Life In The Philippines

Well guys the time is coming for Jared and I to head back to Tokyo. As I write this we are sitting at our bar on the beach-side here at Subic Bay in the Philippines. It is 6pm on Monday night right now, which means we have just 9 hrs left. Because our flight leaves at 9am tomorrow, we have to be at the airport by 7am or so. That means we need to leave this resort by 3am, as it is a four hour drive back to the smog and depression of Manila.

Life in the Philippines: Manila traffic
Manila traffic

So our plan is exactly the same as our last night in Tokyo before coming here: drink all night and try and sleep on the plane. Of course that did not work so well for me the first time. If you remember I was running on two hrs sleep the entire last 48 hrs in Tokyo. But then I could not sleep on the plane and my body started to not feel so hot. I was able to get some meds from the flight attendant, dozed for about 45 mins, and that fixed everything. Then arriving in PI I did not want to sleep, so I stay up until 1am or so that first night. Wound up being 72 hrs on 3 hrs sleep — when you hear it like that it sounds like I am a damn tweaker or something.

Now I am so excited about returning to Tokyo and to Mayu I know I will not be able to sleep at all. But damn I just had a thought: I have a long day and a long night ahead of me tomorrow, and probably should not expect to get much sleep… Damn I really do need to find time for a lil sleep. Well alright I will just have to be fucked up enough to sleep in the van so that if I cannot sleep in the plane I will still be good. [Switching from beer to Jack right now ha ha!!!!]

Living the beach life in the Philippines
The beach at Mango’s Resort, Subic Bay

Anyway, I have forgotten what I originally wanted to talk about in this blog. That sucks. Now it is just rambling. The basic point though is that we have survived a week in the Philippines and somehow — amazingly — resisted the daily onslaught from the dozen or so women-for-hire here. Jared and I stuck to the bartenders, which are also all hot girls, but they are not for hire, they don’t swing that way. And usually they never even really get to know their customers, who are always old Viagra men from America. But we are different because we are young. A couple did even seriously joke about us bringing them back as souvenirs. I’m totally fucking serious, they weren’t kidding. Made us swear we are coming back next summer.

The girls of Gecko's, Angeles City

But they are totally cool. I had one show me around town the second or third day, even though I really liked the morning-shift girl better. Well the one that showed me around town thought that I really liked her, so then when I started going out with the morning-shift girl when should would get off (which was coincidentally right as the tour-guide-girl was coming in for work, talk about awkward!), you can see she was jealous. But damn I’m sorry your friend was the one I wanted from the get-go, that was why I asked you to show me around, not if you want to go out for dinner or dancing or drinks or anything, ya know?

Jared & Michelle
Jared & Michelle @ Mango’s

Jared and I went with the two morning shift girls from the bar (**FYI, the good girls work in the bar on the beach at the resort, the bad girls work in the attached club, Rock Lobster) to OctoberFest on Saturday night. That is basically a Filipino Mardi Gras, with drinks and bands and a parade and rides. Oh yeah, let me tell you about these rides. The Ferris wheel looked like it was from Kiddie Acres and the roller-coaster was straight out of 1950. As we were standing in line with the girls I saw the group ahead of us start their turn in the roller-coaster and guess what: the damn fucking thing was fucking push-started by the two operators and a couple random young-ass kids dressed in shorts and torn shirts. Push started for God’s sake!

And when we got on there I thought I was going to die. Claire of course was all scared, so I put my arm around her as she sheltered up against me. The bar lowered but the damn thing does not lock in place. Down one of the hills I damn near flew out of the coaster, it was a little fucking intense. But luckily the coaster was two circles, an inner one and an outer one, covering maybe 100 feet by 50 feet on the grass. The whole ride was two laps but maybe only a minute or a minute-and-a-half long. Crazy man but to these Filipinos it was the top of the world. They might as well have been at Six Flags.

Life in the Philippines: police everywhere
Not sure if these guys were there to protect the tourists or keep them in line… either way, I’m glad I never experienced firsthand why they carry an assault rifle.

Walking throughout the festival there were probably a hundred or so cops, just down this one closed-off stretch of street, maybe four or five blocks. Of course all the cops had fucking assault rifles, as is the norm here. And even scarier there were a few officers with “Tourist Police” shirts on. I don’t even want to fucking know what a tourist cops job is. Something tells me it is not to protect the tourists…. I mean do they really need automatic weapons that fucking large to protect the tourists? And if so, protect them from what?!? My God only in PI.

Yep, time is running out here, but it has been fun. All the girls have made us swear we will be back soon and stay for longer. We’ll see how that goes with our plan of moving to Tokyo. I really want to return though, so we will make it happen somehow. Man I would have been tempted to take Claire home with me, such a cute and good girl, but I was still thinking about Mayu when I was with her, so no worries. I’m getting used to short relationships in various countries…

Ah, Mayu, 20 hrs from now I will be back to you. I have talked to her several times since I have been here (which is funny because I only talked to Corey and Amy back home once and that was today — the combined time I talked to both of them though was only as long as my shortest call with Mayu ha ha!) and she is looking forward to me returning as well. Hopefully everything works out all good. Man I can’t wait!

  The Philippines Travel & Photo Archive

  This post was imported from my old Shibuya Daze Blogger, a drunken, laughable blog intended only for friends that eventually evolved into the HoliDaze Blog and the HoliDaze Travel Community

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About Derek Freal

"Some people eat, others try therapy. I travel."   Cultural enthusiast. Adrenaline junkie. Eater of strange foods. Chasing unique and offbeat adventures around the world since 2008. Derek loves going to new destinations where he does not speak a word of the local language and must communicate with hand gestures, or places where he is forced to squat awkwardly to poo -- supposedly its healthier and more efficient. For more information (about Derek, not squat pooing) including popular posts and videos, check out his bio.

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