Easter Parade on Siquijor

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There was an Easter parade when I was in town and all the natives followed the effigy of Christ into the church. It was packed.


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Even Jesus has a cell phone.

Travel By Bike Around Siquijor

Siquijor Philippines

These are pictures of the road going across the island with my trusty motorcycle. After Manila, it was wonderful to be on this beautiful island. This video
really shows the island in all its beauty.





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This family was sitting outside their house as I rode by so I stopped. A grandmother and her daughter and grand-kids. The youngest girl's name was Juniper.


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Going around the island by motorcyle, these were just some of the beautiful beaches where I stopped and swam.




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The bike was available for just eight dollars a day. The island is only 103km in circumference and you can either go around it, or across it. Crossing it I went through Bandilaan Park, which is a very special place, and visited Cambuhagay Falls. Everybody was so friendly, waving and shouting hello when they saw me. I stopped and talked with some teenagers in the park and when I asked to take their picture they all screamed and jammed themselves into the picture. Philippinos are just beautiful people, as you can see by their smiles.



As I continued on a group of people flagged me down at the outskirts of their tiny village and waved me towards guess what - a karaoke machine stashed under somebody's storage roof. Karaoke - it's like a chronic rash. They handed me the song list and I belted out Take Me Home Country Roads and So Happy Together, for which they loudly cheered, patted me on the back and handed me a glass of beer. I bought them all a round from the beer stand that was in one of the huts and they really clapped then.
I stayed for another brew and then moved on.




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Although this tree was 100 years old it was massive, as you can see by the
picture. I had to get these kids to come over and stand in front of it because
nobody was around when I pulled up.







“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal, or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

Shamans of Siquijor - the Philippines

I was lucky to be on Siquijor during the Lenten season, a time for the gathering and preparation of healing materials by the traditional healers and their helpers. I visited one shaman's house where people were busy laying out moss, bark, twigs, leaves, berries, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and grass and mixing them in large vats with juice and water to create bottles of medicine that they sold for a small fortune. A BBC reporter just happened to be at the house at the same time interviewing the shaman. Sorcerers, shamans, witches and traditional healers use prayer wheels, incantations and these medicinal herbs to cure illness, heal wounds and also to collect debts. There's a documentary that you can watch on this: Shamans of Siquijor, The Healers. These type of healers have nothing in common with psychic surgery, where the dude rips out carcinomas with his bare hands, along with half your intestines, and declares you free of disease.





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Bottle of medicine for twenty-five dollars.

Ferry to Siquijor - Philippines

I took a ferry from Dumaguete City out to the island of Siquijor, one of the Philippines smallest provinces. It was close, just a one-hour ferry ride to an island that doesn't get visited by too many people, most of whom go to the totally commercial and over-priced Boracay. Boracay is beautiful, as most of the Philippines is, but I prefer the less beaten down paths.
"Siquijor is considered by many Filipinos to be a mystical island, full of witches and other supernatural phenomena," and for that reason many Philippinos won't spend the night on the island.

"Lightning laced the sky in white fire.
The earth wailed in the painful, joyous sound of new life.
The ground shuddered, the seas raged.
The churning waters parted and from the ocean's womb was born an island of rock and fire.

Thus did, according to legend, the island of Siquijor emerge from the sea."

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The beach in front of my hostel looking both ways. It was almost deserted. I was only one of three people staying at the Norwegian Dream. You could also snorkel, the water was clear and beautiful and wasn't too cold. I could stay there for hours and see no one.



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These sweet peas came to visit me everyday at the hostel and we went swimming together. They lived up the road and didn't get to speak with foreigners too often. I fell in love with their pig, he kinda reminded me of a boyfriend I once had... something about those eyes.




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This is the view from my room at the Norwegian Dream, named for a Norwegian shipper that built the place with his Filipina wife. She was a character, addicted to karaoke, and I discovered that combined with half a gallon of vodka and a half-decent song list, karaoke was a darn good afternoon's amusement, that is, if you could wrestle the mic out of her hand for a go.




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I have to add a picture of Maddie and Jess because they were so incredible. The first questions from the natives are always the same - "Are you alone?" - a look of stifled pity when I say yes followed by - "Are you lonely?" I've been asked these two questions over and over again no matter where I go. I should get a t-shirt printed up with the words "Not Lonely Yet!" or perhaps it should read:
"Hungry. Angry. Lonely. Tired."



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A Lucky Break

One night, I went to the town of Siquijor, about five kilometres from The Norwegian Hotel where I was staying, but I didn't know there were no taxis available for the return trip.

I walked up to the main road that circled the island and waited at a pickup point for taxis, when three young men ran after me and asked if I needed a ride to my place. They told me there were no taxis at night. I was hesitant, but I had no ride, and it was too far to walk along the dark road. I asked who would drive me on the bike and one man pointed to one of the others. He looked either stoned or drunk to me. I wasn't sure I'd take the ride, but I haggled with him over the price nevertheless.

All of a sudden, two men with a young baby drove up on a bike and the guy on the back said, 'You're not going with them are you?' as he dismounted and stared at the others.
'Why, is there a problem?' I asked, but he didn't say any thing more. I looked at the guy driving, who had a baby tucked in front of him on the gas tank and said, 'You drive me then?'
As I got on the bike, I asked him to leave the baby with his pal and come back, it would be safer, but he said he was going home.

He was super talkative, and even with the baby dangerously perched in front of him, he drove with one hand waving around, as he kept looking around at me. I cringed and worried about the baby and hoped we made it. 

I arrived safely, but I just shook my head and sighed as I watched him drive off again with that baby with no helmet, no nothing, perched on the handlebars. I didn't trust the men offering me a lift home and then suddenly dude showed up. I think I'm lucky. Let's hope it stays that way.
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Philippine Casino Addiction

I walked through a few different areas of Manila but one day, just around the corner from my guesthouse, I came upon a large hotel/casino complex. On the outside hung a sign that read "Cashless Casino." I'd never heard of a cashless casino before, and the implications of it left me pondering the sign and wondering what the hell was going on inside. So being the curious cat that I am, I strolled through to check it out.

The air smelled great, if you like the smell of stale cigarette smoke, beer, and despair. I circled the vast, square room and peeped in the empty restaurant then looked over at the bar where a bartender was slowly drying glasses and arranging them on shelves.

I walked up the aisles for the slot machines, and I noticed that on all the machines there was a slot which read CREDIT, and I imagined it was as easy for the casino to rake in the cash from helpless gamblers as it would be to smack a baby and take his soother, if people were just using ATM cards, as I thought.

It was ten o'clock in the morning so there were only a few people hanging around playing, but what interested me were four women in their mid-sixties who looked like they'd been weight-lifting in there for the past six weeks. They glanced around with bored expressions as they robotically pulled the levers up and down with their right hand and lifted cigarettes to their lips with their left. Scattered at their feet were empty coke cans, paper plates and styrofoam cups. How long had they been here and how much longer were they going to stay? One of them turned to me and said hello.

'I'd kind of like to play,' I said, 'but I don't get the machines. How does this cashless thing work?' I stood beside her and looked over the machine. With a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, she pointed to a card that was perched in the slot, ready to give up money.

'See here? You put your card in there.'

'So this is linked to your bank?' I asked.

'No. No. You buy a card from the casino. And then you ring in the amount here.' She rung in 100P ($2) and pulled the lever down. The images spun around. She put her index finger on the screen.

'Now all these little pictures. See here? They have to be the same in order to win.' An apple and two bananas appeared.

'Ya see that? That's no good. They have to match.' She rang in another 100P and pulled the lever down again. Apples, grapes, bananas, oranges and pears spun around and came to a stop.

'Nope, she said, looking at the screen, and charged another 100P. She took a drag on her cigarette and looked up at me. 'You see how it works? It's pretty simple.'

'Yeah, it is. Are those your friends here?' I glanced around.

'No, but they're here all the time. Same as me.' She pulled the lever again, her cigarette dangling from her lips.

'So? You gonna get a card?'

'Well, I don't think I'll play today.'

'Bah. Go get a card. Come and join us.'

'Not today. Maybe I'll come around again tomorrow?'

She shrugged and turned her back. 'Suit yourself.'

I read an article about a man who was suing Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas because some woman had urinated in a chair before he sat in it. She didn't want to give up her place because she was sure she was going to win.

Gamblers who become addicted can enter a trance-like state where even basic hygiene habits are ignored, said Carol O'Hare, Executive Director of the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling. Their reasoning is so impaired by their addiction that they may go for hours and days without eating or showering. Gamblers have even told counselors that they wore adult diapers to relieve themselves to keep from losing their seat at a slot machine where they expected the machine to pay off.

I didn't smell anything suspicious in this Philippine casino, but I saw the stage two trance these four women were in.

Holidays in Manila

Manila is a challenge for its crowds, its heat and not least of all, its poverty, but this country has to have the friendliest people in the world.

After my long flight from British Colombia to Manila my feelings of insanity finally dissipated, and upon waking from my nap at 4:30 in the morning I struck out for food like a zombie with his arms raised, not realizing it was 4:30 in the morning because I hadn't changed the time on my watch. Munching on nachos at a stand around the corner and wondering why the streets looked so deserted, I finally clued in that it wasn't 10:30 at night but 4:30 in the morning. I didn't feel threatened though because it appeared the zombies walking towards me had stumbled straight out of a bar from my home town and it made me feel right at home. However, if you're ever worried about people approaching you in the dead of night, just give them a weak smile and cross your eyes and they'll back off. It's my secret weapon. Who wants to rob a crazy old hag that might be looking for some get-go to boot?

If you want to see Manila in a slightly different light, wait until 6:30 in the morning and watch all the park dwellers coming out of their bunkers. Children can live their whole lives on the street. I saw one child no more than 3 years old pathetically trying to have a dump on the sidewalk and he was so constipated it was painful. It was sad and difficult to see, especially as there were so many children and their families living on the street.

I strolled down to the waterfront and on to the glass-littered beach and talked with a man and his wife who was holding an emaciated child that was too weak to cry. Another man with them threw his fishing line out and pulled it in slowly and I would have stayed and talked with them, but the smell on the beach was so bad I almost gagged before moving on. When I walked to the edge of the tide and peered into the gray, murky water, I saw that the bottom was at least half a foot deep with rotting garbage, tin cans, cardboard and muck, so when I saw this horror on flickr I wasn't surprised. However, I was amazed later when I saw a determined crowd of teenagers both male and female storming into the water, barefoot. Some of them brushed their teeth with their fingers and washed their hair with bars of green and pink soap. Poverty is just a reality of so many people's lives, yet in the Philippines I was offered far more by those who had nothing than by those in Canada who had everything. Philipinos are just downright beautiful people.

In Manila I stayed at Friendly's Guesthouse. It was a great place to network and get all kinds of information about the islands.


Jeepneys, which were originally US military jeeps left over from the war, are the most popular means of public transportation and they're as over-decorated as a World War II veteran, with just as many crosses and crucifixes attached to every movable part; probably in supplication to Jesus to get them through the most hideous traffic jams in the world without losing their minds.





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There was a hostage-taking crisis taking place downtown while I was on my way to the airport to catch a flight to Dumaguete City, by a man with a gun and a briefcase full of grievances who was demanding better education and free housing for the poor. He really blocked up traffic, if traffic could get any more constipated in Manila. Now dude is probably in jail for life, but he certainly made his point.

I was relieved I had left two hours in advance to make the ten-kilometer journey to the airport. Cars moved ten yards then stopped for ten minutes, moved another ten yards, then stopped for another fifteen minutes and so on until I finally reached the airport. There was unbelievable gridlock. One sweaty hawker after another came up to the taxi to flog something - drinks, kites, water balloons, newspapers, candy, books, cigarettes, and with so many people camping out on the highway - toilet paper. At the airport security was heavy because the minute I was out of the taxi security guards wanted to see my passport and tickets. It was good to get out of Manila.

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When I got to Dumaguete City I stayed at Harold's Mansion Hostel. The place was comfortable and air-conditioned and full of color. It's a good place to network. Harold was a great guy and he took me by motorcycle on a tour of Valencia, a town just west of Dumaguete. It was incredibly beautiful. I promised if I went back there I'd stay in the overgrown hostel beside the waterfall, Forest Camp. Unfortunately, I lost dozens of beautiful pictures from the Philippines when my computer crashed. Make a backup!










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The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page. - St. Augustine