We just got back from a long bus ride to the interior of Bohol, a biggish island (probably 200km across), where we saw a place called Chocolate Hills. The place is so-named because the geological formations look like truffles scattered across the plain. It’s a beautiful spot, but as the most-famous tourist attraction on the island, the amenities are surprisingly spartan given how far you have to travel to reach it from Loboc or Tagbilaran City. I was hoping at least for a hiking trail but encountered instead just a TCA (tourist containment area) designed for busloads of people to march up to the top of a hill, ring a bell, take pictures and go. We sought a restaurant but found only a snack bar. So we came back here to the Island City Mall, grabbed some KFC and headed for the Netopia center where I’m typing this now. Luis wants to see a movie; while he’s doing that I plan to take a random walk in the direction of our hotel (3km).Last night we had an encounter that I consider the epitome of native hospitality. Luis and I went for a walk to take some beachfront pictures at sunset; almost immediately, a local made eye contact with me and invited me to come over to the bar. He introduced me to a half-dozen friends and served me a coconut-based wine; I begged off for 15 minutes, explaining that I wanted to join Luis for the sunset. Then I returned to the table with Luis and we socialized for 90 minutes or so, until darkness fell. The personalities of the guys were quite varied. Their native tongue is Bisaya but most of them could communicate with Luis in Tagalog; two of them knew a little English. The quiet 25-year-old kid next to me was flirting with me with his hands under the table, and the first guy who invited me over attempted 3 times to get me to leave the group to spend time with him. This led to my possibly-faulty presumption that we’d run into a local group of baklas (gays) (bayot in Bisaya). What was truly funny to me was that Luis’ impression of them, based mainly on unkempt personal appearance, was that they were “thugs” (my closest approximation of the Tagalog word Luis used). I had to laugh because these were, to my mind, quite gentle souls from whom I sensed no danger.
Before our evening hour with that group (I got together with a couple of them later on, just had a beer with the one who had spent 6 years as a seaman, mostly serving in the Persion Gulf area around Iran), we spent the day with our driver Emil. He took us to see two of the places where tarsiers are on display. We also stopped by two churches. At one of the church grounds, I had a rather surreal experience: four boys between 4 and 6 years old approached us, literally wearing nothing but shirts. One of them had learned hand reflexology and gave me a seemingly-professional massage to both of my hands, using all the regular techniques. Kid must be 5, it was just totally bizarre, he was quite strong despite the tiny size of his fingers. We gave them some coins and went on our way.
How did we wind up with a “driver” of our own, you may ask? Well, it wasn’t really something we intended or read in the guide book, but the cell phone is at the heart of it. This is something I suggest to anyone who likes to travel. In the USA, taxicabs are outrageously expensive. When you travel, expect to spend $1 to $5 for a typical cab ride; that’s been the price everywhere I’ve gone the past few years. Except here, where it’s about 6 to 75 pesos (12 cents to $1.50, usually on the low end of that range). What we wound up doing on our first couple trips starting with arriving at the airport here at Tagbilaran City was to take down the cell phone numbers of the first couple of cab rides (most of the “cabs” here are tricycles–a motorcycle with side car). We decided which one we liked and hired him for the day next day. Made the “mistake” of not negotiating a price ahead of time, but we’d been a good judge of character: he let us set whatever price we wanted. He took his own judgment of us first thing in the morning: prompted us whether to buy a full tank of gas (10 liters). We wound up giving him lunch and another 350 pesos for about 7 hours of driving for us. He showed up very promptly to pick us up again this morning, this time just to drop us at a bus station.
We bought a ticket for the 7:30am ferry to Cebu tomorrow.
Note: We have been taking photos all along and have the ability to insert them here, but the process is too painful given the slow PCs, slow uploads and lack of file-management tools on most public Internet PCs.