Jungle Flowers and Diesel fuel
The Navy base at Subic Bay Philippines used to be the biggest base in the Pacific. It's not a base anymore. The Filipinos kicked us out over ten years ago now. But I remember pulling in there back in 1986. It was, I think, my third time there. And when we got off the ship that evening, most of the squids headed into town looking for girls, booze and craziness. But all of my nice civilian clothes were dirty because at our last port in Perth Australia, I met the most excellent girl, Sharon, and I had spent all week under her tender affections, and never got around to doing my laundry before we pulled out.
So there I was at Subic, with a seabag of dirty clothes, and an evening to kill in paradise. I caught a ride on a flatbed truck to a laundromat on base (the base was the size of a small city). It was a lonely brick building out on the edge of a jungle covered hill.
I stuffed my clothes into a washer and bought two cans of San Miguel beer from the vending machine there, and went out to sit on the bench in front of the laundry. And sitting there, listening to the monkeys calling their own home as night fell, I smelled it. The smell of the Philippines...
Jungle flowers and diesel fuel.
It's a strangely sweet-and-sour smell. And since then I've smelled it in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, China, Thailand, Indonesia, and all sorts of friendly places around the world.
And the smell has imprinted itself on my psyche. It instantly calms me and energizes me whenever I smell it. It's the smell of the soft place in my dreams, my Neverland.
I don't really have a picture in my mind of paradise, but whatever it looks like, it smells like jungle flowers and diesel fuel. And sometimes tastes just a little like cold San Miguel.
So there I was at Subic, with a seabag of dirty clothes, and an evening to kill in paradise. I caught a ride on a flatbed truck to a laundromat on base (the base was the size of a small city). It was a lonely brick building out on the edge of a jungle covered hill.
I stuffed my clothes into a washer and bought two cans of San Miguel beer from the vending machine there, and went out to sit on the bench in front of the laundry. And sitting there, listening to the monkeys calling their own home as night fell, I smelled it. The smell of the Philippines...
Jungle flowers and diesel fuel.
It's a strangely sweet-and-sour smell. And since then I've smelled it in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, China, Thailand, Indonesia, and all sorts of friendly places around the world.
And the smell has imprinted itself on my psyche. It instantly calms me and energizes me whenever I smell it. It's the smell of the soft place in my dreams, my Neverland.
I don't really have a picture in my mind of paradise, but whatever it looks like, it smells like jungle flowers and diesel fuel. And sometimes tastes just a little like cold San Miguel.