The Tourist Scramble (with rice and ketchup)

My traveling companions, Noa and Dotan, and I arrived in Banaue with a rough plan of our agenda for the next few days.  To get more information we stopped in at the Tourist Information Center.  The man behind the counter began to describe to us the various sites and treks around Banaue.  We soon noticed, however, that he was less giving us "information" and more giving us a sales pitch for his friends who just happened to be guides.  At one point he even said something to the effect of "You could do this tour with a guide for...let me see...I could go as low as...only P800".  It soon became clear that we were wasting our time and politely excused ourselves.  That night the three of us hashed out a game plan.  In the morning we would cut a deal with one of the independent guides who were constantly roaming around the hostels, and at the same time we would nab other travelers to join our group, thereby decreasing the individual cost for each person.  Noa found a guide who would take us to some hot springs and lookout points for P4,000.  I ambushed two Norwegian guys during breakfast who had just arrived on the overnight bus from Manila and were just dazed and confused enough to be talked into joining our tour, but not so tired from the bus ride as to want to immediately find a bed and crash.  So, with the addition of Nils and Christian (the Norwegians) we were now four (Dotan was ill and would be staying behind).  Meanwhile, two French women whom we had met were planning on leaving Banaue that day for Manila, but were sympathetic to our plight and helped us conspire to rope in a French couple.  After speaking with Phillip and his wife (the French) we now totaled six.  The guide said our departure time was fast approaching, so I ran upstairs to my room to hurriedly pack a day bag with water, snacks, sunscreen, etc.  By the time I returned downstaris, Noa told me our group had nearly doubled in size to eleven.  Somewhere in the mix, she told me, her and I had ditched our original guide and attached ourselves to the guide that Phillip had been negotiating with.  Our final group consisted of one Israeli, two Norwegians, a smattering of Belgian and French, and yours truly.  Phew!  The constant cajoling, convincing, and negotiating of the morning had me fired up for the tour.


After everyone else was inside the jeepney, Noa and I climbed onto the top, so as to better enjoy the epic views.  Others in the group then decided that our idea was less crazy that it sounded, so they left the cramped inside of the vehicle to join us up top.  The ride was absolutely spectacular, as the rugged area is peppered with rice terraces.  The view was impressive enough to keep my mind off the bone-jarring ride on the severely ill-maintained mountain road.  Seriously.  Put a vehicle with no shock absorption on a road that causes you to feel like you're inside a cocktail shaker, and you get the idea.  We eventually arrived at a lookout point, where everyone snapped photos and attempted to realign their spines.  From the lookout the guide took us along a path through the rice terraces, where, in barely intelligible English, he explained some interesting facts about the process of planting and harvesting rice. During all this I felt sorry for the French people, how also had only a rudimentary mastery of English.  I realized that I may be the only one on this tour who's understanding what they guide is saying.  If I have to strain my ear and connect the dots with his pronunciation and vocabulary, how can the non-native English speakers understand?  Once again, I felt lucky to have English as a first language   

We arrived at the hot springs a little while later feeling...hot.  The hike through the stuffy, humid climate made the springs less attractive than they had been earlier.  However, nearby was a rushing river and I dashed off to see if I could locate a calm pool where someone could take a refreshing dip.  Upon finding a suitable place, I ran back to the hot springs, changed into my swimming suit, and excitedly told everyone what I'd found.  Let's just say everyone were less than thrilled.  Apparently no one, not even the Norwegians, liked the thought immersing themselves into an ice-cold river.  Come on!  You're from Norway!  Aren't you all born in a snowbank up there?  Anyway, after I alternated between the cold river and hot spring a few times, while everyone else just sat in the boring hot spring, the guide told us it was time to move on. 


We returned to the jeepney and rode to several more lookout points, each one providing awe-inspiring views of the rice terraces.  It was humbling to imagine the local people carving the terraces out of the mountain with just crude shovels.  Some of the terraces are around 2,000 years old.  It made me think of how I always complained when my parents made me shovel snow as a kid.  Or about how I thought working construction during my high school summers was hard work.  Shoveling concrete all day pales in comparison to moving tons of dirt by hand and hauling river rocks up mountains for years and years to just provide rice for your family.  


That night some of us went to a local bar, where a three-person band amazed us with their musical talent.  The guys were singing everything from Eric Clapton to Toby Keith to Guns N Roses.  And they were good.  Very good.  Dotan and I couldn't stop marveling at their talent.  It was because we were so impressed that, during a break in the set, Dotan approached the lead singer as he was ordering a beer from the bar.  Dotan complemented the guy on how good he was and asked him a question about a song he'd played earlier in the night.  In response to Dotan's question, the lead singer replied with...a blank stare.  It turns out that the guy can't speak English. At All.  Later on we would learn from a local that the cover bands in this country (and there are many) learn the chords and master the lyrical pronunciation of all the famous American singers.  But that's all they master.  They can nail a Pearl Jam song or sound exactly like Jon Bon Jovi, but wouldn't understand you if you asked "Where's the bathroom?"  I find this a very ironic quirk of the Filipino culture.  It would be like if I perfected Feliz Navidad or The Macarena, but didn't understand a lick of Spanish.  I'm still baffled by it.


Sometime during the night Nils and I had an interesting conversation about ketchup.  You see, in the Philippines when you order ketchup you don't get tomato ketchup.  What comes to your table is actually banana ketchup.  Only it's still red.  For some reason, most likely due to the lack of tomatoes and surplus of bananas, condiment manufactures have somehow managed to create banana ketchup that looks like the real thing with only a slightly different taste.  I thought back to New Zealand and remembered that the ketchup there, which was tomatoes, also tasted slightly different than American ketchup.  Nils then told me that Norwegian ketchup tasted different as well.  He told me he loves Norwegian ketchup but can't stand Danish ketchup, even though Denmark is right next door to Norway.  This got me thinking.  If ketchup tastes different in every country, it would be interesting to gather ketchups from all around the world and sample them.  There could be a World Ketchup Festival where people could sample ketchups on french fries, burgers, and hotdogs.  Then, there would be a taste test.  One ketchup would be designated the King of Ketchups.  Also, I wonder, if ketchup in the USA, New Zealand, The Philippines, Norway, and Denmark all taste different, then every ketchup in every country has to be different than all the others.  Fascinating.  What does Indian ketchup taste like?  How about ketchup from Uganda?  Is there a ketchup unique to the Vatican?  I'll keep everyone posted on the ketchup issue when I have the opportunity to try the condiment in other countries. 

That's all for now.  I hope everyone is doing well in their parts of the world.  Take care!

Pat

Exit Sagada, Enter Bontoc

 My last post left off with me feeling sore from a cave tour, whining about cockroaches, and describing the taste and texture of dog meat.  That was two weeks ago.  What follows is the first installment of a three-part account of my journey from Sagada deeper into the mountains (and amazing scenery) of Mountain Province and Ifugao Province of the Philippines.  I hope you enjoy.


After exploring the caves I met two Israeli women who asked me what my plans were during my remaining time in Sagada.  I informed them that my plan was to hike through the Echo Valley the following day.  We had small talk about our travels and local restaurants before they left to get situated in the hostel and explore the town.  Unbeknownst to me, these two Israelis (Rotem and Lior) met a German couple in town, and, after the Germans asked them of their plans, Rotem and Lior said "We're going hiking tomorrow with an American guy.  He doesn't know it yet, but we are going with him."  Later that night when I saw Rotem she told me about the Germans and we agreed on a time to meet in the morning.  So the next day Rotem, Lior and I met up with Felix and Birgit (the Germans who currently live in Zurich), and headed out of town for some hiking.  Rotem mentioned that a third Israeli woman she had met would be joining us, and we waited for Noa outside her hostel.  Noa's husband Dotan was ill, so he would stay back, recuperating in bed.  The six of us found the start of the trail and headed into the valley.  After getting lost a few times we found the famous hanging coffins of Sagada.  Local tribes prefer to stuff their dead into small wooden coffins and hang them from cliffs, rather than burying them in the ground.  This sort of dehydrated-beef-jerky-style of interment is reserved only for the most revered members of society, and requires the family of the deceased to sacrifice 20 pigs and 60 chickens in order to appease the gods.  If one does not possess high status within the tribe, or they don't have the required number of livestock for sacrifice, they are buried in the ground unceremoniously without a coffin.  Some coffins hanging from the cliff are nearly 2,000 years old. 


Moving on from the coffins, we soon came across a creek that required a shoe-wetting crossing, then found a steep hill with a length of irrigation pipe running along the trail, which looked quite inviting as a rope to pull oneself up the hill with.  After going first up the hill, Felix discovered that the irrigation pipe actually was intended to be used a rope, as it was anchored to a rock at the top and too damaged to be used for irrigation.  Leave it to the Filipinos to be the ultimate recyclers.  A couple hours later our group found the highway, which is were the trail terminates, thereby avoiding a fate warned of in the guidebook which said "some tourists who enter Echo Valley for a leisurely day hike return hours later covered in mud with pine needles and thorns sticking out of their hair."  A visit to a nearby waterfall, with a refreshing dip into the cold water, rounded out the day.  The following day had us planning to visit a big waterfall a 20 minute jeep ride from town. After catching a jeep to the trail head and guide-hiring center, we were informed that the big waterfall was closed:  some kind of local holiday.  Now, I have the utmost respect for local cultures and traditions.  What I don't have respect for, is when, before departing in the jeepney, we informed the Sagada tourist center that we were headed for the big water fall.  No mention of a holiday.  Also, when boarding the jeepney we informed the driver that we intended to visit the big waterfall and he mentioned nothing about the falls being closed.  Frustrating to say the least.  We all managed to salvage the day by visiting the entrance and exit of the caves I had toured (no one in the group was interested in the physically demanding, claustrophobic cave tour).  That night we roasted marshmallows and potatoes over a camp fire at the hostel, sharing our fun with a large group of Easter Europeans (mostly Serbs, Bosnians, and Hungarians) who had arrived in Sagada that day. 


The next day Dotan, Noa, and I said goodbye to Felix, Birgit, Rotem, and Lior and we hopped on a jeep for a one-hour ride to Bontoc.  Bontoc is a slightly bigger town, much busier and crowded than Sagada.  Our sole purpose for spending an afternoon in Bontoc was to visit the Bontoc museum, which we had heard was among the best in the Philippines.  It was a nice place, with the small display on the local headhunting tradition (complete with grisly photos) being both fascinating and disturbing.  After the museum the three of us haggled and bargained with a private van, a jeepney, and a bus for transportation to the final destination of Banaue.  The bus won out, not because of price, but because of comfort.  We were off to the iconic town of Banaue, with its world famous rice terraces, for some epic trekking and scenery. 

Here's my requisite gripe for this post.  In the Philippines, not only is personal space non-existent, but carelessly bumping into people is an accepted part of everyday life.  It still shocks me when I'll be walking down the sidewalk and people will be nudging and bumping me left and right.  When I first experienced this I suspected I was being pick-pocketed.  But because I keep nothing in my pockets, and because the offenders run the gamut from young to old and poor to affluent, I realized that it is, in fact, just a normal occurrence.  I can handle the bumping when I'm walking, but when I'm sitting down at a restaurant or internet cafe and little children are constantly smacking in to my chair it gets irritating.  It's hard to concentrate on writing a blog post when every 10 seconds a small kid comes blasting past my chair with no effort to avoid said chair.  The kid's elbows, shoulders, and head will strike me and/or the chair and a small flame of annoyance flairs up inside of me.

While I'm discussing blogging, I'll expound on the complaint to describe the environment of the average internet cafe. Most families in the Philippines simply cannot afford a computer.  It's way beyond their daily budget when most people I've met say they earn an average of $10 per day.  But the internet cafe fills the technological gap.  Every small town has at least one, and big cities like Baguio have one on nearly every block.  However, these places are not calm and serene, filled with people doing homework, researching interesting topics, or looking up basketball scores.  No, internet cafes are crammed with young boys, aged 5 to 15, playing any number of video games.  Most are playing World of Warcraft, others play first-person-shooters.  And they're playing online.  Each kid is competing against the other kids around him, so the shouting, taunting, gloating is almost always at a fever pitch.  Add to this equation about five additional kids standing at each computer, watching the action on screen and voicing their opinions and dissents on strategy and tactics.  You get the picture.  Here sits a quiet, mild-mannered American guy reading the news, learning about the death of Kim Jong-Il or reading the latest developments in the GOP race, while around him the world is swirling like a hurricane as gaming-obsessed kids are engrossed in fantasy combat with their peers.  I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Frank Costanza throws up his hands in exasperation and declares "Serenity now!".  That's how I feel sometimes.

That's all for now.  I hope everyone is doing well in their parts of the world.  And I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  Take care!



Pat

Big Man, Little Cave

First, apologies that I haven't written in so long.  I think most people, with most projects they've undertaken, go through phases where they're very productive and phases where they aren't so productive.  I've been doing things but just haven't had the motivation to sit down and write about them.  So, without further delay:

Let me say that I am utterly wiped out.  This morning I went on a cave tour.  For more than three hours I climbed up cave formations, scurried across giant boulders, threaded myself through extremely narrow openings, climbed down cave formations, swam through underground rivers, slid around on my butt, crawled on all-fours, and bonked my head no more than two times during the whole ordeal.  Despite the physical exhaustion that I'm feeling right now, the cave tour was definitely worth the time and money and I'd do it again in a heart beat (albeit with a few days' recovery).  My companions on the tour were three nice Filipinos from Manila who took a vacation together up here in Sagada.  The fifth member of our group was Igon-ay, a local man who served as cave guide and bearer of light (he carried a gas lantern for us to see).  Fortunately for me, I wasn't quite too big for some areas of this cave, although one time I came very close to getting stuck.  As the title of this blog alludes, there were several areas where the 6'7" American guy had to resort to moves that resembled a circus contortionist.  However, other areas of the cave were cavernous and awe-inspiring.  And water.  Water was everywhere.  From cascades that seemed to come out of the ceiling to swift streams slowly carving out patterns in the boulders to a large deep pool where one could take a dip and shock the system with a surprisingly low water temperature at the same time.  I loved it.  What I will not be loving, however, is tomorrow.  I anticipate the onset of a medial condition known as "acute muscle soreness".  I'll most likely be sitting down, reading my book, and drinking tea most of the day tomorrow.


Before Sagada I had the opportunity to meet up with Jema in Baguio after finding out via facebook that we'd just happen to be in the same place at the same time.  We spent a couple of days hanging out together and spending time with some of Jema's friends (and my friends now, I guess) who live in the area.  Highlights included a meal of rice and dog meat (dog meat is bland and quite greasy, though surprisingly tender), sampling a myriad of other Filipino dishes (stuff I was always scared to try because, quite frankly, it's difficult to tell what's actually in the dish), and driving 1 hour down to the coast to visit a resort/casino complex (no gambling for me).  Jema and I will rendezvous again on the 23rd and spend Christmas in Baguio before flying to the Visayas, which is a huge island group in the middle of the country.  I'm looking forward to some island fun in the sun.

Here's my gripe for the day:  cockroaches.  They are everywhere.  Not everywhere as in "blanketing the floor like fresh-fallen snow".  Rather more like "I see at least one-a-day crawl out from a hole in the wall".  I know what you're thinking: Well, seeing one-per-day isn't exactly "everywhere".  But for a guy from Wyoming who had never seen a cockroach until traveling outside the US at the age of 22, seeing cockroaches everyday counts as "everywhere" in my book.  The kicker is this:  the locals don't seem to mind.  I was eating in a restaurant recently when I spied a rather large cockroach moving across the floor.  A waitress happened to be passing the table so I pointed it out to her.  She nodded her head and said "oh" and continued walking towards the kitchen.  Only after she returned from the kitchen did she make a feeble attempt to look under some chairs.  By that time, though, the bug had done a disappearing act back into its hidy-hole somewhere.  I know I may sound like an affluent westerner by complaining about a common third-world annoyance, but I believe everyone here could do without the cockroaches. 

Stray dogs are everywhere.  As mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to try dog meat (some of you may be questioning my use of the word "opportunity").  That experience, combined with seeing stray dogs all over the streets (Jema recounted a story to me when a local told her that "every dog you see will be eaten eventually"), can possibly change a person's overall thoughts about canines.  While dogs are usually viewed solely as lovable pets, often known as "man's best friend", another description has been added to the list:  lunch.  I've always known that some cultures eat dogs, and that some Americans in the early history of our country did the same, but I've never seen it nor experienced it until coming to the Philippines.  To my knowledge, dog  meat was something eaten by  primitive bush tribes, not city-dwellers with growling stomachs.  The meat is served in most eateries here, although discretely, because technically its against the law to serve it.   Let me be clear by saying that I only ate the dog meat as a cultural experience, and won't eat it again.  It's greasy, the chunks of meat are tiny, and all the dogs I see on the street (that end up on the plate) are emaciated strays.  Give me a chicken leg or T-bone and I'll dig in.  However, this brings up a good question.  Why have we westerners pegged the title of "edible" onto some animals and not others.  How is a chicken more suitable to be eaten for dinner, shake-n-bake style, than so many other animals?  For someone who grew up eating wild game, I can see how animals other than the big three (beef, chicken, and pork) could also make a delicious meal.  I'm sure residents of the Bayou, whom I've hard regularly dine on alligator, would agree with me.

That's all for today.  I hope everyone is doing well in other parts of the world.  Take care!

Pat

"Check Please" and Chicken Bones

In order to familiarize myself with Filipino culture I consult my guidebook quite frequently.  It explains important things about how to act in day-to-day life that come in handy to smooth-over most situations, such as checking into a hotel, ordering food, or, let's just say for example, asking for the bill in a restaurant.  It's this last one that had me hung up for a while.

The guidebook described the usual Filipino way to ask for the bill as "get the attention of your server and extend your thumb and index fingers in the shape of a rectangle".  So, after finishing my meal at my first restaurant outing, I raised my right hand in the air and extended my thumb and index finger and curled up the other three fingers to get them out of the way.  I positioned the two aforementioned fingers parallel to each other to make a rough three-sided rectangle shape, much like if I was about to pick up a small object by pinching it.  You can imagine my surprise when the waitress looked at me in confusion and came over to see what I was gesturing for.  Hello?  Isn't this the normal way to ask for the bill? When she walked up to me I put my hand down and said "may I have the bill, please?"  Again, a blank stare.  It took a few more tries until she said something to the affect of "oh, you want the beel."  Yes, sorry.  Not the bill, but the beel.  Again, there's the small variance in pronunciation that can make a huge difference.  I was slightly annoyed that my guidebook had given me false advice, but chose to put this particular episode behind me.  A few days later, at another restaurant, I decided to give the fingers-in-rectangle-shape another try.  But again, the waiter didn't understand what I wanted.  Come on people, doesn't this mean BILL.  I wanted to open up my guidebook and point to the paragraph and say "Look, it says it right here".  In the following couple of weeks I repeatedly tried to use the rectangle-finger method to ask for the bill, only to get the waiter come rushing over asking me what I needed.  Dang it! I need the bill!  My frustration was building.  I began to think that maybe this method had fallen out of fashion.  After all, the guidebook was published in 2009.  Maybe in the last two years the rectangle-finger method has been banned, outlawed.  Am I committing some sort of faux pas by flashing this gesture which was perfectly socially acceptable two years ago but is now considered the equivalent of flipping the bird?  Should I expose my ignorance and ask the nearest stranger why the heck I get confused looks when I execute the recommend rectangle-finger method?  I was so confused. 

The light bulb moment came one day when I was eating at a pizza place.  I had long since abandoned all attempts at using the rectangle-finger method and was now just saying the world "beel" whenever the server got within earshot.  I had finished eating a delicious pepperoni pizza and was ready to leave when I looked over and saw a man at a nearby table getting the server's attention.  To the untrained eye it appeared he was setting up a make-shift goal post so someone could kick an almond-sized football through his hands.  To my fully trained eye, however, all the confusing and perplexing situations of the past came flooding out of my brain and an energizing enlightenment took over.  OHHHHH!  You don't make the rectangle with one hand.  You make "L" shapes with the thumb and index fingers on each hand, then touch the thumb tips together!  OHHHHH!  Ha ha ha.  That's why all those servers never had a clue that I was asking for the bill.  All this time I was showing them a hand gesture that makes absolutely no sense.  They probably thought I had a hand cramp or something.  I was excited to try it out for myself.  I poised myself to flash the correct sign, and after catching the attention of my waitress I confidently showed her the correct hand signal.  She knew exactly what I was saying.  Phew!  And I didn't even have to say "beel". 

I'm currently staying at a hostel in Baguio where I've stayed before.  This place is nice and clean, with a small restaurant on the first floor as an added bonus.  I eat there a lot because the prices are modest and some of the food is good.  Because I've been thoroughly unimpressed with Filipino food I usually order the Chicken Curry from the menu.  This dish is good except for one thing:  the chunks of chicken have small bones in them.  I've found it difficult to eat the chicken pieces because of the small bones, mainly because of the fact that Filipinos never provide a knife at the place setting (try cutting chicken with a spoon).  This usually means half the chicken ends up being thrown away.  One time I picked up each small piece of chicken individually and ate it using my fingers.  The huge downside was I wasted about 40 paper napkins in the process.  So...tonight I asked the waitress if I could get the chicken curry without the chicken.  The dish usually comes with assorted vegetables accompanying the chicken.  To save the hassle of having to cut bones out with a spoon or pull small bones out of my mouth after every other bite, I wanted to have just a vegetable curry.  Should be simple.  However, when I asked if I could have the chicken curry with no chicken and possibly extra vegetables, the waitress proceeded to name off every vegetable that's in the dish.  Eggplant, potato, bell-pepper, carrot, etc.  Ummm...no.  Sorry, but I'm trying to ask for no chicken.  I want only vegetables.  Blank stares.  I then inexplicably resorted to Spanish:  solamente vegetables por favor.  That did nothing to help me.  Not only do Filipinos not understand a lick of Spanish, but their English isn't as good as most people will want you to believe (side note: I know this makes me sound like an ignorant western tourist who expects everyone to understand MY language and see no reason for me whatsoever to make an effort to understand theirs).  After going back and forth with "please no chicken, only vegetables" and "Sir, it has eggplant, potato, etc, etc", I finally decided to scrap the idea and said "I'll just have the chicken curry, please".  As I waited for my meal to come I realized in horror that perhaps in all the confusion the waitress had misconstrued my request and will bring me a dish with only chicken, no vegetables.  Damn.  What will I do then?  My irrational fear was proved wrong when the dish came out with a heaping plate of chicken and vegetables in curry sauce with steaming rice.  It was very good.  And, as usual, I was pulling small bones out of my mouth the whole meal. 

Well, that's all for now.  I hope every one is having a great time in other parts of the world.  Take care!

Pat

Surf's up, Dude!

I did it!  I can surf!  It wasn't pretty, in fact I'm sure it was quite ugly to watch, but I actually managed to ride a wave standing up.  Wahoo!  It feels good to put in the effort and be able to accomplish what I set out to accomplish.  I'm a long way off from hitting the waves in Santa Cruz or Huntington Beach, but give me a nice beginner's wave and I'll tear it up!  Here's out it all played out:

From Vigan I arrived in Urbiztando, described by the guidebook as "the cradle of surfer-dude culture in the Philippines".  They weren't mistaken.  Surf bums everywhere.  After booking into a room at Monaliza Surf Lodge I inquired about lessons.  Antony, a local surfer and brother of the lodge owner, said he'd take care of me and to be ready at 9am the next morning.  The rest of the evening I was nervous, alternatively thinking about how I could be a natural surfing bad-ass or how I could make a complete fool out of myself while breaking a limb.  The nervousness, combined with the hot and muggy weather, made for some poor quality sleep.  I woke up in the morning feeling not too rested, rolled out of bed, and headed for the cafe next door.  I stuffed myself with eggs, toast, and coffee, then realized it was probably a bad idea to eat that much and regretted it.  Antony came by later, accompanied by a short, slender man whom he introduced as Larry.  Apparently Larry was going to be my instructor.  I was assured that Larry was a talented surfer and would show me all I needed to know.  We picked out a beginner's board and walked down the beach.

In hindsight, I should have watched some youtube videos or something in an effort to familiarize myself with the learning material.  After a brief onshore lesson about paddling, standing up, and balance, Larry led me out into the surf.  We started with me laying down on the board and him holding the tail end to keep me straight and stable.  Then, when a suitable wave was approaching, Larry instructed me to paddle, at which point I followed his instructions, felt the wave come under me, and attempted to stand up.  The next step in the sequence usually involved me losing my balance right away and falling into the water.  However, thanks to Larry's onshore lesson, I knew to fall backward while protecting my head with my arms.  After about five attempts I was finally able to get to my feet and stay there for a few seconds.  Repeated attempts saw me successfully stand up on every fifth wave or so.

(side note:  these two girls, about five and eight years old, are standing right behind me looking over my shoulder at the screen.  They've been doing it for about 20 minutes.  It's annoying and I'm about to ask them to go away.)

Anyway...the hour long lesson was a mixed bag of success.  While I technically did manage to surf a few small waves, Larry's idea of constructive criticism was to give me a thumbs up if I was able to stand and shake his head and smile if I wiped out.  It was up to me to provide my own criticism of my mistakes.  I was pretty disappointed that the lesson wasn't more in-depth.  Let's just say Larry won't be nominated for teacher-of-the-year.  I spent the evening online watching instructional videos and getting a better understanding of how to properly paddle and stand up.  The next morning I was out there again, this time without Larry.  I spied a group of locals and tried to hang near them.  A few attempts to catch a wave had me wishing Larry was there to hold the board straight and level.  It was so much easier with him around.  I couldn't even catch a wave, let alone stand up.  After several failures I was beginning to get nervous, paranoid that the locals around me were irritated that a greenhorn was spoiling their waves with his unique style which could only be described as "drunken surfing".  It was then that I spied another white person, a young woman, who didn't look like she was fairing much better than me.  It also looked like the local male surfers were giving her some tips.  I decided to set up near her so that I wouldn't look so bad and maybe I could learn something new.  After a while I introduced myself.  She said her name was Patricia and she was from Canada.  Judging by the accent I'd say French-Canadian.  The more I surfed around her and the locals, the more comfortable I became.  Soon locals started giving me pointers as well, even though I wasn't wearing a bikini like Patricia.  One of them told me I wasn't paddling hard enough to catch a wave.  I changed my tactic and paddled like a mad man whenever a good wave came up.  That was the trick.  After that I was able to catch each wave and could concentrate on the standing up part.  I kept at it, getting a little better and riding a little longer with each wave.

The board rental price was P200 for one hour, so at the hour mark I called it quits, but mainly because my arms couldn't take anymore paddling.  I hit the shower, ate some lunch, and headed for an internet cafe.  The next morning I planned on surfing, checking out of the hotel, and busing to Baguio.  However, my plan was foiled when I saw the surf.  The conditions were ugly.  Only a few experienced surfers were out.  Antony came up while I was sitting and waiting for things to calm down.  He said there was good beginners surf about 5 km down the coast and that he could drive me there.  After some hemming and hawing I said to myself "what the hell, probably not going to get another crack at this for a long time".  So, Antony, the surfboard, and I piled onto a small mo-ped and cruised on down the highway, arriving at a place called "Jesus Beach" (so named because of a huge statue of Jesus on the shore).  I paddled out into the surf while Antony gave confusing hand signals about exactly where to paddle and setup.  In the hour I was out there I caught a few good waves and had a great time on my own.  Every time I got thrashed by the surf I climbed back onto the board and headed out again.  It was great.  The only downside was instead of sand on the seafloor, it was covered in coral.  I received a few cuts and scrapes from wiping out, but it was worth it.  About an hour into it my arms were dead tired, so I headed back for the beach, happy that I could call my first surfing experience a success.  The locals made it look effortless.  I think I made it look like it wasn't worth the effort.  Hopefully, though, I'll get to surf again in the future.

Now I'm in Baguio enjoying the cool mountain air and, more importantly, getting some laundry done.  I have to say that I'm pretty sore from surfing.  When I arrived at the hostel the first thing I did was promptly take a long nap.  In a few days I'll head north, farther into the mountains to a small town called Sagada.  Only 20 more days until Jema and I meet up.  Sweet-as!

That's all for now.  I hope everyone is doing well in other parts of the world.  Take care!