Nice As Rice

DAY 435: Rice is the staple crop in the Philippines, as it is in many Asian nations. Rice production goes year round and is quite an on-going process of soil preparation, planting, maintenance, harvesting and drying, all before starting all over again. Not only has planting rice provided prosperity for countryside Filipinos, it inspired one Blogreader wheat to write the following ditty:

Planting rice is lots of fun
You must do it in the morning sun
I can't stand it, I can't sit
Planting rice is full of...

La la la la la la la la...

(Continue singing "la" until the laughter dies down from the omission of the "sh" word.)

While rice is grown in almost every region of the Philippines, nowhere is rice farming more famous than at the rice terraces of Banaue, about 200 miles north of Manila on the big island of Luzon. My trip to the northern countryside started bright and early, so early it wasn't bright yet. My father's brother, my Tito Pepito, picked me up at the Greenhills house at 3:30 a.m. with his new wife, my Tita Pangie, and his son, my cousin John Paul, which everyone just calls J.P.

"Hey JayPee, you're so big now," I greeted him. It had been five years since I'd seen him and he had really sprouted up, especially in the abdominal region if you know what I mean. "Look at you, you're like my dad."

The trunk closed shut as did the car doors and soon we were on the tollway northbound under the dark early morning sky. As with most people awake and driving around at four in the morning, there was one thought on everyone's mind: You think KFC's still open?

It was, the KFC at one of the service areas that is, and it was there we had breakfast with the colonel and his eleven secret herbs and spices (although I always say there are only ten that are secret because one of them is definitely salt). Anyway, the meal tied us over for the estimated ten-hour drive ahead, amidst the other northbound cars and buses.

SEVEN HOURS LATER, we arrived in Banaue in record time, mainly because we left so early and beat all the traffic in the metro Manila area. Banaue, is nowhere as big or as congested as cosmopolitan Manila; it is essentially a very big village evolved from the indigenous Ifugao people, one of over 150 tribal groups within the 7001-island Philippine archipelago. As we descended down the mountain road, I saw rice terraces carved into the surrounding mountains. "Are those the famous ones?" I asked.

"No, that's just the appetizer!" my uncle said, making himself chuckle.

We drove to the Sanafe Lodge, the place recommended by both my Tita Josie (my dad's cousin) and my Let's Go guide. It was there we had a lunch of sinigang (a sour, tamarind-based fish stew) and arranged a jeepney to take us to the famous terraces, which were actually about 90 minutes farther out of town via a rocky mountain road. Thankfully the driver of our off-roading jeepney (Filipino jeeps refurbished from old American G.I. jeeps) could handle it. The jeepney took us (and some welcomed stowaways on the roof) up a mountain to a drop point where we proceeded on foot down the valley on an established hiking trail to the village of Batad at the bottom. All around us were the famous terraces which may or may have not inspired wheat's "Planting Rice" song.

Although the trail was all downhill and only required about 45 minutes to do, it provided the most exercise that any of my relatives with me had really done in a while; they were total city slickers on their first visit to the terraces as well. Tito Pepito trekked down, not with the terraces on his mind, but with the notion of whether or not his car would be okay, being left parked on the street in Banaue. JayPee was much more of a basketball player than a hiker, but kept his spirits up as he always did, whistling the theme to Indiana Jones.

"It's an adventure," we all agreed.

IF THE PHILIPPINE MINISTRY OF TOURISM HAS ANYTHING to do with it, the terraces (picture above) of the Banaue area are the "Eighth Wonder of The World" -- well, that's what they bill them as anyway to any foreigner. They are one of many "eighth wonders" I'd seen in other parts of the globe -- the Rat Temple in Bikaner was billed as such, for example -- and no one could be for sure if it was a real "eighth wonder," or if there are even more than seven anyway for that matter. Either way, my first impressions were that they were quite impressive and worthy of their World Heritage UNESCO status.

The terraces date back 2,000 years ago and were built out of necessity. Flat terrain is of course essential in rice production, but it is hard to come by in the mountain regions. Therefore, Asian ingenuity started carving rice terraces into the mountains to establish such flat terrain, resulting in a beautiful and practical engineering marvel still in use today. The terraces today are not as they were 2,000 years ago; they are a continual work-in-progress. Farmers reshape the contours of the terraces with stone and mud based on geological and meteorological factors, all to produce the optimal amount of rice each season.

FORTY MINUTES LATER, we saw what we had come for, the "amphitheater," the main part of the terraces in the shape of a big venue for a rock concert. In the center of the valley of the amphitheater was the village center of Batad, where the local villagers lived their lives when they weren't working the terraces.

We checked into the Hillside Inn, not in the center but on the hillside a little higher than the bottom, with a view of the terraces below. It wasn't luxurious by any means; in fact, it was very similar to a humble little guesthouse I'd frequented on the trekking trail in other developing regions. "This is like one of the places I usually go to," I told my new-to-backpacking relatives. It was plain and simple, with small rooms separated by thin wooden walls and no electricity. Tt was run by the local Ifugao people, who spoke their own dialect that none of us spoke. Luckily they also spoke Tagalog and English and JayPee asked around for the Ifugao phrase he was trying to say: "Munhinanga." Translation: "I'm hungry."

Food would have to wait though since the sun was setting and we wanted to take advantage of remaining daylight. We trekked down the valley to the center of the village -- my uncle and aunt only went half way -- down walking paths and along the edges of the terraces where people were working the earth. Most terraces were being prepped with water -- each level is filled by an ingenious trickle-down waterfall scheme that begins at the top-most terrace -- while some had young rice growing in it already.

In the center of town, it was village life as usual; people sitting around staring at the tourists coming in, and kids playing volleyball near the village church. "Munhinanga," JayPee said. It was getting darker, so we head back the way we came -- uphill that is, which totally winded my basketball playing cousin. At the end back at the lodge, he was totally beat and sweating like a dog.

"Look, you've lost two pounds," I told him.

FOR DINNER WE HAD -- drumroll please -- rice; garlic fried rice that is, a popular Filipino culinary staple, along with scrambled eggs and bottles of water and Gatorade. Village life came to a calm with the coming of nightfall by around 7 p.m., and I spent the rest of the night writing in my room by candlelight.

The next morning when we checked out, I signed the Hillside Inn's guestbook with the only comment I could think of: "Very very nice as rice." If I had remembered wheat's little song at the time, I might have put that down. Instead I'll put it again here for old time's sake. Sing along!

Planting rice is lots of fun
You must do it in the morning sun
I can't stand it, I can't sit
Planting rice is full of sh--

La la la la la la la la...

From City Slicker To Backpacker

DAY 436: I have been backpacking for quite a while now and each day on the road I've gotten a little more wiser in the game, more so than the average person in the daily routine of sitting in a car and then at a desk and then on a couch in front of the boob tube. My relatives on my father's side of which I was with, were sort of clueless on backpacker travel; the day before, I had to remind my uncle to not only lock his guestroom door, but close his window to keep thieves from entering.

"Ah, you're already used to [this,]" he told me.

That morning we started bright and early at day break for the trek back up the valley from the village of Batad in the middle of the famous rice terraces. I had lugged by big backpack with me along with my daypack as I didn't know what to expect. My uncle thought the pack would be too heavy to go uphill with, and wanted to hire a porter.

"No, it's okay," I told him. "I've gone five days with heavier."

"Okay."

JayPee took my daypack and the four of us trekked back up the way we came, which was understandably a lot harder to do going uphill. We must have stopped six times over the course of an hour. (And why not? It wasn't a race or anything.) Up at the top, my Tito Pepito noticed our jeepney driver waiting. "Look, he's laughing at us."

We trekked on through the morning mist and the coming of the rising sun, until we made it to the jeepney, tired, sweaty, but feeling good.

"Good exercise!" Tito Pepito raved. "Masarap!" ("Refreshing!")

Our jeepney driver drove us, along with the usual stowaways on the roof, down the rocky and dusty mountain road back to Banaue. There was only one thought on my uncle's mind: Saan ng coche? ([Dude,] where's my car?) It was there, just as we left it, only with a lot more dust on it -- so much we could write words. JayPee taught me a new Tagalog one, "Astig!", the latest slang for "cool."

"OKAY, NEXT ADVENTURE," I said. It was only about nine in the morning. Tito Pepito made a reservation for us at the Sanafe Lodge in Banaue that night; in the meantime, it was time to go off on our next excursion, to the town of Sagada, about 2-3 hours away along another dusty mountain road. We couldn't leave right away though, because some sort of a homecoming parade was going on in the main street of Banaue. Beauty queens waved to the crowd from the back of makeshift floats, followed by high school marching bands, one of which played "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music. This is not surprising to me at all; The Sound of Music is "industry standard" in many Filipino households (at least in the States it is) as it is a musical beloved by most Filipinos. For me, the most memorable part is when Friedrich sings "Goodbyyyye!" in his high-pitched voice in "So Long, Farewell." Does that kid sing like he had just been kicked in the nuts or what?

The road to Sagada was a dusty one, dustier than before -- so much that my uncle and aunt wore handkerchiefs as dust masks to prevent from inhaling too much. The road was also a hair-raising one for the acrophobic, which JayPee was. Ironically, he was wearing an air-brushed Spider-Man costume t-shirt his brother Joey had made. "I'm Spider-Man, but I'm afraid of heights," he said as the jeepney approached the edge of some really steep cliffs.

SAGADA LIES IN THE CENTER of the Bontoc region, a much higher region where pine trees flourish, where the Bontoc tribe still lives today in co-existence with Episcopalian missionaries and their followers. It was a much smaller town than the already small town of Banaue, and for me, it was like any other little rural town on the backpacker trail. It was weird to see European backpackers in the streets, this time being on "the other side," traveling with local tourists. Funny, I always thought it was weird to see local tourists tour their own developing country, and there I was, a part of it.

We wandered the dusty town center looking for a place to eat and settled down for a bit. "This is my life for the past year," I told my uncle when we finally sat down to a meal in a little restaurant. "I end up in a place like this and try and find a place to stay."

We hired a guide at the town's tour office across the street (the only one in town) and then hopped back in the jeepney to see some sights. Our driver and guide took us to Sumigang Cave, known locally as "the big cave," for its massive interior. Along the way, I anticipated having to leave my bags in the easily-accessible interior of the jeepney, and went through my regular routine of transferring my laptop to my portable safe and chaining all my valuables to a pole in the cab -- all without bringing much attention to myself.

Meanwhile, my aunt pointed out that my uncle's sneaker soles were coming loose. My uncle tried to stick the two pieces together with no luck. "Here, I have duct tape," I said. I wrapped his shoes together, proving once again that duct tape usually saves the day in so many versatile ways. In Zambia, I managed to fix the inner workings of Shelle's digital camera, simply with a paperclip and a piece of duct tape.

"You're like MacGyver," my uncle said.

THE SUMIGANG CAVE WAS NOT ONLY BIG, but dark too, which is why hiring a guide was a good idea. Although I had my headlamp with me, it was nowhere as bright as the hefty oil lamp our guide had with him. It wasn't just the five of us in the cave; as Sagada's main tourist attraction, there were many groups and guides along the interior trails. It was funny to encounter French and Danish backpackers along the way.

What we didn't expect Sumigang Cave to be was an adventure out of Goonies or something. Within the cave was an underground stream, forming pools of water to wade through, and at some deep areas, swim in. The water made every part of the trail more treacherous. "Slippery when wet," JayPee said.

"I thought this was just going to be sightseeing," my uncle said. "But it's an adventure."

Our guide led us around the cavern as it descended deeper and deeper into the earth's crust, deeper and deeper in water levels (picture above). At a halfway point we were instructed to take our shoes off and simply go barefooted -- another surprise for the city slickers. There were many limestone stalactites and stalagmites, and other weird rock formations -- one of which was in the shape of a pregnant woman, so they told us. "They even painted it red," JayPee noticed, motioning to the crotchal region. My uncle leaned over to pose as if he was copping a feel.

As much of a MacGyver I was, I hadn't really anticipated the cave exploration would entail getting chest-deep in cold water. Luckily my uncle and aunt hung back before we got to that section, to hold my valuables and my camera. JayPee and I went ahead into the lower stream areas, where we had to duck and squeeze through narrow passage ways, lit up by the oil lamp. Water flowed around us and it ultimately led us to a big underground swimming hole at the end, where a group was already jumping in doing cannonballs.

"Astig!" raved JayPee.

"Astig!" I seconded.

We swam until enough was enough, then climbed back out via a climbing rope along an inner waterfall. We met the others and hiked up to where our shoes were. It was there I taught them another habit I'd learned on the road: always check your shoes for scorpions before you put them on.

THE OTHER BIG SIGNIFICANCE OF SAGADA is the scattering of tombs around the outskirts of town, established centuries ago by the Bontoc ancestors. Tombs were found under the overhangs of cliffs, and in the middle of jagged rock formations; we saw a couple along the way back into town. From there we changed clothes and then hopped back in the jeepney bound back to Banaue. It was a dustier ride than before; dust penetrated every inch of the jeepney interior and all we could do was grin and bear it.

Two hours later we were back in Banaue, in front of the Sanafe Lodge. We were all completely covered in dust -- our hair even went all gray it seemed. I was wearing my big backpack, also full of dust, and we looked like soldiers coming back home from battle.

"Do you want the dorm?" the manager asked us.

"No, I've been here two times already! We have a reservation," Tito Pepito argued. Suddenly she remembered.

"They don't even recognize us," he told me.

It might not have been the dust that disguised us; perhaps over the course of the day, after hiking and caving and slumming it up in a dusty beat-up jeepney, my city slicker relatives had been transformed so much that they just emitted the backpacker vibe to others. It runs in the family, after all.

Baguio Bakla

DAY 437: The city of Baguio is the "summer capital" of the Philippines, a place to retreat to even if it is technically winter in December. As the self-proclaimed "greenest" and "cleanest" city in the Philippines, it is a city nestled in the mountainous pine forest of northern Luzon, where the presidents of the Philippines go to get away from the smoggy air pollution of metro Manila -- although from what I saw, there was still no escape from the brown haze of progress.

It was a 7-hour southbound drive to Baguio from Banaue, which we started bright and early in the morning. Are we there yet? was the general vibe for JayPee and me in the back of the sedan. He entertained himself making video close-ups of his face on a digital camera while I typed up some entries on my laptop until the battery ran out. Afterwards, I passed the time trying to teach JayPee how to make droplet noises with his cheeks. Before we knew it, we were driving in the hills of the pine forest on the outskirts of town as a mid-day fog was coming in.

MY TITA JOSIE, MY DAD'S COUSIN who apparently knows a lot of people who know people, recommended her friend's fancy mid-range hotel on the outskirts of Baguio City, where we ended up checking in. The decor of the place was tastefully done with a Europe-meets-Asia sort of motif, and it was no surprise when I learned that the well-off owner, Boy (a common nickname for the youngest born male in a family), was possibly bakla (gay). Not that there's anything wrong with it, especially in the Philippines; according to my Let's Go guide, "homosexuality [is] far more readily accepted for both men and women in the Philippines than in other parts of Southeast Asia." While traditional Catholic Filipinos might deny this, they cannot deny the fact that there are many baklas thriving successfully in the Philippines as well as the Filipino community abroad. (Let's Go goes more in-depth into the Filipino gay scene further with an interview with John Abul, Manila Bakla in a sidebar in the guidebook, which you can read here.)

Boy was expecting us and was excited when we finally arrived. He greeted us with a cheery face and then put us up in the suite on the top floor, a great place with cable TV, a living room set, and a view of the valley where the mid-day fog was still coming in. Boy seemed especially excited to meet me, supposedly because he was a traveler too, thrilled about his upcoming trip to Europe.

Although I can't be for sure, I suspected his excitement went beyond me being a traveler from New York, what with my track record of being hit on by gay men: gay co-workers, gay guys off the street in my old neighborhood, that gay Peruvian chef on the boat bound for the Amazon, a guy in a Cape Town bar that bought me drinks all night and tried to take me home (who ended up in a deleted scene until now). I am however, not gay -- despite what some Blogreaders have told me they've suspected -- and I did not go home with that guy, although I'll admit I did take full advantage of the free beers. (Free beer? Sure! Hey, when you've got it, you've got it.)

"Okay, hali ka na," ("Let's go") my Tito Pepito said, finally interjecting the conversation that I was stuck in with Boy that wouldn't seem to end. We hopped in the Toyota and left him in his fashionable lobby -- not that we were trying to be rude; we were just hungry and wanted to eat.

AFTER SLUMMING IT THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS in rice terrace country, it was time for my city slicker relatives and I to go back to the familiar scene of a shopping mall, the big SM City Baguio in town, a big multi-level shopping and dining complex on top of a mountain. It was there we walked passed the Goldilocks bakery that sold dinuguan in take-out pouches, and went to the Ifugao wood carved statue in front of Gerry's Grill, which served fine continental and Filipino cuisine: alimasag (crab, picture above), crispy pata (deep-fried pork knuckles), and pancit palabok (noodles in a special tangy sauce). The four of us enjoyed our lunch near a terrace where a crisp, mountain breeze was clearing out the fog.

"Hey, there's Boy," my uncle pointed out. The possibly bakla hotel owner was coming up the escalator.

Um, is this guy stalking me? was my initial reaction -- not that I'm a homophobe or anything. But Boy was just doing his own thing and went on his way.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE PARKING GARAGE, we left the Toyota in the deck and proceeded on foot to the town center to Burnham Park, a central park with a small town community feel where people came for picnics and to take boats out in the little lagoon in the middle. JayPee and I took a boat out and cruised for a bit, amidst the other boats in shapes of cobras, ducks and swans, and then we walked with my aunt and uncle up to the Baguio Cathedral to catch the sunset.

After the sunset, the winds started to pick up and we head back to the hotel, where Boy was nowhere to be found. The winds were so strong that the cable was all messed up; the only news we could get of the Asian Tsunami was from NDTV, India's 24/7 news network. The rising death toll depressed the hell out of me, so I hooked up my iBook to the TV so we could watch something a little more uplifting, a bootleg DVD of After The Sunset starring Hollywood hotties Salma Hayek and Pierce Brosnan. Man, that Pierce Brosnan is a piece of work -- as an actor I mean, of course -- although if he was trying to pick me up with free beers, I probably wouldn't deny them. Hey, free beer is free beer.

A Brief History Of The Philippines

DAY 438: December 30 is Rizal Day in the Philippines, a national holiday celebrating the death of Filipino revolutionary Jose Rizal, who, like Cuban rebel Che Guevarra, got his start in medicine. An optometrist-turned-national hero, Rizal led the rebellion against Spanish rule with his controversial eye-opening books like Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) crying for Filipino independence. For his insurrection he was sentenced to death and thus became a martyr of the Filipino patriots who continued the fight against the Spanish.

The Philippines, which were named after King Philip of Spain, has come a long way since the days of Jose Rizal. It being Rizal Day 2004, our goal in the beginning of the morning was to try and finish up the sites in the Baguio area and then head to Rizal Park back in Manila to catch the tail end of festivities if time allowed. However, with so much history in the Philippines, we barely had enough time to cover it all.

"LOOK, THE FAMILY NAME IS EVERYWHERE," my uncle pointed out when we drove through the nearby city of La Trinidad, a city whose name still carried the Spanish legacy that Rizal spoke against. "Trinidad" is of course Spanish for "Trinity," which is of course the name of Carrie Anne Moss' character in The Matrix trilogy; people can make fun of me for saying I'm named after a girl, but I'd like to point out that Trinity is a girl that kicks ass.

La Trinidad is not famous for anything Matrix-related; it is famous for its strawberry fields, which was what we went to see just after sunrise. Gardeners walked back and forth through the rows of strawberries and other vegetables, while vendors on the side sold their latest picks and their derivative products. From there we went back to Baguio to see the holy Lourdes' Grotto, the view from Mines View Park, and the presidential summer mansion where ABS-CBN and GMA news vans were gearing up for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's end-of-year statements. We drove the scenic mountain roads and ended up at Camp John Hay, a former U.S. military based-turned-country club that my uncle raved about.

"So who is John Hay?" I asked him.

"I don't know. You ask questions," he told me as we parked in the lot of the Mile Hi Center, a strip mall in the Camp John Hay complex.

"Sino ba John Hay?" I asked at the first store we entered, a sporting goods store.

"John Hay," the guy answered. "John Hay Milton."

"Sino John Hay Milton?" JayPee asked. He didn't know either.

The guy shrugged his shoulders and asked a co-worker if he knew. I thought it was the beginning of a wild goose chase, but the cashier pulled out a history book that they sold, which answered my questions. John Hay Milton was the U.S. Secretary of State at the time the Philippines became a United States colony after the Spanish-American War. It was for him that the military base was named after, despite the fact that he had never set foot in the Philippines at all. John Hay Milton was an important guy nonetheless, for it was he who was in charge of foreign relations at a time when the US stopped living the shadows of its English roots and was becoming a superpower on its own.

CAMP JOHN HAY WAS NOT JUST A RESORT of big condos and a golf course; at its core was the "Historical Core," which preserved the history of the former military base, from its days as a retreat for the Spanish to the time that the Americans took over and established a R&R base for their soldiers stationed in the south Pacific. When World War II came around, the Philippines was attacked by the Japanese within hours of the famous Pearl Harbor bombing in Hawaii. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur fought for the Philippines, was defeated and retreated, but vowed, "I shall return." Meanwhile the Japanese took over Camp John Hay and used it as their own command post and to hold American and Filipino POWs. In 1945 MacArthur came back as promised, and in the fashion of Carrie Anne Moss' Matrix character, kicked some ass, and liberated the Philippines from the Japanese.

Most of this history I learned on the historical nature trail just outside the Bell Amphitheater and the Bell House (with its kitschy totem pole of significant Americans in the Philippines), both named after Major General Franklin Bell, commanding officer of the Philippine department of the U.S. military. Although the United States granted the Philippines pseudo-independence in 1946, it wasn't until much later that the U.S. pulled troops out of Camp John Hay. In 1991, the U.S. handed the base over to the Philippine Ministry of Tourism, who transformed it into a getaway place for Filipinos, foreign ex-pats and tourists alike.

The Bell House, at the center of the "Historical Core," was big and worthy for a big American general, even with the lack of the original furniture because the Americans took it back. The resident house guard/guide was a happy old Filipino man named Reynaldo, who led me and my notepad around the house, from the living room to the master bedroom. A former Philippine marine, Reynaldo had served as a military escort for the Marcos family from 1970 to 1978, but resigned after nine years of service for the reason he told me, because he realized how corrupt his leader was and wanted to get out.

FERDINAND MARCOS RULED THE PHILIPPINES shortly after the new independent government had been established. In 1965 he was elected president and with his great power came no responsibility; he became somewhat of a megalomaniac over the decades, declaring martial law and rigging elections for 21 years so that he could live a much better life than the average Filipino, and so that his wife, former beauty queen Imelda Marcos, could buy a lot of shoes.

"So have you seen all of Imelda's shoes?" I asked Reynaldo.

"No," he said laughing.

Marcos' dictatorship ended in 1986 when, as the conspiracy theory goes, he had his rival, Senator Benigno Aquino shot in the back as he disembarked from an airplane upon his return of a nine-year period in exile for his insolence. It was this murder that set the stage in motion for major political reform; the people and the National Assembly saw behind the 1986 elections that Marcos also tried to rig, and declared Marcos' opponent the winner, one Corazon Aquino, widow of the murdered senator. From then on, the Philippine government started its way towards a more democratic nation.

THE REIGN OF MARCOS IS OVER; it was visually evident when we drove out of Baguio towards Manila and saw that the big statue of Marcos' head that had carved at the side of a mountain had been partially dismantled already. (The statue of Marcos' head did live on in JayPee's references to Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies: "Marcos' secret volcano lair" and "Mini-Marcos.") However, the Philippines is not out of turbulent times, with the violence still going on today in the southern island of Mindanao. The current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo now faces threats from within, from several Communist insurgent and Muslim extremist groups that all have acronyms that I didn't make up: the NPAs (New People's Army), the ASGs (Abu Sayyef Group), and the MILFs (Moro Island Liberation Front, not the American Pie way). These groups have been responsible for terrorist bombings and kidnappings of tourists in a show of brawn for their cause.

U.S. President George W. Bush, in his "War on Terror," had deployed U.S. troops to the Philippines to fight the terrorist threat, but the Philippine government strongly opposed it, under grounds that it would just be history repeating itself -- US troops using the Philippines again for their own military strategy. The Philippines vowed they could handle their own problems with their own army, and upon a visit to the General Gregorio H. Del Pilar Philippine Military Academy on the way home, I saw that it was quite possible. The military academy was the Filipino version of West Point, a training ground for soldiers, and a tourist attraction for me, with its tanks, monuments, planes (picture above), a tree house, and flag at half-mast for the victims of the Asian Tsunami.

THERE WAS SO MUCH TRAFFIC ON THE WAY HOME to Manila that we didn't arrive back at my uncle's house in the Parañaque district until late, when I met up with my other cousins, Judiel, Joey and Jessica. With the traffic, we had missed out on any of the Rizal Day festivities, but so be it; my brain was already full of so much historical information to report about, it might have forgotten how to tie my own shoelaces.

Peter Parker's Rockin' New Year's Eve

DAY 439: Back in June when I was on a tour in Morocco with Vancouverite Sebastian, we had a good laugh in the minivan talking about how funny it would be to travel around the world with a Spider-Man costume, so one could take photos of Spider-Man out of the context of New York City -- Spider-Man riding a camel, Spider-Man in the jungle, etc. Little did I know at the time in Morocco that our idea would realized before the end of 2004.

MY COUSIN JOEY DESIGNS NANOMACHINES at his job by day, but by night he is quite the avid comic book fan. On vacation, he didn't go anywhere and just stayed home to make the most realistic Spider-Man mask he could with ordinary craft material: an old red t-shirt, pieces of rubber, clear plastic like the kind from a report cover, and a tube of fabric paint. The end result was an amazing Spider-Man mask that could have been made by a Hollywood costume designer. It was this mask that provided for hours of hilarity as we toured around Intramuros, the old Spanish neighborhood of Manila, that New Year's Eve morning.

It was JayPee who brought along the mask and wore it everywhere we went, as a complement to the red t-shirt and blue pants he wore, similar to the outfit Peter Parker used before he designed the familiar Spider-suit. My Tito Pepito drove us, along with Joey and Jessica, from the house in Parañaque towards Intramuros, not too far away. There was of course traffic, and with it came the beggars and vendors that worked their ways through the slow-moving cars to approach the passengers and drivers stuck inside. My uncle's car's windows were tinted so one couldn't really see inside without the window opening. The face of one particular beggar boy lit up when JayPee opened the window to give him some change and revealed the Spider-Man within.

"Spider-Man! Salamat!" (Thanks!)

And so began the day-long visual gag of Spider-Man out of context.

IN MY INTRODUCTORY BLOG ENTRY TO THE PHILIPPINES, I quoted Let's Go's description of the country, "a hodgepodge of 'Malay, Madrid, and Madison Avenue.'" Intramuros is the definitive "Madrid" in that statement, as it was where the Spanish came and built their own style of architecture and surrounded it with a fortification wall in the late 16th century. Little did they know that centuries later, a guy in a Spider-Man mask would wander its streets and alleys as a goof.

"Hey, Spider-Man! Buko?" (Coconut?) one of the street vendors called out in a Filipino accent.

"Spider-Man! Soft drink?" called another.

The Spider-Man mask not only attracted the attention of the vendors and the parking lot attendant and the security guard and pretty much everyone walking by, but it caught the eye of the guy we eventually hired as a guide for the next couple of hours to show us around Intramuros in the classic Spanish way, by horse-drawn carriage. His name was Jorgie, as in "Jorgie Porgie pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry" as he recited to us; he was an elderly but youthful Filipino man who had been guiding tourists for 23 years, including John Denver and U.S. First Lady-turned-Senator Hilary Clinton during the Clintons' visit in 1997. He was excited to lead us around, especially since he could address someone simply as "Spider-Man."

Jorgie Porgie was a well-informed guide who spoke in length about the history of the neighborhood, its roots in Muslim settlers way before the arrival of the Spanish. The Spanish eventually arrived and developed the area in a style similar to home, with cathedrals, cobblestone streets, and a Plaza Mayor (Main Plaza), renamed Plaza Roma in reciprocity of Plaza Manil, found in Rome. It was all very interesting to see, even more so since I was with a guy in a Spider-Man mask. JayPee continued to grab attention from everyone, giving hi-fives to those nearby, and posing with an excited group of street kids that climbed all over him. Our Spider-Man also posed on top of an old Spanish cannon, on a horse, with statues of former President Quezon and General Douglas MacArthur, and in group photos with not only us at the Manila War Memorial, but with some Korean tourists.

Jorgie Porgie noticed I was trying to jot down most of his historical lecture in my journalist notepad and asked me why. "I'm a reporter for the New York Post," I said. "It's the one The Daily Bugle is based on," I told him, continuing the Spider-Man theme of the day. Here I go again, milking that one article I sold to the NY Post, I thought. (It was hard to re-establish relations with my "Jameson" there since they had switched travel editors on me after my big break.) When he paused mid-lecture to get my name, I replied with "Peter Parker," which was fitting since I was shooting photos left and right like a freelance news photographer. My "press credentials" got me special privilege to take photos in the museum since it normally wasn't allowed.

Our tour ended at Fort Santiago, a former Spanish military barracks on the Pasig River. "What is the national fish?" Jorgie asked us.

"Bangus," I answered correctly.

"Good! You know. And what is the national flower?"

"Sampaguita," I said, two for two.

"And the national hero of the Philippines?"

"Spider-Man," we all said.

The correct answer was of course Jose Rizal, and it was at Fort Santiago where he was imprisoned by the Spanish and ultimately executed after a long, historical march to his death, which is now immortalized as the bronzed "Freedom Trail." Jorgie Porgie showed us around the former barracks explaining more history, from the baluarte (former prisoner and treasure area) to the courtyard where the government threw a welcoming party for Hilary Clinton. He ended his informative tour with a recitation of some of Jose Rizal's patriotic poems and then bid us farewell to guide the next group of people whom I will assume, did not have anyone wearing a Spider-Man mask.

After a short stop in Manila's Chinatown to pick up some hopia pastries, my uncle took us and our cousin in the Spider-Man mask beyond Manila City Hall and the alma mater of he and my father, M.I.T. (Mapua Institute of Technology, although my dad just loves saying the initials). We ended up at Rizal Park to not only check out the Rizal monument, but to get more out-of-context Spider-Man photos: standing with the flag of the Philippines, trying to hail a cab on Roxas Blvd., and showing that he is not actually Spider-Man, but my cousin JayPee with his gut.

THE SPIDER-MAN MASK HAD A BREAK that afternoon, but resurfaced that night when we went out to ring in the new year. While my 2003-into-2004 New Year's was a rather quiet and introspective affair in a Peruvian oasis at the bottom of the deepest canyon in the world with an Aussie girl named Heidi, this one would be a louder, much more public one. After some celebratory glasses of wine at dinner, we drove over to Fort Bonifacio in the Manila's trendy Makati district, an upscale neighborhood with fancy harborfront shops and restaurants, where MTV Philippines had its headquarters. It was there we attended a live televised concert akin to Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve in America, broadcasted not by MTV Philippines but by ABC-TV Channel Five to a national audience. Throughout the course of the night, the biggest names in Filipino rockstars performed on stage, from Michelle Branch-like Kitchie Natal to Dave Matthews-esque Parokya ni Edgar. Meanwhile, off stage in the crowd, JayPee was quite the celebrity in the Spider-Man mask (picture above), with people coming over to meet us and compliment my cousin Joey on his craftsmanship.

The emcees of the event were former MTV Philippines VJay Caro Terona and Filipina actress/model hottie Bianca King. The two of them were at a loss for words most of the time, trying to think of things to say and do to kill time before the clock struck twelve. They killed time in between music acts with corny Filipino jokes ("You're just my type... my blood type") and with stupid audience participation stunts to appease their sponsor, the SMART mobile phone company. One stunt came in the form of a contest; everyone in the audience had to text the answer to a Smart-related trivia question (answer: "smart") as fast as they could to receive a free Smart cell phone. When the time came, Caro announced the number of the winner in the audience.

"Right here!" my uncle called out, raising his hand. It was actually my cousin Jessica with the fastest fingers who had won the contest, but representing her was Joey, me, and JayPee in the Spider-Man mask and t-shirt of course. It was nighttime, so it was harder for JayPee to see anything behind the mask, and he had to be escorted by either Joey or me all the time. We walked up to the stage with the cell phone that had sent the winning SMS message while Caro the emcee addressed the audience and the live television cameras, not knowing exactly who won the contest yet until we came into sight near the stage. I can't remember the exact words, but Caro said something to the effect of, "Okay, we have a winner for our first question in the Smart trivia contest. He's coming up to the sta--what the... What the hell are you doing hanging around with Spider-Man?!"

Caro and Bianca continued the live event as Joey, JayPee and I were greeted backstage where all the stagehands, producers, and roadies were hanging out. The next music act came on, giving me the opportunity to meet the hosts at stage left. "Can I take a photo with you two?" I asked.

"[Here, I think it'll be a better photo with you two,]" Caro said. I gave him my camera for him to shoot me with Bianca before she went on her way to the dressing room.

THE CLOCK WAS COUNTING DOWN TOWARDS 2005 with still about an hour to go. Since we had won the first question, the people behind the scenes really didn't know how to organize a win, so there was a lot of waiting around backstage. I interviewed some stage producers to try and figure out who was who and where they were from, and continued to snap photos like a good freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle should. Eventually we were led from this place to that place by Smart representatives and were told that the winner would be interviewed on live TV in a bumper before a commercial break.

We were led to a staging area where a cameraman and lighting crew had set up for the televised segment. JayPee patiently waited with the new cell phone until our introduction to Filipino teen heartthrob Juddah Paolo and Filipina actress/model and FHM and Cosmo covergirl Giselle Toengi who'd interview JayPee in the segment. There was debate over whether or not JayPee should wear the mask or not; in the end, he decided not to wear it so that his friends might actually believe it was him with Filipina hottie Gi Toengi. The producer cued us for the segment and the camera started rolling. Juddah put on the mask and did stupid Spider-Man poses as they went live for Gi to do the interview. I can't remember the exact words of it all, just JayPee saying it was "Astig!" to win the phone, and Gi closing the segment with something in Taglish to the effect of "More to come as the countdown to 2005 continues!"

Afterwards we snapped some photos before Gi and Juddah went off to appear in other parts of the show. JayPee gave the new cell phone to his sister Jessica for her to have a Happy New Year with her very first cell phone of her own.

THE LAST ACT OF 2004 was a performance of the number one rock band in the Philippines of 2004, EMI recording artist Bamboo, who swept the Philippine Music Charts as Band of the Year with Song of the Year and Drummer of the Year, etc. With a sound that was sometimes reminiscent of Dave Matthews Band, sometimes like Rage Against the Machine, and sometimes like Bob Marley, Bamboo rocked the stage from 11:30 to 11:59. Joey and I head up to the mosh pit with the die-hard fans to mosh the last half hour of 2004. Ten seconds before 2005, Caro and Bianca were back on stage for the final countdown.

"Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one! HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

Fireworks bursted in the air over Manila Bay in an impressive pyrotechnic display that lasted half an hour. Instead of "Auld Lang Syne," the Beatles' song "All You Need Is Love," was sung and broadcasted on the Jumbotrons and the TV audience at home.

It was officially New Year's Day 2005, another red letter day in the history of The Global Trip 2004 (which entails 16 months like a 16-month calendar does). As far as New Years are concerned, it was a happy and memorable one, all thanks to my Tito Pepito, cousins Jessica, Judiel, JayPee and Joey, MTV Philippines' Caro Terona, ABC-TV Channel 5, Filipina hotties Bianca King and Gi Toengi, and above all, my friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Casual Saturday

DAY 440: On New Year's Day 2004, I had a pretty hectic one trying to get from the bottom of Colca Canyon in southern Peru to the city of Arequipa with a Puerto Rican couple that simply had to get back in civilization right away since they were slated to be in a wedding in Lima the following day. It was a crazy day of trekking, waiting, and organizing any sort of transport we could on a day when the public buses weren't running like people said they would.

New Year's Day 2005 wouldn't be half as chaotic, or even a third; it would be a casual and laid back one to rest and recuperate from the festivities the night before, and to visit more relatives.

AFTER A LAZY SATURDAY MORNING OF TELEVISION and surfing the internet, my uncle, cousins and I hopped in the car to go to my father's hometown, Malabon, not too far away from Manila, to visit my Tita Sedy. It was a casual lunchtime family gathering of Filipino food, English conversation (so that my relatives could practice), and my little second cousins A.C., Trisha and Aaron running around as kids do, with toy swords, the Spider-Man mask, and a mask of Skelator from He-Man. It was great to see my aunt again, an old teacher and author of numerous biology textbooks; she was thrilled to see me healthy and writing as well.

After a group photo, we left Malabon to continue our casual first day of 2005. It was just like any other day, except things were a bit different because of the events of the night before. Suddenly the big billboards on the highway of actress/model Giselle Toengi had a new significance, and now I was really into the Filipino rock scene. We went off to the shopping center in Greenhills to shop for music CDs and bootleg DVDs, but they were closed for the holiday. Instead we head back over to where we celebrated the night before, the affluent neighborhood of Makati.

MANILA IS A HUGE METROPOLIS OF THE OLD AND THE NEW, the good, the bad and the ugly. Like many of the world cities I've seen, it is where poverty is juxtaposed to the super rich, sometimes abruptly without any transition. One minute you're driving through the slums and the next you're in a ritzy neighborhood of luxury hi-rises.

Makati is such the ritzy neighborhood and is definitely the "Madison Avenue" in Let's Go's "Malay, Madrid, and Madison Avenue" description of the Philippines. If "Hong Kong" was in that description, it would be that too; an upscale commercial and residential district, it is where HSBC's skyscraper stands amidst other post-modern financial office buildings, where Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss grace the marble floors of the numerous upscale shopping malls, most connected to each other by covered walkways. It is where all the international restaurants are, from the Hard Rock Cafe: Manila to the Manila's branch of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., as well as the standard that should go without say, Starbucks, situated in a nice open-air courtyard that reminded me of Miami's Coconut Grove (picture above).

"Not here, this is Makati," my uncle told JayPee when he was about to put on the Spider-Man mask again. The gag was getting stale anyway, and so he put it away.

"Spider-Man is retired," Judiel said.

JayPee went off to meet his girlfriend in the first mall as his normal mild-mannered self, leaving the rest of us to casually walk around amongst the other people relaxing after the night of New Year's Eve. Jessica bought a new book to read since she was almost done with Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, and Joey and Judiel helped me find the CD of Bamboo, the headlining act at the concert the night before -- it wasn't so easy to find since some stores had it sold out.

The casual first day of 2005 ended with a casual dinner at the local branch of California Pizza Kitchen, for Peking Duck and Garlic Shrimp Pizzas and bottles of S.M.B. (San Miguel Beer), an acronym I didn't make up; "SMB" posters and flyers are seen all over the Philippines. Nothing really exciting happened after that; we simply went back home and vegged, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. With 364 days left in the year, there was still plenty of time to do stuff later on.

Quoth The Cousin

DAY 441: I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm really into the genre of Hollywood stupid-but-funny movies, most of which star alumni of Saturday Night Live after their runs with producer Lorne Michaels. To my surprise, it runs in the family, all the way to the Philippines; I swear my cousins Joey, JayPee, Judiel and Jessica have seen all of them, and like me and many others, love quoting the stupid one-liners. My cousins are quite perceptive too; after just one screening of my bootleg DVD of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (starring SNL alumnus funnyman Will Ferrell), they seemed to pick out all the one-liners, even the obscure ones that took me multiple viewings to pick up on.

"See, this is how they learn English," my uncle said with a slight sigh.

"I READ ABOUT IT IN A BOOK," (Ben Stiller, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) Joey said when we were preparing for the excursion of the day to Laguna, a couple of hours out of metro Manila. In Laguna was the Exotik restaurant, an award-winning restaurant catering to both locals and foreign tourists. Situated in multiple buildings and pavilions on the side of a hill, it was more than a restaurant, with indoor and outdoor space for private functions, gardens, and a sort of zoo, with just two kinds of animals on display: monkeys and the biggest snake I've ever seen, a 25-foot anaconda named Samantha that made me cringe, whose head was the size of my fist and body girth was like as thick as my upper thigh.

"Talk to it in Parseltongue," Judiel told Jessica.

Snakes weren't only on display at Exotik, they were on the menu, along with other "exotic" foods if you cared to be more daring than the average patron ordering from the regular selections of chicken, beef, pork or fish. Of course, the only reason why we traveled so far from Manila to Exotik was to try the "exotic" foods since they weren't normally served anywhere else.

Accompanying our snake with coconut sauce was manta ray with vegetables, sizzling river eel, and bayawak, or monitor lizard, with garlic sauce. As "exotic" as each of these was, the tastes were familiar: snake like chicken, manta ray like fish, river eel also like fish, and monitor lizard like dog. Except for that last one, there really wasn't anything "exotic" about it, although Joey and Judiel joked about how we ate "exotic rice" and "exotic cucumbers" because everything at Exotik was supposed to be "exotic."

Meanwhile, on a table across from us, a family had ordered fried chicken. "Look, they came all the way [here] and they're eating chicken," Tito Pepito silently mocked them.

"I ate a big red candle," (Steve Purcell, Anchorman) Judiel said randomly.

"IT'S NOT A BOAT, IT'S A YACHT," (Vince Vaughn, Starsky & Hutch) Joey and Judiel said as we boarded a couple of canoes. The other big to-do in Laguna was to "shoot the rapids" through the tropical river gorge that began at Pagsanjan Falls. It was there that the final scenes of Apocalypse Now were filmed, although we would go referencing another movie.

"Hey, Spider-Man!" called a boatman.

JayPee was at it again, wearing the Spider-Man mask that Joey made, for more out-of-context photo opportunities and to get reactions from the other people on the river. Not surprisingly, he was welcomed with smiles, cheers, hi-fives, and double takes. One North American tourist asked to take a photo with him, and JayPee happily obliged.

"Shooting the rapids" didn't involved shooting bullets into the river like my uncle had joked, nor did it involve any physical activity on our part. Rowing and steering was all in the hands of the banqueros, boatmen who did all the work, which was more of a task than expected because we actually went all the way upstream first to the source of the river before riding the rapids back downstream. Going upstream required more than a little muscle; the team of two oarsmen per canoe often jumped in and out to walk it up using stepping stones with all of us inside.

"I can barely lift my right arm 'cause I did so many," (Will Ferrell, Anchorman) JayPee said.

Halfway upstream were the Magdapio Falls, where we briefly stopped for a group photo before continuing up the gorge. Eventually our oarsmen got us to the main Pagsanjan Falls where we hired another guy to pull us on a big bamboo raft into Devil's Cavern, the cave behind the main falls (picture above). Needless to say, we got completely drenched under the water cascade, which made us scream and yell the way people do on wild water rides at an amusement park.

"I don't know what we're yelling about!" (Steve Purcell, Anchorman) I said.

OUR BANQUERO STEERED US back downstream to where we began. It was fun to just ride the rapids and watch the scenery go by. For others in other canoes passing by, it was fun to ride the rapids and watch Spider-Man go by.

The ride back to Manila was a long one because of the traffic, and everyone started getting hungry. Fortunately we were on the road where there were multiple stores selling "Colette's Famous Buko (Coconut) Pie;" we stopped twice to pick some up to eat in the car.

"Mmm, this is really good babingka," (Rob Schneider, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo) Joey said, eating a piece.

"Deep burn, deep burn!" (Will Ferrell, Anchorman) I said, burning my hand on a piping hot slice off pie.

As much as we wanted more buko pie, we called it quits after two; pastries aren't so forgiving to the abdominal region, if you know what I mean.

"Not six minute abs, seven minute abs," (Harland Williams, There's Something About Mary) Judiel said.

AFTER DINNER BACK AT THE HOUSE, I packed my things and got ready to go back to my other uncle's house back in Greenhills; my cousins' Christmas/New Year break was over anyway, and they'd all have to get back to school and work the next day.

For my farewell to JayPee it was a no-brainer; it was a hi-five like the one he had been giving to strangers on the street as Spider-Man. "Astig!" we said in unison. For the others, it was back to the one-liners.

"You stay classy," (Will Ferrell, Anchorman) I told Judiel, Joey and Jessica as I left the house.

"Thanks for stopping by," Jessica said (as Christina Applegate did in Anchorman after Will Ferrell's catch phrase).

My visit with the Trinidad clan of Parañaque had come to an end, but I knew that as long as Hollywood continued to crank out stupid-but-funny movies, I'd always be in touch with them.

Erik Falls On Mount Pinatubo

DAY 442: As we've seen in recent history, natural disasters can strike at any time, especially earthquakes. Fourteen and a half years before the 8.9 quake that rocked the floor of the Indian Ocean, causing the Asian Tsunami of 2004 -- the "largest natural disaster in recent history" according to many news outlets -- there was a 7.8 that shook another part of Asia that had lasting effects for almost a decade. This quake in the Philippines in 1990 caused a geological chain reaction that was epitomized eleven months later with the eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 -- the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century -- which spawned not a killer wave of ocean water, but a killer storm of fire, ash and dust in the sky of Biblical proportions.

While the death toll of the 1991 Pinatubo eruption (800 fatalities) was a mere fraction of the tragedy in South Asia 2004, it was tragic nonetheless; 100,000 people ended up homeless with an estimated half a billion dollars in damage. Geologically speaking, it was tragic as well; the emission of gases from the eruption was so great that it widened the hole in the ozone layer to a new level and further progressed the phenomenon of global warming.

Tragedy is a part of life; bad things happen, people fall down. As restless and guilty I felt being on vacation in the Philippines while people were dying not too far away in another part of the continent -- There are bigger things happening than me and The Blog, I thought -- there wasn't much I could do other than send a donation to UNICEF and get on with it. Until I go back to Thailand to try and do some hands-on volunteer work, the show must go on.

"THE TRINIDAD SHOW" CONTINUED ON that day with a day-hike organized by my Tito Mike and Tita Connie on Mount Pinatubo, 90 km. northwest of Manila. To beat the back-to-work-after-New-Year's MMR (Monday Morning Rush), we started before dawn at 4 a.m. when a driver sent from the tour agency picked Tito Mike and me up in a car designated for use by the press. Less than two hours later we arrived an hour ahead of schedule in Angeles City where we'd meet our trekking guide. While waiting, we had breakfast at a 24-hour Jollibee, the big Philippines' fast food chain that rivaled McDonald's, so big that locations had surfaced all the way in California, USA.

"This place used to be swarming with Americans," Tito Mike told me.

"That's why there are a lot of mestizos here," Rudy the driver added.

Angeles City is home to the former Clark U.S. Air Force Base, the main military outpost for United States' forces in the Philippines during World War II, not too far from Subic Bay, where the U.S. Navy was stationed. The city had evolved into a haven for at-ease G.I.s, with many places serving up booze and women, for a fee of course. Not surprisingly, many fair-skinned mestizos were born from the eggs of Filipina women and the sperm of American Caucasian men, thus the abundance of them in the area.

Our Pinatubo trek was organized locally by the Premiere Hotel, a fancy resort catering to, from what I saw, the Caucasian American and European men who still come to Angeles City for some Filipino R&R and, like in Thailand, to partake in the depressing but thriving sex tourism industry. The place was run by a Swiss German from Luzern named Rene, who was a decent old man that decided to settle in the Philippines after working with the Americans on the Clark Base. It was he who put us in touch with our guide for the day, a youthful 65-year-old Filipino man named Fred who had also worked with the Americans at Clark for decades, before his days as a gardener and freelance tour guide. Fred turned out to be quite a character.

To my chagrin, Tito Mike introduced me, as always, right off the bat as a guy who didn't know any Tagalog, which was fine by Fred because most of his clientele was English-speaking anyway: Americans, Australians and a whole lot of Germans. "Let me ask you a question," Fred said to me. "Who owns nature?"

"Uh, Mother Nature," I replied. Is this a trick question? "We do too."

"That's good! Mother Nature. God," he said. "People who can appreciate nature. [Not many people have the right answer]." Fred was a self-proclaimed nature lover who preferred trekking up to the crater rather than riding in a 4x4 "like the Korean tourists," as well as a devout Catholic man of God -- although he said he didn't believe in going to Church on the grounds that there are so many young attractive women that go to Church, it's hard to concentrate on praying. (He prays best at home.)

FRED'S BROTHER-IN-LAW BEN DROVE US in a 4x4 through the former Clark Air Force Base, which was no longer in use; after the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, the damage was so severe, the Americans simply abandoned it and gave the land back to the Philippine government to deal with. We went through the rural countryside and ended up at the base of the volcano at the local village of Target, named not after the retail store where you can by a TV, bedsheets, and a bottle of Tums all in one visit, but after the fact that it was the site of the former target range of American troops.

While there were many Caucasian and fair-skinned mestizos in the Angeles City area, it may be of note that the indigenous people of Target and the surrounding region were, to put it bluntly, black people of the Negrito tribe, the Philippines' oldest surviving race, descendent from Africans. (My dark skin genes may or may not be due to the possibility that from many generations ago, I am part black.) Negritos don't look "typically Filipino;" they have dark skin, African facial features and kinky Afro hair. Seeing them in the village, they reminded me of Jamaicans.

In Target, Fred picked up our Negrito liaison for our trek, a young man named Carlos who wasn't introduced to me by my uncle and therefore was with whom I got to practice a little bit of Tagalog as we trekked through the long grass, although it was nothing major. It was Fred who did most of the talking, explaining his philosophies on life and telling us anecdotes of his former treks on the mountain.

"[I guided an American from Idaho once, and he asked me, 'What's the name of that spring?' I told him that we didn't normally name things like they do in America and Europe, and so he named it Fred Spring, after me,]" Fred explained to me. (All quotes from Fred are paraphrased here since I cannot remember his exact words, nor did I jot them down. I really need to start carrying around a tape recorder like a real journalist.)

At a viewpoint, Carlos, uncle and I stopped for Fred to take our photo, and so that we could get a glimpse of the Pinatubo crater far away, shrouded in clouds. From there we continued the trek upwards (picture above) through the wide and narrow canyons, passed the rock formation that Fred called his "pet elephant." The landscape was reminiscent of any mountain trail with a river running through it, except for the fact that there was a 200-foot or more pile up of fine volcanic ash everywhere. The pile up was so big that some piles looked like stand alone mountains, with peaks created by erosion and rain. Some of the trees that had survived the fires of the eruption were completely buried in ash.

Hours of trekking went by. Fred entertained us with tales of leading treks with Germans and Aussies and one Korean newscaster who almost ran out of food on a multi-day trek, as we traversed the river back and forth in accordance with the easier way, wary of the ashy edges that would crumble under our feet. My Tito Mike pointed out that the water was getting warmer and warmer the higher we ascended, and it came to piping hot temperatures when we arrived at our goal of the day, the end of the particular trail we were on, about halfway up the main caldera of Pinatubo. Steam rose from the flowing hot springs where, in some areas, it slightly reeked from the yellow natural sulfur. Nearby, a Korean group had harnessed the natural hot springs and built a jacuzzi for an upcoming visit of Korean VIPs. Concurrently, they were widening the trail and having support ramps built so they could simply drive to the jacuzzi in a 4x4.

My Tito Mike was a bit winded from the trek -- he was a city slicker unaccustomed to any sort of nature trekking -- leaving me and Fred to climb as high as possible in the area, up to the steamier environment that fogged up my glasses. There was a big steaming waterfall whose droplets scalded my skin when I got too close. "So what's the name of this waterfall?" I asked Fred.

He smiled. "[There's no name,]" he said.

Oh right, I forgot. They don't name things in these parts. "So we can name it after me then? Erik Falls."

"[Yeah, Erik Falls.]"

I tried to inscribe my name somewhere in the ash but it wasn't really happening with all the pebbles inside. Instead, I went to the Koreans' private jacuzzi before their arrival and soaked my feet while eating a Spam sandwich to celebrate the unofficial inauguration of Erik Falls on Mount Pinatubo.

NATURAL DISASTERS ARE AN INEVITABILITY on this planet we call home, but in the ashes of tragedy life goes on. I think it was John Lennon who said, "Time heals all wounds;" thirteen years after the big eruption of Mount Pinatubo, things have healed and life prospers with steamy waterfalls, Korean jacuzzis and eco-tourism. From what I saw on the news that night back in Greenhills, South Asia was on its way to a slow, but steady recovery with the heartwarming and overwhelming support of the international community. Perhaps in thirteen years the tears in South Asia will be all gone, along with the idea that there might actually be a waterfall named after me in the Philippines.

Civilization

DAY 443: After practically a non-stop barrage of trekking, rafting, visiting relatives, meeting celebrities, and hanging out with my cousin Spider-Man, the course of action called for a day of rest. I spent this "day off" back in the comforts of civilization at my relatives' in Greenhills, Manila.

I didn't do absolutely nothing all day though -- oh no, the duties of a daily on-line travel show never seem to end -- I was behind on The Blog (as usual) and spent a good portion of the day sorting through pictures and writing entries, all while trying to connect to the internet with a cheap pre-paid ISP card ($2 for 20 hours!) that my uncle had. While that sounds like a steal, it was a dial-up with only one access number that, not surprisingly, gave me a busy signal 99% of the time. At one point, it took me an hour to connect.

Tito Mike and Tita Connie were at work, leaving me in the house with the busy signal, my Lola Nene, all the dogs that incessantly barked at me whenever I entered the living room, and the house servants. While domestic help may seem like a luxury, house servants (and canines for that matter) seem to be essentials in every middle-class Filipino household, as they were present in every relatives' house I'd had been to thus far. How's that for civilization?

"THE PHILIPPINES IS CIVILIZED," I remember a Filipino-American student once say to our video art/film professor back in a college in New Jersey. "They have malls and stuff."

"Well I think malls make a country less civilized," the young Bohemian artsy professor said. He always let us in on his philosophies on life; one time he called one of our guest speakers "a bitch."

Whether or not you agree with my former professor's opinion on shopping malls, there is no avoiding the fact that metro Manila is full of them, more per square mile than in New Jersey I dare say. That night, I took a break from my "day off" and went to the malls with my uncle -- the fairly new one called The Podium (picture above) and the big famous SM MegaMall next door -- to buy some supplies, do some research for The Blog, and have dinner. There's nothing especially exciting to say about the Filipino mall experience; it is essentially the same as the Western one, except that you are frisked and your bag is searched every time you enter the main door.

The end of the day was also not too thrilling -- my apologies -- as I just pulled my hair out in the Greenhills house trying to connect to the internet again, for more than an hour at nighttime, prime time. Man, if there's anything that makes a country uncivilized, it's a dial-up internet connection.

The Guy Behind The Guy Behind The Blog

DAY 444: I will dedicate this entry to my brother, Blogreader/Blog Hog markyt who, behind the scenes, has become an indispensable member of the crew behind The Blog. He is the liaison between the writer, the producer, and the guys at the Bootsnall.com, gracious host provider of The Blog. I am dedicating this to him because it's a tribute long overdue -- and, to be honest, because I didn't do much in the day, and I need something to up my word count.

Well, that's not completely true, the not doing much in the day I mean, since I worked not only on Blog duties, but on the production of the trailer for the big DAY 503 return party back in New York City (March 5, set the date). The trailer production required some CDs back in the States that markyt had put together for me and FedEx'd to the house in Greenhills, so that I could work on it (picture above) and finish it in time for American Commercial Day, a.k.a. SuperBowl Sunday. Markyt's efforts saved me a lot of grunt work, leaving me more time to produce and write the Blog and drink more beer.

And speaking of markyt, or Marky T, or Mark R. T., whose initials are M.R.T., which can be tweaked to Mr.T (yes, it's a stretch), that night when I was flipping through the cable channels while waiting for the internet to connect, I bumped into the old Mr. T cartoon from the mid 1980s, on Cartoon Network's Boomerang programming. Immediately my face lit up, since I had fond memories of watching the cartoon as a kid (while 1981ers were still learning to walk), a show which was created by Ruby-Spears during the hey-day of Mr. T, The A-Team, Mr. T breakfast cereal, and all Mr. T-related catch phrases -- which have been immortalized in the Mr. T talking key-chain (like the one Tony had back in Moshi, Tanzania).

Anyway, there was this one part in the cartoon when one of the members of Mr. T's crime-fighting gymnastics team was drowning in a pool. Someone called for help and Mr. T, who was casually sitting in a hotel room reading a newspaper (that made me laugh), came to the rescue by jumping off his hotel balcony and into the pool to save the drowning victim, all in one quick sweeping motion that took about forty frames of animation, if not less.

This I mention because my Mr. T, our Mr. T, markyt also "saves the day." I remember one time when I was uploading some entries in Dar-es-Salaam, and for some reason the server was truncating all my work. Markyt was there to fix everything in a long cut-and-paste relay over instant messenger.

Markyt: ok its fixed
Erik TGT: you just saved the blog

So, nothing much to report on the events of the day -- in fact, I didn't even leave the house once (something I hadn't done in a long time). The Blog continued on and that trailer for DAY 503 was well under way. DAY 503 will not only be a big welcome back party to see friends and meet readers, but it will be my opportunity to, at the very least, buy markyt a beer.

Filipino-American, American-Filipino

DAY 445: Another day of inertia; I did more work on The Blog, more work on the DAY 503 trailer, all while I was "stuck" in the Greenhills house. My apologies for the lack of travel-related activity, but as I once stated in a previous comment, the Philippines has become a great challenge; with the Relatives Factor, where my schedule is at the whim of family members unaccustomed to spontaneous adventure travel, I wasn't calling all the shots as I had in other countries, nor was I in a tourist-friendly neighborhood where it was easy to get around and do stuff independently.

This leads me to write about the sociological aspects of being a Filipino-American in the Philippines, which will not only up my word count on a day with nothing special to report, but will provide some insight on the "First World traveler of Third World descent" that one Blogreader had asked me about. Plus, the explanation of it all becomes pertinent in future entries, so I might as well set the groundwork.

LET'S GO PUTS IT PERFECTLY in their introduction to the Philippines that I quoted in a previous entry: "At the heart of the Filipino tradition is a strong sense of community; Filipinos can't bear doing things by themselves and, above all, value family, friendliness, and personal loyalty." As an American born of Filipino immigrants that met in New York, my upbringing has included those values of family, friendliness and personal loyalty (which I am happy for) -- and all without the ability to really speak Tagalog. Not that I'm complaining; it left my brain to be filled up with other useful things, like knowing how to instantly skip from the first level to the second level in the ColecoVision version of Donkey Kong.

Biologically speaking, it amazes me how the brain is molded in the developmental years; I might have turned out like my cousins in the Philippines -- speaking Tagalog and not totally and utterly dependent on the internet -- but I turned out who I am, simply because I grew up in America. I speak American English with non-regional diction, I write with a sort of American style, and my sense of humor is distinctly American -- although the Trinidads of Parañaque proved to me that you don't have to grow up in America to appreciate stupid-but-funny American comedy films of SNL alumni.

There is much truth in the statement that "Filipinos can't bear doing things by themselves," and it is with that said that I say I have really adopted the un-Filipino, American ideal of independence.

"Kuya Erik, are you a loner?" Chie asked me on Christmas Day on the matter of me being single and thirty, something very un-Filipino.

"Yes, I'm a loner," I said with a smirk.

As more and more of my friends have gone the paths of marriage and kids -- a path I am not attracted to at this point in my life -- more and more I have had to do our activities solo: mountain biking, trekking, snowboarding, etc. Traveling solo for close to fifteen months has furthered that feeling of independence to the point where, for me, it has become a necessity. People have wondered, "How can you do it, travel alone for so long?" but I wonder, "How can people do it, travel with someone for so long?" I really don't know how people can travel without calling all the shots; but alas, here I am in the Philippines in that situation. I did manage to get away for an afternoon walk though, where I simply walked around the nearby post-Christmas market in the Greenhills Shopping Center (picture above), and did the American thing of getting a Frappucino at the local Starbucks.

Lara (Peru, Bolivia, Brazil) put it succinctly when talking about homestays with relatives and friends; as nice as it is to have a free place to crash, you can't come and go as you please like you can in a hostel; you're always tied into someone's schedule. I am not complaining about my relatives' homestays in the Philippines by any means -- I'm grateful -- it's just detrimental to a guy determined to do at least one unique thing per day to keep the variety of his daily on-line travel column going.

On another note, so as to keep my word count rising, we'll go to the subject of eating in the Philippines, at least for a guy staying with relatives. Like I said before, Filipinos will find just about any excuse to get together for a meal. While I do appreciate the concept of getting the family together for dinner, I can't really get used to doing that every single day, and on schedule too. Here in the Philippines, I am scheduled to eat three square meals a day, something I have unlearned to do on the road -- I usually only eat when I'm hungry so as to keep my weight balanced. Here in the Philippines, my metabolism is all out of wack and I am definitely gaining weight, much to my chagrin; on my 1999 trip, I gained twenty pounds in two weeks from all the family overfeeding.

So what identity do I relate to? I am what I am, a Filipino-American, an American-Filipino, taking the best of both worlds I guess. I appreciate the instant feeling of community you get with Filipinos, while at the same time I feel the un-American Filipino tradition of living at home until you're married is just archaic. I love eating McDonald's french fries, just as much as I like the freshly ripped off crispy skin of a fresh roasted pig with the head still intact. To go into all the conflicting philosophies I have in my head would take pages, but you probably get the gist of it, and the word count of this entry is decent enough already.

ABROAD, WHERE I AM A FOREIGNER IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, there is no mistaking me for an American with my mannerisms. In America, where ethnic people are defined by their roots, I am Filipino, or as the people who make standardized tests label me, "Asian/Pacific Islander." However, some would disagree; Rudy, the driver on the Pinatubo trek, put it like this in a conversation:

Rudy: How old are you?
Me: Thirty.
Rudy: Married?
Me: No.
Rudy: Oh, you're not Filipino then. If you were Filipino, you'd be married at twenty-five.

This isn't necessarily the case, and we'll see in the next entry, a more exciting one that finally involves travel again...

A Mis-Match Made In Paradise

DAY 446: Up until this trip around the world, I never really saw the Philippines as a vacation destination in the "getaway" sense; it had always been the place of my heritage, the place where you go and see a lot of relatives that overfeed you. But to the non-Filipino, the Philippines is a great travelers' destination, which Let's Go called "a budget traveler's paradise."

I was determined this time around in the Philippines to not only see relatives, but see the Philippines, and that began when I finally got off the family trail and head for Boracay, the Philippines' hedonistic beach resort mecca that Moe (Hong Kong) raved about. Boracay is to Manila what Phuket is to Bangkok, before the Asian Tsunami of 2004, that is.

I wasn't completely off the family trail though. Escorting me was my Tito Mike, who is technically not my tito (uncle), but my mother's cousin on her mother's side. Meeting us there would be my Tita Josie, who is technically not my tita (aunt), but my father's cousin on his mother's side. As I mentioned in the previous entry, some would argue that they are very un-Filipino; both are older than 25 and unmarried. My Tita Vicky (a real aunt on my mother's side) told me that when the two meet, I should try and play matchmaker.

THE TRIP TO BORACAY STARTED BRIGHT AND EARLY, as always to beat metro Manila traffic, as a driver took Tito Mike and me to the domestic airport. Surprisingly there wasn't much traffic and we got there way ahead of schedule and waited in the waiting area amidst the signs posted warning against making jokes about bombs on airplanes.

One hour-long plane ride, a motorized tricycle ride, and a short ride on a spider boat later, Tito Mike and I finally arrived on the western shores of Boracay Island, on White Beach, named after the plethora of white sands. Perfect and warm turquoise waters graced the surrounding edges of the island, while the intense greens of palm trees and other tropical vegetation swayed in the gentle ocean breeze. The sun blazed down from above, making the air warm, but not too hot or humid. It was every bit the paradise that people had raved about and I hadn't even really done anything yet.

Wow, this is the Philippines? I thought. The roots of my heritage are actually in paradise?

A porter took our bags from the boat, down the beach promenade to Club Ten, the bungalow resort Tito Mike had made an advanced reservation at. We checked into our lovely loft suite, with AC, TV, minibar, and complimentary fresh mango juice when we arrived. It was perfect, except for the fact that it was not on the beachfront, at least not anymore. As one of Boracay's original resorts, it had fallen victim to that game developers play in the waterfront real estate game: buying and developing land in between establishments and the shore, making places no longer oceanfront property but behind-oceanfront property. Club Ten knew they had fallen victim to this and apologized accordingly.

BORACAY'S MAIN TOURIST DRAG is a right on the shore of White Beach, in between the shore and former oceanfront resorts. It is a laid back sandy promenade of bars, cafes, shops and jewelry vendors, which sounds a bit too commercialized, but was actually not too bad; none of the vendors were really that aggressive and pretty much left you alone to decide on purchases yourself. North and south of the main promenade were more secluded resorts and beyond that, nothing but sand.

To get an overview of western Boracay, I walked up and down the shore, wading through the crystal clear waters, passed the sailboats and the wild rock formation known as Willy's Rock, up to the northern cove and the cliffside resort beyond that where I was awarded with a spectacular view (picture above). As one boat's Smart-sponsored sail perfectly put it, it was "Simply Amazing!"

Since it was the week after the busy Christmas week, the place wasn't crowded at all. Along the way, I noticed there were many foreign-looking tourists; something like 70% of Boracay's clientele is comprised of foreigners, mostly Germans, French and Italians from what I was hearing. Just like I had seen in Thailand, I noticed a lot of old white-haired or balding men were with young local women that I assume were escorts, feigning laughter for the old men's jokes. That's not to say there weren't families around, both foreign and Filipino. As the self-proclaimed "No. 1 tropical beach in the world," Boracay's White Beach attracted everyone, and from what I had seen so far, lived up to its claim.

And speaking of family, my Tita Josie showed up around four at the suite at Club Ten, and I was back on "the family trail" again -- except this time it was a bit different. Josie and Mike were not related to each other at all, other than by the distant link of which my brother and I are. Immediately I saw that there would be no sort of matchmaking, as the two were polar opposites: Tito Mike, at 52, was a gentle, humble religious man who read prayer books; Tita Josie was single, forty-something and fabulous -- definitely the savviest of my dad's cousins -- a half-Filipino, half-Chinese party girl and manager of a shoe factory that had contracts with Fila and Nike, who had a lot of rich contacts and friends. To bring parallels from American pop culture, matchmaking them was as impossible as trying to hook up Samantha Jones (Kim Catrall) from Sex and the City with Mr. Rogers.

Tita Josie, who was quite the beach resort person, had been to Boracay six times before and led me on a stroll down to the southern area of White Beach until the sun went down and the magnificent sand castles that people had built were being lit up. We made it back to meet Tito Mike back at Club Ten, and we went out for seafood at one of the many places serving up fresh shrimps, crabs, oysters, and wild lobsters. There was an uncomfortable silence at the dinner table as I ate with my two distant sides of family; it felt like, from what I'm told, being an only child having dinner with two alienated divorced parents.

Later that night I vegged in the room trying to catch up on Blog duties, only to fall asleep on the sofa. I was happy to be awaken up by the voices of my two relatives, finally having conversations over cigarettes -- if there was anything they had in common, they were both big smokers. I knew that there would no match in paradise, but in a laid-back place like Boracay, that thing was the last thing on my mind.

Advanced Novice

DAY 447: "Hi, I'm Margo," the slender young woman in a bikini top greeted me the afternoon before at the Aquarius dive shop on Boracay Island. Half-Spanish, half-Italian with a look and an accent that bordered on both, she immediately reminded of a girl I used to go out with back in the States.

"So where are you from?" I inquired, assuming any foreign-looking person was a tourist.

"Uh, I'm from here," she answered. "[I'm the dive instructor.]"

I apologized for my faux pas, but the following morning she had reciprocated with presumptions of me. "So you are from Manila?"

"Uh, no, I'm from New York," I answered. "I'm a freelance travel journalist," I added when she asked what I did.

"Oh, that's so cool! You could write about Boracay."

BORACAY, IS JUST ONE of the Philippine archipelago's 7,107 islands, but it is arguably the most popular -- particularly amongst travelers -- despite being one of the smaller islands in the group. Let's Go states, "Filipinos all over the archipelago will ask if you've been to Boracay; if you haven't, they'll emphatically encourage a visit to the softest, most beautiful sand in the country." Boracay not only boasts the most "beautiful sand in the country," but the best in the world; every map in town labels the west coast not by its proper name "White Beach," but as "World's Best Beach."

Boracay is not only a paradise for beachgoers and watersports enthusiasts, but also a haven for scuba divers. On the diving scene in Boracay, the PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) website says, "Boracay, just north of Panay Island, is a classic tropical paradise: sun-scored fine white sand, a turquoise sea and a background of swaying palm trees set against an azure sky. Well-established operators have aggressively explored the reefs, finding many top dive sites."

There are dozens of licensed dive shops on the main drag of Boracay to take certified divers and soon-to-be-certified divers to any of over twenty local dive sites with varied coral and marine life. With my newly-acquired PADI Advanced Open Water status that I earned in Dahab, Egypt (the official ID card that was sent home was sent to me in Japan by markyt, TGBTGBTB), I was ready to take on the responsibilities of an advanced diver, even though I was pretty much still felt like a novice. Having a PADI diving license is like having a driver's license; it entitles one to dive but it doesn't guarantee a cardholder is any good at it. In fact, some people argue that the whole privatized certification structure by PADI is merely a money making scheme, and that PADI stands for "Put Another Dollar In."

In the group were three Austrians, a lone Korean woman, European Divemaster Christian and Dive Instructors Margo and Miyong, a dark-skinned half-Korean, half-Filipino(?) girl. Also tagging along were Margo's visiting sister Mita and my Tita Josie, who wasn't a diver, but would come to graciously pay the tab for the both of us, and go snorkeling. It didn't really happen though, the snorkeling that is, because she as a nocturnal night manager of a shoe factory, and was unaccustomed to being awake in the daytime -- plus she got seasick. In addition to contributing to my trip by paying for my dives, she contributed fish food to dozens of tropical fish below with her vomiting off the side of the ship.

WHILE BORACAY'S VARIETY OF DIVE SITES includes deep dives, wrecks, and coral fields, our dives of the day would be wall dives, where we'd explore the marine life along the side of a submerged cliffside. "It's the perfect day," Margo said, complimenting the clear blue skies and lack of big ocean waves. The crew of the big Southern Cross spider boat (picture above) took us 90-minutes away, closer to the neighboring island of Panay.

Our first dive site was Black Rock, named appropriately for the fact that that's what it was, starting at the ocean floor and jutting out of the ocean surface like a big camel hump. We divided into two dive teams: Miyong leading the Austrians, and Margo my dive buddy leading her sister Mita, Divemaster Christian, and me. It's a weird thing when you're brand new to the advanced group; many things and methods in equipment set-up people presume you know already. This isn't such a good thing when you're rusty like I was; as any who has taken the basic PADI Open Water diving certification course can tell you, PADI really hits you on the head on how a hundred things could go wrong underwater. Luckily for me, Miyong and Margo were benevolent with their experience and set me straight as I attempted to make sure my gear was ready to go.

"Uh, you have [your tank valve] backwards," Miyong pointed out.

"Your BCD is too low," Margo said. "If it's too low you might hit your head on the tank."

After the buddy check and a reminder of the hand signals of reporting how much air you have left in your tank (good to know), there was no big launch like there was in a class; we simply dropped into the water one by one under the assumption everyone knew what he/she was doing and then met up at the front of the ship. After the AOK hand signal (I remembered that one) down we went. The dive was pretty amazing, despite the mediocre visibility; living coral ebbed and flowed with the water motion as colorful tropical marine life swam around us -- angelfish, scorpion fish, nudibranches, groupers -- and at one point we swam through a big school of sardines. We followed the contour of the wall looking for extraordinary things; one thing Margo found that I hadn't seen before was a bright blue and yellow-striped ribbon eel, poking its head out of a rocky crevice.

As an official advanced diver I was getting back into the game and it was great to finally be at a point in my diving career where I could finally stop worrying about my breathing and my buoyancy and actual enjoy the dive. For Margo it wasn't the same, with her responsibilities of a leader in this particular dive; for some reason, Mita and Christian had gotten separated from the group and I was paired up with Miyong for the rest of the time while Margo went looking for them. In the end, everyone just met up at the ship and I heard Margo scold her sister in Italian.

THE SECOND DIVE OF THE DAY was not too far away at Buruanga Point, a scenic place even above the surface, with crazy cliffside rock formations that Margo and I took photos of.

"I hate this part," I said, putting on my wet wetsuit. "This is the worst part of diving." The dive instructors agreed; there's nothing worse than that feeling of wet fabric smear against the skin.

After the required body nitrogen-releasing decompression stop, down we went again into the briny deep. It was a good dive just as before and no one got lost this time. Margo was quite the wildlife spotter, finding a small hidden boxfish, and more impressively, a baby octopus crawling over a rock that was almost perfectly camouflaged with it. Again I was more confident with my diving, even when we swam through a narrow chasm.

THE CREW OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS was just about finished preparing lunch when we got back on board: a big grilled tuna and barbecued chicken, served up on the big table on the ship with bread, rice, and cole slaw, to the group of hungry divers, snorkelers and Tita Josie who spent most of the time onboard that day sleeping.

"I want to take him there tomorrow," I overheard Margo say at the other end of the table in a conversation to Miyong.

"Who?"

"Erik." Margo called over to me across the way, singling me out and putting me on the spot in front of the other divers. "I want to take you to Laurel tomorrow. It's the most beautiful site in Boracay."

So, like a dive date? How's that for being "advanced?" "Sure. I got nothing planned tomorrow," I replied, hoping I wasn't putting a damper on the tentative plan I had with my relatives to go see the northern part of Boracay via bicycle. Ugh, the inner turmoil of independent travel vs. the Relatives Factor.

With the ocean waves picking up, our third and final dive of the day would be at Buruanga Point again, to explore the other part of the wall. More colors, more coral, more fish -- and this time a 5-ft. banded sea snake, which to my surprise, I was curious and unafraid of following until it slithered out of sight, even with my ophidiophobia. It was best that Margo didn't tell me until afterwards that the sea snake was very poisonous (but fortunately non-aggressive). The aggressive thing that dive were white sea worms that managed to attach themselves to the suits of Margo and me; we carefully flicked them off.

AFTER SLIDING THE WET FABRIC OFF OUR SKIN (yuck), we packed up our gear and put away the tanks. Then it was a 90-minute ride back to Boracay, which I wisely spent laying out on the upper deck with Mita, Miyong, and Margo. Back on the shores of Boracay, where a drummer group was playing on the shores at sunset, we brought back the gear to the dive shop for cleaning and then did the post-diving ritual of writing in our PADI dive logs. I was up to 25 official dives -- each subsequent one further progressing my confidence as a scuba diver. Margo signed and stamped my pages and went off, with expectations that we'd bump into each other later on.

"It's a small island," I said.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY?" I asked my Tito Mike back at the suite at Club Ten.

"Oh, I went for a dip," he answered with a smile as always. "Your Tita Josie says she has a lot of friends here. She just took off this morning and didn't tell me anything."

"Oh, she was with me on the ship."

"Oh really?"

Clearly there was a miscommunication there, or a lack thereof. No matter, the three of us went out for dinner at one of the many restaurants Tito Mike had scoped out, Le Soleil, which had an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet where I took full advantage of by gorging on grilled oysters. Like the night before, there was an uncomfortable silence with me in the middle of it all; again there was no instant Filipino community rapport. Whether or not it was due to the fact that the three of us were "un-Filipino" -- single with different agendas in Boracay -- I didn't know.

My agenda that evening was to go out to a beach bar despite the off and on downpours that keep Tito Mike and Tita Josie indoors at Club Ten, to see who I could meet or bump into. Boracay wasn't at full capacity since it was just after the Christmas/New Year's rush, so not many people were out at the usual primetime of 11 p.m. Walking the main strip I found the bar most people had ended up at, an open-air beach bar whose name escapes me, with live music. Immediately I was drawn to the three Filipina girls performing Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and parked myself at the bar with an SMB (San Miguel Beer). By chance I was standing right next to Spanish/Italian Mita, who was out partying for her last night out in Boracay before heading home to Genoa the next morning, but to my chagrin, Margo was exhausted and had called it an early night.

No matter, the beer flowed and the band played on -- until another big downpour that put a damper on all the festivities and sent me home in the rain. I arrived back at the suite drenched and faced the inevitable icky smearing of wet fabric against my skin for one last time that day. I'm telling you, there's nothing worse than the feeling of wet fabric.

Party By Day, Party By Night

DAY 448: During the third week of January, the streets of Kalibo on Panay Island come alive for the Ati-Atihan Festival, which celebrates the black natives of the Philippines, the Negritos, for their resilience in protecting and hiding the statue of baby Jesus from the imperialist aggressors -- at least that's how my Philippine-raised Tita Josie explained it to me. However, according to my American-published Let's Go guidebook, the Catholic Church had altered the original meaning of the festival for its own gain; originally a pagan event that had nothing to do with statues of Jesus, Ati-Atihan celebrated the sale of Panay Island from the black tribespeople of Borneo.

Either way, Ati-Atihan is "the archipelago's largest festival," a "Filipino Mardi-Gras," where people paint themselves in black soot, dress up in colorful costumes, get blitzed on alcohol, and dance around in the streets, sometimes not necessarily in that order.

IT WAS NEITHER THE THIRD WEEK of January, nor was I in Kalibo on Panay Island just yet. I was still in Boracay which, in the spirit of the upcoming Ati-Atihan, started the partying early -- a week earlier, and at eight in the morning no less.

It was just a little after seven when I woke up with the sun in the silk sleeping bag I had bought in Hanoi, Vietnam, with my Tita Josie on the other side of the big queen-size we shared in the loft, big enough to hold three. Tito Mike was nowhere to be seen down below in the twin-size.

"Let's have breakfast at English Bakery," Tita Josie suggested. She raved about the beef tapa at the popular beachfront eatery.

"Okay," I said, even though Tito Mike had suggested the breakfast buffet at Le Soleil the night before. I didn't know where he went though, so I figured breakfast was fair game to any suggestion.

Tita Josie stepped out for a while when Tito Mike stepped in to pick up his plane tickets to get confirmed for his upcoming flight in two days. It was Sunday, and he had awaken early to go to church. "I'll just confirm my flight and we'll have breakfast at Le Soleil. I'll just meet you there, okay?"

"Oh, I think Josie was thinking of going to another place."

"Oh."

"You have your phone?" I asked. I figured we'd figure something out and relay via SMS.

"Yeah, I have it." He left and then shortly after, Tita Josie came in, as if on cue. I told her that Tito Mike was just going to confirm a flight at Asian Spirit and that he was set on Le Soleil for breakfast.

Caught in the middle of another case of miscommunication? I thought. What is this, an episode of Three's Company? (Tito Mike, the sensible one with black hair would be the Janet character; Tita Josie, the wilder one would be Chrissy; and I would be Jack, since some people mistake me for being gay.)

Tita Josie and I walked down the main strip in hopes to catch Tito Mike at the airline office -- it was a lot farther south than we thought. We tried texting him and calling him, but no avail. "He doesn't have his phone," Tita Josie said. "There's no answer."

"No, he has it. I asked him."

She dialed again, and suddenly, within earshot, I heard the familiar monochime ringtone of Disney's "Beauty and The Beast" song; Tito Mike and his cell phone were right in front of us. He was busy browsing through some Boracay real estate postings. "Oh, there you are. We were calling you," I said.

Coincidentally, we were all right near English Bakery, breakfast choice of Tita Josie, and we walked in to see how it was. Inside was already a formidable amount of clientele. One glance at the menu and I thought it was okay -- nothing too heavy -- Tita Josie was already ordering her favorite beef tapa breakfast set. "What should we do?" Tito Mike asked me, putting me on the spot. "It's up to you."

"Well, we're here already, let's just eat here," I said. He glanced at the menu but didn't seem satisfied, probably because he already had his heart set on Le Soleil since as early as the night before. "This is too light for me. I think we should have brunch at Le Soleil so you don't have to have lunch."

"I don't want to eat too heavy because I'm diving later," I said. Meanwhile, Tita Josie was asking for my order.

"I'll just go out for coffee," Tito Mike said. " I won't see you for dinner tonight. I'll just leave the two of you for the day, okay?" He went off, leaving me with an all-you-can-feel buffet of guilt behind. I felt bad, but given the circumstances -- me wanting to eat light on account of my upcoming dive -- I felt even worse since he had been graciously playing host for me since my touchdown in Manila, paying for everything during our time together thus far: the flights, the accommodation, the food. Really, I couldn't thank him enough. Guilty in paradise. Alas, such is life in Boracay with the Relatives Factor.

THE STREET PARADE THAT HAD AMASSED down the main drag of Boracay only got bigger, longer, and louder as the morning progressed. By nine, the revelers in black soot, body paint, and costume (picture above) were marching and dancing by English Bakery to the infectious rhythm of the samba-like drum and xylophone bands that accompanied them. Not since the impromptu street parades of Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janiero had I seen such spontaneous inebriated energy. The procession was section in groups comprised of men and women, young and old, each group representing a business on the island with matching t-shirts or costumes. From what I was seeing, many people in the parade were already pretty drunk by that time in the morning, guzzling bottles of SMB and doing shots of Filipino Tanduay Rhum, while some were keeping the Christian theme intact.

Simply standing on the sidelines by the English Bakery, becoming a part of the party was inevitable. A girl poked paint on my nose, while another guy smeared green paint on my right cheek. Another group of black soot-covered paraders came by, and one guy endowed me with two big ashy hand prints on both sides of my face. Going back up to the upper deck of the restaurant after only about ten minutes, patrons smiled at how easy it was to get colorful just by going downstairs for a bit.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW TO RIDE A MOTORBIKE?" Tita Josie asked me after the morning parade had dissipated on the main drag.

"Yeah, I rode one in Vietnam."

With only a short amount of time between breakfast and my afternoon dive, I followed up on the idea to go to Puka Beach on the north coast of Boracay that we toyed with the day before, not with a two-wheeler powered by my own muscle, but by the combustion of gasoline. Tita Josie hired us a motorbike and I sat at the helm and tried to get back into the game of mastering a bike -- but for some reason, I had forgotten certain things (i.e. keeping the bike from crashing into a nearby vendor table) and we wisely hired a driver.

Twenty minutes on the back of the bike later, we were at the entrance of Puka Beach, where people smiled at the paint on my face; the party hadn't made its way up north just yet. Puka Beach was a quieter, much more secluded beach -- perfect for those looking for seclusion from the madness of White Beach -- comprised of sand eroded from puka shells, which jewelry vendors searched for to make necklaces and bracelets. Tita Josie bought some from the one vendor we found and bought me a sharks tooth necklace to replace the fake caiman one I made in the Pantanal of Brazil that broke off my neck after a good nine month run.

We walked up and down Puka Beach and then head back to the road, where we were enticed by a friendly old man to patronize his little restaurant on a side road. He sang a song for us so we obliged him by buying a couple of coconuts to drink -- two huge coconuts I might add, that bloated my stomach more than I wanted it for the dive that came next.

"HEY THERE," I said to the dive instructor back at the Aquarius dive shop.

"Hello," Margo greeted me with a smile. She noticed the paint and soot still all over my face, and then lifted her shirt up to show me her mid-riff; someone had tagged her with finger marks of black soot in the parade that morning. "You're here early."

"Yeah, I'm just visiting."

"We can go early. [I think the tides come in a two.]" She checked the tidal report and confirmed. The swells near the Laurel site were too strong though, so we decided to go to the Crocodile Island site, in a calmer harbor that was a part of the same reef structure anyway.

"So are there salt crocodiles there?" I asked. I had read that salt crocodiles were a big danger in the area.

"No, the island is just shaped like a crocodile, [but you never know.]"

Soon three tanks were prepped up for loading on the Southern Cross: one for Margo, one for me, and one for Divemaster Christian who was tagged along to take some photos. It was only twenty minutes to the Crocodile Island, twenty minutes of conversation and sunbathing at the port deck, and then we suited and geared up -- it was a no-brainer this time around. Soon we were underwater.

The visibility was four times better than the day before, perhaps 80 ft., good enough to see everything with: the the lionfish, the big spotted potato cod I spotted, and the small school of batfish -- one strayed away from the group to check out Margo and then seemingly tell the others that we were friendly. In the shallow area, there were expansive coral fields reminiscent of the ones I'd seen off the coast of Zanzibar, but still fantastic. It's good to be a scuba diver, I thought.

"What are you doing tonight?" I asked Margo back at the dive shop.

"I have to go help my friend find a place to stay," she said. "I can't take you out tonight [on a night dive]."

"Okay," I said. "I'm gonna go wash this off now." The black soot on my face was still present, even after an hour under the sea. It was a reminder that the night wouldn't be a total loss, for the Ati-Atihan festivities would continue after the sunset.

TITO MIKE HAD RUN INTO FRIENDS from Manila -- on the vacation circuit in the Philippines, all flights lead to Boracay -- which I assume he met for dinner, after seeing that his Daily Prayers for Busy People book was left alone on the top of the table in the suite. It was just me and Tita Josie that night, who -- to further explain the great divide between my two polar opposing relatives from opposite ends of my family tree -- only had the intention that night to get completely trashed on alcohol and, as she put it, "get some puet" ("get some ass"). I don't think Chrissy from Three's Company ever put it like that -- if she did, she might not have been replaced by Cindy or Terri.

We made our way to the Pier One Beachcomber beach bar, "The Regal Beagle" if you will, for a dinner of seafood, crispy pata, and our first of many rounds of SMB Strong Ice (6.3% alc./vol). "Three of these and you'll be drunk already," she warned me. The beer loosened any sort of uncomfortable silence as first rounds lead up to fifths, after of which we head over to the main plaza in town for the tail end of the nighttime Ati-Atihan showoff of all the teams on the island.

Each team took to the center court with their own drummers and xylophone players filling the area with island samba rhythms as all the drunken dancers moshed all around, often forming conga lines. After the last team, the plaza was open to anyone and everyone for a Sunday night happy hard house rave, also with many spontaneous conga lines.

"They do this every Sunday," Tita Josie told me.

Amazing.

The events of the night were fuzzy after that. I know there was dancing and moshing and more alcohol because when we stumbled onto our usual coffee cafe on White Beach, I remember the conversation:

Tita Josie: You want some coffee?
Me: Yeah. Some Irish coffee!

If there was a bathtub in the suite instead of just a stand-in shower, I might have ended up passed out in it, just like Jack Tripper did in the Three's Company pilot. Mr. Roper would still probably think I was gay.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

DAY 449: Scuba diving has been around for decades, for so long that people have forgotten that technically it should be capitalized as "SCUBA" since it was originally an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus." (The same goes for "LASER," Light Amplified by a Stimulated Emission of Radiation.) Nowadays, the acronym associated with the diving with the diving community is PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors), which some say stands for "Pay Another Dollar, Idiot" since it's not a non-profit organization, but a lucrative moneymaking business banking on "certification."

Boracay is not just known for its PADI- and SSI- (Scuba Schools International) licensed dive centers; on the other side of the island, the windier eastern side, there is a completely different scene with its own acronym banking on "certification": IKO, or International Kiteboarding Organization. Some argue that it is kiteboarding, not scuba diving, which is Boracay's number one sport; kiteboarding is especially popular amongst foreign adrenaline junkies since in Boracay it is cheaper to do than in most other places in the world.

A thrilling aquatic sport for years, kiteboarding had become a sport I was attracted to since it combined my joy of kite flying and my love of snowboarding/sandboarding -- plus, unlike kite flying and snowboarding, it often occurred in the vicinity of girls in bikinis. The kiteboarding scene in Boracay, so I'm told, started in 1996, and eventually it grew from hobby to business; Hangin Kiteboaring, the first kiteboarding outfitter in Boracay established by a German named Angel in 2001, was soon followed by many other kiteboarding centers.

MIYONG, THE DIVE INSTRUCTOR at my diving outfitter Aquarius Diving was also an avid kiteboarder and girlfriend to one of the kiteboarding instructors on the eastern side of Boracay. She was my liaison between the scene of western White Beach to the scene of eastern Bulabog Beach, between me and her friends at Hangin Kiteboarding, which is a really fitting name for a kiteboarding shop as "hangin" could mean as it does in English (hangin' on a kite, hangin' on for your life, etc.), or as it does in Tagalog; hangin is Tagalog for "wind."

"You speak Tagalog?" the Filipino instructor assigned to me asked me that morning.

"Conti lang," ("A little only,") I answered.

"But you understand it, right?"

"Yeah, yeah."

With that said, he conducted most of the lesson in Tagalog, which was fine and encouraged by me. His name was Merck, and he was a dark-skinned Boracay native who had only been kiteboarding for five months -- but in those five months had become quite the expert at it since he did it practically almost every day, with the physique and skills to prove it.

LESSON ONE: "Learn to Fly a Kite" or "Let's Go Fly a Kite, Up to the Highest Height"

We started off with a small one-meter two-string kite, like the one I had learned to use in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador from a French Rastafarian named Pascal. Piloting the kite was meant to teach me the basics of how a kite behaves in the wind, and how to keep it in the air.

"[You learn fast,]" Merck said.

"I've flown one of these before." How about that? I thought. Who knew that half-hour with Pascal's kite thirteen and a half months ago would amount to something?

As they say, practice makes perfect, and for over an hour, Merck had me practice steering the kite, from "12 o'clock" (the straight direction of the wind) to the left at "9 o'clock" and the right at "3 o'clock." I managed to go back and forth from my twelves, nines and threes, without crashing the kite once like the average novice kite flyer might have.

"ERR-IIK!!!" Miyong cheered for a confidence booster as she rode down the shore of Bulabog Beach on her mountain bike.

For another hour, Merck just had me practice keeping the kite at "12 o'clock," which got pretty boring after ten minutes -- but later I learned that keeping the kite at twelve is one of the most important things in kiteboarding, as it is the position for stopping and slowing down.

LESSON TWO: "Learn to fly a bigger kite" or "How to make your penis appear larger by the simple use of a harness"

"[Okay, now we'll get a kite with the four strings,]" Merck said. We put the one-meter one away and grabbed heavier artillery: a three-meter one with four strings, a smaller version of the ones actually used in kiteboarding. More exciting than that (at least for new-to-kiteboarding me) was the introduction of new gear that brought me to closer to the ranks of the pros: the harness. Similar to a harness in rock climbing, straps cupped your ass and support your groin, all without any attachment to the all-too-sensitive testicular region, which is a good thing; from the wind power coming from some of the kites I had seen out on the bay (picture above), some gusts might have yanked those suckers right off.

Merck led me through the set-up process, how to keep my lines from tangling and how to organize the outer lines and keep them straight from the inners. The inner lines connected to the front, or "leading" edge of the kite; the outers to the "trailing" edge.

We inflated the three-meter kite on the beach -- the leading edge of the kite was inflated with air to provide the kite's consistent arched shape. I connected the cords to the kite in their respective tie-ins and then we went out into the water under the Boracayan sun. We had to wear aqua shoes of course, for the abundance of sea urchins in the area. Merck had someone launch the kite up and soon he was piloting the bigger kite in the air with the steering bar. He schooled me on the techniques: only steer left and right, don't pull on the bar, and the sort. Afterwards I harnessed into the steering bar device and then gave it a go, practicing my twelves to nines, twelves to threes, threes to nines, nines to threes, and the balancing act at twelve.

"Galing!" I exclaimed.

"Astig!" Merck said. "[Wait until you get on a board.] Ooh masarap!" He was happy another pinoy (Filipino) was getting into the kiteboarding scene; in Boracay, it's dominated by Germans.

LESSON THREE: "Body Dragging" or "You're Pulling My Leg... And My Arm, And Everything Else!"

"[That] puti [white guy] [is hogging up the training kit. He's all over the place. We have to wait,]" Merck told me. Eventually the Italian trainee from another school was done with the kite and the practice area.

I harnessed into an even bigger kite, a five-meter one for my final lesson in this first day of my IKO certification course. The point of the lesson was to not only steer a kite, but also let the winds overpower your balance and let it drag you through the water. Merck told me to be wary of sea urchins, or I might get a tattoo on my chest I might never forget.

Piloting a five-meter kite was trickier than the smaller ones. I crashed the kite a couple of times, not because of the wind overpowering me, but because at that time in the afternoon, the northern gusts were weakening and weren't catching. I had to practice dealing with this, by letting the kite go with the flow and not pulling on the steering bar as intuition led me to believe. I did fairly well for my first day I guess, especially since I saw that one student had gotten himself in a proverb: he had literally got his kite caught in a tree.

"Astig! [You're good. Tomorrow we finish body dragging and then we'll get you on a board.]"

"Okay!"

I couldn't wait. In the meantime I could only marvel at the pro kiteboarders thrashing through the surf faster than any of the lame old-fashioned windsurfers that just looked clumsy. Some of the really good kiteboarders were showing off, letting the power of the wind lift them up high for jumps, spins, and tricks in the air. Merck wasn't up to that level yet, although he impressed me enough by simply zipping off on a board at the end of our lesson, letting the winds take him away.

BACK AT THE SUITE AT CLUB TEN, Tita Josie was still recuperating from our booze session the night before; she was either still hungover or stricken with some intestinal parasite she contracted, or both. That morning before kiteboarding class, I had gone out to the drugstore in "d'Mall d'Boracay" off the main strip to get her some medicine, before meeting Tito Mike at an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at the Waling-Waling Beach Resort on the northern end of White Beach. It was a place that served the standard Filipino breakfast items of fish, corned beef hash, eggs, and garlic fried rice, which he seemed pleased about. After breakfast, we walked down the shore, checking out the grotto on the way at Willy's Rock, easily accessible since the tides were low.

That evening I thought we'd all get together for dinner, but the tables were turned again; Tito Mike went out for a previous engagement with a friend he met on the island, leaving me with Tita Josie, whose stomach was better enough for dinner. The Filipino in me struggled with keeping some sort of togetherness of our trio, but I was discovering it was a balancing act more difficult than piloting a five-meter kite in a headwind.

Where The Winds Take You

DAY 450: My presumption of kiteboarding was that it would be similar to snowboarding, only with no snow. From what I had seen of the pro kiteboarders of Boracay's Bulabog Beach, riders strapped into a board like one would on a snowy mountain, and lean back and forth to maneuver and keep balance. Kiteboarding was a bit harder than snowboarding though, as I discovered on my second day of IKO certification class at Hangin.

BEFORE CLASS AT TEN IN THE MORNING, there was a final "see you later" as it was Tito Mike's last morning in Boracay before taking the boat back to the airport on Panay Island and flying back to Manila to get back to work. We went out for breakfast that morning -- all three of us finally -- at the all-you-can-eat breakfast at Le Soleil. At last the situation was "more Filipino;" the uncomfortable silence was gone and I ate a lot of corned beef hash. I was happy that Tito Mike, Tita Josie, and I were finally able to share a meal together after the miscommunications of the past couple of days. The winds were finally blowing my way.

The winds were blowing nicely at Bulabog Beach, but it was the tides that weren't cooperating yet. "[We have to wait for the tides to come in,]" Merck said. "Maraming [many] sea urchins."

This didn't stop the pro boarders (picture above) from taking to the boards and the surf. Merck pointed out who was who in the Boracayan kiteboarding scene as we sat on the sidelines. "That guy's fourteen. He's a beginner, but he's good." "[That's Doughboy,]" he said, referring to the aquatic daredevil who had caught some air and did some spins 8 ft. up.

Wow, I can't wait to get to that level, I thought.

The tide came in and we geared up. I put my harness and aqua shoes on and then set up a five-meter kite by myself, with Merck supervising. He led me out to the lukewarm water of the bay and had me continue my body dragging exercises. Twelve to three, three to nine, and back again. The kite grabbed the upper winds, harnessed its power, pulling the cords attached to my harness to pull me away. It was a great feeling to have some sort of control of the wind as it took me at its whim.

Tita Josie stopped by to check out the scene; she hadn't seen kiteboarding yet and wanted to see what my fuss was about. "[He's good,]" Merck told her. "[He can control the kite very gently.]"

Merck went out for a ride to not only show off his technique, but the one trick he'd mastered: riding on one foot, a balancing act easier said than done. He passed the kite and board to another rider and came back to shore. "So what's your plan for the day? Should we go to the boards?"

"Yeah, let's go."

I unhooked the cords of my steering bar to the five-meterer (Can I say "five-meterer" like "five-footer?") and connected them to the ties of an eight-meterer. A difference of three meters doesn't sound like much, but it is. One square yard of drag is enough to slow a falling body by twenty percent, I recalled, a tidbit I remembered from a Dan Brown novel.

Merck kept the kite at twelve and walked it out to the bay for me. "Okay," he signaled for me to detach the safety rope from his harness to hook to mine, then dislodge the "pig tail" safety latch from his hook so that I could hook into the steering bar myself. I strapped in and held on.

"Do you feel the power?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," I replied.

Power was right; that sucker really caught some air and anytime I strayed away from the neutral "twelve" position, I'd start to get carried away, quite literally. Sometimes even at twelve I'd feel myself being lifted up. Any kite bigger than an eight-meterer and I'd probably start flying up in the sky like Gonzo with those helium balloons in the original Muppet Movie.

Steering the kite was hard, but manageable, and it definitely required a lot more concentration and balance. I kept from flying away with the help of Merck holding me via the support handle in the back of my harness.

Once I got the hang of it, the board finally entered the picture, putting the board in kiteboarding. It was similar to a snowboard with a configurable stance of step in bindings on the top. I had to keep the kite at twelve while trying to mount in -- a feat easier said than done. Luckily Merck was there behind me to keep me from falling down or rising up.

"Okay, eleven, then two, fast. You have to pump the kite," my instructor said. By pumping, he meant to catch a gust by lowering the kite in a rapid motion.

I did as told and tried to stand on the board, but it just sank; I hadn't pumped the kite hard enough to provide enough drag to keep me afloat. It floundered out of control. "Save the kite! Save the kite! Don't pull on the bar, don't pull on the bar!" Merck called out, but I wasn't fast enough to bring it back to twelve in time and the big eight-meterer crashed into the surf. Merck took the reins and tried to do his magic of relaunching the kite without having to walk all the way over to manually reset it into the air, but after some time, he had to do the "walk of shame" for me anyway.

The winds were too weak on that attempt.

TAKE TWO. Same set up. I kept the kite at twelve and mounted the board. "[Okay, you have to pump the kite. Go lower,]" Merck instructed me. "[Lower the kite to give it more power."

Okay, more power to provide momentum. I can do this.

We waited for the area to clear of other kiteboarders and windsurfers and then I pumped from eleven to three. The winds really caught in and pulled me up to stand on the board -- and then violently slam me into the water like a belly flop. Salt water went all up my nose and I lost my sunglasses. Underwater, I still felt the power of the kite pulling me. I stood up but the kite went crazy and I lost control of it. It flipped and slammed into the surf.

The winds were too strong on that attempt.

Suddenly I knew why the arch of the kite was rigid with only inflated air and nothing solid; I might have killed someone. I really started to see the potential dangers of kiteboarding that I had heard of. Margo, my dive instructor/buddy at Aquarius Diving, told me she had once tried kiteboarding, but would never do it again after the traumatic experience when she lost control of a kite and almost slit a guy's throat with rope burn from one of the cords.

MY SUBSEQUENT ATTEMPTS were more of the same; either the kite wouldn't be pumped hard enough to keep me upright, or it'd be pumped too hard, causing me to lose control and crash. After almost every crash, Merck would have to walk all the way over to the kite to launch it in the air, then walk all the way back to me to help me mount in. I could tell that after many back and forth walks, he was getting pretty tired of it.

"Okay, last one," he told me, cueing my final attempt of the day.

"Okay."

"Remember the quick release," he reminded me, referring to the safety measure installed in the steering bar to prevent a runaway kite.

This is it; don't get scared now. Concentrate Erik-san. You can do it! I thought, citing quotes from Home Alone, The Karate Kid, and The Waterboy. I balanced the kite at twelve, mounted the board, and pumped the kite from eleven down to three.

Save the kite. Let the wind take the kite. Don't pull on the bar. Remember the quick release. Don't cross the streams.

The wind took the kite. Upright I became. Forward I went.

Wooo hoooo! I'm doing it! I'm kiteboarding! Wooooo!

The momentum didn't last so long because I didn't keep a consistent drag going. Still, it felt amazing to finally get the hang of it.

"Astig! Okay, again!" Merck called out, cheering and smiling. "I said it was the last, because the last is the best."

"Yeah, best for last."

Same set up. Balance, mount, pump. This time I didn't get it, but I didn't crash the kite and managed to hop back on the board for another attempt. That attempt failed to as did the next. Man, did I lose the power?

"[Okay, this is the last one,]" Merck said.

"Okay."

Balance, mount, pump. Like magic, the winds caught on and took me forward, this time for quite a while, maybe three times more than I had gone before. I lost consistency in the drag and sank, but still felt good that I got the hang of it on my last try of the day. "Two or three more days and you'll have it," Merck said.

"Yeah, I just need to practice."

We ended the session on a high note and went back to the office to already file the paperwork; due to the travel schedule imposed upon me by my Tita Josie, I could not stay another day in Boracay to finish the third and final official certification day of IKO training. I got an IKO certification card anyway, with the third section blacked out; I could use that card to finish the training in another center, should I come across one in my further travels of the Philippines.

"You have to stay one more day! [You almost have it!]" Merck said. He pleaded with me to stay in Boracay to complete the training, like the way Yoda did on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back before Luke Skywalker cut his Jedi training short to go fulfill his destiny -- and to ultimately discover he was bound by the Relatives Factor. ("No... I am your father.") Alas, the winds of my travels were also dependent on the Relatives Factor; Tita Josie and I were expected to stay that night at her friend's house in Kalibo on the neighboring island of Panay.

"YOU'RE LEAVING ALREADY?" Margo said when I bumped into her on our way back to the ferry station to leave Boracay Island later that afternoon. "You don't like it here?"

"No, it's not that," I said. "Uh, we just have to go."

"We hardly got to do anything."

I sighed. If only I had one more day. "Yeah, I know." I remained optimistic. "I'll be back. And you'll be here." We parted ways, not knowing if that would actually happen.

The spider boat ferry took Tita Josie and I passed a rowing crew from Boracay back to the island of Panay as the sky got darker and darker. Soon it started raining and eventually it turned into a massive storm, one that continued through the night until morning -- a storm that might have put a damper on any diving or kiteboarding activities in Boracay if I stayed that extra day anyway. Funny how fate works; to quote a line from arguably^* the deepest philosophical movie of 2004 (Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle), "The universe tends to unfold as it should."

Perhaps the storm was my cue to just accept that the Relatives Factor was all a part of the Fate of my travels -- my destiny like Luke Skywalker if you will -- that I've come to believe in. Nothing is coincidental; somethings are simply out of my control. In kiteboarding as in Life, the winds take you and carry you to new places, new experiences, and new discoveries. Sometimes they blow in your favor, sometimes they don't; sometimes you can control them, sometimes you can't. Either way, it sure is one hell of a ride.

Super-Size Me

DAY 451: I've ranted about this before, but I'll say it again anyway as it becomes pertinent for this Blog entry: Filipinos will find just about any excuse to get together for a meal. That's not to say that this isn't true with other nationalities; I remember a Portuguese classmate once tell me in college that you're not allowed to turn down food from a Portuguese mother when she offers it to you -- as she will almost always do. I can totally relate to that; it's often hard to turn down food when it's offered to you in the Philippines, as it is almost always offered very frequently throughout the day.

Erik, stop complaining about being overfed, you may be thinking. There are starving children in this world. Yeah, tell that to the spare tire inflating around my waist. If this keeps up, I'll need an upside-down periscope to see my penis soon.

THE PHILIPPINES IS DIVIDED INTO THREE REGIONS, as represented by the three stars on the Philippine flag (that all you Amazing Race fans should know by now): Luzon, the big Christian island to the north; Mindanao, the big Muslim island to the south; and Visayas, the group of small and medium islands in between. The goal of the day was to make it through Visayas from Kalibo, the northwestern capital city of medium-sized Panay Island, to the small island of Guimaras off Panay's southeast coast. This began in the morning when my Tita Josie and I rode a shared minivan for about two hours through the tropical countryside to the big southeastern city of Iloilo.

Like every big city in the Philippines, Iloilo was not without its shopping mall made by the SM corporation, and it was there that we were dropped off. Immediately, Tita Josie brought me to the Bisocho Haus, a branch of the famous pastry company to stock up on bagged pastry snacks. Then it was off to Ted's Old Timer inside the mall, which sounds like a store for timepieces, or products for people who need geriatric care (or timepieces for people who need geriatric care), but is actually a place to get one of the region's most famous foods, Lapaz batchoy (picture above).

Back in the States, Lapaz batchoy was almost the only thing I ever ordered when I went out for Filipino with my family in New Jersey. The contents of Lapaz batchoy are simple; it is a soup with shredded pork, chicken, crushed pork rinds, toasted garlic, an optional egg, and egg or rice noodles. It was in Iloilo's Lapaz district that the dish was created, and then perfected by a guy named Ted, who started selling his recipe since 1945. Multiple locations of Ted's Old Timer have been created since.

The Lapaz batchoy at SM City Iloilo's branch was just as good as any other I'd had -- you really can't mess up batchoy, provided you have the right ingredients -- so good that I could not turn down Tita Josie's offer to get me another bowl. "Okay."

Soon another bowl of Ted's "Extra Super" Lapaz batchoy arrived, only to inflate the spare tire around my waist by another notch. This was followed by another "must have" in the mall, sago (tapioca bubble tea) from the Zagu chain.

THE S.M. (SHOEMART) MALL IN ILOILO was just like any other SM mall, with American imports McDonald's and Guess, and Filipino equivalents Jolibee and Kamiseta (with spokesmodel Natalie Portman). We left the familiar scene to check out the tourist attraction of Iloilo that Tita Josie raved about, the classic-looking big mansions of the Lopez family, the Filipino equivalent to the Rockefellers or Gates, if you will.

"You hear the tonation of the people here?" Tita Josie asked me, referring to our private taxi driver we hailed down that I think she took a liking to. "Listen to [his Visayan accent]. It's so sweet."

Larry our driver took us around from the big, but seldom-used house of Albertito Lopez, the Filipino tycoon who founded Meralco, the Philippines' major power company, ABS-CBN, one of the Philippines' major TV networks, and the country clubs at Camp John Hay outside of Baguio.

"[Only the housekeeper stays there]," Larry said in his apparent sweet accent that I really couldn't pick up.

Nearby was the big house of Albertito's son, Joji Lopez, the bakla (gay) of the family, with pink paint all over his house to proudly show off his femininity. As one gay friend back home told me, with Filipino men you have to either be straight or totally flamingly gay to be accepted in society. Joji not only had the pink walls, but pictures of kittens and flowers painted by his front gate. Larry said that similar pictures were decaled on his bright pink pick-up truck as well.

It wasn't long before the next offer for food, just two and a half hours after we had lunch. Iloilo was not only famous for its apparent sweet accent, but its sweet oysters from the many talabahans (oyster farms) on the island. Oyster farming is one of Visayas' major industries, and with it pearl farming, giving the Philippines the nickname, the "Pearl of the Orient."

Larry drove us to Nato & Helen's restaurant, a place where you could get a full kilo of fresh steamed oysters for just 30 pesos (about 53 US cents). "This would be twenty dollars in New York," I told them, referring to New York's famous Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. Although I was full from two orders of Lapaz batchoy and the order of sago, I simply could not resist a kilo of my own, especially at those prices. I sort of regret it after the fact though, when my spare tire started over-inflating. Talk about your super-sizing.

"Another one?" Tita Josie asked.

"No. I'm busog (full). I barely had room for that one."

"I told you to save some room for talaba (oysters)."

"I did. And now there's no more room."

Tita Josie had Larry take us to the dock for the ten-minute ferry ride to Guimaras; he dropped us off and left us, but not after giving his phone number to Tita Josie at her request. She invited him out for lunch upon our return to the island.

"DRINKING IS A PART OF THE CULTURE HERE," Tita Josie told me on the ferry ride over.

Drinking? I barely have room for anything in my stomach, not even for, I dare say, a beer. Yes, I was that full.

Soon we were in Guimaras and hopped on a tricycle with a driver that knew a "shortcut" across the island, beyond the mango orchards, to bring us to Alubihod Beach. Of course the shortcut wasn't simple -- "If it were easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it'd just be the way" (Paulo Costanzo, Road Trip) -- and we eventually came to an unpaved road too steep to carry the weight of all three of us and our bags. We turned back the way we came and went the real way after over an hour or zipping around the island. I didn't mind; I spent my time in the back, hanging off the back with my hand clutched to a top bar, pretending I was kiteboarding.

The Raymen Beach Resort was where we ended up that night, were we checked into a beachfront bungalow with plumbing and private bath for about ten dollars. It was there that Tita Josie ordered us room service for yet another meal of the day to fill our already full stomachs with more Visayan "must-haves": bananas, mangoes, steamed spotted alimasag (crabs), and sinigang (a sour stew, prepared in Visayas not with tamarind as it is prepared in the north, but with the tangier batuan fruit). We struggled trying to finish it all.

"I've been busog all day," I told Tita Josie. "I've been busog for two weeks."

"You want a Coke?" she asked me.

"No, let's have beer." Okay, there's always room for beer. I stand corrected. One beer was all I could take though, which was more than Tita Josie could take. Apparently, her hospitality had filled her beyond capacity too.

"Busog," she finally admitted.

That made the both of us.

The New Blue-Signed Tourist Trail

DAY 452: I caught a TV program in the suite back in Boracay about the state of tourism in the Philippines. To sum up, the program interviewed many officers of the Ministry of Tourism with their gripes about the lack of development in the tourism industry in the Philippines. They felt sort of embarrassed that almost every other southeast Asian nation is ahead of them, and can't seem to figure out why. They blamed the government, and their lack of investment into the industry, which is most likely the major factor, but I think it's also simply because of geography; the Philippines is "out of the way" from the standard tourist routes of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It may also be due to the fact that many people generalize all of the Philippines is dangerous, when in actuality, it is quite safe as long as you avoid the extremists-frequented areas of Mindanao in the south.

The TV program ended with a question: What will 2005 bring to Philippine tourism? They left the answer open with something to the effect of "We'll wait and see." While tourism hasn't developed as fast as a place like Vietnam has, it is developing nonetheless, even in the small island of Guimaras as I saw throughout the day.

THE DAY STARTED at our bungalow at Guimaras' Alibihad Beach, a beach with crazy rock formations and different tropical flowers, where we began our way via public transportation on the island: shared jeepneys for long distances between towns, and tricycles to get from the jeepney stop to where you want to go. The easy transportation infrastructure is an integral part to the infrastructure of tourism.

Guimaras is really pushing for the growth of tourism on the island. From what I saw, it appeared that the people of Guimaras suddenly woke up one day and said, "Boy, I'm hungover. But let's go build up tourism anyway," and then had a meeting where they made a list of all the potential tourist attractions on the island. I'm sure they didn't cross anything off that list and just made anything remotely a draw for foreign tourists one of the points of interest on the map of Guimaras, as everything from old colonial churches to "the world's smallest plaza" were designated as tourist sites with a blue sign with white lettering.

The first tourist site that day was Macopo Falls, which was billed as a scenic swimming hole nestled in the hillside, but didn't exactly live up to the hype as the dry season kept the falls flowing at minimum capacity. The swimming area wasn't nearly as nice as I had seen in a picture, so we left and moved on to the next place with a blue sign after a bowl of batchoy in the town of Jordan.

ANOTHER TRIKE RIDE LATER, we were at the Navalas Church, the oldest church on the island, constructed in 1885 by Spanish missionaries and deemed a tourist attraction with a blue sign (picture above) a little over a hundred years later. Down the road from the old church was a place a bit more modern and luxurious, the Roca Encantada, the summer home for the rich Lopez family, also designated with a blue sign. While the house wasn't officially open for tourism (we snuck in the main gate), the views of the palm trees were just inspirational, an mental image to shoot for if kids stayed in school and persevered.

Speaking of school, the education system in Guimaras knows that tourism can truly transform an economy -- look at Thailand and Vietnam for example -- and teaches the workings of tourism as early as elementary school. While it may seem wrong to train children to grow up and serve foreigners at such an early age, I'm sure they teach them how to wait for the tip.

ONE OF GUIMARIAS MAIN EXPORTS is mangoes, with what they claim to be the "sweetest in the world," thus giving the island the moniker "Mango Capital of the Philippines." Like churches and rich summer mansions, the mango industry has also joined the blue-signed ranks of the tourism authority, with tours of the official-looking National Mango Breeding Research Center and the Oro Verde company's orchards. The day before we had driven through an orchard of young trees on our "shortcut" across the island, and in just a tiny section of it, I saw there were over 4,000 trees alone -- the total number of trees of Oro Verde is well over 42,000 -- producing sweet mangoes, mostly for export to richer mangoly-challenged countries like Japan, Australia, and the USA.

That afternoon we stumbled upon the big to-do in the town of San Miguel, a big food fair that took over the main plaza. It was there that Oro Verde had a booth set up to give some of the info you just read, and to provide us with samples of their famous mangoes -- or so we thought. They had run out of fresh mangoes and only had mango-related products -- jams, purees, dried snacks -- but fortunately had a blender to make mango shakes from fresh frozen puree, blending sweet ripe mango puree with tart green mango puree for the ultimate mango shake experience. Rich and thick, the shakes tied us over so we didn't have to spurge on food from the festival. Apparently, Tita Josie was feeling the bulge of unnecessary overeating too.

Across a booth selling handmade galleons (another big industry on the island), the Guimaras Department of Tourism had a booth set up with a promotional video playing in a loop and maps showing off all the places they designated with blue signs. They really went all out with brochures and flyers explaining what a tourist could do on a visit there -- trekking, spelunking, diving, fishing, even paintball -- as the "Island that fits your taste!" Furthermore, they made the island sound like the thing romance was built for, with their pamphlet explaining the origin of the island's name: "Guimaras" comes from the forbidden love between Princess Guima and a slave named Aras, who eloped and disappeared together on a raft out to sea, never to be heard from again.

The Guimaras' Tourism booth was one the national Philippine Ministry of Tourism would be proud of. It's just a matter of getting the word out to the rest of the world that tourism in Guimaras is not only alive, but safe, inexpensive, and relatively easy. And if that's not convincing enough, here's a photo of the breathtaking sunrise on Alubihad Beach (Hi-Res) I took the morning after.

That TV program I saw before in Boracay ended with the question: "What will 2005 bring to Philippine tourism?" I don't really have the answer to that one; I just know it involves a lot of blue signs.

Black Baby Jesus

DAY 453: Of the numerous aliases of late Wu-Tang Clan rap artist Old Dirty Bastard, there is one significant to this entry, "Black Baby Jesus." I figured he gave himself that name for laughs, but I wonder if he knew, before his unfortunate death in 2004, that there was actually an annual festival in honor of Black Baby Jesus in the Philippines.

The origin of the Ati-atihan Festival of Kalibo, and all its sibling festivals of different monikers in other towns, is the celebration of the acquiring of Panay Island from the black tribespeople of Borneo. As un-PC as it sounds to the Westerner, people go out in black face or full black body paint and dance in the streets to celebrate their black aboriginal heritage. The Catholic Church thought it was a pagan ritual that took attention away from their expanding religion and put a spin on the festival early on, preaching that it was actually a festival to celebrate Santo Niño, Jesus Christ as a child. Combine the two origins of the festival and you have a party that celebrates a statue of baby Jesus in black face make-up.

In the city of Iloilo where the party is called Dinagyang, festivities wouldn't officially start until a few days, but the big to-do in town was the rehearsal parade, a townwide event just as big.

"WHEN ARE WE LEAVING FOR ILOILO?" I asked Tita Josie that morning in our Guimaras bungalow.

"Today is Friday?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, I thought it was Thursday." It's amazing how travel can make you loose all concept of date and time; she thought we'd have an extra day to see more blue-signed sites in Guimaras, but that would have to be cut short if we were going to see any of the pre-Dinagyang festivities that afternoon back on Panay.

After packing up, we ventured via tricycle to the Guisi Point lighthouses, which weren't much to see themselves, although they looked out to a scenic bay that sort of made the trip worthwhile. The tricycle driver then took us to the town of Jordan for a quick bowl of batchoy to prepare our stomachs for oysters -- "It's not good to eat talaba when you're hungry," Tita Josie said -- and then we hopped on a ferry boat to take us the ten minutes back to Panay.

"Where is Larry?" Tita Josie asked. She had called our trusty taxi driver we met before for a pick-up so that we could go out for lunch. It wasn't too hard to spot him and soon we were in the air-conditioned comfort of his Tata company car on the way back to Nato & Helen's restaurant. Having skipped breakfast aside from that batchoy stomach primer, I was all set for a final splurge on oysters before leaving the oyster land. We started off with four kilos of fresh oysters, steamed -- although, like Old Dirty Bastard a.k.a. Black Baby Jesus once said, "I like it raw... Ooh baby, I like it raw..." as well. Without a doubt, they were the tastiest, most plump oysters I've ever had I must say -- and we ultimately ordered three more kilos. My favorite ones were the "super oysters;" five or more oysters clustered and stuck together with five shells and five pieces of meat. Of the seven kilos (that only cost about five bucks), half of that went into my stomach -- the world truly was my oyster, if only for half an hour.

THE STREETS WERE COMING ALIVE AROUND MID-AFTERNOON for the Dinagyang rehearsal parade. We head over to the main cathedral where the parade began, with the replica of the original Black Baby Jesus (picture above) being transferred to a parade float. For those who were too far away to see the holy statue, there was a big dress-up Black Baby Jesus waving to the crowds. Some uptight Catholics might have found this just wrong, but perhaps they just need to sit down and watch Kevin Smith's movie Dogma, which theorizes that Jesus was black anyway.

Group by group, different competing tribes marched down the street from the church to the grand bandstand full of people, dancing to the infectious rhythms of their drummers and xylophone players. It was no Wu-Tang Clan, but pretty good anyway. Although the parade was merely a rehearsal for the big fully-costumed one later on, each participant represented his/her team in uniforms of his/her tribe's colors for a sense of unity, and above all, fashion. It seemed the competition was not just for dance but for dress, each tribe trying to outdo the others with matching garb ranging from tribal to slick, flamboyant to cool.

With Black Baby Jesus leading the way, along with some tribal mascots, the teams proceeded down the street, each with a choreographed routine that was sometimes tribal dance, sometimes African-American fraternity step show, sometimes a little bit of both. For one of the final groups to march the parade route, a tribe showed up wearing nothing flashy at all. They were dressed in plain clothes, each one wearing a Muslim-like headdress made out of an old t-shirt rag.

What can this tribe possibly do to outdo the others? I thought.

They blew me and everyone else away of course, as underdogs always do, with a crazy acrobatic routine that involved bamboo sticks and somersaults in the air. Guys lifted girls up and twirled them around, while others twirled around from bamboo sticks like Chinese acrobats. Old Dirty Bastard a.k.a. Black Baby Jesus would have been proud -- assuming he was alive and wasn't high or running from the police, that is.

THE MINIVANS WERE FULL and we had missed the last public Ceres Liner bus back to Kalibo, so Larry the taxi driver took us all the way back to Kalibo for a fee that we split with three other guys in the same situation. Upon arrival in Kalibo's main plaza, the streets were just dying down from their own rehearsal parade, but the real deal would happen the following morning -- tribes, costumes, drummers, Black Baby Jesuses and all.

Another Carnaval

DAY 454: In Carnaval 2004 in Rio de Janiero, fourteen teams representing the different barrios of the area danced and partied in a competition to a panel of judges and a huge international crowd of inebriated revelers. Each team had a theme, with costumes, music, and colorful floats.

The Philippines has a similar festival in the Visayas region, known in the city of Kalibo as Ati-atihan, where over forty teams representing the different tribes on the island of Panay dance and party in a competition, also to a panel of judges and an international crowd of inebriated revelers. Unlike the Brazilian Carnaval, which starts at 10 p.m. and goes until dawn, the self-proclaimed "Mother of All Festivals in the Philippines" started bright and early at 8 a.m. What better reason to start drinking so early in the morning?

The main street of Kalibo was blocked off for the parade when Tita Josie and I arrived by tricycle. By eight o'clock, there was already a crowd of spectators on the sidelines, gearing up with their camera-enabled cell phones, to watch their favorite tribe members dance down and give it their all. By 8:30 the procession began with tribes in different garb street-danced down the aisle, starting with the "Cannibal" tribe (it's just a name, not a lifestyle) in black full-body make-up, dancing while toting around weapons and plastic severed heads.

All different colors of the spectrum were represented in the many costumes of the festival -- blacks, reds, greens, pinks, oranges, etc. -- and with them many different textures -- shells, feathers, silks, plastics, wood. Animal costumes were also a big hit, from chickens to horses, to a crew in green body make-up calling themselves the Snake Men. They, like many others, didn't lose focus of the parade's origin, a celebration of black heritage and the adoration of baby Jesus (who was also seen in Snake Man attire).

Standing around watching the people simply go by seemed a bit non-interactive, and with the loose security, Tita Josie and I simply weaved in and out of the parade to take photos. I stepped into the role of pretend press photographer again, shooting paraders left and right with a rather unofficial-looking Ati-atihan press badge around my neck.

Forty minutes went by. More tribes, more colors, more people, all dancing the rhythms of the day (picture above). Ati-atihan's morning procession was a marching rave, all to the infectious melodies of xylophone players chiming out familiar tunes that they might have gotten from ring tones, accompanying the overpowering hard-hitting percussion of full-set drumming bands vibrating everything around them with loud rhythmic thunder. The drummers set the beat for their dancing counterparts in costume, most dancing to a choreographed routine -- although I'm not quite sure the choreography exactly called for drinking during the procession despite what one woman may have thought.

"Let's get beer," Tita Josie said.

"Okay." It was 9:30 a.m. Drinking in the morning? Sure, okay.

The procession lasted only until about eleven in the morning, but the party had just begun. Each tribe was set loose into town to perform their street-dancing parade wherever they pleased, so that anyone could just join in behind them and partake in the frolicking. Most of the impromptu processions took place in and around the main plaza, near the main cathedral in town where a brass band played on the front lawn. As the day worn on, the forty tribes parading around at their own whim were joined by more non-competing tribes, from the groups of the smaller villages, to the ones with corporate sponsors like Filipino fast-food chain Jollibee, to one group waving around a Canadian flag.

IT WASN'T A NON-STOP BEER-FILLED PARTY ALL DAY THOUGH; amidst the madness in the streets, you could still take a break to do normal non-Ati-atihan stuff, like sober up before your next binge, or upload four Blog entries at an internet cafe in town -- or, if you were the manager of a shoe/luggage factory like my Tita Josie, go to the local branch of your affiliated distributor and boss people around for perks like shoe discounts and the use of the "C.R.," or "Comfort Room," which is what Filipinos call the rest room.

We went to the local Foot Lucker, which is not a typo; it was a distributor of fake, but just-as-good footwear which spoofed real name brands: Birkenstone instead of Birkenstock, Dieselite instead of Diesel, and All-American instead of Converse All-Star, for example. That's not to say all footwear in the Philippines is a rip-off of the real thing -- mind you, most "real" brands are "Made in the Philippines" anyway -- and Tita Josie's shoe and baggage factory has had contracts with Nike, Fila and Samsonite. Unfortunately for the Philippine economy, most of that business was lost to factories in China, with its increasingly powerhouse of an economy. (I swear, from what I saw in my time in China, I felt the Chinese will be the next superpower possibly in ten years, so learn Mandarin now.) Anyway, that's enough about Philippine economy; let's go back to talking about drinking at Ati-atihan 2005.

AFTER SOME LAPAZ BATCHOY, we were back in the plaza with more beers for more intermingling with the parading tribes of dancers and drummers. We continued to weave in and out of the different teams, dancing to each one's rhythm section, joining in at our will to street-dance behind along with hundreds of others. Both Tita Josie and I were in agreement which tribe was the best one: the Kalikasan tribe, dressed in yellow and orange gospel choir gowns and headdresses, whose choreography was this slick very cool-looking step show that was both graceful and funky at the same time, if you can picture that.

The street parades reminded me of my days and night outside the Sambadrome in Rio during Carnaval weekend; whereas in Rio's street parties there was lots of spray foam going around, in Kalibo, the only thing I could find that was close were bubbles. I blew them up in the air and at kids faces and almost all the time, their faces immediately lit up.

The procession of tribes was soon joined by a float of "homecoming king and queen," along with their masqueraded entourage, as well as the everyday citizens, just having a good time, boozing it up until nightfall, after of which they'd just continue the party. Not everyone dressed up was part of a tribe though; the other competition in town was a costume contest for individuals, and guys and girls went all out to try and win prize money, from psycho clown cigarette vendors, to thin and portly drag queens, to fat fairies.

My favorite superheroes were also represented in the costume contest, in some sort of capacity, from more-bat-than-man Batman, to cigarette-smokin', beer-drinkin', diaper-wearin' Superman, to a rather portly Spider-Man, whom I was convinced was actually Michael Moore in disguise.

THE DAY WAS A FUN, but tiring one. "I'm going out to get a Pepsi X [energy drink]," I informed Tita Josie.

"Pepsi? It's nighttime. You drink beer," Tita Josie replied. "You're not a baby anymore."

What is this? It's like high school peer pressure all over again. I got the beers anyway of course -- Drinking at night? Sure, okay. -- more SMB Strong Ices for the rest of the festivities: watching the fireworks, the "Singing Idol" contest at one outdoor venue and the rock concert at another, and of course, the parade of teams that was still going around the plaza. Ultimately, we followed our favorite one, the Kalikasan Tribe, the ones that did the really gracefully funky step show in the yellow and orange gospel choir gowns. They were out of their gowns that night, but had dressed up in matching uniforms anyway, to wow the crowd again in a step show procession out of the main plaza to their base. Tita Josie and I stepped with them for as long as we could, before hopping on a trike back to her friend's house at the end of the night.

THE NEXT MORNING, the partying and parading continued after a big morning mass at the main cathedral, but the festivities got a little out of hand; underneath the sounds of pounding drums, there was a shootout that made national news involving rivalries within the local police department. Six officers were shot to death (by other officers), including the chief of police. A young girl was caught in the crossfire and died as well.

As they say, it's all fun and games until someone looses an eye -- or a life for that matter. If Spider-Man, Superman or Batman were sober enough, they might have saved the day, but after experiencing the first day of Ati-atihan 2005, I knew that that was just not going to happen.

Delusions Of Grandeur

DAY 455: Perhaps the "Relatives Factor" I had ranted about before was all just in my head, at least with my Tita Josie. As a savvy single woman, she knew the pros of independence and left it up to me whether or not to stay with her in Kalibo for the second half of the Ati-atihan festival, or venture back to Boracay on my own to complete my kiteboard Jedi training. Because of the downpour over Kalibo that morning and the fact that after two days of parades I was a little "paraded out," I opted to go back to Boracay. Perhaps it was fate that led me to that decision; I had missed being in the middle of the crowd at the big public shooting that occurred that morning in Kalibo at the festival.

Like Luke Skywalker setting a new course back to the Dagobah system to complete his Jedi training with Master Yoda in Return of the Jedi, I packed my bag and departed the town of Kalibo on that rainy morning.

A SHORT TRIKE RIDE, a 90-minute minivan ride, and a 20-minute spider boat ferry ride later, I was back on White Beach on Boracay Island. Immediately I thanked myself for making a wise decision; whereas the skies over Kalibo were gray and gloomy, the skies over Boracay were blue and clear.

Like Luke Skywalker having what Han Solo called "delusions of grandeur," I envisioned my return to Boracay to be a triumphant and welcoming one. I pictured myself surprising my kiteboarding Jedi trainer Merck with my return to Bulabog Beach. I envisioned him saying Yoda-like proverbs in Taglish like, "Meron do or do not. Wala ng try." I pictured myself gearing up and hopping on a kiteboard and, with the power of the wind and of The Force, getting the hang of it immediately to zip back and forth through the surf like the pros. Moreover, I conjured images of my Spanish/Italian dive instructor/buddy Margo in a gold bikini like the one Princess Leia wore.

"Erik," called a familiar voice. It was Analyn, the young Filipina secretary of the Hangin Kiteboarding office.

"I'm back."

"Wala ng hangin," ("There's no wind,") she informed me. "[Maybe tomorrow.]"

My delusions of grandeur started deflating. "Maybe later?"

"Maybe. Where are you staying?"

"I have to look for a place."

"There's room here."

I checked into Room 5 of the Hangin House where all the resident kiteboarding jockeys lived. Not surprisingly, they were a tight clique of extreme adrenaline junkies, with extreme names like Mars and Angel.

"You're the guy learning to kiteboard?" one asked me.

"Yeah."

"Monster. What's your name?"

"Erik," I replied. "What's your name?"

"I'm Monster."

Oh, Monster was his name. Ri-ight.

As nice as a day it was, there was no action on Bulabog Beach that day; all the kiteboarders were literally in the doldrums, waiting for the winds to blow strong enough. I saw one guy down the beach launch a kite in attempts to go for a run, but the kite only floundered to the sand with the lack of wind power. I sat on the beach and waited with the rest of the beach bums.

"Hey, it's you," called a familiar voice with a familiar face.

"Yeah, I told you I'd be back, and here I am," I told Merck, my kiteboarding Jedi master.

"Wala ng hangin," he told me. "For [almost] one week now! We've been waiting."

"So was there any wind since I left?"

"No."

Wow, the winds of Fate did blow me the right way back then. Since my departure before, there was no kiteboarding at all (picture above). For days, the guys were grounded and just sat on the beach, waiting for the winds to pick up with no luck. Most of them ended up just sleeping in all day in hammocks -- including the resident dachshund -- a very un-Jedi like thing if you ask me.

"Just twenty more minutes [and then that's it,]" Merck said later on that afternoon. I remembered that around four o'clock, the shop usually called it quits and started packing gear back into the gear shed. Twenty minutes later that's just what happened, and my delusions of grandeur deflated even more.

MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND on White Beach where all the sailboats were lined up in a row like blue roses, I went to visit an old friend.

"Hey, you're back," called a familiar voice.

"Yeah, I told you I'd be back and here I am."

"Many people say that, but I really don't believe them."

Margo the dive instructor had just gotten back to town from an all-day dive trip. My delusions of grandeur were deflated again as she was not exactly in a Princess Leia gold bikini, but was looking fine nonetheless. She was raving about how she had just seen a manta ray on the last dive of the day and was all smiles.

"So what can we do tonight?" I implored. Immediately she checked the schedule for night dives, not only with her dive shop but also with all of her friends in the tight diving instructor clique on the island. No one wanted to do it since everyone was too swamped and tired from the demand of day dives.

"I will call another friend," she said, picking up the receiver again.

"It's okay, if there's no night dive, there's no night dive. I can just go drinking instead."

She called one more friend but it was a no go. "Sorry."

"It's okay. Really, I'm just looking for something to do," I implored again. She suggested a bunch of things and a bunch of places for me to venture to, solo that is, maintaining the professional vendor/client relationship she had maintained from the beginning. It may be of note that the dive she took me to my second day of diving in Boracay I was billed for, it was not a diving "date" as I thought it might have been. Any thoughts of there being anything more than a vendor/client relationship were simply delusions of grandeur. She went off to go meet a friend while I went for a walk on the beach as the sunset behind Willy's Rock (HiRes).

HA, WHEN THE WINDS DON'T BLOW, you go nowhere, I thought. How ironic. I walked back to the Hangin House on Bulabog Beach to see what was going on, and it was then that the figurative winds started picking up again. There was a note on my door from Blogreader Erik vK, a young Canadian backpacker from Vancouver who had e-mailed me to tell me that he too was in Boracay in his long-term trip through southeast Asia.

"Your friend left a note," Analyn told me.

"Yeah," I said. "Uh, what does he look like?" Funny, me asking her what he looked like.

"Very tall. Blonde."

"Okay.

Erik vK, whose real first name was just Erik (the third "Erik" commenting on the Blog after the second "Erik" from Austria -- what ever happened to that guy?), told me he'd be at the all-you-can-eat buffet at Secs. I wasn't exactly sure where that was and you can imagine the looks I got on people's faces on the promenade when I told them I was looking for "Secs." When I finally found it, it was familiar; turns out I had Secs before, pun intended. A guy matching the other Erik's description was nowhere to be found.

"Was there a tall blonde guy here?" I asked the hostess.

"By himself? American?"

"Canadian."

"He left already."

"How long ago?"

"Maybe one hour."

Erik's note said he'd go "back into seclusion" at his beachfront bungalow on Diniwid Beach around 8 p.m. unless he could be persuaded to go out drinking. And so, my mission was simple: Find the other Erik and then a party. May the Force be with me.

DINIWID BEACH IS THE QUIETER, more secluded beach north of the loud, hedonistic White Beach. I took a tricycle up there and scouted the area for a place that a budget backpacker might go. There was only one obvious place, away from the fancy, expensive-looking private villas. "Is there a tall blonde Canadian guy staying here?" I asked.

"Erik?"

"Yeah."

"He went out."

"Oh, he said to meet him here."

I ordered a beer as the only customer on the practically deserted bungalow resort on the beach, and sat with the caretakers and brothers Ariel and J.R., both Filipino and married with children by their mid-20s. "Your friend is Erik?" Ariel asked.

"Yeah. I'm also Erik."

"[He's] very tall, huh? Six four?"

"Uh, yeah."

Six four, huh?

The guys kept me entertained with beer and conversation about things like the shooting in Kalibo that morning and the surge of Korean tourism in Boracay -- Koreans love Boracay and come in big package groups. Finally, after about half an hour, there was a tall, shadowy figure coming from the beach.

"There's Erik," Ariel pointed out. "Hey Erik! Your friend is here!" And he appeared.

"Erik," Erik said.

"Erik," Erik (me) said.

We sat and officially met and had the instant rapport that solo North American backpackers with the same spelled name usually have. "I've been following you since South America," he said.

"Wow, that's when I started." Ages ago.

We chat over more bottles of SMB with Ariel and J.R. "You're well Filipino," Erik said, commenting on my dark-skinned Filipino appearance. "If you weren't wearing that shirt, I probably would have [walked right by you.]"

"Yeah, I know. That's why I wore it."

Erik went off to get his camera in his bungalow to snap a photo as evidence to show off to his friend, an SBR (Silent Blog Reader) who had turned him onto The Blog, one of many other SBRs in British Columbia that have been following me without posting a comment. Amazing, I thought. I wonder who else is out there? The photo not only proved our meeting, but the contrast in our physical appearance despite having the same first name: him, towering at six four, and me the five foot five guy who'd been out in the sun too long.

"Should we go into town?" Erik suggested.

"Yeah, let's go."

THE HOT SPOT OF BORACAYAN NIGHTLIFE is a bar/club called Summer Place, a place where even in the January winter it felt like a carefree summer night. We parked ourselves at the bar, like Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi at the Mos Eisley cantina, for a round of Tanduay White Rhums on the rocks with a twist of calamansi. It was the first of many rounds of drinks that evening. It was refreshing to finally meet another foreign backpacker in the Philippines after seeing just relatives (not that there's anything wrong with that); he could relate to the smothering of Filipino hosts as he had stayed with one in Manila and also faced the pressures of overfeeding and perhaps too much hospitality.

Later on that night, the bartender served us up another round of drinks that we didn't order. "It's from them," he said, pointing to the people across the way on the other side of the oval-shaped bar.

"Is it that guy [in the blue shirt]?" I asked the other Erik.

"I don't know," Erik said. "Well he's not looking over here." He suggested it might be another guy at the corner of the bar in a green shirt who was sort of peeking over at us, a guy that reminded me of an old man I had seen in a Moscow internet cafe surfing Asian boy porn sites.

Great, I thought sarcastically. Another gay pick up. I wonder if Luke Skywalker ever had to deal with this. However, a free drink was a free drink and we downed them.

THE NIGHT PROGRESSED WITH MORE DRINKS and more conversation. Summer Place got more and more crowded passed midnight. The bartender came over to remind us to thank the ones that bought us the complimentary drinks.

"Who?"

"[Over there.]" He pointed towards the guy in the blue shirt again.

"That guy?"

"[No, over there.]"

Behind the guy in the blue shirt at a table was thankfully a female, a Filipina girl with her sister and her boyfriend. We walked over to make introductions and join their little group. Two of them, the couple, were actually Filipino-Americans like myself, from L.A., and the single one who bought us the drinks was interested in the other Erik. I forget all their names though, probably because I got thoroughly drunk with them. I recall vague memories of table dancing, myself included, and possibly falling off the table, laughing. I remember blabbering out like an idiot, "Itaas mo! Itaas mo!" ("Raise yourself up! Raise yourself up!")

(The other Erik obviously remembered a lot more, as you can read in his version of the night. I must be getting old.)

While I don't exactly remember taking some of the photos you just clicked on, I remember it being a pretty awesome time. Sometime around 3 a.m. or so, I think we left and went our own ways to our respective secluded beaches. How I managed to make it from Summer Place on White Beach all the way across the island to the Hangin House on Bulabog Beach, I don't quite recall, but I suppose I was simply guided by instinct and the Force.

Even in a drunken stupor in a place like Boracay, the Force will be with me, always.

Waiting In Vain

DAY 456: I woke up in the Hangin House on Bulabog Beach with a slight hangover headache to a welcoming sound coming from behind my room's window: the rustling of palm trees blowing in the ocean breeze. Wind. Soon, kiteboarders were inflating their kites on the beach, launching them, and venturing off into the surf -- but not without some snags.

"It's gusty," Mars the German-Filipino reported.

"Gusty" meant the winds were blowing, but weren't consistent in the flow. There were unpredictable updrafts that made kiteboarding a tad harder, even for the most experienced. One portly eastern European kiteboarder could barely get his kite in the air without losing control of it. At one point it flew out towards the crowd on the beach with no tension, and then quickly caught a draft and tensed up the lines in a sort of dangerous way. If anyone was in the way, there might have been one of those throat-slitting accidents I had heard about.

The morning kiteboarding session of the pro boarders was cut short because a heavy downpour came through, grounding everyone except a few of the insane hardcore guys (picture above).

"There's wind now, but now there's rain!" my instructor Merck said on the shoreline.

The downpour was just a passing storm as most tropical storms are, and soon there was a blue sky again, but with lot more gusts -- not a good condition for a boarder-in-training like myself.

"Are you going out?" one of the female pro-boarders asked me as I sat on the beach with Merck.

"I don't know. What's going on?" I asked Merck. "Are we going?" I was eager to complete my training, getting more and more restless as every kiteboarder zipped by.

"It's too gusty," he said. "Just one mistake..." He didn't have to complete the sentence, I got the gist of it. I could accidentally kill a guy or something. Still wasn't I just better than when I first arrived at Bulabog with no experience? But I've learned so much since then! I whined in my head like Luke Skywalker.

"HEY."

"Hey," I answered. Erik the Vancouverite came by to visit and check out the scene of Boracayan kiteboarding culture. "I haven't been on a board yet," I told him. "There's too much wind."

"Too much wind?"

"Yeah. Funny, huh?" We made plans to meet for dinner; I hoped to arrive with news that I finally got out there on a board after all. Erik went off to work on his blog, while I continued to wait for better wind conditions on Bulabog Beach. I hoped I wasn't waiting in vain.

I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna wait in vain, I sang in my head to the melody of the legendary song by Bob Marley and The Wailers.

"Maybe eight meters," Merck suggested. The winds were too strong for a regular eleven- or twelve-meter one, but eight might do the trick. Of course I assumed he was talking about an eight-meter kite for me, and I grabbed a harness.

"What? You're going out?" he said to me.

"Yeah. Let's go!"

"[We'll see. I'll try out with eight-meters first.]" Merck went out into the surf with the eight-meter kite and zipped back and forth around the bay, catching air and doing some jumps with the updrafts. It only made me more restless and eager to get out there.

"What's the word?" I asked him when he came back.

"Gusty. It's scary when I do the jumps," he replied. I think he noticed the disappointed look on my face -- it was my last day in Boracay, my last opportunity to kiteboard after all -- and so he suggested, "Okay. Eight meters. After the black clouds."

The drizzle that was coming down had turned into another heavy downpour, which everyone assumed would pass as fast as the first one, but it just kept on raining for another hour, then another, and another -- all afternoon.

Oh c'mon. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna wait in vain. I sat in the Hangin Kite Cafe, covered with an awning, wearing my shoes and harness, still optimistic that the weather would clear before dusk. Most of the other kiteboarders were grounded in the cafe with me, eating soups, pasta, and sandwiches as the hardcore boarders and windsurfers still went out to challenge themselves and Mother Nature.

By four o'clock I saw that the kites were being deflated and gear was being put away into the gear shed. My waiting around for my last opportunity to finish my Jedi kiteboarding training had been in vain after all. To make things more depressing, I had been kicked out of the Hangin House since someone else had a reservation for that room that night. I was shifted over to a rundown house down the beach that looked like it had been abandoned for months. (At least it had a private bathroom.)

With the day gone bust, the only thing I could think to do to salvage the rainy afternoon was get a much-need haircut.

TWO DAYS BACK IN BORACAY to go kiteboarding and it didn't happen. Fortunately my return to Boracay wasn't a complete bust; it led me to meet Canadian Blogreader and fellow traveler Erik, a decent fellow, who I met for dinner that night. He couldn't believe I had waited all day for nothing.

"We had a lot to drink last night," he came to a realization. With that said, we just had a couple of beers over a couple of pizzas at an Italian place on the beach. The beer was cold, the pizza was tasty, and really I had nothing to complain about. Suddenly I was singing a different Marley tune, for pizza, beer, and good company is all I ever need... Redemption Song. Redemption Song.

Island Hopping

DAY 457: "Island hopping" is a term often used in the tourism circuit in the Philippines, and for good reason; there are 7,107 islands in the archipelago, why just stick to one? (Some of the smaller ones are even up for sale if you can afford it.) It isn't necessarily needed to fly from island to island as there are many modes of transportation available, from big ferries to jet-powered catamarans. For the backpacker on the tightest budget, there is the Roro, an inter-island bus that travels on land by road and over water by vehicle transport ferry from island port to island port.

My goal of the day was to island hop from Boracay to Panay to Cebu to Bohol to Panglao, by air, land, and sea -- all before nightfall.

THE SKIES WERE STILL GRAY when I woke up in the house in Boracay's Bulabog Beach. There was no time to wait around another day for the winds; I had a flight to catch at Caticlan Airport on neighboring Panay Island. A spider boat ferry and tricycle ride later, I was at the airport on my second island of the day, with time to spare to catch up with my Tita Josie, who had arrived earlier via minivan from Kalibo. She told me all about the shooting that had occurred in Kalibo the second day of a festival, an incident that sort of put a damper on the rest of the celebration. The skies were still gray and gloomy over Panay, both figuratively and literally, and it was a sign for us to move on to sunnier skies.

IN 1521, SPANISH EXPLORER FERDINAND MAGELLAN, in his expedition to be the first guy to circumnavigate the globe, landed on the island of Cebu. To mark his territory, he erected a Christian cross to christen the island in the name of the Spain and the Catholic Church. He thought he was doing the natives a good service, but was killed two weeks later by Chief Lapu-Lapu who drove the Spanish away until their return forty-four years later. Magellan never personally accomplished his around-the-world goal, but his crew managed to finish it for him.

Four hundred eighty-four years later, it was my turn to land on Cebu on my own global trip. "It's nicer here," I said when we touched down on my third island of the day, in Cebu City's airport. Unlike at Boracay and Panay, the skies over Cebu were blue and sunny.

We got our bags and hopped in a cab to take us not to one of the numerous resort in the Cebu City area, but to the town center where just days before the 25th anniversary of the Sinulog festival (Cebu's version of Ati-atihan) took place. Like two backpackers, Tita Josie and I lugged our gear around the city center, stopping first at one of the more significant monuments in town, Magellan's Cross, the actual cross Magellan planted in 1521 before his death. It was at the site of this cross where King Humabon of Cebu, his queen, and 800 of his subjects were baptized as the first Filipino Christians by Spanish priest Fr. Pedro Valderrama after the Spanish came back in 1565 and really began to colonize the archipelago.

My interests of being in the presence of the cross were not only religious, but significant in the parallels I could draw from it. Where Magellan attempted to go around the world and failed mid-way, I was optimistic that my trip would come full circle in time for a big return in New York on DAY 503.

DOWN THE PROMENADE FROM THE CROSS was another monumental relic of the Spanish colonization: the Basilica Del Santo Niño, the oldest church in the Philippines (reconstructed numerous time due to fires) and the resting place of the original black-faced baby Jesus holy statue, which draws pilgrims to come and wait on long lines to be in its presence. The face wasn't as dark as the festivals made it out to be -- it was moreno than black -- and the darker-skinned statues came from the ones in the sacristy, with Jesus and Mary.

A less colorful statue stood before me at the next historical site we went to in Cebu City, Fort San Pedro. The statue was of Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi who forcefully colonized the Philippines under Spanish rule starting 1565. Although Legazpi made peace with the local tribal chiefs, that peace was short-lived when violence began; Legazpi burned down Cebu to make room for the Spanish and their Fort San Pedro, a fortification of stone blocks and heavy cannons. Nowadays, the fort is a quiet oasis away from the hustle and bustle of the city with a gallery of pictures depicting the history of the arrival of the Spanish.

THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON was spent, not surprisingly, at the SM City Cebu shopping mall, where Tita Josie and I mistakenly filled our stomachs with ube/banana/peanut shakes before having a lunch of Cebuano "must-haves," from flash fried crablettes and shrimp to ginataang langka (young jackfruit in coconut sauce) and bicol express, a spicy coconut-milk-based stew of pork and shrimp.

I spent the afternoon killing time walking around the mall, up and down escalators, until it was time for our transport to the ferry port to catch our ride to the fourth island of the day, Bohol.

"Super cat and super mouse," my Tita Josie joked. Our mode of transportation was a jet catamaran dubbed "SuperCat 2" (picture above) that would zip us across the sea in just under two hours. Like in the hydrofoil I took from Hong Kong to Macau, the interior was similar to that of an airplane, with assigned seats, only a lot wider. I was going to spend most of the ride catching up on Blog duties, but the Wayans brothers movie White Chicks came on and distracted me with laughter.

It was about sunset when we arrived at the port in Tagbilaran, capital city of Island #4 of the day, Bohol. A guy at the docks had a sign with our names on it, for he was our assigned driver to pick us up and take us across town and over a small bridge to Island #5 of the day, Panglao, a small island of towns and resorts off the southwest coast of Bohol.

Panglao was once a peaceful island unfettered by Western tourists, until the 1980s when the second "invasion" and "colonization" of Europeans began. German backpackers "discovered" Panglao as a beach-goer and scuba diver paradise and began to come in droves. Since the early 1990s, Filipino developers cashed in on the demand of accommodations and began building beachfront resorts for Germans and their wunderlust. Today, many German and Swiss tourists still vacation in Panglao (as well as a few other countries) -- mostly forty-something married couples.

The Alona Tropical Beach Resort, supposedly the original beach resort on Panglao's Alona Beach, was where we checked in that night to rest up from a long day of island hopping. We were led to a private bungalow a few meters from the beach, where the light of the sun was just about to disappear under the horizon.

With my time on Luzon and Guimaras, that made seven islands down by the end of that day. Seven down, just 7,100 more to go.

Foreign Local

DAY 458: I remember Vietnamese-American Tony (Moshi, Tanzania) telling me he once went on vacation to Vietnam with some non-Vietnamese-American friends and all the local Vietnamese thought he was not a foreigner traveling with the others, but their guide. I was surprised the same phenomenon didn't happen to me in the Philippines, until I went on a diving trip off the coast of Panglao Island that day.

Panglao Island has attracted not simply German tourists, but German scuba divers who come to explore the surrounding reefs. With nearby Bohol Island, there are many popular dive sites, and I would see two of them that day off the coast of the smaller island of Cabilao two hours north of Panglao via motorboat.

The diving group was a crew of five German and Swiss-German divers, four of them in married couples, and all over them appearing to be in their forties. They were a tightly knit German-speaking diving clique that I assumed had been diving together for years; they even had dive crew t-shirts made up from previoius trips. One of them wasn't too good in English, while the others knew enough for a basic conversation.

"Where are you from?" I asked them as a dingy took us from shore to our bigger boat.

"Germany."

"Yeah, I mean where in Germany."

"Essen," a man said. "In the center."

"Frankfurt," answered another.

"He's from Switzerland," one said, referring to the single guy of the group.

"I'm from Basel," he said.

"Oh, Basel. I've been there," I said, referring to a European backpacking trip I did in 1999. "Nice zoo." His face lit up that someone had actually been there; it's not exactly a sought out traveler's destination. (I wasn't planning to go, but had no choice since trains were full to my alternate destinations.) "Every time I meet someone from Switzerland, they're from Basel," I continued to entertain him, which was only true about 69% of the time.

That was pretty much the pinnacle of social interaction that I had with the German and Swiss dive crew; they pretty much kept to themselves with their language and inside jokes. Soon I realized they simply thought I was one of the Filipino crewmembers; a couple of them mistook me for Edgar, the Filipino divemaster that was overseeing the excursion for his German boss back at the Sea Explorers dive shop.

THE TWO DIVES WERE GOOD, despite the poor visibility -- quite possibly the worst I'd had to date, at only about 3-5 meters. Poor vis wasn't necessarily a bad thing; it just made the dive more interesting. With that and the lack of sunlight peering down from an overcast sky (which displayed a rainbow just earlier that morning), the dives were pretty dark, so much that the Germans and Swiss all had underwater lamps (along with all their own gear). As we hovered about halfway down reef walls on both dives, it felt more like an outer space exploration rather than an underwater one.

The two sites were "Lighthouse," named for the nearby lighthouse on Calibao Island, and "Hammerhead Point," named for the frequent sightings of hammerhead sharks -- although they weren't in season and we saw none. "They're sleeping now," Edgar told us. The dives did bring encounters with a manta ray and a bunch of pygmy seahorses living in a big piece of fan coral, as well as all the usual tropical marine animals: trumpet fish, angel fish, nudibranches, etc. For me, most of the enjoyment came from the swimming in the dark conditions.

THE ANCHOR WAS HOISTED and we began the ride back to Panglao. Edgar and crew passed out in the inner cabin (minus the driver of course), while the Germans and Swiss were on the top deck chatting amongst themselves. I overheard one guy talking about celebrating his 300th dive.

"What's that island?" he asked me. "Is that [Siquijor(?)]?" He assumed that I would have the answer.

"Uh, I don't know." He went off, ignorant.

Back at Alona Tropical Beach Resort (picture above), my Tita Josie had just gotten back from her excursion of the day, zipping around the island on a rented motorbike to see the sights and do some shopping. Both of us were pretty tired, so we just stayed in and watched Lost in Translation on my laptop, a pretty fitting movie for my experience that day.

Not So Chocolate

DAY 459: I had first heard about the island of Bohol not from my Philippine-born parents or any of my relatives living in the Philippines, but from the Globe Trekker travel show (formerly Lonely Planet). Host Shilpa Mehta turned me on to seeing the famous Chocolate Hills, Bohol's signature attraction, which unfortunately for me and my chocolate-loving sweet tooth were not made of chocolate. Upon my own exploration of the island, I discovered that the not-so-Chocolate Hills were just one of many things that made Bohol unique, an island separate from the other islands in the archipelago.

With my Tita Josie graciously paying for mostly everything on my travels with her thus far, she hired us a private car with driver and guide to take us to the sites of Bohol. Before nine in the morning, we were over the bridge from Panglao to our first Bohol site of the day.

IN 1565, SPANISH CONQUISTADOR MIGUEL LOPEZ DE LEGAZPI came to Bohol not for chocolate, but to start the inevitable colonization of the Philippines after Magellan's failure some forty years before. It was not as easy as it he originally thought because there were already people living there, local Tagbilaran tribespeople under the reign of their chief, Chief Sikatuna. The two parties didn't exactly see eye to eye -- what with one group wanting to take over and one group wanting to be left alone -- and so the famous "Blood Compact" agreement took place after negotiations of scheduling conflicts. Legazpi and Sikatuna penciled each other into their busy schedules and eventually met up for a drink, the perfect icebreaker to bury the hatchet and let by-gones be by-gones.

The "Blood Compact," which goes down in history as the first friendship treaty between Spain and the indigenous people, was actually an event like American Thanksgiving; it was that one moment when foreigners and locals came together in peace, to be blood brothers -- before the onslaught of colonization. It wasn't long before Legazpi broke oath and started bossing around the natives with his militia and big guns and starting claiming land in the name of King Philip of Spain, namesake of what was later dubbed the "Philippines." Nowadays, by-gones are by-gones -- mostly because most of the original natives have been outbred through the intermarriages with the Spanish -- and a life-sized monument was erected celebrating the one peaceful meeting of Legazpi and Sikatuna. (Are those frosty chocolate milkshakes in their hands?)

IT WAS ABOUT AN HOUR by road to the town of Carmen, in roughly the geographic center of Bohol. Carmen, which is also a very Spanish name, was the prime spot for viewing the Chocolate Hills, which unfortunately were not made of chocolate nor had any cocoa plants growing on them -- they were named that simply because in the summer, the grass on them dies and turns a dark brown. Starting around April the color change begins, making the 1,268 hills of roughly the same size and shape look like a bunch of gigantic Hershey's kisses. Mmmmm, Hershey's kisses... Each hill is a round mound like a camel hump, originally formed from coral deposits when the island was under the sea millions of years ago. Eons later, the earth rose and seas swept away, leaving the mounds to be geologically "carved" through erosion and the motion of the surrounding water.

Our guide Leto led us to the observation deck at the top of one of the not-so-Chocolate Hills for a panoramic view (picture above) of the rest of them. They were still a bit green (not ripe yet), but were impressive nonetheless and actually held my attention for a good twenty minutes.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER we were off to see another of Bohol's signature attractions, the signature attraction if you ask me. Tarsiers, little primates characterized by their big eyes (the better to see at night) and shy and nervous demeanor, are endemic to Bohol. Several roadside sanctuaries were established for tourists to see them and Leto brought us to one such place. It was where you could come face-to-face with the cute little animals, pet them, and take many pictures with your camera or cell phone (as most Filipino tourists did). To me, tarsiers looked like a cross between Monchichis and Gremlins (before a post-midnight feeding).

"You want to see the falls?" Tita Josie asked me at the sanctuary after I saw a feeding of one of the tarsiers. (It picked up a little cricket with its little hands, ate it like a Snickers bar and smiled.)

"Sure, okay."

The sanctuary was conveniently on the banks of the Loboc River, a jade green river and popular waterway for river cruises in a motorboat or a floating restaurant with cheesy lounge singer acts. We hired the former and ventured not too far away upstream, beyond the village kids swimming and the slanted palm trees (which I call "boner trees") to Busay Falls, a local waterfall where all the boats anchor for a while before heading back the way they came. We went further downstream to a riverside restaurant, an all-you-can-eat buffet, where I made fancy gourmet-looking dishes instead of just piling food on my plate. (This is a custom my brother and I do at Chinese buffets in the States -- "Iron Chef Buffet" as we call it. We have presentation contests with categories: chicken, soup, dessert, etc.) There was no chocolate there either, but my sweet tooth was pleased with Peanut Kisses, a candy available from the touts and shops in all the touristy areas. Peanut Kisses, Chocolate Hill-shaped morsels made of crushed peanuts and egg whites, satisfied my sweet tooth with the lack of actual chocolate on the island.

WITH THE SPANISH CAME CHRISTIANITY, and many churches were built on Bohol, in the old sixteenth century style. We visited a three of these churches, the Church of San Piedro the Apostle, the Baclayon Church of the Immaculate Conception, and St. Augustine's with its famous bayside watchtower. In between churches, we managed to buy more Peanut Kisses and to track down Tita Josie's cell phone after she had left it in a CR -- a woman took it and brought it to her suite at a fancy exclusive resort. We also paid a visit to another one of Bohol's signature attractions, the Hinagdanan Cave, an underground freshwater lagoon discovered in the 16th century by a local farmer. Today, it is where bats fly above tourists swimming below.

FOR MY LAST NIGHT IN VISAYAS, my last night with Tita Josie, we went out with our guide Leto, who picked us up in his little motor scooter. The three of us piled on and rode across Panglao to Bistro Andrei, a quaint little eatery that seemed out of place amidst the village houses. It was there we finished Bohol off with one more specialty of the island, unod saang, a type of shellfish similar to conch but with a spiky shape, that wasn't really eaten on the other islands. We special-ordered a whole plate of it and ate it with our final beers and conversation. Unfortunately for my sweet tooth, the meat was very salty, but that was all sorted out when I had some more Peanut Kisses. It's the only thing I had for the lack of actual Chocolate Hills. Where's Willy Wonka when you need him?

Return To Normalcy

DAY 460: While island hopping with my Tito Mike and Tita Josie from beach resort to beach resort was nice, it wasn't exactly my scene. Don't get me wrong, beach resorts are nice and all, but they are inherently resorts, relaxing places to get away from the challenges of normal life. My days of resorts and island hopping in the Philippines were over and it was time for a return to normalcy.

Tita Josie and I left the sunrises and palms trees of Panglao's Alona Beach and flew off to Manila's domestic airport. We landed by late morning and parted ways: her with her driver and me with my Tito Mike who picked me up to bring me back to the house in Greenhills. On the way across town, everything was becoming familiar to me: the skyscrapers, the billboards, the highway traffic. In a way, it was sort of refreshing; they were all a part of my normalcy.

"Do you have any plans tonight?" Tito Mike asked me.

"No."

"My nephew David wants to take you out to dinner."

"Okay." My last night in the Philippines would bring one more relative, my distant cousin David whom I had showed around New York during his visit to the States in 2003.

"HELLO! DAVID," I greeted as my cousin walked in the door that afternoon. "How is everything?"

"Okay. I quit my job. I'm just studying now," he answered. "Where should we go?"

"I just need to get to an internet cafe at some point," I told him. "I've been trying to connect here for an hour and it's been busy." Dial-up connections? So not a part of my normalcy.

GROWING UP IN THE NEW JERSEY SUBURBS outside of New York City, the shopping mall has become a part of my state of normalcy, and it was at the mall that I spent my last day. We took a bus -- not a duck-filled jeepney (picture above) -- to the granddaddy of them all, SM MegaMall, where I easily logged onto the internet at a high speed and uploaded some Blog entries. High-speed internet was definitely a part of my normal life and I embraced it.

The rest of the afternoon was a pretty normal one, even for a person not going around the world; it was an afternoon of browsing music stores, electronics, eating sandwiches, and drinking shakes while wandering like a couple of mallrats.

"You want to go to the spa?" David asked at the in-mall deli where we ate. "So you can be rested before you go to Bangkok."

"The spa?"

"It's the only thing I can [think of to] do for you," he said. I had seen most of the noteworthy sites in Manila and had run out of nearby places to see. "There's not much in Manila; just shopping malls," he said. Mall shopping is definitely a favorite Filipino pastime.

Spas weren't exactly a part of normalcy for me -- they should be though -- but we went off anyway to the fancy spa across the street to see what sort of massage therapy I could get. There were no open spaces until much later in the evening and so, we reverted back to normalcy by just going to the movies.

Back at SM MegaMall, a huge crowd of Filipino teeny-boppers were lined up in the theater lobby, not for a movie premiere, but the live telecast of Starstruck, the Philippines' version of American Idol, which not only judges on singing, but on acting and overall celebrity charisma. From what I gathered, teeny-boppers had lined up and waited all day for a glimpse of the soon-to-be-famous, but we skipped all that and went to see already-famous celebrities Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Barbra Streisand, and Dustin Hoffman in Meet the Fockers. Laughing at a Hollywood comedy was definitely a part of my normalcy (especially every time the little kid utters his first words).

The mall was closing by the time the movie let out, but we managed to get some Japanese fast food (another normal thing for me) at a place before it completely closed down. David and I ate our tempura, sushi, and tonkatsu until we head back to Greenhills so that I could pack for my flight early the next morning.

That night, I could have logged onto the internet via dial-up, but I didn't have feel like waiting around for a connection. Once high-speed internet becomes a part of your normalcy, it's almost impossible to revert back.

Blog and Reality

DAY 461 (31 days since last Thailand entry): This here weBlog has become and integral part of my trip -- more so than I originally thought. Maintaining it not only has given me a sense of purpose in my wanderings of the world (and given my brother an unneeded second job), it has raised funds and connected me to many people that I never knew before. (In fact, most of the commenters in recent months I've never met; you SBRs out there shouldn't be afraid to "be a stranger" and break the silence.)

The Blog has evolved from a little travel journal I did for friends and family into a sort of international daily travel humor column and on-line reality TV show of my life on the road, i.e. "The Trinidad Show." As of late, I often treat it as a reality TV show, playing the role of producer and editor, all with the audience in mind. The Blog, like reality TV programming that isn't overproduced, doesn't make up events or fictionalize anything; personalities and conflicts are created by the simple magic of editing. People become "characters" by the simple inclusion and exclusion of their actions and what they say on screen.

TRAVELING BACK TO BANGKOK, I was keen to meet up with "recurring character" A.R.I.E.L. (the American Reporter I Encountered In Laos), who has remained anonymous since her introduction to the Blog since she was working undercover behind the Laotian government's back when I met her in Phonsavanh. The anonymity gimmick stuck in the second "episode" and it was apparent to me it could be an ongoing gag, like the anonymous "Mr. Big" character in Sex and the City.

However, behind the scenes, the savvy "Ms. Big" was sort of disappointed in my revelation of our one night in Bangkok; she wasn't too keen on my public announcement (to over 40,000 unique readers) of our little make-out session and felt it was exploited. (Concurrently, the comments from The Fellowship of The Blog only cheapened any romantic vibe.) Why I decided to stray away from my "no tales of intimacy on-line" policy that one time I don't know, but it irrevocably backfired on me. Sometimes I forget that this isn't reality TV and that I'm meeting real people -- who don't exactly sign disclosure agreements.

And so, in true Sex and the City form (sitting on a bed while using an outdated Apple laptop computer, picture above), we ask a question I'm sure Carrie Bradshaw never asked:

What is the difference between Blog and reality?

Despite the issues, "Ms. Big" was willing to meet me back in Bangkok, but unfortunately was out of town to investigate the violence in the deep south of Thailand near the Malaysian border, leaving that storyline "to be continued." The night wouldn't be a total bust though -- in fact, it would turn out to be a sort of Sex and the City-esque episode anyway.

MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN, a redhead going not by the name of Miranda but by the name of Noelle had sent me an email:

We are on the outskirts of Patpong... I'd really like to get my stuff from the storage place at my hostel and then go to dinner.

Longtime Blogreader Noelle had taken me up on my open invitation to appear on "The Trinidad Show," packed her bags, and bought a ticket to Bangkok. The L.A.-based events coordinator and fundraiser (most recently for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research) had quit her PR job to, for an indefinite amount of time, leave fast-paced L.A. society behind and live the life of a backpacker. However, as we found out that night, Bangkok could be just as a part of jet-set scene as L.A. or New York.

FASHIONABLY LATE BY ABOUT HALF AN HOUR, Noelle appeared at the front of my guesthouse, in the flesh -- out of her Blog commenter persona and into my reality. Picking her out right away was easy; she was wearing The Global Trip t-shirt she had received when she pledged me the summer before. There was no need for formal introductions; we started off with a friendly hug like we had known each other for years, even though it was our first physical encounter. I told her how just seconds before I bumped into Manchester Paul before he left on an overnight train for Chaing Mai (another recurring character on "The Trinidad Show" from Nepal and Bangkok), and she knew who I was talking about almost immediately. "This is great," I said. "I can just mention things and assume that you know them already."

With Noelle were her Thai friend and former schoolmate Suthee and his wife Wendy, who had taken her around town that day, off the beaten backpacker path away from the Khaosan Road district to a more cosmopolitan side of Bangkok. They had come to pick me up and bring me to that side that night for dinner. Suthee asked if I had any preference for food and I told him I could pretty much eat anything.

"[Noelle is always asking what things are before eating it,]" Suthee said (to the best of my memory). "[I tell her don't ask before you eat it. Just try it first and see if you like it, then ask what it is.]"

"Yeah, don't ask questions," I seconded.

Noelle was a tad more particular about her food than I was -- mind you I've had dog, snake, horse, whale, and butterfly larvae -- and she drew the line before McDonald's. She was not only anti-McDonald's, but anti-KFC since she knew someone who used to work there and knew some of the things that went behind the scenes of the Colonel's secret recipe. "Oh, I could enlighten you [about what they put in the food at KFC.]"

"I don't want to know," I said. "This is why I don't ask questions."

THE CITY OF BANGKOK IS ACTUALLY a really cosmopolitan place once you leave the "Backpacker Hell" scene of Khaosan Road. Like New York and other international cities, it sparkles in the night with its skyscrapers towering above the trendy establishments below. Prada graces its presence on Sukhumvit Road by day while trendsetters abide by the dress code by night at one of the hottest nightclubs in town, The Bed, where, like in New York, people mingle and drink on mattresses. Bangkok also boasts many cuisines other than the Pad Thais and banana pancakes of Khaosan Road, to cater to the movers and shakers that keep the buzz of the city alive.

Suthee took us across town in his VW Golf with leather interior and GPS device to the Good View restaurant, a trendy place about twenty notches up from any American fast food chain. A fairly swanky-looking place with nice wooden furniture overlooking the Chao Phraya River, it was once the place to go for the savvy Bangkoker. "When it opened, there was a one-week waiting list to get in," Wendy told us.

It was the perfect place to continue the Sex and the City-esque angle of this Blog episode, serving fancy colorful cocktails and fine Thai food -- spicy soups, pork rind dishes, spicy papaya salad, and other things that we found out what they were after eating. The four of us sat at the table -- Suthee and Wendy on one side, me and Noelle, the self-proclaimed "Red-headed Vixen," on the other -- over drinks and conversation, listening to the live band that was playing on stage, a really good local band that could perform classic Motown songs along with modern hits from the Black Eyed Peas and Maroon Five. However, unlike the Andean band I encountered in Cuzco, Peru, they denied my request to play the Village People's "Y.M.C.A."

"I'll have another one of these," I asked, ordering a Good View Dreamer cocktail. Noelle had the same, while Suthee repeatedly tried to order some mineral water from an unattentive waiter. Another waiter made up for it by making sure our glasses of water were full at all times to keep us happy. With the Good View came good service, good food, and good company.

SUTHEE AND WENDY DROPPED US BACK OFF to the Khaosan Road area and wished us well. Noelle, my redheaded "Miranda" of the night, accompanied me, the writer from New York, in the continuation of the night at the trendy-looking Wild Orchid bar on a side alley way for more cocktails and conversation. "So what's going on with the reporter?" she asked me. I revealed to her Ms. Big's real name.

"She's off reporting about the violence in the south near the Malay border," I said. I continued, "She's sort of upset of my handling of everything."

"But you didn't show her face."

"Yeah, I know," I answered.

"Well, [what would have happened anyway?] You're in New York and she's here."

The night went on and the cocktails went down smooth while Noelle gave me a much needed American pop culture update and I filled her with more details behind the scenes of "The Trinidad Show." It was great to spend time with a pre-established friend, for the very first time out of the Blog and into reality.

FOUR DAYS LATER, I finally got around to writing this Blog entry in Noelle's presence. "You're making me sound glam," she said.

"Don't worry. It goes with the theme of the entry," I responded.

To answer this episode's question, there is no difference between Blog and reality. Nothing in this entry is made up; it is simply treated with the magic of creative writing and editing. And so this is why, just like with unknown foods and the real secrets behind KFC, I don't normally ask any questions.

Same Same But Different

DAY 462: There is a phrase on t-shirts that many of the backpackers in southeast Asia wear: "Same same but different." It is a phrase often uttered by tour agents and touts when trying to get a foreigner's business. "Same same" as in "we're just as good as the next guy;" "but different" as in "but we're more special."

This was my fourth time in Bangkok on my global trip thus far, and the city was more or less the same same, but different. The usual backpackers were roaming Khaosan Road in their Red Bull tank tops and baggy fisherman's pants. The women selling jewelry were still hawking their merchandise amidst the tables selling the latest bootleg CDs. However, it was different this time around; with the upcoming local election, the entire city was plastered with campaign posters (including the one for the "Hammer Guy" Noelle and I kept on joking about since the night before, and for good reason). Also, the most notable difference was seen on the corner of Khaosan Road: a long bulletin board and memorial displaying the thousands of foreigners still missing from the devastating Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004.

This fourth time in town, it would also be different as I had a new partner-in-crime to go around with, Blogreader-turned-"The Trinidad Show" guest star Noelle, who met me in my small jail-cell-of-a-room at the Sawasdee House that morning. "You get to do a bunch of fun and exciting things with me today," she said as we arrived at the pier of the water taxi.

A short ride later, on a boat with some seats reserved for monks, we arrived at the Thewes district, home of a mid-day carp feeding frenzy and the nearby Vimanmek Mansion in Dusit, the former royal residence of King Rama V used between 1901 and 1906. A big beautiful house completed in 1901, the Vimanmek Mansion was designed in a European-influenced style with European furniture and accessories (mostly gifts donated from British royalty to schmooze for trade agreements). It has the honor of being the world's largest house built out of teakwood and is not only beautiful, but an engineering marvel; no nails were used and is held entirely together by wooden pegs.

Like most Thai temple complexes, the Vimanmek Mansion complex was more than one building -- many separate residence halls surrounded the main building -- but it was only the big Vimanmek Mansion that we chose to tour in. "I'll take my shoes off for that one," Noelle said.

Shoes off, we went along with other tourists on the 55-minute English-speaking tour, which showed us the big parlors, bedrooms, and hallways of the five-story house -- but unfortunately didn't allow us to take pictures. The guides pointed out the fine crystals, furniture and silverware, which were all accompanied by the ivory of elephant tusks in almost every room.

The tour ended just in time for a mid-afternoon Thai traditional dance show (picture above), but we didn't stay for the entire thing since it was outdoors and sweltering. "Should we get outta here?" Noelle asked.

"Yeah, let's go." We ended up at a nearby street food cafe for some spicy "spaghetti," as the woman called it.

WITH THE QUESTIONABLY SANITARY CONDITIONS of our lunch place, we were at the hospital soon after. It wasn't for anything stomach-related as you might be thinking, it was for a much more benign reason. Mission Hospital was where Noelle had wisely filled her prescription for malaria drugs two days before, instead of paying ten times more at any drug store in the States.

I had run out of my own batch of Lariam, my malaria meds, and I too needed to get some, so Noelle took me to the hospital. The pharmacy counter was right by the entrance, but it wasn't that easy; we had to explain to the woman there that mefloquine was the generic name of Lariam and that they did in fact have it since Noelle got it from the very same desk two days before. However, the pharmacist wouldn't fill my American prescription unless a local doctor approved it.

"But I just got my prescription filled here on Friday," Noelle argued. The pharmacist wouldn't budge and I was led to the information desk. The guy there led me to the emergency room office and again, Noelle and I argued to get my prescription filled.

"You have to see the doctor," the nurse in white said. We continued to argue it wasn't necessary; my prescription was a legitimate prescription. They continued to argue it couldn't be done without local approval, and we counter-argued that Noelle had done it already. Back and forth we went and ultimately it came down to the question, "How much to see the doctor?"

It was only 145 baht (about $3.80) so I went for it, and soon, there I was, being admitted into the E.R. again. I filled out the form and got an official patient card with a barcode on it. I thought I'd go in and speak to a doctor right away, but it turned out to be a routine E.R. visit, complete with the long waiting at the beginning.

"What if I was dying right now?" I questioned Noelle.

Sooner than I thought, a nurse led me into the E.R. for the routine weight, height, and blood pressure check. Everything was normal, and I waited again until I was led into the doctor's office. "I just need to get this prescription refilled. I've taken it, I just ran out."

"Ah, Lariam," the Thai doctor said with some confusion.

"It's the brand name for mefloquine. You have it."

"Mefloquine?" Is this guy for real? He still seemed confused, perhaps because my American doctor had written down in his questionable penmanship that the prescription was for "Erik Trinipod." "Er-rik Trr-in..." the doctor tried to pronounce.

"Erik Trinidad," I finished. He scrutinized the prescription, or merely pretended to, and said, "Okay," and soon I was waiting on another chair in another waiting room by the cashier -- a process Noelle never had to go through. "It's like a real check-up," I told Noelle. "With the stethoscope and the deep breathing. He didn't touch my balls though."

Noelle waited with me in the waiting room and read her guidebook until a male nurse called my name. "Oh that's me," I said.

"Peace out," Noelle said.

The male nurse only led me to another waiting area at another cashier and I was soon wondering if I'd ever get my drugs. My number was called and they gave me a bill for over 1000 baht, over three times the amount Noelle paid. I argued in English to a staff that wasn't really fluent in it. "But my friend got the same thing and only paid three hundred."

"It's not the same. Different," one woman said.

"Mefloquine. It's the generic name of Lariam. You have it."

I argued with them and they sent me to another pharmacist who led me back to the cashier. In the end, the error was merely because the doctor prescribed me thirty-five pills when I only needed ten. Everything fell into place after that and soon Noelle and I left the E.R. I hoped to never see one again if I could help it.

WHAT WE DID SEE THAT NIGHT was not the same same old thing, but different, when we had dinner at Patty's Mexican Fiesta in Bangkok's Patpong district, which was sort of like a familiar Mexican place in the States, but wildly different in its own way. "This is the most random place," Noelle commented as we ate platters of chimichangas and a quesadilla.

The place was done in wood with a sort of Mexican theme, although it was much more eclectic with Buddhist images, pictures of naked women, and posters of classic Hollywood icons like Marilyn Monroe. Soccer was played on the TV monitor by the bar, while on the other side of the room a lone Thai guitarist with a back-up percussion on CD played Spanish songs and then Elvis tunes. At one point, one of the ladyboy waiters went up on stage to bang the bongos.

Random indeed, but it sure beat a night of eating the fried bugs from a street vendor.

There wasn't much we felt like doing that night but get foot reflexology massages at a nearby parlor that, despite being in the Red Light district, was actually a legitimate business for both men and women. The foot massage, which went all the way to my kneecaps like the one I had in Luang Prabang, was pretty much the same old thing -- not that that's a bad thing -- although Noelle noticed that if one chose to do so, it could have been different; a sign on the front window stated, "outside services available."

Outside services? Maybe they could have refilled my Lariam prescription easily.

Pretty Fly For A White Guy

DAY 463: One of Noelle's first impressions and observations of Bangkok -- specifically in the Khaosan and Patpong districts -- was that, "There are a lot of white people here. I hardly see any Thai people." True, Khaosan and Patpong are the tourist areas were real Thais wouldn't have a need to go to -- in fact, the Sawasdee House where I was staying still had its sign up saying, "NO Thai people permitted in the hotels rooms."

White people have been coming to Bangkok for centuries (not that there's anything wrong with it) way before the song "One Night In Bangkok" became a one hit wonder. One noteworthy white guy who came to Bangkok is one Jim Thompson, the American who came to Thailand and became famous revolutionizing the international hand-woven silk trade.

SILK HAS BEEN A SOUGHT OUT TEXTILE for centuries ever since the Western world "discovered" it in the east. Since then, the quest for silk spawned many trans-global seafaring expeditions and The Great Silk Road overland. People risked life and limb, all for smooth, shiny fabric. In the 20th century, silk came into fashion again when Jim Thompson started the famous Jim Thompson Thai Silk Company. The story of Jim Thompson and his silk company were explained to Noelle and me when we went to the Let's Go-recommended Jim Thompson House near Siam Square in Bangkok.

Jim Thompson, an all-American architecture grad of Princeton University, worked in New York City before serving in World War II as an intelligence officer in the OSS, the agency that evolved into the CIA. His post was in Bangkok, a place that he eventually fell in love with, so much that he decided to stay after the war. Thompson became infatuated with Thai people, culture, and architecture, and had the utmost respect for it, despite his inability to become fluent in the language.

"I love Thai people, culture, and architecture," he probably said in American English. "And I have the utmost respect for it. I think I'll stay."

With his architecture background, he refurbished a traditional Thai house in the center of town and it became the center of his operations as he wooed the world with the local textile.

Weaving silk by hand had become a dying tradition in Thailand, one taken over by the industrialization of machines. However, Jim Thompson found value and beauty in hand-woven silk and showed it off to a bunch of designers at Vogue in New York City, who went absolutely gaga for it.

"That silk is absolutely to die for," they probably said. "I'll take ten."

Soon, silk from the Jim Thompson Thai Silk Co. was the hottest item in New York's garment district, supplying not only commercial fashion designers, but also costume designers for Broadway theater. Word got around to the west coast and Hollywood started buying up the fabric -- Jim Thompson's silk was used to design the wardrobe for the production of The King And I.

All these transactions with the States were conducted on business trips; Jim Thompson was an American ex-pat after all, living abroad in his house in Bangkok (picture above). With Thompson's business savvy was also a sense of interior design. In his traditional Thai wooden house, he fused aesthetics from the east and the west, repurposing eastern things for western use. For example, two mahjongg tables were put together to make a dining table. Drums from Burma were refashioned to become lamp fixtures. Some open-air windows were fitted with wood and fabric to hold Buddhist sculptures. Italian ceramic tiles graced the floor in between the walls of southeast Asian teak.

Our guide Nong, a well-informed Thai woman, led us from the gardens of foliage and lucky goldfish in big urns around the house to the different rooms inside. She showed us the rooms (but forbade photography) and it was all very Pier One, more than Ikea. There were only two bedrooms in the house, one for Jim Thompson and one for a guest. Although Thompson married a fashion model in New York, she remained there, leaving the Thai house for her husband to stay solo.

THE STORY OF JIM THOMPSON ends in a mystery. On Easter Sunday 1967, Thompson went out for a walk in the Cameron highlands, never to return again. Many conspiracy theories of his disappearance exist today, from suicide, to killing by aboriginals, to demise resulting from his time as a secret government agent. Perhaps he simply said, "Maybe today I'll go out for a walk in the Cameron highlands, never to return again," and made it so. "Many conspiracy theories of my disappearance will exist."

When all hope was lost, the Thompson estate was put into the hands of his nephew, who converted the house into a memorial and museum for Thailand's endeared, adopted white son. Jim Thompson silk is still sold today, more so in the gift shop.

"WE REALLY NEED TO FIND SOME AIR-CONDITIONING," I told Noelle as we sat in the sweltering 90 degree weather. Sunny and hot, it was no wonder Jim Thompson kept residence in Bangkok to avoid the snowy and cold New York winters.

"We can see a movie," she suggested. We found refuge down the block in the MBK Center, the multi-level shopping complex with plenty of air-conditioning. We checked out the timetables there and at nearby Grand EGV Cinemas.

"What time does this one end?" Noelle asked the guy at the box office.

"Seven fifteen."

"That won't work then," she said. We already had dinner plans for seven.

THE SUN WENT DOWN and the clock struck seven. Meeting us in front of the Sawasdee House were Noelle's friend-of-a-friend Kevin and his wife Ellen, two more white people (from Oklahoma) to journey to Bangkok. Noelle, who had never met them before, had gotten word in an e-mail that they were in town and we decided to meet them for dinner. We left the white folk scene of Khaosan Road and took the No. 511 across town to Sukhumvit Road, where we didn't go out for Thai, but for Indian at Moghul's, the highly recommended restaurant for tasty dosais, chicken tandooris, and plenty of naan. It was nice to chat with new faces and swap tales -- they too were on a round-the-world trip and had finally landed in Bangkok as most people do. They had spent the past week going to two movies a day at the 2005 Bangkok International Film Festival and were ready to venture onto new things.

No new things panned out that night though and inevitably we just went back to the tourist district of Khaosan Road via taxi with the rest of the white people. No one resembling Jim Thompson was anywhere to be seen. If I may add a conspiracy theory to Thompson's disappearance, perhaps he simply got a sex change operation and became a woman -- Thailand is arguably the sex-change capital of the world after all. Hand-woven silk dresses are definitely more sexier on a woman after all.

Supergirls

DAY 464: "We're in Bangkok. We can't not see one," Oklahoman Ellen said to her husband Kevin the night before at dinner. She was of course referring to the famous sex shows of the red-lighted Patpong district, another one of Bangkok's signature attractions even if you're not a total perv. That night we went to go see one and discovered it was a rather interesting and enjoyable show that involved a lot extraction of items from a particular female body part.

DAYTIME BROUGHT A SHOW OF A LESS X-RATED NATURE when Noelle and I finally got around to going to the movie theater, not only to see a film, but to be pampered in the Gold Class VIP seating available at Grand EGV Cinemas in Siam Square. Really, heated reclining massage chairs with complimentary socks, blanket, pillow, and snacks are the only way to go when seeing a three-hour screening of Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. It was a movie I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm not just saying that because of Leo's top notch performance or the luxury theater conditions; bombshell supergirl Gwen Stefani was in it too.

THE SKY WENT DARK and the "red lights" came on. Noelle, Kevin, Ellen, and I made our way from dinner at Anna's Cafe (named after the governess of King Rama IV's children) to the Patpong district (picture above), where the glow of neon lights in many colors (not just red) illuminated the crowded streets and pedestrian malls. With the night market, there were a lot more people simply shopping for souvenirs than sex than I thought, but that's not to say sex was readily available -- for a fee of course; "No Money, No Honey," is a common phrase heard and silk-screened onto t-shirts. There were plenty of touts around with laminated "menu" cards of the different things they could lead you to:

Lonely Planet warned that most of these pussy card-toting touts often led to shows where they scam you for thousands of baht, even though they tell you there's no charge. You don't need Lonely Planet to figure that one out; no money, no honey, after all. The guidebook did recommend one place where there were no gimmicks (at least not ones involving money), Supergirls, a go-go bar and X-rated cabaret like the others, only with an up-front stated policy that the cover charge was the simple one drink minimum (90 baht/drink).

"That's it? Just the one drink?" Ellen asked the woman outside to confirm. She was really eager to see the on-goings inside.

"Yeah."

Up the stairs we went, passed the numerous "NO PHOTO" signs posted everywhere, and the four of us were seated in the couples section on the other side of the stage where the single old men were sitting, amidst the Thai woman offering services for them. To our surprise, two of the white-haired old men were actually old white-haired grandma-type women. I supposed everyone is curious as to what goes on in these types of places.

Four drinks came to our table as we sat and watched the show on stage. My initial impressions weren't too grand. "This is a pretty generic strip club," I told Noelle. On stage, five girls were dancing topless on the stripper poles, but with not much fervor at all -- except for this one Thai girl who perhaps had a bit too much Red Bull and was most likely inspired by the movie Flashdance. "C'mon, I wanna see something cool!" I complained.

I ate those words right away when the next act of the night came on.

"Oh, okay. That's cool."

Lowered from the ceiling was a huge martini glass filled with water, bubbles, and a girl in a florescent orange bikini. There wasn't much to her dancing though; she simply lounged and moved in the big martini glass trying to be all sexy, which didn't really work because she was picking her wedgies all the time.

Meanwhile, at our table, two strippers approached us at opposite ends -- one to Ellen and one to me -- and both of them simply started massaging the two of us. Needless to say, I didn't turn her away -- nor did Ellen for that matter. Noelle and Kevin continued to watch the show on stage as the crazy Flashdance girl was pulling a string of flowers out of her vagina with one of her co-strippers.

"[My stripper] wants me to buy her a drink," Ellen told me.

"Yeah, mine too," I said. "I think you just order a drink for them, and they just get the ninety baht."

"This is good," Ellen said, enjoying the kneading of her muscles by a scantily-clad Thai woman. "I think I might actually get her one."

"Yeah, me too."

"One hundred baht, same same. You give to me," my massaging stripper said.

"Okay." I paid for services well-rendered as did Ellen on the other side of the table. Ellen's stripper went away while mine lingered and started massaging me again, below the belt the time. She was obviously trying to milk me for more money and with a pretty damn good strategy too.

"Uh, no, that's okay," told her politely. "No more." She respectfully walked away to go back dancing on stage where some girls were now pulling scarves out of their privates like they were boxes of Kleenex. It's a good thing too; if things were progressing the way they were, I'd probably have put her through college and be bankrupt.

PERHAPS THE BEST PART OF THE SUPERGIRLS SHOW was when an older, chubby woman cleared the stage and did the most amazing thing: she lit up a cigarette and started smoking -- with her vagina. Seriously, she placed the cigarette where the sun don't shine and actually inhaled and exhaled. The embers of tobacco on the tip glowed orange at every inhale and puffs of smoke came out at the exhales. "Wow, that's amazing," I said with my jaw dropped. Everyone else was equally impressed.

That stunt was only topped by the blowing of whistles and horns.

Amazing, I thought. Simply amazing. These are truly super girls.

While Bangkok's sex tourism industry isn't smiled upon by everyone, it is here to stay. Patpong will continue to thrive and entertain for every man, woman, and grandma curious enough to see just how multi-talented a vagina can really be.

The Two Backpacks

DAY 465: It was advised by numerous parties to travel overland from Bangkok, Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia with a transport service set up by a tour agency, in order to ease the transition at the border crossing. What I did not hear until after the fact that it was probably best to go via boat, but alas, the road trip that was supposed to be twelve hours ended up being close to twenty.

By 7:30 Noelle and I were in a minivan with our two Cambodian visas and two big backpacks headed eastbound for the Thai/Cambodian border. The Thai roads were smoothly paved and made it easy for me to take a nap. By midday we arrived at a restaurant that looked like the designated place for all the backpacker minibuses to stop in for lunch, and afterwards we were back in the same minivan. Noelle and I sat with the cast of others, a guide, and a driver for the ten-minute ride to the Thai immigration office at the border. We were dropped off and all set to walk over with our bags until, "Hey, where are our bags?" Noelle said.

Everyone else had his/her bags present and accounted for -- except for ours. The tour guide apologized for the mix-up -- they were possibly just shifted to the other transport van -- and left us with a fellow guide to wait at a nearby restaurant. Waiting for our two backpacks to arrive took a lot longer than we thought; it was only a ten-minute drive from the restaurant and the bags took a whole 90 minutes to show up. In the interim, we simply sat around and watched the happenings of a bustling little border town. Vendors lugged their goods on big rickshaws. Huge cargo trucks of corrugated cardboard went back and forth the road. Kids were playing in the area, running around and playfully hitting each other, some with little babies strapped to their backs.

All of the kids' antics would temporarily stop whenever a foreigner was around, when they'd demand money. "You give me ten baht."

"No."

Our two backpacks finally arrived in a big truck with a whole new group of backpackers we hadn't seen before. No matter, the bags were there and untampered with. Our guide led us to the Thai exit office, across the bridge and the casinos of No Man's Land, and into Cambodia. Like with Thai exit formalities, the Cambodian entry involved waiting more on long lines.

With that said, we were perhaps two and a half hours behind our original group once we got to our tour agency's bus office in town. Another bus was waiting for the next batch of travelers to Siem Reap, and it was then that our unanticipated trip extension really began.

In the bus with us was a group of French, an Italian, three Korean girls, a Finnish guy, an Englishman named James reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, and an old Swedish freelance writer who had been living in southeast Asia for quite a while and was merely doing another trip to Siem Reap for the hell of it. "Usually I fly, but this time I take the bus because I forget," he told us.

What he forgot was the fact that driving on Cambodia's roads, particularly the one we were on, was just about as smooth riding on a flight of stairs. Seriously, you would not want to perform a bris in a moving vehicle on this road. At least there was air conditioning to cool us from the hot and dusty conditions; most of the surrounding grasslands were scorched from grassfires.

Our Cambodian guide took us to another pre-determined road stop with a restaurant for dinner where we sat around without bumping around for a change.

"You see how slow the bus is going?" the old Swedish guy said to us. "[It's so we can get there at a later time, so our guide can bring us to a guest house and get commission on all of us. For us, it will be too late and we will be too tired to walk around to check out other guesthouses,]" he said. "This [restaurant] here. We are not here by chance," he continued, explaining the whole operation was run by a sort of mafia.

DUSK TURNED TO EVENING as I overheard the Old Swede talking to the Finnish guy about his conspiracy theories of the operation, when we were back on the bus headed eastbound. Our Cambodian guide, who seemed to be a friendly upstanding guy, told Noelle and I that we'd stop one more time for a break 90 minutes from then to stretch our legs. We'd arrive in Siem Reap by nine and he'd show us a guesthouse but not force it upon us, and leave it up to us if we wanted to go elsewhere.

The second planned stop came in a village in seemingly the middle of nowhere, under the pale moonlight. We were inundated with many more touts, mostly little girls who would first try and get on our good side by asking "What is your name?" and "Where are you from?"

"Doug," I answered, as I often do when I don't feel like giving my real name. ("Doug" was a name I was often called at my last job when our office technician Doug set up my phone but forgot to put my name on the outgoing interoffice caller ID. It defaulted to his name, and every time I'd call someone, it'd come up as "Doug" and then became an on-going gag between me and the writers I worked with.)

"He's from Mars," Noelle (a.k.a. Alice) said. The little girl didn't believe us, but got me back by pointing to my shirt and saying "What's that?" When I looked down, she'd run her finger up my chest and to my nose. I fell for it about three times.

The 10-minute stretching stop turned out to be much longer than anticipated as the driver had to go to the local garage to change one of our bus tires. Whether or not there was an actual problem with the tire I don't know, but the Old Swede continued spreading rumors that it was all a part of the scam to get us in Siem Reap too late to shop for our own place to stay. "[He probably told his friend in Siem Reap that we are running early. We are not supposed to arrive until eleven.]"

Eventually we were back on the bus headed for Siem Reap on the bumpy dirt road under the illumination of the full moon. In less than twenty minutes, the bus broke down again in the middle of nowhere. "Of course," Old Swede said. "What next?" The Finnish guy wholeheartedly shared the same opinion.

The bus staff was back under the bus again, jacking it up and moving rubber around. Ten minutes turned into thirty and we had nothing to do but just wait around in the headlights (picture above). Most people were getting impatient, especially the Finnish guy.

"[This is a scam!]" he blew up, accusing our guide in a tantrum. "[You're doing this for the commission!]" He started a small scene.

The Cambodian guide got all defensive, saying no scam was involved and that the poor mechanics were out of his control, but the Finn kept pushing the issue further -- not a real productive thing to do when you're stranded in the middle of nowhere. I stayed out of it and just sat around and admired the full moon and the stars above, recalling the words of wisdom my film professor once said at School of Visual Arts in New York: "The Golden Rule in filmmaking is never ever loose your cool on the set, or else you bring everybody down." Good advice, even off the set too, I thought.

"This sucks," Noelle said. "[All this because of] those two fucking bags."

"Could be worse," I told her. "It could be cold or raining."

"Yeah." She had just finished talking with Old Swede, who was filling her with more conspiracy theories. "He's an unreal old coot, but he's funny."

Eventually we were up and running so that we could not continue to Siem Reap, but go back to the village garage to make more repairs. Since our previous departure, the entire town shut down from lively place of little girl touts, to a deserted ghost town with no one around. If the moon wasn't full, it might have been pitch black.

We had no choice but to wait even more; it was somewhere close to midnight. Eventually we were up and running again -- only for a big cloud of black smoke to burst out of the side of the bus five minutes later. I was starting to believe that the bus was legitimately a piece-of-shit and that no scam was really involved.

One of the Koreans and the Englishman managed to flag down a random guy driving a rather fancy Toyota LandCruiser at the odd hour of the night. "You want to go with them?" Noelle asked me.

"Yeah, let's go," I said, feeling guilt I was going for the ride without putting much effort into acquiring it. The French and the Italians stayed on the bus while the rest of us packed into the SUV like circus clowns. I volunteered to just stay in the trunk with the bags (Noelle's and mine included). Our bus guide wasn't too thrilled with the situation; whether it was our safety or his commission in jeopardy we weren't for sure. He exchanged a bunch of heated words with the SUV driver and reminded us that he was a complete stranger. "He's going to kill you!" he warned.

Kill us? Suddenly, most of us were having second thoughts, but we put our faith in safety in numbers. We negotiated a forty-dollar fee for the eight of us (after shutting up the Finnish guy who wouldn't go higher than twenty) and soon we were on our way to Siem Reap -- or were we?

"This isn't the right way," James the Englishman said. We were going the other way on the main road and then turned onto a dark side road.

Fuck.

Suddenly we were pulling into the driveway of a dark house, also seemingly in the middle of nowhere, in the shadows of some nearby trees. The driver got out and went over to the gate to talk to another guy. Soon, about five guys arrived on bicycles and they all ended up in some sort of a huddle.

Double fuck.

"I locked the door," Noelle said, sitting up front on the passenger side.

"What's going on?" I asked. I couldn't see anything from the back. I sat there wondering how I could escape if needed -- being under four bags wasn't really a good thing. Everyone was talking, wondering what our fate would be.

"Shhh," advised the Old Swede. "The guide wasn't too happy with us taking the taxi."

"He's coming back," Noelle reported. She unlocked the door with the power lock and let him in. He pulled out of the driveway and got back onto the main road, this time going the correct way. What was in sort for us after that huddle we didn't know.

Stay awake. Stay alert, I thought. Then again, where would I run off to in the dark of night if something happened anyway? I was dead tired from being up since five a.m. the day before and fell asleep anyway, but I was happy when I awoke when we were in Siem Reap already. Everyone was still on guard as we pulled into another shady looking place off the main road.

"Where are we?!" the Finnish guy asked the non-English-speaking driver.

"He doesn't understand," Old Swede said. "Siem Reap, Siem Reap, Siem Reap," he said, knowing that proper names were universal.

We pulled out and eventually made it to one guesthouse that was taking in guests -- at a whopping price of $20 (USD) for arriving at 2:30 a.m. James and the Finn went down further the road and found us a cheaper, very decent place with rooms with private bath, cable TV and fan for only $6, and that's where Noelle and I ultimately ended up that night. After a twenty-hour day of adventure, we were finally safe and sound with our two backpacks -- and our lives -- intact.

Red Pills, White Apples, and Blue Pumpkins

DAY 466: "I'm not going to be much fun tomorrow," Noelle said the night before when we checked into the New Millennium guesthouse in Siem Reap at 2:30 a.m. after a long grueling journey from Bangkok.

"Oh, we're not going to do anything," I said. With both of us exhausted, it called for a day of rest, relaxation, and writing. For Noelle, it would also be a day of recuperation, for she had developed a cough and cold from all the inhalation of dust on the ride over. I volunteered to be her caretaker -- her "canary" as she put it -- by running errands for both of us: look up another guesthouse in the book to see if it was any better (it wasn't), get us food, water, etc.

I mention this not only because it is what I did that day, but because most of Noelle's friends back in California were worried that she'd be meeting up with a questionable stranger off the internet. "He could be an axe murderer!" they said.

Ha ha! Ha ha ha! This is absolutely hilarious to me; I mean really, an axe murderer? C'mon now, if I was going to kill Noelle, I'd use an ice pick.

Ha, ha, that's a joke of course; I'm kidding. Really, I'd just poison her with pills or something. That is, if I wanted to kill her.

OUR LET'S GO BOOKS RECOMMENDED a bakery called The Blue Pumpkin in town, which has a name that for me, initially conjured up an image of an old colonial European grandma-type of bake house with a pumpkin painted blue in the window display. When I finally found its new location, I discovered it was the exact opposite of that as it was the sleekest, most cosmopolitan-looking bakery cafe I've seen. The brainchild of a Frenchman with a Thai wife and a staff of English-speaking Cambodians, The Blue Pumpkin had moved from more humble digs into its new location of just four months.

No blue pumpkins were seen at all; in fact, nothing was in blue. All the walls, lounge furniture and pillows were in Apple Computer white (picture above) -- the color of iPods, iBooks, and Mac Minis -- and while that's nice, the best part of it was that mounted on the wall was a matching Apple Airport Extreme wireless internet hub to provide free wi-fi internet access to anyone with a laptop, Apple or otherwise. Wow, this is Cambodia? I thought. Just down the block, Siem Reap was your normal southeast Asian town with market stalls.

Excited, I ran back to tell Noelle, who was just as much an internet addict as myself. After lunching on our tasty take-out spicy chicken pita bread sandwiches, water, and Orangina in our room with HBO on, Noelle was feeling a bit better and I took her to The Blue Pumpkin. We ended our day of relaxation with a night of healthy yogurt shakes, delicious baby lobster and pumpkin soup (still not blue), and of course, free internet access. With our stomachs full and Blog entries up, we went back to the guesthouse that night, so that I could execute my plan.

"Here, take one of these," I said to Noelle, handing her a bottle of red pills with the label scraped off. I told her it was "medicine" for her cold.

With my trust, she took the bottle and ingested one, chasing it down with some water. Excellent, I thought. Ex-cellent. After that, my plan of the night was finally in motion...

...to just work on my laptop and hope Noelle would get better.