Wanderlust Heaven!

Last couple days in Manila were anti-climactic. Recuperated from the surprisingly debilitating round of golf – my hands were raw and blistered for days afterward. Had a couple massages to ease the back and brain…took care of onward travels arrangements, including figuring out how to get cash to a hotel owner named Horst in Boracay – solution: go to a branch of his bank and deposit cash into his account. Took a couple hours to take care of that, but hey – I do have time these days…

Heard from my friend Bob, my Burma travel pal who resides in Bangkok. He left Thailand late last year to go to Vietnam for a while, but then figured out how to get around new Thai visa obstacles and is now back in Bangkok for the time being. He went to his friend Jan’s wedding to a Thai woman, up in the rural provinces of Isan. Sent me the pics – looks like it was a real down-home Thai event.

Had dinner with my ex-colleague David, his wife Cai, and their friend Bettina – who’s a great person to talk with, she’s a serious diver and told me all about the best spots in the RP. She also works for a pharma company and had some helpful insights for me there. Enjoyed catching up with David & Cai, they’re doing well and are the proud parents of a baby girl.

Has been getting warmer in Manila – summer’s coming on. I dislike being in the city during summer – you need to dress reasonably well and also shave, two things I don’t do well these days. Still, for the 6 weeks I was in Manila, I didn’t even get through a tiny bottle of shaving cream. But was looking forward to taking off for the beaches…where shaving is all but unknown and dressing up means wearing a shirt with some sort of collar. I can do that. The Japanese really know how to do summer, regardless of their environs. Sliding ricepaper doors to absorb the heat and let the breeze in…tatami mats to let the room breathe…kimono and yukata, daytime or night, to keep the bod cool. It’s fantastic to walk around in Japan during a summer night and see a few people (esp. young ladies) in kimono/yukata…you feel that the old days haven’t truly gone for good. Other cultures don’t seem to adapt that well, or should I say so stylishly, to the onset of summer. You can walk around Shanghai in the heat – and from what I’ve seen, the principal form of adaption for males is to go shirtless. Lovely. Too bad women don’t go that route.

Final night in Manila was fairly random. Meant to have dinner with a friend at Café Havana in Remedios Circle. While walking there, noticed that my fave bar Ciboney was open – on a Sunday evening. Unusual. Made it to Café Havana – closed for the night. Huh. Sent a text to my friend Maya and told her to meet me instead at Ciboney. No prob. Had a drink there, and that launched a long evening. Next: huge Japanese meal of shabu-shabu and the usual starters/accompaniments. Then: Nirvana Disco for some live music and dancing. Finally: Music21 for karaoke and further drinking. Ugh…had to get up at 7 the next morning to travel to Puerto Galera, barely made it. Head was pounding till lunchtime.

There are two easy ways to get from Manila to Puerto Galera. Each is a bus-boat combination, taking approx. 4 hours. Characteristically, they are offered by two hotels that are one block apart in Malate. Chose one randomly and got the tix. It’s amazingly easy to get to PG – can’t believe I never made it there before. The road to the port of Batangas – where you catch the boat – is laughingly called the South Luzon Superhighway – it’s hardly that – but still, it seemed the road trip was over before it started. Not something you can say about many journeys hereabouts.

The boat from Batangas to Puerto Galera takes an hour. Very relaxed. Beers were being sold (it was 11 a.m.) and consumed with alacrity. Lots of old geezers and young Filipinas heading down together – seems that’s a regular thing to do. Remind me to try that when I’m 60 or so. The entry into the harbor of Sabang town (Puerto Galera is an actual town, a bit around the cove, but ‘Puerto Galera’ applies to a long stretch of beach and Sabang and other places have stolen PG town’s thunder over the years) is an eyeful – one of the more captivating harbors I’ve ever seen, low-key, but outstanding – see for yourself:

Perhaps not as stunning as some of the Greek island harbor towns, but quite nice for a tropical setting. Took a small pumpboat over to my hotel, the Deep Blue Sea Inn in Small Laguna Beach. Could’ve walked, the towns are very close together and you can get nearly anywhere in 10 minutes. Very cool. Checked into my room – which has a stunning view, when I wake up and walk outside it feels like I’ve stepped into the heavenly third of a Bosch triptych – here’s what I mean:

Puerto Galera is one of the big diving areas in Asia-Pacific. If you don’t like to dive, you don’t belong here. The beaches are modest – Big Laguna Beach used to have a fine beach, supposedly, but a typhoon last year washed away half of it. The beaches are basically a place to moor boats and walk from place to place (i.e., bar to bar). And of course, the hotels/resorts all built as close to the surf as possible, so you can hardly stretch out. But for diving, dining, drinking, etc. this is a classic place. And I’m kicking myself for not coming before…my only issue thus far is that the place is by no means a secret – every diver in Asia knows it well. Anyway…

My friend Rita in Manila told me to try Asia Divers, she’s been diving with them for years and came to PG just the other week. Sounded like a solid outfit, and given that there are dozens of operators here, I needed a tip. Booked a series of 10 dives with Asia Divers, and have been working through those the past 3+ days. As I sit here banging away on the laptop, I’m between my 3rd and 4th dive of the day. In the past that would have worried me – precisely how much nitrogen is working its way through my tissues? – but now, no problem. That’s because I have a new dive watch, a Suunto Mosquito, which I mentioned a few entries back. The thing is brilliant – tracks all the key parameters, and tells me when I need to ascend to avoid decompression sickness risk – a rather critical threshold to avoid tripping. It’s given me a new lease on diving and a better understanding of how the biology works too.

Have seen some random sights during my 9 dives thus far, including:

-The largest turtle – maritime or terrestrial – I’ve ever seen. The monster was considerably larger than my nephew, swimming about freely, consuming a sea cucumber, and giving a ride to two remora on its back.

-Something tissue-like, ripping in the current – bright red, much like a tablecloth. I really must get up to speed on my marine biology…

-A massive sea snake – looked like an industrial hose, with a strange mottled skin pattern. -On a night dive, when the mix of creatures can be very different, a small octopus. Hadn’t come across one of those before. That night, had a nice plate of grilled calamares…

-Lots of little shrimps and seahorses.

We also did a few wreck dives. The wrecks were deliberately sunk for diving, so no cool WW2 Japanese wrecks, but still good fun. Swam through a couple, all the while recalling the book Shadowdivers, in which a father/son team winds up perishing from decompression sickness after the son gets entangled inside a Nazi U-boat that their friends had discovered some time before. Get the book – fascinating stuff, and I don’t say that merely because old friend Ray’s wife is the editor at Random House. Made me extremely cognizant as I swam through not to get tangled up in wiring, etc.

Sabang has many good restaurants, the semblance of a real small town (although anyone can see it’s all there because of the diving), and a rocking nightlife. I don’t quite know how alcohol affects the physiology as it relates to diving – but no one here seems to care, the bars are packed until early morning, then everyone gets a bit of sleep before plunging to the depths. Incredible. I’ve been a good boy – having dinner with people I meet here, not staying out too late. Asia Divers had a nice dinner the other night – about 40 people there, instructors, students, and divers like me. Met a random gang of English divers – 7-8 of them – who came over with their London dive club. Sat next to them during dinner, plowed through a couple bottles of Chilean red, and then bounced around a few bars till 2 a.m. or so. I recall trying my gypsy dancing moves with the one Spaniard in the gang – everyone was crowded round and she gave me passing marks. Mostly for sympathy, I suspect.

One of the British divers is a gay fellow who apparently made millions in real estate in the UK, and now seems to split his time across 3-4 countries, largely to avoid paying taxes. Couldn’t remember if he’s now in Switzerland or Italy – but anyway, next week he’ll move on. He’s a switched-on fellow – has a point of view on nearly everything, including the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. He was going on about how no one in the press or politics ever talks about the underlying demographic issue at play, namely how the ‘white European Jews’ are taking land from the ‘brown Asian Arabs.’ Supposedly our two people sprang from the same root, i.e. Big Daddy Abe, but years of wandering through the Russian/Euro backwaters led to a fair bit of gene extension and whitening of the epidermis. And so, in this fellow’s mind, the Arabs are most pissed-off about having their land stolen by white people – and that there was little or no tension before 1947 or so. I have my issues with this one – first, there were incidents and massacres well before WW2 and Israel’s founding. Our two people have a long and sad history together. Second, Israel has been heavy-handed in many ways, for many reasons, and if I were on the other side I think that would be top of mind. But it’s good to hear a fresh perspective and I think he’s not entirely off-base here…

Why are gay males generally so switched-on? When I was in Goa, a gay Brit named Matt was down the hall, and he had something to say about everything. He was a photographer and seemed to have attended every major event in London in 2006. Very interesting conversation partner – although my ear started turning to cauliflower after a few hours of banter (mostly coming from him).  Perhaps it’s simply the ‘minority affliction’ – when you’re in the minority (religion, race, sexual orientation) you often feel the need to try harder.  My father certainly beat that into our heads.  But another lesson comes to mind, particularly given our Jewish creed – and that’s to mind your tongue and don’t stand out too much.  Not an uplifting message, for sure – but with a bit of subtlety you can make it all work just fine.

I mentioned that I went for a night dive – that was last evening. I was joined by another member of the UK contingent, a cool female painter from London. She did 4 dives/day almost every day, and I assigned her the sobriquet ‘Nitrogen Laura,’ as her body tissues were probably bubbling forth with N2 by the end of her time in PG.  Very good diver – super-prepared and organized. The mark of the city is upon her – whereas I probably appear to have just emerged from a Moroccan hash den and thrown on my BCD (buoyance control device) and tank. 

This was just my second night dive, and it was good fun.  Saw a funny little octopus scurrying around the bottom.  And Laura pointed out some tiny fluorescent creatures that you can see if you wave your arms around.  Again, must bone up on my marine biology…

What else? Had lunch at Capt’n’ Gregg’s today. Had a San Miguel Light in advance of dive #2 for the day. The beer came in a ‘huggie’ or whatever the hell they’re called – they’re a ‘beer glove’ that keeps ‘em cold. It felt lumpy and perhaps damaged – until I lifted my eyes from my book and noticed that the lumps were in fact breasts. Nice. The book I’m now reading is The Scar by China Mieville. Discerning Slog readers will recall that I completed Mieville’s previous book (and first in the trilogy) Perdido Street Station en route to Manila. Finally got round to book #2 – before doing so I wanted to plow through some fatter/heavier books I had with me, to avoid lugging them around the RP. Those books were: The Japan Journals by Donald Richie; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; The 48 Rules of Power by Robert Greene; and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. All quite good, all worth reading. Am still early days on The Scar, but it’s already shaping up nicely and I continue to be impressed by Mieville’s creativity and energetic writing.

Have woken up with some bad mosquito bites past few days. Finally went hunting yesterday – the good thing was that the mossies had nailed me and were fat and slow. Smacked the first one against the wall – you should have seen the blood (presumably mine) that stained the wall. Got two more that night, and one more today. All heavy and slow. Given what it seems they’ve sucked out of me, I might need a blood transfusion soon. But am not sure what blood type I have – need to find that out and put it on my ‘SOS Card’ in my wallet. Do you know your blood type? Probably not, huh? Well, the Japanese and other Asians are crazy about this stuff and they have an entire horoscope-type system based on it. I know, very odd.

The cook here at the hotel has promised us some ceviche-style local raw fish for dinner tonight. I’m generally not that keen on raw fish in the RP…but might humor him and try it out. A German regular here, Michael, has had it several times and swears by it. I guess I’ll trust this German…oh my!

Over and out – behave yourselves, dear readers. Enticement to come out and join me – a sunset shot from my hotel – taken 10 minutes ago.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 4:13 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.