A couple of days ago I flew into the second biggest city in the Philippines, which is Cebu City located on one of the bigger islands in the Visayas. The Philippines is divided into three parts. The first is the island of Luzon, which is the biggest island in the Philippines and contains it’s capitol of Manila. The middle part of the Philippines is called the Visayas, which are a bunch of smaller islands in the center. The south is Mindanao, which is a larger island to the south.
Cebu is known for its woodwork guitars. I asked my taxi driver this and he took me to a guitar seller in the middle of town. It was 9am, and had been up since 3am, so I decided I did not feel like buying anything, so I told him may be later. While I was checking out the guitars this quite large crowd gathered around to watch the transaction, which was really weird.
Got back into the cab and he took me to a pension listed in the Lonely Planet. This place turned out to be a crap hole. I ended up staying there because I was too tired to look elsewhere. They had different room types to choose from, but I ended up taking the cheapest room because even the most expensive room in the joint was still a piece of crap. There are no varying degrees of crap in a crap hole, so I opted for the crappiest and cheapest room.
I awoke later and walked around the city a bit. I visited a Spanish fort, which was the oldest Spanish fort in the Philippines. Cebu was the sight of the death of Ferdinand Magellan by local indigenous people who I guess took a disliking to being discovered. Sitting in the fort, I began to feel sick.
I started walking back to my pension and ran into the guitar seller again. I told him I was not feeling well, and I would think about buying later. He dropped the price 10$, so I ended up buying it for about 35$. The guitar is more of a souvenir than an actual good guitar. It is handmade from local wood and very pretty looking. It is not the best quality guitar. It does not sound so great playing chords, but it must be a classical guitar because it sounds very nice when finger picking.
I went back to my crap hole and played guitar for awhile and felt worse and worse. It felt like I had daggers in my stomach and I was very tired. I thought it might be something I ate because I had some Filipino food for lunch. I have talked to many other travelers who have gotten sick from Filipino food. I slept most of the afternoon, but it was hard to sleep in my place because my neighbors were incredibly loud. The wall adjacent to them did not even go up to the ceiling, so I could hear every word they spoke like they were in the room with me although I could not understand what they were saying. I think they were like the Laurel and Hardy of the Philippines because one of them would say something and then they would both crack up laughing and then the other would say something and again they would crack up laughing. The thing I could not understand was why the were in a pension and they did not go anywhere. I was staying there because I was not feeling well. This pension was the last place I wanted to be. They were healthy yet were by choice hanging out there all day apparently having a blast doing it.
I finally made it out to get something to eat. Because I suspected Filipino food for the cause of my present ailment I decided to eat only American fast food. I know this is not much better, but at least I knew what I was getting here. I got a value meal at Jollibee, which is a Filipino equivalent to McDonald’s. There was this cute girl I was making eye contact to. I tried to motion her over, but she refused, but wrote her cell number on a napkin and gave it to me. Her name was Rosalie, and she worked as a cashier at a hair salon. She works from 9:30am until 10:30pm every day with no break. Unbelievable. She says she is looking for another job, but it is hard because of her height. She is really small and I guess in the Philippines for some reason many employers do not like to hire short people and there is no law governing this type of discrimination. We have tried to go out a couple times, but with her work schedule and me not feeling well it has not come about.
I went back to my room and laid down for awhile, but got bored and decided to walk around. I walked past four girls and they all started looking at me. They came over and started talking to me. I had no idea where anything was, so I asked where are the cool places to go in town. They said we will show you. Somehow I got shanghaied (or since I was in Cebu I was Cebuhaied) into going with four girls to a bar and buying them all drinks. This was not exactly what I had in mind. I gave a 500 pesos for the beers which costed 140 pesos. I got no change and I asked the waitress where the change was. She said they were out of change and it will be coming. In the meantime, some of the girls finished their beers and ordered a second and one girl ordered potato chips.
I asked one of the girls if she worked or if she was in school. She smiled and said no and then asked why I had asked that question. By this response to the question, I realized I was sitting with four prostitutes. I decided to cut my losses and leave. I got 50 pesos back from my change and got the hell out.
Next day, I still was not feeling good and mainly hung around the room. The next day I was heading to Malapasqua island, which is a tiny island off the tip of Cebu, which supposedly has a nice beach.
I awoke the next morning at 3am and took a bus from Cebu to the northern point of the island. This took four hours and then I took a cool little ferry to Malapasqua. The ferry took about an hour and the highlight of this trip was seeing flying fish come out of the water and sail for a about twenty feet before diving back in.
This island was beautiful. Clear blue water with white sand beaches and rocky islands sticking up off the coast. I did not have that many pesos with me, so I wanted to stay at a place that took credit card. The only place that took credit card was the most expensive place on the beach. It is true irony when one is running out of money that because of this they need to stay at the most expensive place on the island.
The hotel was beautiful, and I had a balcony overlooking the sunset. I played guitar on the balcony for awhile and then hit the beach. I had lunch and then went swimming. I was beginning to feel better. I then went back to the room. I took a nap and woke up feeling worse than before. I was taking anti-diarrhea medicine, which dehydrates and this plus the sun made me feel dehydrated and dizzy. I went down to the front desk and had some juice. I went back up to the room and then slept a little longer.
Later I woke up and went for dinner. The problem with this place was there was absolutely nothing to do after the sun goes down. Everyone on the beach it seemed were couples. I went into a couple of bars to see what was going on and they were empty. I had dinner at one and then went back to my hotel and fell asleep around 9pm.
The next morning I decided to leave early. Being on this beach was making me lonely, plus I was still not feeling good. Beaches are definitely not a good place to go alone unless there is a lot to do besides just the beach. The only two places I have felt alone on this trip have been at the only two beaches I have visited. This one and Nha Trang in Vietnam. It was a beautiful island, but I was ready to go.
I left the next morning and got back to Cebu. I fly out to Manila tomorrow. I am feeling much better, but my stomach is still unsettled. I have ruled out Filipino food as the culprit and now realize it is just general exhaustion. Going to and from Banaue I took two night buses in three days where I did not sleep, then woke up at 3am to fly to Cebu, so I think I am just over tired, and my body just shut down on me.
I have liked what I have seen of the Philippines so far, but since this is the last place virtually I have been I have been kind of worn down by the whole trip and not had the same energy I had in other countries. The problem with the Philippines though is the transport is very difficult. Getting from one spot to the other in other countries usually just consists of one bus ride or a train ride. Here it consists of a taxi ride to the bus station, then a 8 hour hot or incredibly cold bus ride to a town then switch to another bus, or wait for a ferry. It takes as long to get to a place sometimes then the amount of time you can spend there.
