Winston: The Spirit of the USA!

We were not able to make the flight today to Palawan so we are back in Manila for the night. Manila is still a hellhole, but we are staying at a different hotel on a much nicer street. I am also over my jetlag and not as psychologically vulnerable as when I first arrived, and what a difference that makes.

I meant to mention this interesting fact of life about employment in Manila in an earlier e-mail. We were talking to this girl at the frisbee tournament who works for Arthur Anderson about an employment
advertisement we had seen at the convenience store of a gas station. We were marveling at all of the requirements – women had to be over 5’4, couldn’t have any children, had to weigh a certain amount -specifications that would certainly have dire HR consequences for any US company trying to pull anything like that. She said that was nothing – each employee in the city also has to undergo an incredibly
invasive and humiliating medical exam, ANNUALLY. Anderson complies with all of the local employment laws so she was forced to submit to this exam. She had blood withdrawn with needles of mysterious origin, was
rigorously gynecologically inspected, and even scrutinized for hemorrhoids. The final indignity: the results of the exam are then property of the company to be used as it wishes – you aren’t even privy to the results unless the company deigns for you to be. She threw such a fit about it that somehow Anderson ‘lost’ her paperwork and she wasn’t required to undergo it the next year.

We saw an amazing thing last night – a television advertisement for cigarettes! It was like time travel. The ad was all of this stock footage of smiling & beautiful white people doing these incredibly rigorous outdoor activities, each one requiring a lot of lung capacity – beach volleyball, breaking through the finishing line ribbon of a marathon, basketball, windsurfing. The tag line was "Winston – the Spirit of the USA!" The nerve. Pinoys get enough of a lung workout from the diesel fumes that spew out of each vehicle like squid ink. Flying into Manila this morning was like entering a big black cloud of doom.

We also spent a little time watching MTV India, but it hurt our brains.

Mountain Province

We have just made the seven hour harrowing return bus ride from Sagada to the little city of Baguio, amountain resort town for wealthy Manilans. Our bus driver thought he looked pretty fine in his Top Gun
aviator glasses, and more than once I caught him admiring himself in the rear view mirror instead of focusing on the narrow ribbon of a road that had a sheer drop on the side of thousands of feet. I did all I could to avoid looking at the window so I wouldn't be throwing up like the little girl in the seat in front of us. Helen forewarned us that we would be subjected to easy listening soft rock from the 70s piped through speakers, but since I have a secret passion for that sort of music I didn't mind at all when our bus driver stuck in a tape of Anne Murray's greatest hits. Anyway, it's sad to be back in the rank diesel fumes of a city, but at least it's not Manilla.

Sagada was a place of incredible natural beauty. We were in the midst of pine forests (with plenty of banana and coconut trees mixed in) and terraced rice fields carved out of sheer sides of mountains. The rice was just being planted so the terraces were shimmering green pools of water. Helen took us on a hike (what she called her little death marches) almost every day through the terraces and over mountain tops
and to waterfalls. She is incredibly fit from walking through the hills of town - thank God we're used to the hills of San Francisco so we could somewhat keep up with her. There are some very wild areas around
Sagada. While we were there a tourist was lost in an area Archie said is as wild as old Apache territory. It has these labrynthine limestone formations crawling with cobras and boas and even a pack of wild horses - you wouldn't dare venture into it without a Igorot guide, who all call it "Marlboro Country." This tourist group went back there and one of the members decided to hang back and go off on his own for a
little while and the idiot was immediately lost. The Sagadans are expert trackers and I assume eventually found him. And then sent a text message to the other guides letting them know. (Cell phone texting is the primary method of communication - everyone is amazingly good at it).

Dropping the Stapleton name was like having the key to the city. Just mentioning that we were staying with Archie or Helen had the locals breaking out in smiles of welcome. Archie speaks Igorot fluently and is a real member of the community. We visited his pottery studio and he is doing amazing things and training several of the local women to carry on the work at the studio when he leaves next year. Helen is teaching at the local high school and has a well attended yoga class on Saturdays. Their little girls are absolutely thriving - they are growing like little weeds and Margaret is practically reading at an adult level(she's six). We stayed in grandeur at the lavish
summer home of the headmaster of the International School of Manilla, a friend of Archie and Helen. There was a crew of gardeners constantly toiling away in the magnificent gardens.

Helen and Archie are living in the same house Archie grew up in when his parents were missionaries there. They have an unruly but adorable local teenager named Bete living with them. It is common Igorot practice to billet the teenagers into different households, a very
sensible solution to a lot of the strain of having your own teenager around. They also have a hen and 8 newly hatched chicks. Archie said that she must be a very clever and protective mother to have had her
clutch hatch - the ravine and caves behind their house are teeming with civet cats who consider eggs a delicacy. The hen and chicks are quite entitled and marched into the house at one point while we were there demanding rice. Helen asked Elizabeth to shoo them out them out the hen fiercely charged Elizabeth's ankles.

There are only a few white locals in Sagada. The area is known for its potent hash and made me think of a (way) off the beaten track Kathmandu. Many of the whites I saw looked like dirty and skinny heroin
addicts - completely sketchy. And of course our journeys wouldn't be complete without a negative encounter with a German. Helen introduced us to onenamed Uwe, also a local, who lives with his common-law wife and child. They're both silversmiths who make trinkets like those charming little silver marijuana leaf pins. Helen says that he is always trying to male bond with Archie by telling him tales of about all of his repellent adventures with the 'hot' prostitutes in the next town. Anyway, Helen told us how he is a notoriously bad drunk and is always getting in fights with the locals. One time he started harassing one of the resident baklas (drag queens). Unlike American
drag queens, who when provoked are as terrifying and dangerous as a Minotaur, Philippine baklas are gentle and sweet natured creatures. They are also very well integrated and accepted in society and function almost as a third sex. Uwe was so relentlessly insulting and rude to the bakla that the bakla finally took his manicured fist and knocked him out cold. Yay!

We leave tomorrow for Manilla. I pray we don't have to spend the night there, but it might be unavoidable since flights anywhere in the Philippines all leave out of Manilla and all in the morning. Next we are headed to the island of Palawan, which is mostly nature preserve and is famous for its beaches, reefs, and underground river cave.

Asian Fatalism and Spanish Colonial Hangover are quite a combination

I'm so sorry not to have written sooner. We haven't been carried off by
Muslim extremists, we just have been in an incredibly remote and isolated area of the Philippines that has no internet (even phone service is a recent phenomenon). Elizabeth and I took the hour long jeepney ride to the comparative metropolis of Bontoc to spend the
afternoon checking our e-mail and exchanging some money.

It was so wonderful to be greeted by all of your e-mails. This connection is teeth grindingly slow so I'll have to wait until I get
to a faster one to respond individually, but I want you to know how
grateful we are to receive them. Manila was a dark, soul sucking experience and all of your encouraging e-mails gave us the fortitude to not turn around and get back on the airplane for home. Everything, by the way, improved dramatically on Friday.
The Ultimate tournament was our ticket out of the slums and into the
rarefied air of the gated communities of fabulously wealthy Manila. The
tournament was at the polo fields of a very Year of Living Dangerously,
colonial country club in a plush suburb well outside the pollution of
Manila. There were teams of groundsmen lining the fields, masseurs on
the sidelines and tents with steam tables of food. The local players were an odd mixture of ex-pats, ultra rich Filipinos who had picked up the sport in the states, a couple of very earnest Canadians and this bizarre contingency of uncharacteristically warm and lovely French who werein Manila on some sort of grant to work with street children. Most of the players who flew in were Americans who were working in Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai.

The level of play was about on par of that of Sunday pick-up in Golden
Gate Park, with about as much adherence to the rules, but it was a
wonderful time, even though the tropical heat and relentless sun left me staggering and dazed and slightly sun poisoned. Elizabeth's ankle
was still a little touchy after her sidewalk spill in Colorado so she was appointed time keeper by the tournament director. She kept things on a very tight schedule, something the players were a little shocked by since they probably hadn't encountered efficiency of any sorts since moving to the Philippines. I was surprised and tried not to get annoyed at how infected by the Philippine lassitude & casualness & manana, manana attitude all the Americans seemed to be.

A word on ex-pats. Some of them are lovely people, but if you'll allow
me to generalize there is something about a lot of them I find a little
off-putting. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems that the
more obnoxious facets of their personalities are allowed to flourish and aren't kept in check as they would be if they were surrounded by their own
peers in their own culture. They just don't have to try hard enough to get women, or to be a big shot,a status they are granted just for being white and (comparatively) rich. They start believing that they are really that cool and it gives them an annoying air of undeserved
complacency.

Anyway, we met many great people and got all sorts of wonderful travel
advice. We also got an award for being the farthest traveled players.
On Monday we flew on Asian Spirit airlines (leave as an Asian, land as
a spirit, ha ha) to Baguio. Our flight took off an hourbefore it was
scheduled to - a habit that the Philippine airlines have. Their attitude is if everyone is there, why not go ahead and leave? So, we actually ended up arriving in Baguo before we were supposed to take off. We then took a seven hour teeth rattling bus ride to Sagada and the Stapletons!

Sagada is like Shangri-La. We are in the piny mountains, with rice terraces carved throughout them. This place couldn't be more different from Manila. The temperature is cool - I feel like I'm in the mountains of North Carolina. Helen looks fabulous and everyone seems so happy. We took a tour of the pottery workshop and Archie is truly doing amazing things. Our jeepney is leaving soon so I must sign off. We have many more adventures to describe.

Philippines Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

Thank you all so much for your e-mails. We are back in the bowels of the massive Robinson's mall to check e-mail.

We checked out of our hotel, which we plan to complain to Lonely Planet about, which I still suspect of pushing its own little questionable agenda.. The hotel itself was charming,but the poverty gauntlet of a street we had to walk to reach it was terrifying and pathetic. Manila has a staggering population of 10 million, and I think about 1 million of them live crammed in the shanties across from our hotel. These hovels, which seemed to extend for miles back in these rickety little warrens, have no plumbing or sanitation,judging from the smell. Walking down the street was like walking through the fumes of a tannery. I caught a whiff of my first durien (the notoriously stinky fruit) and it was like perfume compared to the stench that hit us each time we stepped out of our the high walls of our hotel. Yesterday morning I was greeted to the body of a rat the size of Spoon when I stepped out of the gates of our hotel. I thought it was dead until it rolled its eyes and shot me a look of incredible pathos.

Almost every impoverished woman I see seems to be in the latter stage of pregnancy and the streets are teeming with unsupervised children dodging in and out of traffic. This makes me want to drop kick both the pope and George Bush for his barbaric & disgraceful withholding of international family planning funds. Please write your representatives. It is an unconscionable situation.

We decided to escape to the cool and forested mountains of middle earth last night and watched Lord of the Rings. The movie was hard to follow because of all the incessant cell phone ringing - I think every single person in the movie theater received at least one call. The man sitting next to me was not only taking calls but also making them, all in a boomingly cheerful tone.

We're relocating to the posh, gated Makati neighborhood.this afternoon, but not before hiring a driver to take us to the Chinese cemetery, which has elegant air conditioned and chandeliered mausoleums.

Manila Vice

We're in the Manila equivalent to the Mall of America- it's mind boggling huge - the the size of several city blocks. It's good to see there are some familiarmall fixtures like TGI Fridays, Auntie Annie's & Dairy Queen. We found an internet cafe finally (they are much scarcer than in Indonesia, I'm surprised to say. I mean, wasn't this where the “I love you virus” originated?) and wanted to write that we arrived safely. If this is disjointed it's because it's difficult to think over the blaring Boy Bandz music and my jetlag hangover.

Our flight to Hong Kong was 15 hours and then our flight to Manila was 2. We crossed over the international date line, tailed the sun and didn't catch up until 20 plus hours after we left San Francisco - it was a little disconcerting to see nothing but pitch blackness out the window for so long. We each had our own little TV screen where we could channel surf CNN, movies and a confounding Japanese gameshow where the object seemed to jump off of a ledge and cling to a giant swinging Styrofoam piece of toast. Right before landing, just in case everyone wasn't swollen enough, the lovely smiling stewardesses passed around huge styrofoam containers of Cup o' Noodles (as they did on our China Air flight to Indonesia.)

We're staying in the bohemian section of Manila called Malate. We arrived in the late morning and while Elizabeth was sleeping I went exploring and wandered into a beauty salon to get my hair washed and blown out. It was one of the best I've ever had - all for an exploitive $3, compared to $40 in the US. I sat next to a beautiful Filipina who talked all about her American boyfriends in the US she had met over the internet. One of them was trying to get her a Visa but she said that he was having trouble because of her gender - she was a man, you see. If you had put a gun to my head I wouldn't have been able to tell.

I'm a little emotionally raw from jetlag and the X-treme poverty, squalor and accompanying smells of Manila are brutal and hard to take. The city is very Latin with lots of walled in places and armed guards
and big churches.

Before we get out of the city we plan to go the Chinese cemetery. We were saddened to learn that National Museum display of Imelda Marcos' collection of shoes has closed. The frisbee tournament hosted by Manila Vice http://www.tsoup.com/frisbee/manilavice (team motto: JUST PUT IT IN!) kicks off tomorrow afternoon with a pre-party. The tournament is in a posh area of Manila, a little removed from the pollution of the city. I'm worried that Elizabeth and I might have permanent respiratory damage if we play in this air.

We leave for Sagada and the Stapletons on Monday! I can't wait to see them all.

The Secret to Life that the Dolphins Shared: Life Ain't Nothing but Bitches and Money

The day before Christmas we stopped at Hamelin Bay and saw the stromatalites! Creationists can please skip to the next paragraph. Stromatalites are rocky formations found in a lagoon in Hamelin Bay, on a peninusula north of Carnarvon, if that means anything at all to you. Their discovery in the 1950s was as scientifically exciting as discovering a valley of pterodactyls, since these structures have existed on earth for over 3 ½ billion years and were long believed extinct. Visually they might not be so impressive – they look like bumpy, knee high mushrooms – but the stromatalite bacteria, through photosynthesis, created the oxygen that allowed all life on earth to evolve. The uniquely hypersalininated and shallow waters of Hamelin Bay are believed to be like those covering most of earth billions of years ago, allowing this isolated pocket to survive. The stromatalites were best viewed from a boardwalk, which was unfortunately marred by these informative signs along the line of "Hi, I’m Stumpy the Stromatalite! Please don’t touch me, I’m thousands of year old!" These signs detracted from the solemnity of the experience, but it was still fascinating.

Afterwards, Amanda and I went swimming with ‘Stumpy’ and his pals in the warm and inviting turquoise water, which must be as buoyant as the Dead Sea, until we got worried about stonefish and got out.

Our next stop was the town of Monkey Mia in the scarily named Shark Bay, home of the ‘world famous’ dolphins. In the 60s a fishing boat noticed a pod of dolphins following close by and they began throwing the dolphins the discarded fish of the day. Soon the friendly pod began swimming into the Bay, and people would feed them. Now park rangers tightly control the situation, but each morning like clockwork the dolphins swim in for their feeding, right up to your feet! The dolphins really ham it up – they have caught on that they get more fish if they perform. This was my closest encounter with a dolphin – magical.

On Boxer day we made it up to Coral Bay, a tiny resort town. Boxer day, the day after Christmas, is a big deal in Australia, although not one single Australian could tell me what it meant - Elizabeth had to explain it to me! Anyway, Boxer day is when the servants in England got their own day off to celebrate Christmas, when they had to work serving theirs masters Christmas dinner. Even if they have forgotten the origin of Boxer Day, Australians have maintained this tradition, which I guess their ancestors used to celebrate before they were shipped over here for filching their master’s watch fob.

On Boxer Day we went on a snorkeling cruise, and were lucky enough to be the only customers for the day, so we had our own private cruise to the reef and swam with mantas, bull rays and sea turtles. We might have lingered longer in Coral Bay because of lassitude and inertia caused by the extreme heat had we not run into these German girls Amanda had gone to school with in Adelaide.

Here’s the history: when they were all in school together there was some unfortunate incident involving the German girls borrowing and losing a very expensive Gucci purse belonging to an Asian girl named Zoë, also in the program. The German girls refused to reimburse Zoë and were trying to cow and intimidate her. Zoë asked Amanda to arbitrate and then the German girls turned on Amanda, threatening her and telling her that "She was not to get involved." Well, wouldn’t you know that in all of Australia we would run smack into them at the beach in Coral Bay. When their program ended they bought a van to travel across Australia, so Amanda knew that they were also traveling through Australia, but his is a huge continent and they were last seem heading up central Australia to Ayers Rock. But, in those strange coincidences that occur constantly when you travel, we (of course!) run into them in this tiny resort town on the western coast. (The creepy part is that Amanda actually had a strange premonition that we would.) They seemed genuinely glad to see us and we agreed to meet later for drinks, which Amanda suspected that they hoped we would pay for. Shortly after that Amanda decided that she couldn’t be around them, and that she had had it with the heat of Coral Bay, the plethora of creepy old drunks on the make, the trashy caravan park where we were staying, etc. and that we needed to leave right then. When we broke the news to the German girls that we couldn’t stay for drinks they were furious! When they realized that they weren’t going to get a free round off of Amanda, they actually turned their backs on us. Amazing.

We then decided to go south to the cool of the southern forests, where we are now. It’s absolutely amazing here, but I’ve rambled on long enough this time – more later.

Amanda "The Road Warrior"

This is a description of the first few days of our trip, which I
failed to report because of scarce internet connections and the
narcotic effect of the heat that made doing much of anything requiring
thought impossible. Here it is as far as I remember.

Our first stop from Perth was the Pinnacles, these limestone pillars
(some as tall as 12 feet) that rise out of a yellow sanded desert next
to the Indian Ocean. When the Pinnacles were first sighted from the
sea, Dutch sailors thought they were ruins of an ancient city, but
they're actually only calcified spires of tree roots from a long
vanished forest, now uncovered by erosion. We stayed and wandered
through these eerie creations until dusk, and then drove back to
Cervantes, the closest town. Dusk is when the emus and kangaroos come
out to feed (and when most animal - vehicle collisions occur - bad
time to drive) but we drove very slowly and were treated to the sight
of at least 10 kangaroos hopping through the brush and over the road.
They are such gentle creatures, and I was amazed at how far their
spring loaded jumps could carry them. We also saw an emu and a foot
long lizard that drew up his front torso and ran away on his hind legs
like a tiny T-Rex when we stopped the car to take his picture.

The next day we drove to Kalberri, famous for its gorges. While I was
trying to enjoy the scenery I had my first experience with the Aussie
fly . It looks disarmingly similar to a big fat lazy housefly, but it
is fast moving and BITES.
A word about the fly: with maddening persistency they try to crawl up
your nose, your shorts, get in your eyes, your mouth, your ears until
you can do nothing but desperately wave your hands and stamp your feet
and run. I have seen more dignified reactions to being attacked by a
swarm of hornets. The only defense is netting, which many hats come
equipped with. In the backpacker's hostel where we stayed some
Englishman (they call them Poms here - short for Pompous Ass) wrote in
the guestbook, "Nice country, except for the flies." His entry was
followed by a screed by an Australian telling him that he can thank
his ancestors for the flies - they accompanied the sheep they brought
over. I'll have to do my research to see if this is true, but if
these are English flies then they have mutated horribly. Now that I
think of it, though, most 'introduced' species have had bizarre and
horrible effects on Australia. More later on the terrifying rabbit.

On our journey north, Amanda was doing all the driving and we were
making excellent time. I was blissfully unaware of our speed due to
my ignorance of the metric system, which the good intentioned
President Carter halfheartedly tried to implement in the 70s, but
never quite stuck with me because I wasn't forced to learn it as I
should have been. I finally began effortlessly converting meters to
miles (as exciting as being able to think in a foreign language!) at
exactly the same moment when I glanced over at the speedometer and
noticed that Amanda "The Road Warrior" Godair was going 110 miles an
hour (177 KM). There are apparently no speed traps, or even
policemen, on the roads in that particularly desolate area and people
go whatever the speed they like, sort of like Montana. Amanda likes
to go very, very fast. She is an excellent driver, though, and the
car is well equipped with airbags. We are also out of that part of
Australia where speed like that is possible so, as they say in
Australia, no worries. Maybe I should leave this part out.

This is becoming much longer than I intended! I still have much to
report. In my next letter I'll describe our adventures in Next Shark
Bay, Monkey Mia and Coral Bay. Hit the delete key if this is boring
to you, which it must except to all but the most devoted family
members. I hope all is well with everyone! I'll be back in San
Francisco on the 11th.
Much more later!