My Trip
This is pretty much a copy/paste of an email I sent my Aunt about my trip, but I'll paste it here for if you all feel like reading it.
I remember it all pretty well. In fact, the last week or two I've had what feels like homesickness for it, oddly enough. I felt like I was there for a lot longer than I actually was, that's for sure. I practically felt like a local by the end of the trip, and that was just after two weeks. I think it's mainly because we did so much more in a day there than we would ever do back home, so by bed time, the stuff you had done that morning felt like 2 days ago. Back home, going to a school and doing food distribution and making balloon animals one have been enough for one day, but over there, it was 2 hours out of a day, which would be followed by work at a building site, followed by some time at the markets, followed by another food distribution.
There's a whole lot to tell about the trip, I came back with a ton of stories. The first place we stopped was Manila, which is where most of the groups go and do work, but we only stayed there on the night we arrived and the night we left for home, the two places we really spent all of our time were Isabela and Boracay. Isabela is in the North, and is an agricultural area, it had been heavily flooded a few months before we arrived, and in one barangay (like a suburb) I worked in, they had been without electricity for months becasue of the storms.
In Isabela, we stayed in the dorm of an old Agricultural college which wasn't being used anymore, it was all bucket showers in cold water. The place made a perfect horror movie setting. It looked like some old dilapidated hospital ward or something, with dark hallways and all.
We did all most of our travelling in Isabela in/on Jeepneys, which I'm sure Uncle Jim could tell you all about, but they're basically old Jeeps from the War that have since been turned into heavily decorated and ridiculously unsafe busses. They're everywhere, and they're a ton of fun. In Isabela, people ride in, on top of, and hanging from the back of them. Basically, I got to relive my 16 year old days of car surfing on my friend's Land Cruiser, so I absolutely loved the Jeepneys. Not to mention the roads in the Philippines are absolute madness to begin with....A taxi ride from the airport to the Mall of Asia in Manila might have been the most white knucle 5 minutes of my life....Aside from the Jeepneys, there were trikes, which were more dangerous but in a much less enjoyable way. One actually rolled backwards on Bekah because it was too full going up a hill, which was a good laugh.
The people in Isabela basically treated us like we were famous, people stared or called out to us wherever we went. I pretty much had to have a hand free at all times while hanging off the Jeepneys just to keep up with waving to everyone. You hear a lot of "Hey Joe!" Which I think has to do with G.I Joe, and them assuming any white person up their way must be American. Bekah and I were fine with that assumption, of course, but the Australians wasted a good deal of energy trying to correct them. With them being so hospitable, it was actually hard to get to work at first, because they didn't want us to have to do anything. It was also fairly tricky trying to be a help on the worksite when none of the Tradesmen there spoke English. They fed us like kings, though. The food throughout the trip was amazing.
For the Isabela leg of the trip we spent most of our time seperated into two groups for two work sites, my group was small, and we were working on putting up windows in a church that had been "praying for windows since 1994". It was pretty impressive watching them work, because nothing went to waste at all. We sifted gravel out of rocks for the cement mixture, and then sifted it again for the finer cement. I spent a lot of time tying the window frames to the rio bar that ran through the cement of the building. I'm glad to say that those windows are definitely in there to stay.
There was an elementary school down the street which we vistited for food disrtibutions and making balloon animals. It's amazing what you can learn when you have to, if anyone wants a sword or a mutated dog, I'm your man. You'd be so shocked at how thrilled these kids were to see us show up at their school. I guess I can imagine how strange it would be to be going about your day and suddenly a pack of white people, possibly the first you've ever seen, just start waltzing through your school. They were hanging out the doors and windows just to see us. The schools there have very long days with very long lunch breaks, where the kids usually go home to eat, so around lunch time, we usually got a whole bunch of kids showing up to play with us at the work site. They were probably my favorite part of the trip.
Somewhere during all this, we also visited a prison to play basketball. Wearing little tank top jerseys that were WAY too small. I scored a basket against prisoners, which is something I can always throw out for street cred from now on. Also, we vistied another elementary school, which you can actually see a picture of on the Isabela wikipedia page. They had this morning routine where they pledged allegiance to the flag, sang the anthem, and then started dancing to songs like "Let's Get Loud." There was a bit of ummming and ahhing amongst our group whether any of us should go down and dance with the kids to give them a laugh. None of the other people seemed willing to step up, so I did. So there may be footage of me somewhere dancing the maccarena or something with a bunch of elementary kids.
For the last big work day, we went to the work site the other group had been working on, where our group got tasked with digging a hole for a septic tank to go in. I think there was this idea among the rest of the group that because we had all these stories of playing with the kids during breaks, we hadn't been working as hard as them. So they of course gave us the payback job. So there was a bit of competition amongst the groups, and I think they may have wanted to see us cave at "real" work. Of course, they didn't have a chance of making me do that. I kind of spent that whole day quietly proving a point. We had to break up the ground with a metal bar first, because there were no good shovels that could break into the ground, then we scooped up the dirt (or clay) into buckets, which we passed out of the hole to be dumped elsewhere. The amount of sweat you produce working over there is insane.
The last day in Isabela was "relaxing". We went caving first thing in the morning. The first cave we went to had actually been a church a long time ago, so all of the pews and the altar and such were still there. It was really incredible to look at, the light came from an opening way up at the top of the cave. After we were done there, we had a second cave to go to, which we had to have a guide take us through. It was a scientific research cave, so it wasn't open to the public, but they opened it up for us. We all had an idea that the second cave was going to be a bit harder to get through than the first was, and I can't even tell you how sore I already was from digging that hole the day before. But when the guide said "Ok, this is the path to the cave." I knew it was going to be the death of me. He was using "path" very loosely, because what was there was a practically vertical incline that looked like someone may have walked on once or twice before.
Obviously, there weren't any lights or paths inside the cave, the only thing we had were head lamps that were bought a few days before at the local markets, nobody really had any idea of the battery life of these things, some people had been playing with theirs for a few nights already, and nobody had charged theirs past whatever juice it came with. So really, it was more that likely they were going to start dying on us one by one. There were these mutated looking cave spiders and crickets around, and some kind of sonar-using birds flying around. At one point, we saw a snake, too. For the most part, the cave had been no big deal, aside from a few bumps on my head from slamming into hanging rocks, (stalactites?) I was fine.
THEN we came to a 15 meter crawling portion, which was optional. Basically, we just had to go to the end, turn around, and come back. We could only go in groups of two, so I dived in first (this is BEFORE I had seen any snakes, mind you) and another guy Jamie, who went to school with Bekah, came with me. When I say "crawl", I mean army style. It was so legit I can't even begin to tell you. We started off laying down, bascially wriggling through wet clay to gain any ground, having no idea what was ahead of us, then I rounded a corner, and it got LOWER. There was a whole lot of hysterical laughter going on at that point, at one point Jamie asked me 'Can we even do it!?" and all I could really say was that we didnt have a choice. There was no way we could reverse back out, all we could do was go forward till we found the end. It just couldn't have been any more tight a squeeze. The end turned out to just be a slightly more open area where we had to try make a three point turn, at one point while I was turning my light was grinding up against the wall in front of my face, and I was sure I was going to break it. That of course gave us the idea to turn our lights off to see how dark it was. No prizes for guessing how dark a hole 500 meters underground is. We both were laughing so hard at all of this. It was just so much more hardcore than we ever would have expected.
Eventually we made it out, only to find out that there was going to be another similar crawling portion on the way OUT of the cave which everyone would have to go through, unless they like the idea of eating cave crickets for the rest of their lives. The mud there was so thick you could lose your clothes. When we finally made it out, we were greeted by an equally steep DEcline to get back to the road. Basically, we slid down grabbing branches and saplings to try and keep from just rolling. The younger kids behind me actually lost their footing and came crashing into me. Of course, being the wall of heroic masculinity that I am, I caught them on my back and helped the down.
At the end, we were coated in mud so thick you could peel it off, so we payed a man in a motorboat to take us up the river to wash off before we went back. It was like something straight out of a movie, mountains were on both sides of us. That was one of the moments it really hit me just where I was, considering that just a week ago I would have been making eyeglasses, and now here I was on a rickety motor boat surrounded by jungle, heading up some little no name river. We came to a spot where we got out to swim around and wash the mud off, then Jamie, myslef and another Andrew saw a big rock hanging over the water. Probably something like 13/15 meters high, we guessed. So, we started climbing to the top and jumping into the water. However high it was, you kept falling well after you felt like it was time to hit the water. We only did that a few times, though, my swimming isn't great at the best of times, and I was more than a little tired out by then.
That evening they had a huge meal in our honor, which included a giant roast pig, from head to tail. I ate the tail, in fact. People from all over came to see us off, which was great, I was really shocked at how close I had gotten to some of these people, especially the kids, in such a short time. I should also probably mention that somewhere in between getting back from the caving and the start of the meal, Jamie and I took to shooting each other with a bb gun we had bought at the markets. It shot plastic pellets which actually drew blood and left welts. I still have some of the marks from it even now. We pretty much took turns finding out which part of the body hurt the most to shoot. It was nice to meet another guy who enjoys the same refined and gentlemanly pass times as I do.
Now the second half of the trip was in Boracay, which is a resort island, and like I told you on the phone, is very poor behind the beachfront. Also, the reception in Boracay was very different, as they used to seeing white people there, usually very overweight German men in speedos. We were a little bit more like walking wallets to the locals. Most people in our group loved Boracay, and I did too, but I actually sort of liked Isabela better. The whole beach side resort thing doesn't do much for me, and it was going to be hard for anything to top that caving day. Still, it was very nice, and the trip seemed more relaxed once we got to Boracay. We stayed in a place that was literally ON the beach, and it actually had shower heads and even warm water and an air condtioner, so it was practically luxury.
Most of the days followed the same schedule, we worked during the mornings at a school, which was growing to include a doctors clinic. And of course, our job was digging holes. Only this time through rock rather than clay. And the debris had to be wheel barrowed over an obstacle course to be dumped in the nex door neighboors yard, which was made more difficult by the fact that it rained every morning just before we worked, which made the mud slick, so it was hard to push uphill. Luckily, we got an electric jackhammer to use, but it broke on us, so that was a short-lived luxury.
Boracay seemed to be more about food distribution that the physical labor aspect, though. We went to a few different islands and schools to do distributions. The poverty there was even worse than in Isabela. Compared to some of these smaller islands, Isabela wasn't all that impovrished, really. There is a difference between real poverty and just not being wealthy, and it really showed here. Some of these children had nothing on at all but a shirt, and the schools were nothing but a shack with a dirt floor and a chalkboard. That was definitely a far cry from the school uniforms and dancing routines in the morning I saw Isabela.
During the evenings we were pretty much free to do what we liked, Paul, the guy who coordinates the trips, usually had something planned for us in the evenings, like a restaurant or riding on an outrigger or something like that. I spent a lot of time going on "Jonah's runs" to a milkshake place about half an hour down the coastline. One of the restaurants that we went to was managed by a guy who is a local artist who sings and plays piano. He actually just recorded his second album, so he's apaprently kind of a big deal in Boracay. Paul knew him from other visits. He played for us, and we had a bit of a singalong night. The whole time Bekah and I kept hoping he'd play some Matchbox 20, because they make for great singalong stuff. So when he asked, we spoke up. He was a bit vague on the words, so we were sort of helping him, I kinda sang a bit too loud, and of course, when you stick your neck out, next thing you know you're on stage with a mic in your hand. So there I was, singing Matchbox 20 for everyone at some restaraunt on a resort island. I really checked off alot of the "things to do before you die" list during that trip!
That's most of it, really. I think I did pretty well off the top of my head, like I said, there was so much going on, it was hard to keep track of it all. Next time we talk on the phone I'm sure I could think of a few more things to throw in there, but that should get you a pretty good idea of what I got up to.
I remember it all pretty well. In fact, the last week or two I've had what feels like homesickness for it, oddly enough. I felt like I was there for a lot longer than I actually was, that's for sure. I practically felt like a local by the end of the trip, and that was just after two weeks. I think it's mainly because we did so much more in a day there than we would ever do back home, so by bed time, the stuff you had done that morning felt like 2 days ago. Back home, going to a school and doing food distribution and making balloon animals one have been enough for one day, but over there, it was 2 hours out of a day, which would be followed by work at a building site, followed by some time at the markets, followed by another food distribution.
There's a whole lot to tell about the trip, I came back with a ton of stories. The first place we stopped was Manila, which is where most of the groups go and do work, but we only stayed there on the night we arrived and the night we left for home, the two places we really spent all of our time were Isabela and Boracay. Isabela is in the North, and is an agricultural area, it had been heavily flooded a few months before we arrived, and in one barangay (like a suburb) I worked in, they had been without electricity for months becasue of the storms.
In Isabela, we stayed in the dorm of an old Agricultural college which wasn't being used anymore, it was all bucket showers in cold water. The place made a perfect horror movie setting. It looked like some old dilapidated hospital ward or something, with dark hallways and all.
We did all most of our travelling in Isabela in/on Jeepneys, which I'm sure Uncle Jim could tell you all about, but they're basically old Jeeps from the War that have since been turned into heavily decorated and ridiculously unsafe busses. They're everywhere, and they're a ton of fun. In Isabela, people ride in, on top of, and hanging from the back of them. Basically, I got to relive my 16 year old days of car surfing on my friend's Land Cruiser, so I absolutely loved the Jeepneys. Not to mention the roads in the Philippines are absolute madness to begin with....A taxi ride from the airport to the Mall of Asia in Manila might have been the most white knucle 5 minutes of my life....Aside from the Jeepneys, there were trikes, which were more dangerous but in a much less enjoyable way. One actually rolled backwards on Bekah because it was too full going up a hill, which was a good laugh.
The people in Isabela basically treated us like we were famous, people stared or called out to us wherever we went. I pretty much had to have a hand free at all times while hanging off the Jeepneys just to keep up with waving to everyone. You hear a lot of "Hey Joe!" Which I think has to do with G.I Joe, and them assuming any white person up their way must be American. Bekah and I were fine with that assumption, of course, but the Australians wasted a good deal of energy trying to correct them. With them being so hospitable, it was actually hard to get to work at first, because they didn't want us to have to do anything. It was also fairly tricky trying to be a help on the worksite when none of the Tradesmen there spoke English. They fed us like kings, though. The food throughout the trip was amazing.
For the Isabela leg of the trip we spent most of our time seperated into two groups for two work sites, my group was small, and we were working on putting up windows in a church that had been "praying for windows since 1994". It was pretty impressive watching them work, because nothing went to waste at all. We sifted gravel out of rocks for the cement mixture, and then sifted it again for the finer cement. I spent a lot of time tying the window frames to the rio bar that ran through the cement of the building. I'm glad to say that those windows are definitely in there to stay.
There was an elementary school down the street which we vistited for food disrtibutions and making balloon animals. It's amazing what you can learn when you have to, if anyone wants a sword or a mutated dog, I'm your man. You'd be so shocked at how thrilled these kids were to see us show up at their school. I guess I can imagine how strange it would be to be going about your day and suddenly a pack of white people, possibly the first you've ever seen, just start waltzing through your school. They were hanging out the doors and windows just to see us. The schools there have very long days with very long lunch breaks, where the kids usually go home to eat, so around lunch time, we usually got a whole bunch of kids showing up to play with us at the work site. They were probably my favorite part of the trip.
Somewhere during all this, we also visited a prison to play basketball. Wearing little tank top jerseys that were WAY too small. I scored a basket against prisoners, which is something I can always throw out for street cred from now on. Also, we vistied another elementary school, which you can actually see a picture of on the Isabela wikipedia page. They had this morning routine where they pledged allegiance to the flag, sang the anthem, and then started dancing to songs like "Let's Get Loud." There was a bit of ummming and ahhing amongst our group whether any of us should go down and dance with the kids to give them a laugh. None of the other people seemed willing to step up, so I did. So there may be footage of me somewhere dancing the maccarena or something with a bunch of elementary kids.
For the last big work day, we went to the work site the other group had been working on, where our group got tasked with digging a hole for a septic tank to go in. I think there was this idea among the rest of the group that because we had all these stories of playing with the kids during breaks, we hadn't been working as hard as them. So they of course gave us the payback job. So there was a bit of competition amongst the groups, and I think they may have wanted to see us cave at "real" work. Of course, they didn't have a chance of making me do that. I kind of spent that whole day quietly proving a point. We had to break up the ground with a metal bar first, because there were no good shovels that could break into the ground, then we scooped up the dirt (or clay) into buckets, which we passed out of the hole to be dumped elsewhere. The amount of sweat you produce working over there is insane.
The last day in Isabela was "relaxing". We went caving first thing in the morning. The first cave we went to had actually been a church a long time ago, so all of the pews and the altar and such were still there. It was really incredible to look at, the light came from an opening way up at the top of the cave. After we were done there, we had a second cave to go to, which we had to have a guide take us through. It was a scientific research cave, so it wasn't open to the public, but they opened it up for us. We all had an idea that the second cave was going to be a bit harder to get through than the first was, and I can't even tell you how sore I already was from digging that hole the day before. But when the guide said "Ok, this is the path to the cave." I knew it was going to be the death of me. He was using "path" very loosely, because what was there was a practically vertical incline that looked like someone may have walked on once or twice before.
Obviously, there weren't any lights or paths inside the cave, the only thing we had were head lamps that were bought a few days before at the local markets, nobody really had any idea of the battery life of these things, some people had been playing with theirs for a few nights already, and nobody had charged theirs past whatever juice it came with. So really, it was more that likely they were going to start dying on us one by one. There were these mutated looking cave spiders and crickets around, and some kind of sonar-using birds flying around. At one point, we saw a snake, too. For the most part, the cave had been no big deal, aside from a few bumps on my head from slamming into hanging rocks, (stalactites?) I was fine.
THEN we came to a 15 meter crawling portion, which was optional. Basically, we just had to go to the end, turn around, and come back. We could only go in groups of two, so I dived in first (this is BEFORE I had seen any snakes, mind you) and another guy Jamie, who went to school with Bekah, came with me. When I say "crawl", I mean army style. It was so legit I can't even begin to tell you. We started off laying down, bascially wriggling through wet clay to gain any ground, having no idea what was ahead of us, then I rounded a corner, and it got LOWER. There was a whole lot of hysterical laughter going on at that point, at one point Jamie asked me 'Can we even do it!?" and all I could really say was that we didnt have a choice. There was no way we could reverse back out, all we could do was go forward till we found the end. It just couldn't have been any more tight a squeeze. The end turned out to just be a slightly more open area where we had to try make a three point turn, at one point while I was turning my light was grinding up against the wall in front of my face, and I was sure I was going to break it. That of course gave us the idea to turn our lights off to see how dark it was. No prizes for guessing how dark a hole 500 meters underground is. We both were laughing so hard at all of this. It was just so much more hardcore than we ever would have expected.
Eventually we made it out, only to find out that there was going to be another similar crawling portion on the way OUT of the cave which everyone would have to go through, unless they like the idea of eating cave crickets for the rest of their lives. The mud there was so thick you could lose your clothes. When we finally made it out, we were greeted by an equally steep DEcline to get back to the road. Basically, we slid down grabbing branches and saplings to try and keep from just rolling. The younger kids behind me actually lost their footing and came crashing into me. Of course, being the wall of heroic masculinity that I am, I caught them on my back and helped the down.
At the end, we were coated in mud so thick you could peel it off, so we payed a man in a motorboat to take us up the river to wash off before we went back. It was like something straight out of a movie, mountains were on both sides of us. That was one of the moments it really hit me just where I was, considering that just a week ago I would have been making eyeglasses, and now here I was on a rickety motor boat surrounded by jungle, heading up some little no name river. We came to a spot where we got out to swim around and wash the mud off, then Jamie, myslef and another Andrew saw a big rock hanging over the water. Probably something like 13/15 meters high, we guessed. So, we started climbing to the top and jumping into the water. However high it was, you kept falling well after you felt like it was time to hit the water. We only did that a few times, though, my swimming isn't great at the best of times, and I was more than a little tired out by then.
That evening they had a huge meal in our honor, which included a giant roast pig, from head to tail. I ate the tail, in fact. People from all over came to see us off, which was great, I was really shocked at how close I had gotten to some of these people, especially the kids, in such a short time. I should also probably mention that somewhere in between getting back from the caving and the start of the meal, Jamie and I took to shooting each other with a bb gun we had bought at the markets. It shot plastic pellets which actually drew blood and left welts. I still have some of the marks from it even now. We pretty much took turns finding out which part of the body hurt the most to shoot. It was nice to meet another guy who enjoys the same refined and gentlemanly pass times as I do.
Now the second half of the trip was in Boracay, which is a resort island, and like I told you on the phone, is very poor behind the beachfront. Also, the reception in Boracay was very different, as they used to seeing white people there, usually very overweight German men in speedos. We were a little bit more like walking wallets to the locals. Most people in our group loved Boracay, and I did too, but I actually sort of liked Isabela better. The whole beach side resort thing doesn't do much for me, and it was going to be hard for anything to top that caving day. Still, it was very nice, and the trip seemed more relaxed once we got to Boracay. We stayed in a place that was literally ON the beach, and it actually had shower heads and even warm water and an air condtioner, so it was practically luxury.
Most of the days followed the same schedule, we worked during the mornings at a school, which was growing to include a doctors clinic. And of course, our job was digging holes. Only this time through rock rather than clay. And the debris had to be wheel barrowed over an obstacle course to be dumped in the nex door neighboors yard, which was made more difficult by the fact that it rained every morning just before we worked, which made the mud slick, so it was hard to push uphill. Luckily, we got an electric jackhammer to use, but it broke on us, so that was a short-lived luxury.
Boracay seemed to be more about food distribution that the physical labor aspect, though. We went to a few different islands and schools to do distributions. The poverty there was even worse than in Isabela. Compared to some of these smaller islands, Isabela wasn't all that impovrished, really. There is a difference between real poverty and just not being wealthy, and it really showed here. Some of these children had nothing on at all but a shirt, and the schools were nothing but a shack with a dirt floor and a chalkboard. That was definitely a far cry from the school uniforms and dancing routines in the morning I saw Isabela.
During the evenings we were pretty much free to do what we liked, Paul, the guy who coordinates the trips, usually had something planned for us in the evenings, like a restaurant or riding on an outrigger or something like that. I spent a lot of time going on "Jonah's runs" to a milkshake place about half an hour down the coastline. One of the restaurants that we went to was managed by a guy who is a local artist who sings and plays piano. He actually just recorded his second album, so he's apaprently kind of a big deal in Boracay. Paul knew him from other visits. He played for us, and we had a bit of a singalong night. The whole time Bekah and I kept hoping he'd play some Matchbox 20, because they make for great singalong stuff. So when he asked, we spoke up. He was a bit vague on the words, so we were sort of helping him, I kinda sang a bit too loud, and of course, when you stick your neck out, next thing you know you're on stage with a mic in your hand. So there I was, singing Matchbox 20 for everyone at some restaraunt on a resort island. I really checked off alot of the "things to do before you die" list during that trip!
That's most of it, really. I think I did pretty well off the top of my head, like I said, there was so much going on, it was hard to keep track of it all. Next time we talk on the phone I'm sure I could think of a few more things to throw in there, but that should get you a pretty good idea of what I got up to.