Island Hopping & GRO's!

It was sad to leave Boracay, I could've spent all my time there as the people, the energy and the scenery were all world class. However I was excited to get moving to experience the rest of The Philippines. We're off on an adventure which will take us through a multi island province called The Visayas. Our first journey took us through the large island of Panay. Lining the roads past all the bamboo hut villages we saw 1000's of people, some in tradtional outfits waving the Filippino flag. Security was high and soldiers with machine guns were a common site. After about an hour of driving though this I saw a series of police vehicles followed by a convoy. We quickly realized it was the president of The Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The bus slowed down people got excited, I was a bit confused as to what was going on and then like that it was over. I never actually got to see her through the dark tinted windows but I guess it was pretty cool. Too bad I didn't get to speak with her, I want to have a word with her about the Filipino diet.

It seems this is a fast food nation. One could be forgiven to think that all the people do here is eat, and a common complaint is that the people here would rather be eating than doing anything else! All that sounds great but the food here as I've mentioned before seems to consist of all meat and carbs with a serious lack of any sort of vegetables. Fast food outlets are everywhere and always full. Sometimes it feels like The Philippines is the 51st state of the USA oddly misplaced in South East Asia. The people here seem to embrace the good ol' USA fully. It's very common to see the USA flag on peoples shirts as you walk by, pedicabs decked out in the USA colors and even their money has the American flag on it. There's not a ton of tourists here so as we're greeted people often ask us if we're American and/or in the navy/military. Sully and I would often joke with the locals saying I was Canadian and he was American asking who he liked better. The response was always USA is number 1! haha I laugh at this because there seems to be so much anti-Americanism in the world, but you won't se it here.

Our first stop was the University city of Iloilo. As with many Filipino cities there's the town is rather drab and unexciting. Not too much to say about it. It was just a plain old city. We went to the local mall, tried to unsuccessfully find a restaraunt that had vegetables and wasn't fast food haha. It's a fairly pleasant place to be and of course the people are as friendly as ever. Always smiling! And a big plus is the taxicab drivers aren't employed by Satan as they are in Manila. At night there's a fairly modern area called Smallville. We partied there for a bit with the Uni students before heading home for a nice 4 hour sleep.

The next morning we knew we were heading for a long grueling journey but the reward at the end would was promised it would be worth it. Our next location Sipalay. This place is seriously off the beaten track. We took a one hour super ferry to the random town of Bocolod and then headed south down a very bumpy road on an extremely packed unconfortable bus with a suicidal maniac bus driver on the island of Negros to Sipalay. Arriving at the town 7 hours later we had to take a 20 minute pedicab down a dirt road to a river where we crossed an unstable bamboo bridge. Hiked for 30 minutes til we found a young boy with a canoe to get us past the 2nd river for 5 pesos (12 cents) each. We passed a remote bamboo hut village and then finally got to a little slice of paradise called Sugar beach. It's a beautiful whitish but more grey sandy beach with clear water and mountains on each side. It's about 300 metres long with just a few resorts on it. We were exhausted and booked the first place we ran into.

We quickly realized we were the only people there. It was completely quiet. The resort was really cool though. Owned by an eccentric Swiss couple who put so much effort into the place that you could spend all day looking around. It had themed multicoloured rooms. It's weird, like for example to turn on the light you might push a stapler on the wall or pluck a guitar string. It's posts would be full of old cell phones or calculators and places to wash your feet you might pull a string which sends the water through a contraption and....., hard to explain! But it's a fun place. The food here because of it's remoteness is about 4 times what you'd pay outside the area. As dark fell it got very quiet and we found ourselves in bed by 9pm. And then awake by 7am to perfect weather. We went for a swim and then had breakfast. Then it was 9am. There's NOTHING to do! NOTHING!! We read a book for an hour. Then we decided to make an early retreat. People dream of finding somewhere so remote, so quiet. It's hard to find, although the Philippines has an abundance. It's not really for me though. I can enjoy remoteness hiking in the mountains but even there you have things to do such as making a fire, cooking food, etc. here you just order from the restaraunt which of course is not so exciting. Other may disagree with me though as it is a postcard perfect retreat away from any sign of civilization.

Overall I would recomend this place called Sugar beach if you're looking for remoteness. To me I don't regret going but it was a tough ride in and out to get there. To get out we took a boat to Sipalay town. The place was empty and reminisant of an old western movie. We hopped on the bus for the difficult adventure to the next Univercity town called Dumaguette. The bus wasn't as packed but the driver was equally as suicidal! Dumaguette has a pleasant boardwalk along he ocean with large trees lining it. The nightlife was fun, albeit there is only 1 bar used by everyone. It consisted of te College/University crowd, and really old western men and their young Filipina girlfriends. A very common sight in the city.

After a couple days we took a 5 hour ferry to The Philippines 2nd largest city called Cebu. The downtown area was reminicent to a Mini Manila, and the town area is actually quite modern for a Filipino city. As you may have noticed before we don't do much in the cities, as there is really not much to or see except to experience the Filipino culture as a whole. We pretty much did the same thing here as the other cities.
1) Arrive, check in hotel 2) Look unsuccessfully for healthy food (This never happened, an I feel tha I am slowly dying) 3) Have a walk around the city 4) Enjoy the nightlife. We didn't take many pictures during these few days. The cities just aren't that picturesque. And rereading the blog it sounds like it may have been unexciting. Although it was uneventful at times it was still a great adventure and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The nightlife in Cebu is really good and there are plenty of places to choose from. he amosphere on the streets is pretty wild. Loud music bumps from lowrider cars and trucks with young people drinking alon side them having a good time. 100's of street kids, as young as 2 years old are everywhere begging for change. Late at night you can seemany of them sleeping on the side of the street. I saw on shaking uncontrolably, he was filthy it was really sad to see. Although the saddest thing I think we saw was as Sully and I were walking home late at night. A group of girls were eyeing us and as the passed by the y asked if we wanted some company. My guess is they were about 12 years old. It's not all bad here though. Poverty is just something you have to get used to when visiting a developing country. For the most part, most people live very normal lives. I really enjoyed this city.

The next stop for me is Manila. Back to the craziness. While Sully is going to Boracay for 10 days. Once again and finally I am travelling alone. I'e spent the first 2 and a bit months alone, and then the next 2 months with Sully. And now the next week or so alone before I finally head home to Vancouver. I'm not 100% sure which I prefer to travel, alone or with a friend. I guess a mix is best. Sully was always mad at me because I hink I'm a bit to adventurous and active to ay the least while he likes more to in his own words, vegetate. Nothing wrong with that of course, just different styles. Overall he was fun to travel with and we had plenty of great times. So once again I'm off on my own, however in Asia one is never alone.

I met up with a friend I kept in touch with that I met in Puerto Galera. She took me around the high end district of Makati and I got a better feel for it than last time. It's a beautiful area, full of people driving BMW's and shopping at Gucci. A far cry from the rest of what the Philippines is like. She told me the area I'm staying in called Makati/Ermita is really rundown, ghetto and dangerous and to be careful. However over the next few days I got a real feeling for it and began to like it. In my last Manila blog I described it as a shithole, and in some ways in reality it is. but in other ways it's got a certain charm to it. In some ways dare I say it......it's actaually nice. I guess after travelling in The Philippines for 3 weeks my standards have changed.

Just by fluke my friend from Vancouver is in Manila. We found out online that we're just staying just a few streets from eachother so naturally we met up. Richard is here on a Poker tournament and had all kinds of crazy stories about 1 million peso ($23 000 USD) bets they've been making, hanging with the presidents son, high rollers, mafia and so on haha. They're living the highlife in Manila while I'm living the ghetto life! haha I had hopes to go have fun at some fancy hotels mingling with the elite, rich and famous of Manila. However Richard is a cool down to earth guy and he just wanted to hang out and do normal stuff such as go drinking at the local bars. I took him to a bar near my hotels where the (in his words) "bad girls" hang out. 100's and 100's of them! In reality every bar in Manila is where the "bad girls" hang out, this one is just one where you can enjoy a drink without being aproached. The girls do live shows in bikinis on stage which are great to watch. It's nowhere as near as raunchy as in Canada since they don't get nude and most are terrible dancers. In some ways Manila is a sin city and others it's quite innocent. I really can't decide whether Manila is Hell on Earth or a developing modern city. I guess it's both. It has appauling poverty literally beside giant skyscraper luxury buildings. It's quite a site to see. I find myself giving away all my money half the time as I find it hard to see a Mother with 3 screaming babies begging for change. At this point in my trip I am literally counting pennies as I have literally run out of money, but when I look into their eyes $1.00 isn't gonna kill me in the long run.

My flight to Malaysia leaves from Clarke airport which is near the city of Angeles. The Lonleyplanet guidebook seems to refuse to give much info about this place except to describe it as a hellhole. It gives no maps or reference to any hotels except to say it's a joyless place full of 20 000 prostitutes. Naturally I was a bit nervous to show up there that night. Upon arriving everything was just fine. I found a more than respectable hotel which is actually a fancy resort with a pool etc and settled in. There's no budget options in this city but the $40 I spent was well worth it, as it is one of the nicer places I've stayed in in my entire 10 months of travelling over the last 2 years. Inside the pool I met 2 girls who agreed to show me around town. I kept asking myself who were these 2 girls? They must be pretty well off or rich to be staying in a place like this. Or are they bargirls and there men are the guests at the hotel? I didn't want to ask, it seemed rude. They told me there were a lot of GRO's in town while they laughed. GRO's stands for "Guest Relation Officers". This is what they call them here in The Philippines while elsewhere they may be called Prostitutes, Bargirls, etc

That night I met up with them and they took me to Fields avenue which consisted of literally well over 100 girlie bars and 1000's and 1000's of women. Women everywhere! Gorgeous ones, ugly ones, some with no teeth, some skinny, some fat, some old and some young. There must be at least 20 000 women. I didn't know places like this existed. It's really wild and really weird. With all these women there ar elike maybe at most 500 foreign guys there. The place is saturated but like the rest of Ther Philippines not much foreigners. It makes Manila (crazy!) look like Krabi (laid back). We first went to this bar where literally about 100 bikini clad women were on stage dancing. They all had numbers and you can order them from a menu just like a beer. It was a strange scene. At times it was sad to see the bored looking girls dance on stage waiting to be "ordered" And at other times they had some great dance routine that was actually entertaining.

I kept wondering why the girls would take me to a place like this unless they were GRO's themselves. They were loving the place, as we watched from a couch with a balcony view at the high end looking place. I guess it's really the ONLY thing to do in this crazy place. To be honest though I've been to crazier places in Thailand. Same Same but Different! Next they brought me to a regular nightclub where on the dancefloor it was literally me and 100's of other girls. It was great to have some friends because going in alone would be trouble but being with them I didn't get a 2nd look from the Guest Relations Officers (Love the name!) The girls suddenly had to go home so we left early. I had all these excuses in my head how I was going to ditch them if they were GRO's. I didn't need them. Could I have met the only 2 girls in Angeles who are not working girls? Just regular nice girls like the rest of the country willing to show someone around. Philippines is full of surprises! It's so easy here to meet people, and even easier to find someone willing to show you around.

I'm truely going to miss it here. I think it's my favorite country I've been to. Overall I had a ton of fun, the scenery is amazing and the people are truely something special. I can't wait to come back!

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