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?
