Much like my first trip to the Philippines, my second was anything but ordinary. To really do it justice I'd have to type several long blog entries, so in the name of injustice I'm cutting up the story and just posting the highlights. It started when this sex tourist in my row started talking to me on the flight. Out of politeness I replied. He gave me a story about being an Australian lawyer who owned ESL schools in three or four different countries. I only half-believed him, but he seemed to be familiar with Korea and the conversation was half-decent. On our way out of the plane, he gave me his business card with a Korean address and cell phone number. So I guess he wasn't a sex tourist.
So for the first time in five months I was in the same country as my girlfriend ( she's teaching high school kids for almost no money, and trying to get me to spend my life in the Philippines working for no money). We'd somehow managed to keep up an emotionally healthy relationship in spite of the distance. I think it goes without saying that the only thing I could do my first night back was drink beer with the guys.
The funniest thing about my second trip to the Philippines was that I didn't have a single whore ask me to marry her. Whether it was because I was with friends the entire time, because I knew where I was going all the time, because half the time I went to places too seedy for sex tourists, or because the look in my eyes told them I'd make an exception to the no-hitting-women rule if one of them tried to talk to me is something I'll never really bother trying to figure out. As with the 2008 Phillies, results are all that really matters.
I followed my Filipino friends around the night they went around singing Christmas carols for money. The caroling wasn't so much fun, but it was pretty fun going to Juliana's, the club that plays more Korean music than I've ever heard in a Korean club, and watching my buddy Marco strike out with a girl that didn't even realize he was hitting on her.
Christmas Eve 2008 was like every Christmas Eve would be in a perfect world. I spent the afternoon drinking dollar beers at a cockfight with my buddies Mark and Jovel, where some guy tried to sell me a rooster, then took an overcrowded van with my girl to the village of Balamban. It was night, the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 30 feet in front of you, and the van went through the mountains at speeds that would've been dangerous for that heap of scrap metal in the best of conditions. Balamban was a true third world Roman Catholic small town. The church there looked like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie, and the crowd at Mass was cultic. Since the ocean was just a few hundred yards away, we decided to stroll down to it.
I've never walked through a mine field, but it's probably not very different from that walk to the water. I didn't see anyone get hurt, but it's a miracle with the way those adolescents throw fireworks around. More than once I almost got hit. I love a roman candle fight every now and then, and even the time I got hit in the neck wasn't bad, but you don't throw fireworks out on a sidewalk while there's a crowd trying to use it. After that I had a couple of beers with her bro in a house in the middle of the jungle that doesn't have running water, before retiring underneath a mosquito net. Christmas Day was one of the most uneventful days I've ever had. I just ate a lot and enjoyed the weather.
The following afternoon we went to Bohol. In case anyone ever thinks about going to Bohol, here's my advice: the Western food tastes just like the Western food in America, the beer is cheap, and there's plenty to do. Just don't go alone, because almost all of the foreigners there are German divers who keep to themselves. The Chocolate Hills were picturesque, Alona Beach is nice, and some local stuck a tarsier ( tiny monkey ) on my arm and took my picture to get a tip. I don't know how illegal this was, but I know there were signs everywhere in English saying not to touch them, and when other people asked him to take their pictures with the tarsiers, he put them back on the tree and played dumb about it.
Because she was worried it would be hard for me to say goodbye, my girlfriend had the brilliant idea to make it easier on me by getting me wasted right before I got on the red-eye flight home. From what she's told me, I unintentionally pissed off an armed guard at a local fast food joint ( yeah guys, the Philippines is poor enough that fast food restaurants need guards with guns ). After getting to the airport, I passed out and woke up in a strange, dimly-lit bus that have a cavey feel to it. The only thing weirder than waking up in the middle of the night on a bus you don't remember getting on is when you are told by a lady who works on the bus that you can't get off because you're in the air. I'm pretty sure I'll never understand how I made it through airport security, took out my contacs and put them in their case, and even thought to stick my glasses in my pocket before nodding off, but couldn't tell the difference between an airplane and a bus.
