Stumbling Upon Parades

There’s nothing quite like letting Google do all the planning for you next trip. Not sure on a destination? No problem, Google’s got that answer too.

And so the adventure began to the Philippines from Shanghai, after my friend Cameron, plugged in “cheap flights from Shanghai” into Google, and found a great deal on Cebu Pacific Air. There’s something that just feels right about a plane ticket where the international tax makes up more of the price than the actual seat. No previous interest in the Philippines? No problem, a few Google image searches, and the beach pictures were enough to make us more than excited.

Of course, there is always a catch, and this time it entailed taking the red-eye flight that gets in at the all too inconvenient hour of 4:20 in the A.M. Not quite late enough to justify a few hours of café loafing until daylight, and not quite long enough for a hotel room on our budget.

We solved this problem by uncovering a pay-by-the-hour hotel located on the airport premises, or so said the website. Surely, this would save us time and money. Not to mention getting the trip started on a trashy-if-not-romantical foot. Of course, upon landing, no airport official had ever heard of such a hotel, so we were back to square one.

The man in the taxi line nicely asks, “Where are you going?” We respond bleary-eyed, and without Pesos, “We have no plan.” Oh, and no guidebook. The guidebook we saw in the airport cost almost as much as the plane ticket, so we figured we could do without.

As we got in the taxi, mentioning that we just wanted a cheap place to stay, in the only area of town in Manila we could remember reading about, Malate, we started to question our “no plan plan.” Then as the cab pulled away from the terminal, and we saw the pay by the hour hotel a mere 100 yards away we really started to question it.

Upon awaking the next, well same, morning, we stumbled down to check-out, and while waiting, I picked up a local newspaper. The days’ newspaper turned out to be better than any guidebook we could have wanted.

The headline “Parade in Tondo for Fiesta del Santo Nino,” piqued our interest. We had nothing planned, and besides, who doesn’t love a parade? We prodded our hotel manager for a little more info, and she replied,

“Oh you don’t want to go there. Too far, and too many people!”

And so it was settled, we’d go to Tondo after lunch to see the parade. The great thing about the Philippines is their outstanding hospitality, as well as their impeccable English. Our waiter explained that the cheapest way to get to Tondo is by “Jeepney,” which is essentially a substitute for a vast network of busses, and is how all the locals seemed to travel.

The Jeepney is your first clue into the vibrant spirit of the Philippine people, as each vehicle is brightly painted to attract the attention of potential riders. These Jeeps, leftover from WWII, have been converted to cram about 12 people in the back. Their exhaust systems seem to lack any sort of overhaul though, as being at street level in Jeepney-to-Jeepney traffic, you start to appreciate the development of the Prius Hybrid.

After a short twenty-minute ride, and a slight downpour, we arrived out of the tourist zone, and officially into the “stare at the lost foreigners” zone. Granted, we didn’t really have a destination, but we didn’t consider ourselves lost either. After wandering around the Tondo area for a while, we decided that A) people were already drunk “celebrating Jesus” at 2pm, and B) maybe it’d be nice to join them.

So we stop at the first restaurant we stumble upon, and sheepishly ask for a table for two. The waiter happily obliges and we sit down next to a large table with plenty of other revelers.

“Do you want lunch too?” he asks.

“No thanks, we already ate. Just beer please.”

As the whole patio turned to look at us as we sat down, we realized perhaps we stumbled onto something out of the ordinary. We start to notice matching shirts, and the lack of women, and we start to ask questions.

Turns out, it is the local firefighters’ private party for the Fiesta, and they have also invited their motorcycle gang friends. Apparently these two go together in the Philippines. We quickly offer to leave, and pay them for the beer we already drank, but the Philippine hospitality immediately kicked in, and we were rebuffed with plates of food and more beer instead.

This was our first taste of the delicious, sweet bbq meat that permeates the country, as they brought plate after plate of homemade meat, seafood, snacks, soups, ice cream, and of course more beer.

Drinking and chugging ensues, all at the request of our hosts, which we are now extremely indebted to, so we must oblige all requests. They apparently felt the same as their duty to their foreign guests, so any offhand comment by us was taken very seriously.

“Sweet shirt!” Cameron commented at one point. Let me point out that this particular branch of firefighters’ theme was Tweety Bird, so their shirts consisted of an airbrushed Tweety holding a fire hose, wearing a fire hat, and generally looking bad-ass. Also, their official vehicle was a purple truck aptly named the “Tweety Pumper.”

The shirt comment immediately landed us two aforementioned Tweety shirts, and despite our best efforts to refuse, we proudly wore them the rest of the night. This only endeared them to us more.

The “no plan plan” is not failing us at all, as it is now dark and we have spent the entire afternoon imbibing the local, ubiquitous brew, San Miguel. However, we decide that they could be of assistance to us, as we know we want to get out of Manila eventually and hit the beach. We had Boracay in the back of our minds as our destination, but I didn’t want to fall into the tourist trap of going to the most famous beach just because of hype and good marketing.

Luckily they confirmed that Boracay is indeed the way to go, as its sand “is finer than table salt” and has nightlife and wind sports to boot. They wrote out a route using planes, vans, and ferries, and along with the newspaper article, we filed it away in our de facto guidebook, Cameron’s wallet.

With that taken care of, we turned our attention to the more pressing cultural happenings around us. Why are there no women here? We asked at one point.

“They’re at home taking care of baby, doing laundry!” our new friend Luis exclaimed, as he rocked his faux baby, and motioned like we’d never seen anyone doing laundry before.

“Wait a second. You have a kid? How old are you?” I asked.

“18. I got him when I was 16. Here in the Philippines, we have no family plan!” That was duly confirmed as we went around the table and found out when everyone “got” their first child. This turned out to generally be in their teens, with a second child inevitably following about 10 months later. The influence of the Catholic Church has clearly not waned since the time of Spanish rule.

As darkness fell, the parade on the street started to pick up steam. Thousands of people walked by, most simply holding statues of baby Jesus in various states. Floats went by completely adorned in hundreds of these plastic statues. Not too exciting, really.

Next up on the agenda was apparently a traditional dance where two dancers inside of lion costume prance around wildly to the beat of some drummers standing by. But this is no ordinary dance, for this is a celebration of our Lord, baby Jesus.

The lion dances around our patio, but every five minutes or so, it stops to drink from a series of beers that are set up on little platforms, getting higher and higher, until they reach the top, which is a bucket of money that is their reward for dancing. This provided great entertainment until the dancers took off their lion head to chug the beers, whereupon we realized that the dancers couldn’t have been older than twelve.

“It’s okay! They’re professionals!” Our hosts exclaimed, as we cheers’ed another round.

As the night wore on, and we realized we’d been with them for the better part of 9 hours, it became clear that we should probably be on our way. They asked if we needed a ride, and we said, “no, we’ll be just fine in a Jeepney or taxi,” but we should have known they wouldn’t have any of that.

And in the end to a perfect night of beer, cultural exchange, and revelry, we were dropped off at our hostel in the department’s main fire truck, in a “taxi” ride that couldn’t possibly be beaten.

We left Manila immediately the next morning, satisfied in knowing that nothing could ever top that day, and that the sandy beaches of Boracay would heal our aching bodies.

And with that, we vowed never to buy a guidebook again. At least in English-speaking countries- China…..not so much.

No Rice Until You Finish Your Beer

Never thought I would hear that phrase, but my host family never ceases to amaze me.