Feb 28 – The bus ride back from Dumaguete seemed longer and more arduous than the one down there. Maybe I am wistful: the people of Dumaguete really are quite special; I can’t figure out whether it’s because they just don’t see many white guys so they were curious about me, or because they’re just plain more friendly. It really is likely to be the latter; it may be mainly a college town, but it’s also got plenty of resort accommodations.
Our hotel back here treated us remarkably well, handing us the key and sending a porter up with our bags moments later. Such a relief after a 5.5-hour bus/ferry ride. (Spoiled only by the grim bathroom facility in the room…;-)) Went shopping afterward – Luis insisted we need additional luggage to cart our stuff back to the States, which is why we collect new luggage on so many of our vacation trips – so I found myself in a department store rummaging through the socks & underwear section, starting to get that detached/bored expression that Luis knows so well. But the shirts captivated me; I remembered how cute one of his fellow alums looked at the reunion, and Luis remembered the brand name of the shirt so sure enough, I found a couple shirts that I liked. Very much nicer than what I find in boring American department stores.
To stave off my increasing grumpiness at being in a store for too long, Luis took me over to the McDonald’s. He wanted to experience the McSpaghetti, and I got a McRice burger. Don’t find those things in the States either, but I remember going to Honolulu back in 1987 and finding Japanese noodles on the McDonald’s menu.
Speaking of Mickie D’s, there’s a new one going up in the center of Dumaguete. I used to rank towns by the number of McDonald’s outlets to be found (when I moved to MA in 1980, I settled into the “2 McDonald’s town” of Marlborough). As noted in an earlier entry here, major construction projects like this operate at least two shifts: two nights ago we walked past the Dumaguete site at 9pm, and could see full work crews creating the familiar McDonald’s interior on the ground floor and adding steelwork to the structure high up on the 3rd floor. Everywhere you see a Jollibee in the Philippines, chances are you’ll find a McDonald’s no more than 2 blocks away.
A familiar sign you find – on many walls and buildings – is a tribute to the ill behavior of many of those great-looking, friendly guys you find in the urban centers: Bawal umihi dito (prohibited to piss here). Luis and I have witnessed many examples of this crude behavior, which seems to be part of the culture here but which clearly drives property owners stir-crazy. Public restrooms are far easier to find than in most any US city but some guys…
Another sign you see very often – next to cash registers – is from the BIR (don’t remember the acronym, it’s the Philippine IRS). Sales tax (called VAT pretty much everywhere but the USA) is assessed at 10% to 12% and almost always included in the price tag. The signs remind customers to always demand an official receipt bearing the store’s TIN, because evidently many merchants try to under-report sales volume.
Back to my wistful thinking about Dumaguete: yesterday I got up and decided to get some exercise. We’re eating 3 square meals plus snacks each day, and we’re not doing our usual exercise. So I ventured out to the promenade/boardwalk of Dumaguete, which is 780m long plus a stretch leading out to the dock, and made about 1-1/2 laps. Despite living a lot of my life on coastal beaches including Virginia Beach, Daytona and Fort Lauderdale, rare has been the day I’ve been up early enough to go out and look at the sunrise. It was remarkably pleasant to go out in 75F weather and glimpse my shadow cast all the way onto the buildings across the street as I jogged along the waterfront. This morning I repeated the exercise, not quite early enough to catch the sunrise, forcibly insisting to Luis that he join me. He too had a great time of it!
Ah, so many memories but so little time during the trip to write about them… one other thing I’ll mention before signing off here tonight is the German guy we met after a motorbike ride up to the waterfalls near Valencia (south of Dumaguete) yesterday. He appeared to be in his mid 60s, and struck up a conversation with us at a coffee shop. He’d been living there permanently for 3 years, after a number of visits. He’s got a Filipina wife whom he said was not “cooperative” in making permanent immigration plans. I got the sense that she wanted to raise their kids in Germany rather than Philippines, but didn’t inquire about that further. He said he chose to live about 15km outside Dumaguete for the cooler weather. Only 150m elevation, on the eastern slope of a higher mountain, makes a difference of at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit. So he said he gets access to all the comforts of the town without having to cope with the heat. I asked him how he’s treated by the community, since I know that as a permanent resident people treat you a lot differently (usually with competitive suspicion) than if you are a temporary visitor. He got off onto a tangent about a property-line encroachment dispute with a neighbor so I didn’t learn much. But I was very much thinking about how the Japanese tend not to accept foreigners no matter how much they assimilate. Filipinos, I think, are much more accepting even though I can plainly see that white people are only a very tiny minority here.
Luis and I contemplated future resettlement plans. Very much on my mind is the rise of Asia (exemplified here in Cebu by a tremendously tall building whose unfinished frame and construction crane dominates the skyline) and the seeming loss of common purpose – potential decline – in the USA. But the example of Luis’ father, who tried to make a new start in a foreign land in his 40s, serves to remind both of us that our home is the USA so at least for Luis the next 20 years or so will probably be rooted to a medical-research career in the USA. I have no idea what my own career will be; everywhere I turn here, I can think of money-making ideas that have yet to be implemented. In the USA, I can never come up with something that isn’t either already being done or which would get stomped into oblivion by well-established corporate giants the moment a hint of profitability becomes apparent. That’s why there is such an air of possibility here, at least for the myriad people here whose entrepreneurial spirit is similar to mine in my now-past career.
Well, all that said, I’ve opted not to return to USA for another couple of weeks. Philippines, you’ll have to live with me until (at least) the 18th!
Tomorrow we fly from Cebu City to Boracay for a one-day stay in the most famous white-sand beach of this island nation. Reaching our 7th island (8, I guess, if you count the neighboring island from here where the airport is), we will have seen 0.1% of the islands in the country.