter on the roadsides indicates that they can't have been the only ones. Apart from the effects of random chemicals leaking into the ground - I understand that this may not be obvious to everybody - shouldn't the smell and optical clutter be an indicator that it might not be the best idea to dispose of garbage just about everywhere? Or am I just being a German here?

Day 371: Advanced Open Water Diver

For my last dive in the AOWD course, I had chosen to do a wreck dive. There is a sunken passenger ferry, the Doña Marilyn, to be explored near Malapascua, and I was curious to learn more about wreck diving. When I got to the dive center in the morning, however, I was told that the trip to the wreck was cancelled due to bad weather - apparently, there was a typhoon incoming. Since the ferry sank because of a typhoon, it certainly was a sensible choice to not risk creating another shipwreck ;-)

Instead, we replaced the wreck dive with an underwater naturalist dive at a site called Lapus Lapus. In retrospect, the naturalist dive was a really good choice, especially at this particular dive site. The naturalist part of the AOWD course involves learning about the different types of marine life and how they interact with each other in the underwater ecosystem. During the dive, we then had to locate and identify five types each of plants or coral, vertebrates and invertebrates. Lapus Lapus was such a richly endowed dive site, however, that we easily could have found ten or more examples for each type.

So, after a navigation dive, a deep dive, a peak performance buoyancy dive, a night dive, and an underwater naturalist dive - and all the required readings that came with the dives - I am now a certified advanced open water diver! Strangely enough, four of the five dive guides I had dived with in the last month recommended that I do a divemaster course. Seems like diving is another thing I am quite good at :-)

After an afternoon spent relaxing, I went back to the dive center in the evening for the certification celebration. The dive center gives out a free, specially designed shot for every new certification gained. The shot was a layered creation, deep red on the bottom - red symbolizing my blood that hopefully nobody will ever get to see during a dive - a blue layer in the middle symbolizing the ocean, and topped by a silver layer representing the sharks that are the reason why everybody comes to Malapascua to dive.

Two happy hour Margaritas later, I felt so deadly drunk that I went back to my hotel and went to sleep immediately to avoid having to cope with the world revolving before my eyes like a carousel. Most people I've met became master drinkers on their long trips around the world - I became a master non-drinker, it seems ;-)

Day 370: Diving, diving, and ... diving!

Today I had to get up around 4am to make it to the dive center at 4:30. At 5am, we left for a dive site called Monad Shoal. The main attraction at Monad Shoal? The thresher sharks that come here early in the morning to get cleaned by cleaner wrasses. We saw at least five threshers during the dive, and right at the beginning of the dive, three of them were circling close to us, trying to get into the cleaning station but being swept towards the ocean by the rather strong current. What an amazing sight! I think of all the sharks I've seen so far, threshers were the most beautiful and elegant ones.

The dive doubled up as the deep dive required for my AOWD certification. One of the tasks during the deep dive is to look at what happens to colors underwater. For this purpose, I carried a small slate with a sample of colored swatches printed on it. In theory, I knew what was supposed to happen to the colors, but seeing it proven with my own eyes was something else altogether. At a depth of 27 meters, the colors - red, orange, yellow, green, and blue on the surface - turned to dark brown, ocher, dark yellow, green and blue. Fascinating!

After the shark dive we had a big break until the afternoon - enough time to walk back to my hotel and catch up on sleep. The hotel was about a ten minute walk from the dive center, all along a lovely sand path like this one:

In the afternoon, a navigation dive was the next of my five dives. Compass navigation underwater is a little tricky as it is, but today it was complicated by a medium strong current that made swimming in straight lines and square patterns quite challenging.

And then, after a tiny break, it was already time for the day's third dive: the night dive. For that, it was really convenient that it gets dark at around 6pm in the Philippines - no need to stay up to go night diving! There is a very popular spot for night diving in Malapascua because the colorful mandarinfish come out there at sunset to mate. They didn't seem to mate tonight, but they were there for us to admire anyway. Among the other fish we spotted in the torchlight were bobtail squid and seahorses. Ascending at the end of the dive, I looked up at the surface and was amazed: there were hundreds of tiny dots patterning the surface. I had never seen this before, and I guess the torchlight added to my confusion, so I didn't figure it out until we were actually on the surface: it was raining!

Day 369: Malapascua

In the morning, I went to the pier in Maya to finally complete my journey from Coron to Malapascua. When I got the pier, however, the information was that at least the first ferry, and maybe many after, would be canceled due to a lack of passengers - apparently, there was only me and two others. Shortly after, it started to rain, and then people told me that ferries wouldn't run at all if it continued raining. I decided to not let them worry me and wait - and indeed, after a short while the rain stopped, and with the busload of tourists that had arrived in the meantime, we had enough passengers for the ferry.

About 45 minutes later, I set foot on Malapascua, a tiny island with a circumference of just about 6km. The island lives almost entirely on tourism, and accordingly the main beachfront consists of a quick succession of hotels, dive centers and restaurants. Small paths lead inland to collections of huts housing the Filipino population. Malapascua is so small that there are no cars on it, no post office, and no ATMs - the closest ATM is about two hours away (!).

The biggest attraction of Malapascua island are its spectacular dive sites, and so I decided to do my Advanced Open Water Diver certification here. Someone had recommended a specific dive center to me, and so - after finding a hotel and checking in - I went there to check it out. The dive center was reasonably priced (not cheap, but not super expensive either), and the people seemed really nice and fun. So I quickly signed up for the course, and started with the first of five dives in the afternoon.

The dive was all about controlling buoyancy underwater and involved tasks like swimming through a small-ish square without getting stuck:

We also had plenty of time to look at underwater life. Since effective buoyancy control means that you do not use your hands to steer where you're swimming, I got to fool around with my instructor's underwater camera for most of the dive to keep my hands otherwise occupied. That's how this lovely shot came to be, showing anemonefish, or clownfish, looking out of their sea anemone homes:

Between diving, reading the required sections in the coursebook, and completing the assignments therein, there was almost no time to admire the lovely white beach with its blue waters and palm trees that would be my home for the next three days:

Day 368: Coron - Cebu - Maya

So today was another day spent in getting from A to B - and I didn't even arrive at B in the evening! This is something that I really don't enjoy in the Philippines: it is extremely complicated - and takes a long time - to get around.

But here's the full story: I had a noon flight to take me from Coron to Cebu. The Coron airport is tiny and located in the middle of nowhere about half an hour from town. No reason to go there the usual two hours before the flight, you'd think. I made a point taking an early airport shuttle anyway - and it was good I did: the shuttle drove around town for about 90 minutes, picking up other passengers, before finally making its way to the airport. Coron has about 10.000 inhabitants - there shouldn't be enough 'town' there to drive around for 90 minutes, but somehow my shuttle managed.

Anyway, I got to the airport on time, the flight was on almost on time, and an hour later I landed on Cebu island, at the other end of the Philippines. It took me a while to figure out where the regular taxis were located at Cebu airport - coming out of the arrivals hall, there were only airport taxis that were about twice as expensive as normal cabs. A short cab ride later, I got off at the northern bus terminal to catch a bus to Maya, located at the extreme northern end of the island. Maya is less than 150 kilometers away from Cebu City, yet the bus ride took almost five full hours - an average speed of 30km/h!

In Maya, I wanted to catch a ferry across to Malapascua island. Since the ferries run only during the daylight hours, I had to spend the night in Maya, in just about the only guesthouse that exists in the village. The owner of the guesthouse saw me coming in the bus and rushed out of the shower to come pick me up from the bus station - very sweet of her, and definitely the best thing that happened to me today :-)

Day 367: Anniversary Diving

To celebrate my one year of travel anniversary today, I treated myself to a package of three dives in the vicinity of Coron. The first dive was in Barracuda lake on Coron island. Barracuda lake is interesting because it has both a halocline and a thermocline. The top layer is fresh water (unlike most other places with haloclines, where it's the other way around). With about 30°C, the fresh water is also much cooler than the salt water, which goes up to as much as 39°C. For the first time ever, I was not even a little cold at the end of the dive, but instead very glad to go up to the cool fresh water again. After all, this was a dive and not a visit to the hot springs! Apart from the temperature, the lake was really quite boring. There was next to no underwater life in it, and to compensate for the lack of sights, the guide started fooling around with the extremely loose soil at the bottom. At one point, he swam head first into the ground, burying himself from head to shoulders. Maneuvers like that ruined the visibility, of course, leaving a little less of nothing to see.

Back on the boat, I noticed that the array of tanks we had brought really looked quite impressive, taking into account that there were only five of guests and two guides on board.

The second dive was a lot more interesting than the first one. What makes Coron an interesting place to go diving is the amount of shipwrecks you can find here. Almost all of them belonged to the Japanese navy, sunk by the US sometime during the second world war. So our second dive took us to one of the wrecks, the Tangat. I was amazed by how populated the wreck was, after only 60 years in the water. On its outside, there was almost no metal exposed to the water - everything was covered with coral. Hiding in the coral was a great assortment of reef fish, especially lots and lots of lionfish. With one guide leading us and one guide bringing up the rear, we could even enter the wreck and explore the cargo holds inside - amazing!

The third dive was another wreck, the Olympia. It was just as populated as the Tangat, but lying on its side rather than standing upright. The inside was even more interesting as the first wreck's inside because there were traces of the ship's crew remaining: a shoe sole lying in a corridor (the rest of the shoe rotted away, I guess), a broken toilet bowl, and a board with plaques showing the crew's names.

In terms of sheer beauty, these were maybe not the best dives I've done, but in terms of awe and fascination they're definitely among the top ranking ones!

On the two hour boat ride back to Coron, we passed some more stunning little islands that seem to be typical for this part of the world :-)

Day 366: On to Coron

To get from El Nido to Coron, there are two choices: you can either backtrack to Puerto Princesa and fly, or take a direct nine-hour ferry. I chose the ferry. Since the departure time is in the morning, that essentially meant dumping a full day in getting from A to B.

As it turned out, the word 'ferry' was a bit of a euphemism: they used an average-sized Filipino bangka, cramming around 40 passengers onto the two benches running along the sides of the boat. Luckily, the waters were very calm, so I wasn't in any danger of getting seasick and could read as much as I wanted.

There were some gorgeous islands to be seen along the way, but mostly it was just water with a few hazy islands visible in the distance.

When we arrived in Coron, the sun had already set, revealing the bright sickle of the moon over a colored horizon.

Day 365: Stuck in El Nido

Yesterday evening, I had found out, more or less by accident, that the ferry this morning had been canceled and moved to the next day. The agency changed the date on my ticket for me, but that still left me with yet another day in El Nido. I wasn't in the mood for more island hopping - the sunburn on my back still hurt and I didn't want to add to it. More diving wouldn't have been conducive to me keeping within my budget. Since island hopping, lying on the beach and diving are about the only things to do in El Nido, I took another 'nothing day'.

Geek that I am, I started looking at how to develop Android apps - I have a few ideas for apps that I would love to have but no one has seen fit to develop for me yet. Thus, the day passed in a manner it used to pass very often, but hasn't in a very long time. Very agreeable!

Day 364: Diving in El Nido

Today - almost exactly one year after I started my trip - I finally figured out how I want to continue my life after. It sure took a while for me to reach this conclusion, but I'm certain that it's a good decision - I'll write more about this in a separate post, coming up in a few days :-)

In the afternoon, I went diving. I had heard that the diving around El Nido wasn't so good because much of the coral was dead. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't heed this particular piece of advice. There was plenty of coral and it was very much alive.

The two dives - at Helicopter Island and Nat Nat - were two of the most relaxing dives I've ever done. I was the only diver with my guide, and for once the guide went at a speed that allowed me plenty of time to look at everything (usually guides go much too fast for me.) The relaxed speed also made me consume much less air than usual, making these two my longest dives so far with 60 and 69 minutes.

El Nido has at least ten dive centers, and I'd chosen more or less randomly: a dive center that happened to be on the way from dinner to the hostel. As it turned out, I couldn't have chosen better: they easily had the best equipment I've seen in a dive center on my trip. Unlike other dive centers in El Nido, they had a nice speed boat - not one of the wooden bangkas that are used for everything in the Philippines, but a purpose-built dive boat - and a ladder that was coated with grip tape, making it super comfortable to get out of the water after the dive (on the island hopping tour, I had struggled with the wooden ladder that was hanging too high, removing a fair bit of skin from my shins in the process.) The masks had padding on the strap, making them much more comfortable than un-padded masks, and all the rest of the equipment, too, was new and in perfect shape.

Besides the vibrant marine life, the highlights in these two dives were certainly the bluespotted stingrays and the green sea turtle we saw. Besides those, there were also lionfish (named for their mane of sorts, I guess), pipefish that looked like a piece of rusty pipe, and moray eels.

It's amazing how all experiences are colored by my current state of mind. Today I was very relaxed, finally having found out how I want to continue my life. As a result, the dive was very relaxed and enjoyable. When I compare this to other dives, I'm wondering if I've misjudged dive sites where I happened to be distracted or anxious. But, of course, this applies to more than diving - all of life, in fact. Definitely something to think about, keep in mind and work on!

Day 363: Relaxing in El Nido

After getting thoroughly sunburnt yesterday, I thought this would be a good day to stay in the shade and read - all day long. The only thing I wanted to do was to buy a ticket for the morning ferry to Coron on the next day. When I got to the pier, however, nobody seemed to know the company that was supposed to run daily ferries, and neither did any of the travel agencies in town. There were two other companies that each had three boats a week - leaving uncovered exactly the one day I wanted to travel on. With gritted teeth, I bought a ticket for the day after and went back to find something - anything - to do tomorrow.

Since there was nothing else to report today, I'll share what I've observed about language and culture in the Philippines so far. The Philippines are a very young country. They started fighting for independence from Spanish colonization only at the very end of the 19th century, and were soon after occupied by the Americans. Their occupation lasted until after World War II, and only then did the Philippines gain independence. Both Spanish colonization and American occupation have left strong traces in the Filipino culture. The area where this is most obvious for me is the language.

There are eight official indigenous languages in the Philippines, the most widespread being Tagalog - a language that I don't speak. However, when I listen to the radio or to people talking, I can understand a few bits here and there. On the radio, especially the advertisements, there is a lot of English thrown into the mostly Tagalog speech. Big numbers - like possible winnings in the lottery - always seem to be in English. Listening to people, they often sneak in the Spanish word 'pero' (but). I can't be sure that that isn't a Tagalog word with a completely different meaning, but the intonation and placement within speech is the same that people would use a 'but' for. Also, smaller numbers, like the amounts you can expect to pay in a shop - are always said in Spanish. There are Tagalog words for numbers, but as one Filipina explained to me, they are much longer than the Spanish versions and sound terribly old-fashioned to modern Filipinos.  I can also understand when somebody talks about days of the week or months in a year; these are also said in Spanish.

The mixture of languages is even more pronounced when it comes to printed signs. I'd estimate that as many as two thirds of all the signs I've seen - from restaurants to advertisements to shops - were done entirely in English.

Apart from this crazy mixture of languages, American occupation has left another language-related trace in the Philippines: most Filipinos speak reasonably good English. You can approach pretty much anybody and speak to them in English - and they will not only understand, but also be able to answer. I don't think this would be possible in Germany - and it most certainly is not possible in Latin America.

Day 362: Island Hopping in the Bacuit Archipelago

The main attraction in El Nido is the Bacuit archipelago - a collection of small limestone islands just off the mainland's coast. Travel agencies in town offer a variety of island hopping tours where you visit a handful of different islands (and their beaches) as a day trip from El Nido.

For today, we chose the ingeniously named tour 'C', visiting four beaches and one catholic shrine. All of the islands looked somewhat similar: a white beach fringe, craggy limestone cliffs, and a dense forest on top - all very beautiful, of course.

As I usually run out of things to do on a beach fairly quickly, I was glad that there was good snorkeling off each of the four beaches.

However, having watched the live stream of the Ironman world championships in Hawaii in the morning, I was a little homesick - or rather triathlon-sick - all day. Getting absorbed in watching and photographing colorful fish was no cure for that, but most certainly a very good distraction.

During the hours spent snorkeling, I got a bad sunburn on my back once again. I will have to learn to always wear a t-shirt for snorkeling!

In the late afternoon, when we were almost back to El Nido, the captain suddenly stopped the boat and switched off the engine. At first I assumed that he was giving us the opportunity to enjoy the sunset without engine noise, but that wasn't the case, of course: we simply had problems with the engine. After floating around for a bit, we had to be towed in by another boat. On this occasion, I discovered that the flashlight app on my phone is able to turn any message into morse code and use the phone's built-in lamp to transmit it. We had lots of fun fooling around with that - just imagine deciphering someone's morse and reading 'we're bored, bring food and beer' ;-)

Day 361: To El Nido

Due to the slow speed of ground transportation in the Philippines, today was another day spent almost entirely in getting from A to B. A, in this case, was Puerto Princesa, and B El Nido, a small beach town on the northern coast of Palawan. I had met three other travelers in Puerto Princesa who also wanted to go to El Nido, and so we made the journey together, and also looked for accommodation in El Nido together.

In the Americas, I had gotten used to booking accommodation online. That way I could rely on user reviews to find the nicest places, and I never had to wander the streets aimlessly with my backpack. In the Philippines, I found this to be almost impossible. In most places, there was not a single hostel or guesthouse available for online booking. Which is why I was very grateful to have a few companions who shared the need to find accommodation in El Nido. Despite everything I'd read about dormitory roooms not being available in El Nido (and all other accommodation being quite expensive), we ended up finding a hotel with a pretty cheap dorm and a terrace overlooking the bay. Beautiful!

In the afternoon, we went to check out the beach and go for a little swim. The water had almost the temperature of a bathing tub - perfect to just float and do nothing for a while :-)

Day 360: Underground River

After all the bureaucracy yesterday, today was the day I finally got to see the subterranean river - another world heritage site in the Philippines. As seems to be usual in the Philippines, the way there was long and uncomfortable. The village of Sabang is about three hours by van from Puerto Princesa, and the underground river another twenty minutes by boat from Sabang. Unfortunately, our van driver drove like a lunatic. The road was narrow and winding, but the driver sped through in a manner that made me feel like I was in a roller-coaster. It took all my concentration to keep from throwing up...

Climbing off the boat, we were greeted by a beautiful white beach with blue water and gorgeous limestone formations on the side - a view that made me instantly forget the van-induced nausea ;-)

From the beach, a short trail led through the forest to a small bay - the mouth of the underground river.

We were made to wear helmets and life vests, and then crammed into a small wooden boat that would take us on a tour of the river's navigable part. Since there is no light once you enter the river cave, there was a big battery sitting in the front of the boat, powering a hand lamp. I was lucky enough to get to hold the lamp, so I could look where I wanted when I wanted :-) Whenever the guide - sitting in the back of the boat, paddling - wanted to point out a specific rock formation, he told me where to point the lamp so everybody could see.

The interior of the cave/river was stunning. There were huge caverns with a 60 meter high ceiling, bats fluttering around, and fantastic rock formations everywhere I looked.

Far too soon, the tour was over and we had to brace ourselves for another roller-coaster ride in the van. In the parking lot, the guide was talking to the rest of the group in Tagalog - the group consisted of six Filipinos and me. I wasn't really listening, assuming I wouldn't understand anyway, when my ears suddenly caught the words 'holy water' and 'holy shit' - in the same sentence. I still have no idea what the guide was talking about, but it got everybody laughing (including me, even though I doubt that I laughed for the same reason as the rest of the group.)

On the way back, we made a stop at a rock formation called Elephant cave. This is pretty representative of what I saw of the landscape on Palawan today (remember I had to keep my eyes closed most of the time to avoid getting sick in the van): flat surfaces covered in rice paddies, sharp limestone rocks jutting out from time to time, and forested hills in between.

Day 359: Bureaucracy in Puerto Princesa

Today I spent a lazy day: I did some reading and some blogging, and in the afternoon I set out for the adventure of getting a permit to visit the subterranean river in Sabang.

I had thought arranging the visit would be straightforward, as usual: go to a travel agency, give them money and be told when to be ready for pick-up the next morning. As it turned out, however, the travel agency would have needed about two weeks advance notice to procure a visitor's permit from the national park office. Since I didn't want to spent that much time in Palawan, the agency sent me to the office to buy the permit myself.

The national park office, at the other end of town, was crammed into a small building with a single room. There were far too many people inside - most of them just sitting around waiting. I tried to figure out where to queue, and spotted a basket with waiting numbers. I took one and settled in to wait, but I quickly noticed that nobody seemed to care about the numbers. So I went to stand at one of the counters, and after a while it was my turn. The lady asked when I wanted to visit the river, asked to see my passport, and then printed a document with all the information on it. Then she sent me on to the next counter - about one meter away - to pay for the permit. After queuing for the payment and paying, the clerk sent me to the next counter. Confusingly enough, this counter was located behind the first two counters, in an area you would usually expect to be closed to the public. It was even separated from the public area by a little gate. Ah well. I stepped inside and gave my document to the lady at the counter. She signed it and then handed it on to yet another counter. The lady there wrote all the information (by hand!) into a book and finally gave the document back to me.

If there was an award for unnecessarily complicated bureaucracy in combination with innovative job creation schemes, this office would be sure to be nominated. The entire procedure reminded me somewhat of the division of labor at the hairdresser's a few days ago. Everybody was responsible for only a tiny slice of the work to be done - which wasn't that complicated to begin with. A Philippine pattern, maybe?

Day 358: Travel Day

Last night, I boarded another night bus to go back to Manila. My goal was to avoid staying another night in Manila by catching an afternoon flight to my next destination, the island of Palawan.

The night bus got in around six in the morning, which left me with about eight hours to kill. Luckily, I had wanted some time to explore the Mall of Asia, one of the world's largest shopping malls. The mall is completely westernized, of course. The only thing that served as a reminder of its actual location in the Philippines were the security guards checking everybody's bags upon entering the mall.

Inside, the mall was just huge. There was a bowling center and an ice-skating rink, along with several cinemas, hundreds of shops and restaurants aplenty. I can't imagine the patience needed if you head to the mall to find something specific you'd like to buy.

Later, I finally got to see more of the 7000+ Philippine islands from the plane. The view was enchanting, with the deep blue sea surrounding hundreds of small islands, many of them ringed with stretches of white sand beach.

However, after landing in Puerto Princesa, I was quickly yanked back into the Philippine reality: the town turned out to be just as dusty, loud and chaotic as everything else I'd seen in the Philippines.

Day 357: Batad Rice Terraces

Another part of the rice terraces that form part of the world heritage site are the ones around the village of Batad. This picture shows the original core of the village, nestled in the middle of the terraces:

Currently, the village is quite a bit bigger than that: the newer touristy stuff like restaurants and guest houses popped into existence around the area from which I took the picture. Like Banaue, Batad consists mostly of corrugated metal shacks - if this continues, I'll be leaving the Philippines with sore eyes from looking at too many ugly houses ;-)

Batad is only 17 km from Banaue, but the trip there took more than two hours. The first 12 km took about an hour on a tricycle. Only two thirds of the road were paved, and the rest was a badly potholed dirt road. From there, the road was in an even worse condition, definitely too bad for tricycles, so I had to hike uphill for about 40 minutes. After this, the road stopped altogether, being replaced by a narrow and steep footpath that led down to Batad in another 40 minutes. This means that there is no car access to the village of Batad. Everything the village needs from the outside - construction materials, food, soft drinks for tourists - has to be brought in on foot. I met several men carrying long metal rods and heavy sacks with cement during my hike to the village and back.

This is another, more complete view of the Batad rice terraces:

Day 356: Banaue Rice Terraces

Last evening, I boarded another night bus with the destination of Banaue. Banaue is a small village in the mountains north of Manila. Even though my guidebook had warned me that Banaue wouldn't be the prettiest of villages, I was surprised by how unappealing I found it to be. Part of its non-appeal may have been due to my tiredness after hours in an especially uncomfortable bus, but I can hardly imagine that this haphazard collection of corrugated metal shacks would have appealed to me in any state of mind. 

Banaue is famous for the rice terraces surrounding the village - they are a world heritage site along with a few other rice terraces in the region. Unfortunately, the weather didn't really cooperate: it was very cloudy, with fog completely obscuring the terraces at times, and the sky pressing down on everything, making the village of Banaue even more depressing than it would usually be. Nevertheless, the terraces were an interesting sight.

Apparently the terraces have been in continuous use since their construction about 2000 years ago. The big feat was not only building the terraces themselves into the sides of the mountains, but also the inclusion of an irrigation system - pretty indispensable for rice farming, as I understand it.

The way the terraces were shaped to adapt to the mountains was a fascinating sight, even if the colors could have been a bit more lively ;-)

Walking around in the village, I discovered a custom that is common in the Philippine mountains - and in many other parts of Asia. I noticed several aspects of this custom just walking around, but didn't put it all together until I looked up one of them on the internet. The first thing I noticed were strange red stains on the streets and sidewalks. Then there were people spitting on the street all the time. Some people seemed to have unnaturally red lips. And finally, there were signs like this one:

I also saw the other version of the sign, forbidding the spitting of 'moma'. What I found out when I researched the word 'moma' was that the people were chewing a mixture of betel leaf and areca nut commonly called paan. The chewing makes the body produce a large amount of spit - which happens to be colored red. So this explains it all: the stains on the street, the red lips, and the spitting. Apparently, chewing paan is part of the culture of many Asian countries; according to Wikipedia, it is stimulating up to the point of inducing euphoria. But, to dispel the mystery completely, it is also addictive and has been linked to an increased risk of mouth cancer.

Day 355: Lake Taal

Today threatened to be another slow, unplanned day. But then I met two Germans over breakfast who convinced me to join them on a tour to the Taal lake and volcano. After about an hour's drive we reached the shore of lake Taal. Since the volcano is located in the middle of the lake, we had to take a boat across to be able to hike up to the crater. The boats - there were many of them, I don't really want to imagine lake and crater in high season - all looked like the one in the picture, very narrow with bamboo balancers on the sides:

The landscape on the hike up to the crater was beautiful, lush and green. The trail winding through it was more like a highway though - populated mainly by horses carrying people to the top. There weren't many people besides us making the 45 minute hike on foot. Luckily, the smell of the sweating horses and their droppings was often countered by the lovely scent of the mint plants lining much of the trail.

The Taal volcano is funny: it is located inside a lake, and its crater, filled with rain water, makes a lake within a lake. To make matters even more complicated, there is another small island inside the lake-within-a-lake - and you also have to consider that the entire lake-island-lake-island combo is located on another island: Luzon, the main island of the Philippines...

The crater rim must be a very popular tourist spot. I got away with having my picture taken, but everyone tried their best to sell me drinks, fresh coconuts, a ride down on a horse, or the possibility to drive a golf ball from the rim into the crater lake. I can't really see the point in riding up to the crater rim just to put a golf ball into the lake, but there were quite a few people up there doing exactly that (and posing for pictures with golf clubs in their hands.)

The crater lake itself is off limits to tourists - which is a good thing, or otherwise I wouldn't have been able to shoot beautifully undisturbed pictures such as the next one. I love how you can really see the lake-island-lake-island succession:

Day 354: Lazy in Manila

Today it seemed like, even after a good night's sleep, my body had decided that a bit of jet-lag would be fun after all. So I stumbled around half sleeping all day, not really able to concentrate on the tasks at hand (like catching up on blogging and planning my stay in the Philippines).

What I did manage was a visit to Greenbelt Mall, one of many super-modern malls in Manila. The mall was big and confusing enough for me to get lost (twice), but in all other respects it was exactly what you'd expect of a mall: full of western brand shops and chain restaurants, and blissfully air-conditioned.

Another thing I managed was to get a haircut. With the temperature in the Philippines, I certainly couldn't be bothered with a mop of hair on my head. I thought they did a rather good job this time - and I mean 'they': there was one person responsible for washing and blow drying, another for cutting, and a third for styling. Division of labor and specialization driven to extremes!

Day 353: Old Manila

I arrived in Manila in the morning and was immediately confronted with the city's transportation system. Apparently, there is no public transport connecting the airport to the rest of the city - at least none that a foreigner would be able to use without weeks of instruction. So the only way into the city is a taxi. But the weirdness continues when it comes to taxis: there are three different types. One has a fixed rate - which is ridiculously high, of course. One has a special 'airport' rate - which is twice as high as that of regular taxis. And then there are regular taxis - but these can only be found in the departures area, not the arrival zone. Seriously, is that any way of welcoming visitors?

Add to that the fact that the streets are congested day and night - if a taxi ride takes ten minutes, there will be at least an additional twenty minutes spent standing. And without decent rail-bound transportation, there is just no way to get around the congested streets. Especially coming from Mexico City and its perfect metro system, I was appalled by what Manila - a city of similar size - has to offer in terms of public transportation.

Having checked into my hostel, I was looking for a way to spend the rest of the day so I wouldn't fall prey to jet-lag by going to sleep early. So I was pleasantly surprised that the hostel offered a free walking tour of Manila's historical center, starting around noon. Our first stop - after some more public transportation, consisting of a jeepney ride and a few metro stations - was the national museum.

Going with a guide, there was not enough time to take it all in - after all, the museum offered a breakdown of all the cultural groups in the Philippines, along with items recovered from a 17th century Spanish shipwreck. The pottery in the exhibition was interesting though: the dragon decorations clearly showed a Chinese influence, a distinct difference to pottery in the Americas.

Next up was Rizal park, the biggest park in Manila. It is named after the national hero José Rizal who, by writing novels about the state of the country under Spanish reign and getting executed for that, finally started the Philippine independence movement at the end of the 19th century. This is a monument in his honor:

No visit to the historical center of Manila would be complete without Fort Santiago, the place where the Spanish held José Rizal prisoner before his execution. Today, the fort has a big Rizal shrine centered around the prison cell, showing memorabilia from his life.

The security personnel watching over the fort - and the entire historical district, in fact - were wearing old Spanish uniforms, looking a little strange to modern eyes (if not downright ridiculous... there's a picture at Wikipedia.)

The fort overlooks the Pasig river, revealing a prime view of... a shantytown:

Day 352: Lost in the Void

It seems that this day disappeared almost entirely at the date line: I left Los Angeles airport shortly before midnight on October 3rd, and arrived in Hongkong at 5 in the morning of October 5th. In between these two was a fourteen hour flight, which makes October 4th about nine hours long - most of which I spent sleeping.

On this occasion, I finally figured out how the date line 'works'. Traveling west, you gain a little bit of time each time you cross into a new time zone. But to make up for that, the date line takes a big chunk of time away again. And traveling east, you lose a bit of time with each time zone, but then gain a chunk at the date line. Makes sense, doesn't it?

As you might have guessed reading the above, my trip from Mexico to Manila went through Los Angeles and Hongkong. At the Los Angeles airport, I finally discovered why passengers transiting through a US airport need to apply for the ESTA thingie online: the US makes everybody go through immigration and customs, even if you have an international connecting flight. Initially, I thought this didn't make sense at all, but if you look at the immigration procedure from a data gatherer's point of view, everything suddenly makes sense. At immigration, the US collect not only passport data for each passenger, but also record fingerprints for all ten fingers and shoot a picture. Quite a comprehensive database the US are building there, isn't it?

In my case, the funny part was that both the immigration officer and the guy who handled rechecking my bag were from the Philippines. The immigration officer even gave me tips on where (not) to go.

Walking through the LAX airport, I realized that the USA are indeed a great melting pot. There were people of all kinds of nationalities and ethnicities, chatting in Spanish, English, or some other language, all working together. At least on the first glance, this intercultural cooperation seemed much more advanced than anything I'd seen in South or Central America.

At one point, I went to one of LAX's many restrooms. Sitting on the toilet, I looked around frantically for the waste paper basket - but I could only see a tiny little one on the far side of the booth. Where did they expect me to deposit the toilet paper? And then I remembered: I wasn't in South America anymore, it was ok to flush paper down the toilet. What a strange feeling, after almost a year, to put toilet paper into the toilet once again!

Day 351: Goodbye, Mexico! Goodbye, Americas!

On my last half day in Mexico and the Americas, I went to visit the Castillo de Chapultepec, and the national history museum that is located there. In my experience, it usually makes more sense to visit a history museum on the first day in a country instead of the last; but since I didn't enter Mexico through the capital I couldn't really help it.

The history museum covered Mexican history starting with the Spanish conquest - I'd already seen all things pre-hispanic in in the anthropology museum.

I learned that Mexico was one of many countries that used Spain's troubles at the beginning of the 19th century - when it was invaded by Napoleon - as an opportunity to declare their independence. Isn't it fascinating that almost all South and Central American countries started their independence movements around the same time? Mexico declared independence in 1810, so - like many of the South American countries I've visited before - it just celebrated its 200th birthday two years ago. In contrast, the Philippines, also colonized by the Spanish, started their independence war only at the very end of the 19th century.

Right at the beginning of the exhibition, the museum had a sculpture representing the Mexican coat of arms: an eagle devouring a snake while sitting on a cactus.

For a long time, the castle served as residence for Mexico's rulers; the conversion into a museum is relatively recent. As I discovered, there are two parts to the museum: one part explains Mexican history, while the other showcases some of the residence's rooms with their original furnishings. This, for example, was a dining room:

From the castle's rooftop terrace, there were great views of Mexico City's skyline. The tree-covered area in front is the Bosque de Chapultepec, the largest park in Mexico City.

In the afternoon, it was time for me to say goodbye to the Americas. After almost an entire year spent in Spanish-speaking countries, I've really gotten used to the comfort that comes with speaking the language of the country I was traveling in. But regardless of comfort: I'm curious to finally see more of Asia in the coming weeks!

Day 350: Anthropology and Art in Mexico City

I dedicated this day almost entirely to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. I had heard that the museum was huge and almost impossible to visit in its entirety in one go, so I decided to just go there in the morning and see how far I got before my head threatened to explode.

The museum focuses on all the indigenous cultures in Mexico, grouped by geographical region and time. For ease of reference, time spans were given in terms of three phases - preclassic (up to 100 AD), classic and postclassic (after 900 AD). On the ground floor, the museum had exhibits from the pre-hispanic civilizations, while the first floor had exhibits from the peoples who live in the same geographical regions today.

As I had feared, the museum was much too big. There were too many exhibits and too many explanations to read. Just have a look at the main part of the Aztec exhibition to get an impression:

Luckily, from my earlier visits to archaeological sites, I already knew about some of the cultures and didn't have to read every single bit. One new thing I learned was that in this part of the world, organized religion seems to have been invented some time between 1800 BC and 100 AD - the same period of time as in other parts of the world. Strange, isn't it?

As you would expect from a big museum in a nation's capital, they snatched up some of the best archaeological finds from around the country. For example, this was the only place in Mexico where I saw some of the old writings, called codices, on display. This is an Aztec one:

The Maya especially kept excellent records of their history, but unfortunately most of the codices were destroyed by the Spaniards. This is one of the very few remaining ones:

In the Maya section of the museum, they also had the richly adorned sarcophagus of Pakal, ruler of Palenque. But wait... hadn't I seen that sarcophagus before? I had, in fact, when I was visiting Palenque: the site museum there also had the sarcophagus. Neither of the two museums said that their version was a replica. But one of them has to be... if they care this little about fooling the public, I wonder how many exhibits in this or other museums were just replicas instead of the real thing?

The museum also displayed a great feather headdress that was supposedly worn by the last Aztec ruler Moctezuma II when he went to greet the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés:

Another part of the museum dealt with the Olmec, considered to be the first civilization in Mexico. The biggest trademark of the Olmec were the colossal stone heads they made:

After covering all of downstairs, I went upstairs to check out the exhibition about current-day indigenous peoples. The exhibition was started with this tree, representing the diversity of today's indigenous people in Mexico:

I was already quite tired at this point in my visit, so I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of the exhibition. All I managed was to walk through, just for the satisfaction of having seen everything ;-)

After a break in the afternoon, I felt up to one more museum visit. As a contrast, I picked something small and non-historic: the Frida Kahlo museum. The museum is located in a house called Casa Azul, which was the home of Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera for many years.

The museum had some rooms with artwork created by Frida and Diego, and a few more rooms exhibiting personal items from their lives. Especially Frida's life is quite a tragic story - I suggest you watch the movie Frida if you want to know more.

In the evening, I strolled around in the vicinity of the Zócalo to find something to eat. A short while after I had sat down in a restaurant, a demonstration went down the street just outside the window I was sitting at. The people, mostly the younger half of the population, were demonstrating against the planned labor law reform.


The labor laws are apparently decades old and in definite need of reform; but as with governments worldwide, the Mexican one doesn't seem to have the the common laborer's interests in mind. The reform is supposed to combat unemployment and create new jobs, but people fear that all it will do is outsource jobs and lower salaries.

When I had finished eating, I went down the street to look at the demonstration's aftermath. It seems that the police had covered all the building facades with metal sheets - certainly in anticipation of people spraying slogans on every flat surface available.

The demonstration was still ongoing when I arrived at the Zócalo. Everyone was listening to someone giving a speech in front of the brightly lit government palace.

If you don't look closely, you might think that there was an Italian flag flying over Mexico City. Indeed, when I first came to Mexico and was looking for a restaurant I had wondered about the multitude of 'Italian' restaurants - and the lack of Mexican ones. Later on, I learned that the colors in the Mexican flag are darker than the Italian ones, the proportions of the flag are different, and, of course, there is the Mexican coat of arms in it. But apart from that, the two flags really do look similar ;-)