The Philippine Island Adventure, 1995            (c) Robert Hale 1996

Every trip is special for its own unique reasons. China was special because it was the first exotic trip I'd ever done. Nepal was special because it was the best Christmas ever. Peru was special because there is no view on Earth like the sight of the early morning clouds alternately hiding and revealing the ruins of Machu Picchu. Malawi and Zambia were special because of the African sunsets and the incredible profusion of game.
And the Philippines...

Chapter 1

If clouds had body language the one above Dubai Airport would have been rolling up its sleeves and spitting on its hands. The sky was the dull grey of old lead and sheets of rain lanced down diagonally to ricochet knee-high from the water blackened tarmac. During our descent Emirates Airlines had shown us the latest Dubai promotional video. It promised the finest sports facilities in the Middle East, a shoppers' paradise with a cornucopia of bargains, five star luxury in every hotel and a guaranteed nine hours sunshine three hundred and sixty five days a year. When we had stepped from the plane it was pouring down. Now, an hour later as we huddled on the transit bus scant yards from the plane that would take us on to the Philippines it was still pouring down. Outside a group of Emirates employees, trying very hard to look smart as the rain soaked into their uniforms staining the crimson to a darker maroon, were forming an archway of umbrellas so that we might cross in relative dryness. I sprinted from the bus and up the iron steps. All the time I was thinking how thankful I was that this was only a stopover on my journey and not my destination. In the Philippines it would be hot and dry.
If clouds had a sense of humour the one above me would have been laughing its head off.

According to the official survey the Philippines consist of 7107 Islands. Of these roughly 2000 are inhabited although only about 500 are larger than, for the sake of example, Bilston Town Centre. The largest of the islands though is Luzon which at 104,683 square kilometres is the size of Ireland and Wales together. It is on Luzon that the capitol city, Manila, is located. Metro Manila was formed in 1975 from the amalgamation of 17 towns and communities and, at the last census, had a population of over ten million.
It is a city of startling contrasts. Officially a Roman Catholic country the money changers in Manila, and there are thousands of them, are without exception Islamic. At one end of Manila's social spectrum there are millionaires who live in palatial mansions while at the other there is the Tondo - a grim slum of a shanty town which runs for mile after hideous mile parallel to the South Superhighway and the railroad tracks, and houses one and a half million people in poverty and filth. In the centre of the city, completely surrounded by some of the least lovely modern concrete developments I have ever seen is Intramuros, a walled city of beautiful mock Spanish-Mediteranean buildings and narrow winding streets. Lavishly decorated restaurants serving a bewildering variety of world cuisine sit cheek by jowl with branches of the Jollibee - a sort of down market Filipino fast food joint.
We arrived at night about a week before Christmas and everywhere were signs of civic festivity - enormous illuminated stars hanging above the street, multicoloured flashing snowflakes four foot across at the airport looking for all the world like the displays on demented slot machines, giant snowmen painted on buildings in a country that has never even seen snow, Santa Clauses and Reindeer by the sleighful. Our route wound from the airport through the city past the seedy looking twin fun fairs of Star City and Boom na Boom which were illuminated with a desperate garishness apart from one of Boom na Boom's stranger looking attractions - a futuristic fortress that would have been at home in a Mad Max film with a sign announcing it as 'The Dark Star'. Both fairgrounds were spookily absent of revellers.
At the hotel, the Las Palmas on Mabini Street, we were all too tired from the eighteen hour flight to do more than check in, get our instructions for morning, order wake-up calls and fall straight into our beds. Tomorrow the adventure would begin properly. For now there was just the roar of the air conditioning and the rumble of traffic to send us gently into our slumbers.
There are probably few places in the world that look more forsaken and forlorn than a twenty four hour a day bar and grill at eight O'clock in the morning. Rosie's Aloha Hawaiian Bar and Restaurant was no exception. At that hour it was almost deserted. A couple of tired looking waitresses hovered around us taking our breakfast orders without enthusiasm. A solitary drunk was asleep on a stool with his head resting on the bar. Empty and in daylight the place was dispiriting and glum. The small stage in the corner had amplifiers and instruments piled at the back but without musicians looked rather sad. The posters, rather bizarrely of Wakiki Beach and Honolulu, seemed embarrassingly out of place. The empty beer stained tables were mute monuments to a place that was momentarily separated from its proper time and function.
I examined the menu which seemed to have been put together in random order with pages of drinks interspersed with dinner menus, bar snack menus and breakfast menus. When I found this last option I discovered there were plenty of choices. There was the American breakfast - two eggs, fried potatoes and bacon. There was the Mexican breakfast - two eggs, salsa and tortillas. There was the Australian breakfast - two eggs, vegemite and fish and chips. After careful consideration I decided that as there was no English breakfast the American one was the better part of valour. I looked around making snap assessments of the group without any particular rational basis. Jim I had already discovered to be a Texan with a quiet slow voice that made him sound like, well like a Texan.His friend Sal hadn't said anything much but he looked like Troy Tempest, a clean cut All American Boy. Then there was Sally, bright and lively and outspoken even this early and after an eighteen hour flight and only a couple of hours sleep. Allison I had met briefly at Heathrow. She had a slight build and short dark hair and a quiet personality. I liked her right away. At the other end of the table there was Arthur who I had also already met at Heathrow. There were lots of others but before I could make my snap judgements breakfast was over and we were on our way.

We took a public bus for Batangas which is a port in the South of Luzon and is several hours away along the South Super Highway. I passed the time in a mixture of conversation with Jim, looking out of the window and reading P.J.O'Rourke's 'All The Troubles In The World'. Jim was, like almost everyone on this sort of trip, extremely well travelled. He also painted such a glowing picture of various parts of the United States that for the first time since the Florida Fiasco I found myself thinking about visiting it again. P.J. O'Rourke on the other hand alternately fascinated and appalled me with his blend of humorously and cogently argued and hideously plausible fascism. I couldn't tell whether he intended to be serious or not so that whenever his latest defence of pollution or totalitarianism or whatever started to irritate me I took the option of gazing at the view.
We passed through an endless sequence of almost identical towns, the sort of places that look as if they were made from the debris when all of the real places had been finished. Buildings were jerry-built of wood, concrete and odd pieces of corrugated metal. Occasionally they gave way to more substantial, if no prettier, constructions. There was a half built building which a sign claimed to be a College of Accountancy. In another, completely empty, plot a similar sign declared
    "On this Site Will Rise the Saint Thomas Medical Centre".
In themselves the towns seemed to consist mainly of Doctors, Dentists and Clinics mixed in with Auto Repair Shops with yards full of rusty gas cylinders. There was a difference between these towns and others I have visited in similar parts of the world which was the greenness. After six weeks of constant rain, which was still continuing now in a constant oppressive drizzle, everywhere was lush and verdant instead of orange, dry and dusty.
In Lipa City there was a drive through McDonalds at which we turned off the Super Highway and went along a winding uphill road. As we ascended, it became ever more twisting and simultaneously lost whatever Tarmac covering it had ever had. Much of it had been washed away completely and in places teenagers stood on the points of the bends signalling to traffic to come ahead or stop to prevent collisions. Eventually we reached the outskirts of Batangas and ground to a halt in the heavy traffic.
Batangas is the provincial capital and the point of departure for the ferry to Puerto Galera on Mindoro. It is a largish industrial zone which the Philippine Government was trying to develop into the centre of a greater industrial zone. There were plans to extend the South Super Highway all the way from Manila to Batangas. To my eye it had the look of having been thrown together hastily about ten minutes ago and of being likely to fall down again in ten minutes time. As the bus made its painfully slow way to the harbour there was plenty of time to see Batangas in all its glory. It seemed strange to me that even here there were buildings with painted signs outside advertising courses in Wordstar, Windows, Quatro Pro and a host of other familiar computer products.
At the harbour we boarded the Si-Kat ferry, a trimaran vessel, that runs the route to Puerto Galera. The rain had stopped although it was still overcast and dull and we were soon approaching our destination through the beautiful Batangas Channel which takes you between a series of emerald islands with bamboo and palm huts and eventually leaves you in the town's beautiful natural harbour. The harbour itself is filled with bangkas, unseaworthy looking boats resembling canoes stabilised by long bamboo crosspieces ending in struts, parallel to the hull which lie at the waterline. In use these boats are surprisingly stable as the crossbeams act in much the same way as a tightrope walker's pole and the parallel struts skim the surface of the water keeping the boat upright. The come in every conceivable size from tiny one man vessels to large and relatively luxurious passenger craft.
The other ubiquitous form of transport in the islands is the Jeepney and we had our first encounter with one of these almost as soon as we disembarked. They are a kind of stretched jeep and look about as road worthy as the bangkas look seaworthy. They are inevitably painted and decorated in the most garish fashion imaginable. They usually have slogans such as "In God We Trust" or "Have Mercy On Us Miserable Sinners" or "The Fear Of The Lord Is The Beginning Of Wisdom" featured somewhere prominently on them to further terrify their already frightened passengers.
Our Jeepney was to take us to Encenada Beach., about one and a half kilometres out of town along deeply rutted and muddy tracks. Inside the uncomfortable vehicle the roof was decorated with glued on Toblerone packets and empty yoghurt cartons. We bounced our way up one side of a hill then down the other hanging on to our seats with a dogged determination that would turn into a sort of fatalism as the weeks passed without any serious transport mishap.
Encenada turned out to be a hotel resort of a reasonably clean if basic standard. We stood around on the veranda drinking coconut milk from green gourds and waiting to check in. The view out over the beach was splendid in spite of the intermittent drizzle and, after dumping my things in the small but serviceable bedroom, I went out for a swim. In the water the algae caused a constant stinging sensation like thousands of repeated tiny electric shocks. I swam out until the warm coastal water met a sharply colder cross current and then lazily trod water and swam around in aimless circles for a while. When I got bored with that I swam back to the beach and fell asleep on one of the sun beds until the cooling weather woke me up and forced me indoors.
Next day started with more travelling. Leaving the bulk of our luggage behind at the hotel we waded out to the large yellow bangka moored just off the beach and climbed aboard to sail to Puerto Galera where we transferred to two much smaller bangkas that were to take us to the beach on the western coast of Mindoro where our Mangyan guides would meet us and our initial two day trek would begin.
The beach, when we reached it, was a long curving strip between the ocean and the jungle. It was empty of people apart from us and the small group of Mangyans who were waiting, although further along a number of bangkas were drawn up above the high water line. There was also a small group of buildings where food and drink could be purchased. Our local man was Willy who introduced us to the tribesmen who were to be guides, cooks and general helpers for us. They all looked about nine years old although Willy told me later that the youngest one was sixteen and the oldest thirty five.
There are more than fifty thousand Mangyan tribesmen living on Mindoro which has a dense interior jungle which enables them to protect their privacy. They were formerly a coastal tribe but, a peace loving people, they retreated to the hills when other settlers came. Like most of the Indians of the Philippines they are a physically small people which enhances their innocent childlike appearance. They stood at the start of a path into the trees while Willy introduced them and we instantly forgot their names. One of them was introduced to us as being the chief of their particular sub-tribe and another was bizarrely introduced as being our coconut specialist.
When the introductions were done we started off along an easy broad path that ran into the forest roughly paralleling a river. Initially it was a pleasant stroll with the forest only sporadically thickening and with many large open areas of rice-paddies. Very occasionally the path became a little narrower and steeper and slick with mud. In a couple of places I threw my Sports Sandals down the slopes and went barefoot to get an easier purchase. Alex, our tour leader, had told us that the terrain was suitable for trainers, sandals and even flip-flops but there were a couple of places where I felt that barefoot or fully-booted were the only genuinely sensible options with nothing in between being suitable. Nevertheless when we reached the river I was thankful that I had brought the Sports Sandals with me. Although at this crossing it was only up to knee height it was still fast flowing over some sharp and slippery stones. We crossed it easily and continued along the path which was now weaving between the widely spaced coconut palms. Shortly after the river we paused for a refreshment break and discovered exactly why our 'coconut expert' was so named. He literally ran up the side of a vertical palm trunk and started to hack away at the coconuts with a machete. As they dropped like bombs to the ground the others dodged in and gathered them up. They set about topping and tailing them with their knives and offered the flesh around to eat and the holed gourds to drink from.
The milk had the watery oily consistency that coconut milk always has but the flesh was unlike any I have eaten before. The coconuts were green and barely ripe and the texture of the fruit was rather slimy. It didn't really taste of anything. While we ate, with Willy's aid as a translator, the Mangyans answered questions about their lives. We found out that the Mangyans are subdivided into the Alangan, the Batangan, the Buhid, the Hunanoo, the Iraya and the Ratagnan which are then further divided into many small tribes living separately in the jungles. They survive as mainly agricultural communities. Only the men from one of these tribes, never the women or children, ever came down to act as guides for the tourists. The village that they came from was several kilometres further into the jungle than we would be going but unencumbered by our lack of woodcraft they could get there in a few hours. One question, posed by Sal, did have him stumped.
    "Who does their hair styling?"
I noticed for the first time that all of them were neatly groomed. A hasty consultation determined that they did indeed use scissors bought in the towns and that the actual job was done by the women of the village.
After the break we went on making several more river crossings at faster and deeper fords each time. In a clearing we came to a broken down bamboo and palm structure which Alex told us would be our 'hotel' for the night. First however we had a couple more rivers to cross to get to the spot for our picnic lunch. These two crossings proved to be rather worse than the ones we had done so far, the second one necessitating wading more than waist deep through some quite rough water.
The picnic site was a small clearing on one side of a large and fairly calm pool. Downstream the water quickened as a series of boulders forced it through ever narrower channels and upstream a fierce cross current indicated the presence of rapids but here the water was almost still and ideal for swimming. After my lunch of sandwiches and a roast potato I hesitated for a while but finally decided to go for a swim. Some of the others had already gone, heading further upstream and then clambering out to climb up along the rocky bank of the rapids. I chose the easier option of simply going back and forth across the calm section. The water, though cool, was not chilling and the fact that the light drizzle that had accompanied us through the morning had become markedly sharper merely made the experience seem more vivid. Once I ventured into the faster water but the cross current was even fiercer than I had anticipated and I allowed it to push me round and back into the pool.
All too soon it was time to retrace our steps to camp. The rain had made the water even faster and we chose a different crossing place, further downstream. The water was now chest deep in places and tugged hard enough to threaten to break our perilous grip on the rocks. The sure-footed Mangyans skipped lightly across, helping us with their surprisingly strong grips and relieving us of our rucksacks which they carried effortlessly above their heads. Wherever I have been around the world the natives always make me look and feel like some great lumbering and clumsy beast that should never be let within a hundred miles of a wilderness.
At camp another group had gone on ahead and were hard at work restoring the first shelter and building a second one as this group was larger than previous ones that had used the camp. They worked with a quick efficiency. First they rammed four long bamboo corner pieces into the ground, jack-hammering them in with bare hands until they were wedged fast. To these, at about ten inches from the ground they attached four more pieces to form the edges of the floor. Further poles were laid across these forming the floor itself. A similar arrangement but with layers of palm leaves formed the roof. The whole thing was lashed together with tough and fibrous strips of bark, stretched and twisted into a kind of twine. I tried to break a piece and found that it was strong enough to resist my best efforts.
In one corner of the camp, left over from last trip, was table and benches also lashed together from pieces of bamboo. This was our dining room. The ever helpful Mangyans set about constructing a shelter around it as by now the rain had become a steady downpour. We sat around in the shelters watching the water. Thousands of fireflies, undeterred by the bad weather, filled the air with shifting spectral lights.
Another group of Mangyans was preparing our supper - goat stew and chicken soup - both animals having been despatched with the usual Eastern chain saw delicacy. It was already dark and by the time we were ready to eat the rain was lashing in at the sides of our makeshift restaurant. After dinner we chose our spots in the shelters, unrolled our sleeping bags and tried to sleep. I found myself dozing in short bursts. The rain kept on getting faster and harder and more and more of it found its way through the roof until all of us were drenched. I lay in an increasingly sodden rucksack trying not to think about the fact that, allowing for the time difference, my work's Christmas party was now in full swing.
When I did sleep I found myself plagued by a recurring dream in which I woke up and the sun was shining and everyone was laughing and getting ready for the day. Every time I dreamed it, it fooled me, and every time I awoke to a reality that was worse than when I had fallen asleep.
By the light of a torch I checked my watch. It was not yet midnight.

About two hours before dawn I had had enough. My sleeping bag was reduced to little more than a soaking sponge and I decide that I would be better sitting in waterproofs in the remains of the dining room. I stood around waiting for first light and chatting with others who had made the same choice. Sal was sitting on the table under a large umbrella. Alan and Bob were standing at the corner of one of the huts smoking. I stood talking to David and his wife Margaret. They came, I discovered, from Kidderminster and although widely travelled had not done this kind of trip before. I admitted that even though I had, this accommodation was probably the most basic I had ever been in.
When dawn eventually came, creeping in slowly like thick honey spreading on a plate, the Mangyans began to prepare breakfast. Those few not engaged in this held an impromptu catapult contest firing rocks at a can suspended from a bush about twenty metres away. They were all pretty accurate, their chief Bina being the most accurate - hitting six times in seven shots and only missing the seventh by a whisker. A few of us had a go but once again our efforts were laughable by comparison.
Breakfast was what Alex had described as 'Mangyan Muesli'. It consisted of strips of banana and coconut boiled in coconut milk and served with plates of fried aubergine for the more adventurous palate.
Rather than carry down my sleeping bag which, now waterlogged, weighed about twelve pounds more than when I had carried it up, I gave it to the Mangyan chief as a gift and then changed into swimming trunks and a T-shirt and packed everything else into waterproof plastic bags in my rucksack.

The initial part of our trip retraced yesterday's steps. Now however, after seventeen more hours of torrential rain the river crossing was so much worse than before. The water had gone from a mere raging torrent to something much worse. Eventually we made what was promised to be our last crossing and stopped for a break. The Mangyans scampered up the rocks at the side of the water and gave an impromptu diving exhibition before we set off again.
Now the character of the walk had changed and took us alongside muddy rice paddies and once up a steep and slippery mud slope which could be climbed only with the aid of a rope. Descending the more gentle slope on the other side brought us into a meadow from which an easy and flat half an hour saw us on the beach which we then followed to return to our original starting point. Here we had a rather unpalatable lunch of fish head soup before we went back to Encenada by bangka and Jeepney and a replay of two days ago with a little swimming, a little relaxing and a buffet supper.

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