First time to the - PHILIPPINES - DANAO, Donsol
The taxi driver from home to the airport was originally Polish (still had a strong accent and a very loud voice) and was a staunch catholic; somehow, we got into an extended conversation on religion!!!
The egress travel arrangements were not ideal: the flight left Perth at 5 minutes past midnight on Saturday morning and flew north for eight hours to Hong Kong - another massive airport where you catch a driverless automatic train between terminals. Following the informative signage, I walked for ‘miles’ and traversed multiple escalators to find the correct gate for the connecting flight. I had a good connection though: only waited about 20 minutes before boarding. Then we flew back south to Cebu (Philippines) for nearly three hours - I felt like I should have parachuted out half-way up during the previous flight!
I don’t usually converse with seating companions on aircraft but the guy next to me on this flight was an interesting Kiwi who was running an orphanage on the island where I was going, and was planning to open another in Cebu. He told me that he’d had a stroke and a heart attack and his kidneys were failing due to the fourteen medications he was on. So, as you can imagine; we were soon swapping medical stories. Then I regaled him with some tales from PNG - that usually spawns further discussions…..
The Mayor’s mother - the matriarch of the family (and the local region where I was headed) - was at Cebu airport to meet me; but I was through fairly quickly and into a taxi, so she did not see me. Apparently that precipitated a flurry of phone calls and people were checking airlines and hotels trying to find me as I seemed to have just disappeared! I think that the taxi driver that took me to the ferry terminal for the next leg of my voyage was an aspiring Kamikaze pilot, either that, or he thought he was competing in a Formula One event!
Next step was to find the correct ferry to book for travel to Tagbilaran on the island of Bohol. I paid for a ‘business class’ ticket which turned out to be upstairs in an air-conditioned area with WiFi, a large television and aircraft-style seats - as opposed to sitting on plastic chairs on the deck with the ‘others’. We ‘sailed’ along for another hour and a half to the destination, arriving at 3.30pm.
As I’d left home at 9.30pm the previous day, I’d been travelling constantly for eighteen hours; but don’t recall ever travelling so far before and still being in the same time zone!
I was supposed to be met at the ferry terminal on Bohol by a representative of my latest client (Tom) to be taken to the inland site at Danao; he happened to be the mayor of the area. I waited outside the terminal for over half an hour, being approached by representatives of multiple hotels and taxi drivers. I kept telling them that someone was meeting me and where I was going, but they still insisted that they could take me: I told them who was meeting me and they said “but he’s the Mayor”. I went inside to make a phone call to see what was happening and Tom turned up, claiming that he had been on the same ferry - bit odd!!
The popular mode of public transport in Tagbilaren seemed to be a vehicle like a tuk tuk: a motorcycle with a sidecar, with a roof which extended over the driver. Every such vehicle had a different talisman painted on the back extolling the virtues of God or Jesus Christ, or a quotation from the bible.
SO - I stayed that first night in town at Tom’s home; when he wanted anything, he would just call out someone’s name and they would come running to do his smallest bidding.
Next morning I met the local tourism officer (I had to get used to another set of unfamiliar names - her name is Loinda), who was to drive me to the site, on the way we collected the accountant (her name: Leumen). On site the operations manager (another female) was Weina. I’ve done eight volunteer assignments (in five countries) just in the last two years alone, so that is up to 500 staff that I’ve dealt with (and, hopefully, had a small effect on their lives, to varying degrees) - is it any wonder that I cannot remember all their names?
The drive was about 90 minutes through picturesque farming (corn and vegetables, but mostly rice) and dramatic cone-shaped hills. Some of the road was down to one lane as they were laying new concrete, and over half was rather rough and unsealed - Loinda claimed I was getting a ‘free massage’. As we progressed further into the countryside it became common to have half the road closed because farmers were using it to dry their rice.
The standard of most of the road was very rough - another driver later described it to me as ‘part of the adventure’!
We had a good exchange on information on the drive and I garnered a better appreciation of the complications I was facing.
Our destination was Danao - which is located among mountains and deep valleys virtually in the centre of the island of Bohol. I’ve lived on several islands before but, somehow, being in a forested area with hills and dramatic valleys; at no stage in this scenario did I feel like I was actually living on an island. I was to stay at an organic vegetable farm overlooking a valley which disappeared, shrouded deep in mystical mist every morning.
We had lunch at the restaurant in the Danao Adventure Park … some of the victuals I consumed during my time there, I honestly could not identify. Then we went to have a look at the amenities they provided:
‘The Plunge’ (or ‘canyon swing’) - a sudden 60m drop into a huge 200m deep chasm, while suspended only in a harness then swing in huge arcs until you are just hanging in space and they winch you back - (bit like a bungee jump).
‘The Suislide’ - where they strap you in a harness and you lay flat, suspended under a steel cable, they give a push and you traverse a 500m canyon, then swap to another one for the return to the side on the canyon you started from (lower down, of course).
A gentler ride across the canyon in a gondola (‘sky ride’) - we did that one together.
You can rappel down a sheer rock face or climb up a nearby almost vertical rock face using only the roots of mangrove-like trees for handholds.
Or be a speleologist and disappear underground into a labyrinth of caves, including bats!
There were village tours, etc and the area had a strong historic interest as the site of the longest resistance to Spanish rule (1744-1829).
PHOTOGRAPHS CAN BE VIEWED on this link- click on 'slideshow...
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/BevanLibya/BoholPhilippines1#
The entire Park endeavour is a local government enterprise and operation so you’d have to give them full marks for initiative, in spite of the rampant nepotism. Councillors and officials would ‘recommend’ that some relative be employed and they had little choice but to comply. PLUS some of the staff had other jobs (also for the local government); but, they claimed, received no extra pay.
My accommodation at the nearby ‘farmhouse’ was where they grew organic vegetables, with umpteen staff. The shower was in a separate building out the back - it’s always a rude shock to the system in the morning in hot climates to subject one’s body to the sudden jolt of cold water. Adding to the ambience was the fact that the water supply was sometimes intermittent, so one had to judge how much soap or shampoo to apply and still be assured that there would be sufficient water emitting from the spigot to rinse it off!!
My room had no glass in the window and was open between the top of the wall and ceiling (luckily there were insect screens) so that even the slightest noise permeated the room. The room was surrounded on three sides by a large veranda and next to another bedroom - with a very thin wall - so all sounds were ‘four dimensional’! Staff would talk to each other and wander around constantly (night and day). They mostly wore what they call ‘slippers’ (flip flops or thongs) and habitually dragged their feet along the concrete….. No one moved a chair by picking it up - it was always dragged.
I did not see, or hear, any news of the outside world, and the only alcohol consumed was one beer with the visiting ABV representative, for the six weeks I was in Bohol.
Radios seemed to be a common form of ‘entertainment’ - with one volume setting: LOUD! When I had breakfast with the mayor at his home the day after arriving (Sunday) there was a radio in the kitchen where we were sitting and it was yelling what seemed to be a sermon - I could tell because it was a hotchpotch of Filipino and English; so we were virtually shouting at each other to have a conversation The farm where I was staying often had the radio on - with the volume cranked up so they could hear it while working on the vegetables. Problem was: most days, the basic content seemed to consist of a phalanx of inane commercials interspersed with what seemed to be radio soap operas as they primarily consisted of women screaming and crying….!!!
The mayor and a bunch of his cronies came up the bad road to visit - that night they came home at 2am and roused the staff out of bed to make them a snack. Then one of them was vomiting most of the night, by the sound of it: the regurgitation must have been sourced from deep in his boots. Next morning the staff all got out of bed at 3am and proceeded to load the truck to take fresh vegetables to the market!
The organic farm was staffed by around ten boys and young men that the matriarch of the family (the mayor’s mother) was giving employment and paying for their education. She is a wonderful woman who was assisting as many of the hundreds of poor people in the area (who were procreating like crazy in the strong catholic regime with many children each) as she could.
The market trip was at least once a week - everyone was up by 3.30am: crashing around, footwear scuffing along concrete, radio blaring, loud conversations… Because my room was in the middle of the building, with much of the walls ‘open’, I’d get noise from all sides. A light would be turned on that shone straight into my face when lying in bed. Then there was the poultry - roosters telling the world they were awake, one mentally retarded hen had a regular compulsion to run around the yard clucking and squawking like the end of the world was nigh. Then there was the young goat that had been taken from its mother - so the kid was crying and bleating….
I was usually conveyed to/from the farm/Park as pillion on small motorcycles. Often I walked back as it was pretty much all down hill. I did not want to tempt fate by walking UP and repeating my collapse, being paralysed and being a medivac patient again! On a few occasions, I had the loan of a car - it was a Pajero but it had a bit of flair as the number plate said: ‘MAYOR’.
The Park had a total of 72 staff - with a maximum age I would guess at mid-30s - and a preponderance of very cute, petite females. They seemed pretty casual about what they were doing: like throwing people into yawing chasms. But, on closer inspection, their level of attention to detail seemed genuine. Even before I arrived I had realised that a good part of my focus on the project would have to be on safety, and consistent attention to detail. It must take concentration to be doing the same thing day-in-and-day-out and still remain focused on essential tiny details and avoid killing too many people.
A more likely scenario for ‘killing people’ was the appalling standard of the tiny kitchen at the Park - which would feed up to hundreds of people a day. ‘Hygiene’ was non-existent. They had virtually no preparation area so used a corner of the sink, washing-up was carried out with cold water and a hose on a patch of grass outside. The freezer contained a hotchpotch of meats and huge, whole fish (not wrapped separately) and gave off an unpromising odour! On really busy days (over 700 people a day) they would serve a buffet and be putting out food in chaffing dishes at 9.30am - and no heat under the food - that would still be there at 3pm!
To write-up their individual Standard Operating Procedures, I would watch them sending people off on their rides. One guy who had just done the Plunge described it when he returned as: “like being dead for four seconds”. When they were setting up in the mornings, staff would casually step into a harness, clip themselves to a runner balanced on a taught wire and casually leap into space to travel half a kilometer across a yawing chasm to the first stop on the zip-line.
Most Filipinos are small and thin (with obvious exceptions of course because you cannot generalise on anything about any race) but just how they stayed that way was beyond me, because eating seemed to be a national pastime. A full traditional English breakfast tended to be around 6am. Whether I was at the farm or at the Park, around 10am (or earlier) I would be told that it was ‘snack time’: perhaps a refreshing glass of iced tea and maybe what they locally called a ‘bunwich’ (a large bun, usually with a fried egg, cheese, slice of ham and lettuce). Lunch would then front up from 11am to 11.30am. Sometimes another snack (such as two hamburgers) around 3pm. Dinner arrived at around 5.30pm. I usually gave up around 8pm but there was probably another ‘snack’ after that!
I was moving between the farm and the Park and could have consumed two of every meal, every day! As it was, I am sure that I disappointed the cooks because I just could not devour the quantity and variety of food placed in front of me three times a day. Every meal was accompanied by a bowl of claggy, plain, boiled white rice. AND, like much of the Pacific and Asia region, hot meals need not necessarily be served while still hot (fried eggs served up an hour before eaten, cold French fries) - a bane of my life when doing restaurant training!
I don’t recall ever being called “sir” so much as on this assignment - at least I’m pretty sure that it WAS ‘sir’ and not ‘cur’! Also got called and introduced as ‘Sir Bevan’ rather a lot…..
I’ve been out of Australia for some nine months this year alone, and I’m getting used to staying in hotels and places for free, and just wandering into restaurants, having meals and not paying… so long as I don’t try that somewhere where they don’t actually know me at all!
I’m also getting out of touch with general news, etc. On some other assignments I’ve been able to watch television (BBC, CNN) and keep up with international news. On the first assignment to the Philippines I never saw any television at all, or heard a radio that I could understand.
I used to like to watch quiz programs on TV at home and could fair pretty well at getting the answers right - however I’m so out of touch now, and there is an increasing trend to ask trivial questions about show business or sport and similarly irrelevant matters and so now, I often have absolutely no idea what/who they are talking about!
I was asked to address a Municipality meeting (who had instigated and ran the Park- with heaps of convoluted Local Government red tape). They had a special meeting room at the imposing head offices and started with a prayer and then sang what I took to be the national anthem before I was ushered in. They were all solemnly seated at a large u-shaped table, the chairman sat at the closed end on a large ‘throne’ on an elevated podium; they all had a microphone in front of them. Sorry, but I just could not really take it too seriously: unfortunately, I kept visualising the chairman as an American bald eagle in a Technicolor Disney-like scenario. I suppressed a smile, congratulated them on the initiative and told them they needed to increase the size and upgrade the kitchen before they killed someone …no one said a word; then I was thanked by the chairman, and I left.
The Park staff would gather together and start most mornings with a prayer. In their Business Plan, I mentioned that saying the Morning Prayer would not help if any of the equipment was faulty!
At a conference held at the Park, they started with prayer and then sang seemingly endless verses of the national anthem - the first one was the national anthem, followed by a hymn for Bohol (the island) then another for Danao (the town). I was impressed to see the staff all stop work, place their hand on heart and sing along. Reminded me of America - we Aussies are proud of our country, but don’t tend to take such extraneous matters so seriously.
Confession time - Australia’s national anthem used to be the same as Britain’s: “God save the Queen/King” which was just plain silly; so, in 1984, it was changed. It was an existing song but, to tell you the truth, I know the opening sentence and that’s about it; I don’t actually recall ever hearing it sung and could not tell you all the words!!!
The 90 million people in the Philippines speak “more than 20” local dialects; so, most people speak at least three languages: their local dialect, the most common Filipino language and, often, English (oddly enough, with an American accent).
A quick history lesson … Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521 and claimed the archipelago for Spain, but some local chiefs (rather logically) objected and killed him. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos followed in 1543 and named the territory Filipinas after King Philip II of Spain. Permanent Spanish occupation began in 1565, and by 1571 the entire country, except for the strictly Islamic Sulu archipelago, was under Spanish control.
A Filipino independence movement grew in the 19th century and Filipinos fought on the side of the Americans in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. When the Spanish were defeated, General Aguinaldo declared the Philippines independent, after 300 years. The USA, however, had other plans, and promptly purchased the islands from the Spanish for US$20 million.
The USA eventually recognized the Filipinos' desire for independence and a President of the Philippine Commonwealth was sworn in 1935 as part of a transitional phase pending full independence. Japan invaded the Philippines in 1942, brutally interrupting this process and ruled until the USA re-invaded two years later. The Philippines received full independence in 1946.
On a Sunday, I was invited to the first wedding anniversary of one of the Farm staff at her home in a village: a very basic structure: a concrete block box with a corrugated iron roof, no ceiling. The matriarch dropped me off early on her way to mass and I was ‘entertained’ with a movie, then Mr Bean until people started to arrive. Heaps of food was assembled, including a whole roasted pig. After a few hours, I asked to use the toilet (although, they delicately use the term ‘comfort room’ - but love acronyms, so it’s ‘the CR’). I was led out the front door, around the back, along narrow, muddy tracks, across slippery planks over muddy culverts, around some corners to what must be a local village facility: a corrugated iron lean-to with a pan (no seat, no door, no cistern and no visual means of flushing). Still, they are a really great couple and had been very helpful to me - but: what do you do in these circumstances? No one seemed to be giving gifts, but, as I left, I wished then ‘happy anniversary’ and slipped them a US$50 note - I still have no idea if that was acceptable, or an insult, or what, in the circumstances..!
OK, so the lads were standing around with not a lot to do one morning and they talked me into venturing onto the Suislide. I thought that I’d probably give it a try sometime … the Plunge was something that I considered would not tempt me - all I’d need would be to give my tin heart valve a jolt to slam shut, and I could be hanging there: dead as a door nail! So, I donned the body harness effect and they fitted me with a helmet (which kinda amused me because I could not see what earthly help a little helmet would do if you plunged down onto rocks!). Anyway, they place a runner onto the overhead wire, connect it to four wires on the top half of your harness; then you lean forward and they lift your legs and attach the four back wires: so you are hanging suspended horizontally in a harness from neck to knee. They yell ‘bombs away’ and give you a shove to launch you 500m across a yawing chasm. My only thought as I caught my breath, suspended, helpless under a thin wire, shot over the abyss and looked down 200m to a tiny river and rugged rocks far below was: “WTF am I DOING?”
So - you traverse half a kilometre across the chasm and the other side approaches rather rapidly as you zoom downhill past the sheer cliff face and into a narrow, tree-lined gulley. Staff on the other side have a rope attached to a rubber fitting on the wire which slows you down and you come to a shuddering stop - reminded me of an aircraft landing on a carrier!
Then you walk up a hill to the return point and do it all again back to the side of the valley you started from, but lower down, of course. STILL - I can now say: “I did it!!”
One day the mayor arranged for a local band to play at the HQ because some celebrities were coming - they’d scaled Mount Everest. The band was older guys in their 60s and 70s - two rhythm guitars, a bass and a banjo but it was the percussion section that amazed. The guy was thumping on two empty 4-litre plastic containers, interspersed with hitting an empty glass bottle and his ‘cymbal’ was a tin plate containing some cutlery tied together with string - still, all-in-all, they sounded pretty darned good.
I mentioned before that I’d not seen any television - that’s not quite true toward the end. There is a Filipino boxer who is regarded as a national treasure because he has won world titles in various weight divisions - they were amazed that I’d never heard of him. Anyway, he was involved in a title fight in Las Vegas which was televised and they set up a TV at the Park HQ. I watched a few rounds but it was at least 80% commercials and they just seemed to be dancing around most of the time so I only watched a few rounds - their boy won again. I was told that, when one of his fights was on TV that traffic on the roads decreased dramatically and crime virtually ceased throughout the Philippines!
I’ve had this happen several times with hotels - but never with an ‘adventure park’: three days before I was scheduled to finish, I was told that all the supervisors were attending a meeting the next day and, therefore, I was in charge for the day. Thankfully nothing went wrong, although we did close The Plunge because of some doubts with u-bolts where they attached the person to the main cable. Better to be ‘sure’ than ‘sorry’ - eh, didn’t want anyone saying “ooppss”?
SO: back to Tagbilaren for a flight to Manilla and three days R&R before going onto the next assignment, on another island, in the Philippines. The driver delivered me to the airport at 07.15 and I was told that I could not check-in until 08.00! The numbers slowly stacked up in the tiny terminal and the decibel level of the conversations increased exponentially. Then three blind men with guitars and a blind woman with castanets arrived and added to the volume by ‘entertaining’ us all!