Bleak mirror

It isn't easy travelling as a Filipino, when the whole world presumes you're a criminal and/or prostitute until proven innocent by a long and expensive paper trail, after which they may decide on a whim not to let you into their country anyway without being obliged to give you a reason why.

We expected to face obstacles when applying for Jackie's tourist visas to the notoriously xenophobic Japan and South Korea a few months down the line, but spending a few months travelling around friendly neighbourhood countries first, like Malaysia, Thailand and wherever else took our fancy, was supposed to be the easy part, dipping Jackie's feet in international waters and collecting some useful passport stamps to help her chances of being approved for more difficult countries in the future.

We only learned there's no such thing as a stress-free holiday for Filipinos after we'd already cleared immigration at Manila and were stopped just before boarding the plane. At least the Philippines is consistent, going to great efforts to give me the worst possible impression right to the very end.

Pre-lance Planne(u)r

In Fife, in another life

I started this blog in September 2010 as a self-indulgent travel journal, a means to let anyone who cared know what I was getting up to, so I didn't feel obligated to join a social network or something, and as a way to keep myself sane during the more emotionally confusing and stressful times. It's succeeded admirably.

Before this blog, my only means of expressing these feelings, whims and frustrations was in the form of Word documents written for my own benefit and saved to my hard drive. There's also the angst-ridden emails to the few people I feel comfortable talking about deeper feelings with, whether they want to hear it or not. This practice is still alive and well, but as a ruthless minimalist I occasionally go through my old emails and annihilate any that I feel don't serve a practical function, so all that girl trouble is hopefully lost forever (unless Oliver still has a load of incriminating stuff from me).

So, for the sake of historical context, here are extracts from some of those documents written in the months leading up to September 2010, offering an insight into my changing mindset, the reasons I left Scotland and my original travel 'plans,' back when I clearly had no idea what travelling involved. I just read it through and it's probably the most pointless and boring post I've ever done, but as an origin story it's at least better than those Star Wars prequels.

Things I didn't like about the Philippines

It's that time again - several months into a relationship where I start to think unnecessarily far ahead and consider the long-term ramifications of being with someone from a different country, specifically the matter of where I could end up spending most of my life if we settled down. I'm not selfish about this: if I can continue working freelance forever, I'll have the freedom to relocate wherever I'm needed. Jackie's close to her family so naturally she'll want to be close in a geographical sense too, I have no problem accommodating that. The only problem I have is that this place is a complete shithole.

That's the sort of unreasonable, over-privileged white man intolerance I know you love to read from me, but this isn't a few weeks in grotty hotels I can laugh off later, I'm talking about the place I'll be living for (probably) most of my 30s, 40s and however many more decades my poor nutrition allows. I got a bit bored of seeing the same streets in Edinburgh when I lived there for three years, but at least those streets were clean, paved and not filled with ignorant people staring and yelling at me (not filled, but there was the odd sod).

So since I've cracked open this can of intolerance and I'm taking sanity leave from the Philippines for a couple of months, here's the latest instalment in what was meant to be a regular feature to explore my real or imagined problems with every country I visit. Due to a packed travel schedule in the second half of last year and quite enjoying Australia in January, I haven't taken the time to make a formal complaint about anywhere since China, which makes things look a little unfair and specific - I'll try to remember to be racist about everywhere from now on, alright?

Here are assorted things that have annoyed or depressed me about the Philippines from my privileged, judgmental and probably hypocritical perspective. I'll be back again and again between our trips, but I don't know if I could stay.

Philippeats

I haven't talked about exotic foreign food for a while, mainly because in Australia I was eating complete shit to save money. But then I went back to a country where it's almost offensively cheap to get people to cook all my meals for me. A country which, I realised in surprise, I had next to no idea what the local cuisine is, despite having spent three weeks there before in 2011.

I must have been eating something, surely? Come to think of it, have I ever seen a Filipino restaurant abroad? What do they eat in this multicultural archipelago that's seen Spanish and American colonisation and a melting pot of immigration? Man cannot survive on balut alone. Thank god.

Davey day care

I don't talk too much about the friends I've made when travelling, mostly because people are annoying and time-consuming so I try to limit human interaction as much as possible. But every so often I'll meet someone who's fun and friendly enough to spend some time with, like Eshen.

I'll get this out of the way first - Eshen's a lot younger than my friends usually are. I thought it was a bit weird when I hung out with 19-year-olds in South Korea, but Eshen's only just turned two. She's certainly the first friend I've made while travelling who was born within the life span of this blog, specifically when I was on the Perhentian Islands, Malaysia (where were you on 18 April '11?) That means when I left the UK, she wasn't even conceived.

But we haven't let this age gap be an obstacle to our friendship, maybe because people are less judgemental about that over here. I've seen loads of really old foreign men at my hotel with really young Filipina 'friends' and they seem to be getting on just swell. The language barrier isn't any greater than it would be with a child who could barely speak any other language either, and it's about the same as it was with the adult Koreans to be honest. Eshen speaks about as much English as I do Bisaya, but it's usually easy to work out what she's talking about when she invites me to play popular games like throwing her bag across the room, pretending to eat invisible food for three hours, pretending to be shot in the head (classic), placing coins between her toes or just openly laughing at my face even when I'm not pulling a face.

Until she starts crying for no reason and I call for her mother or Auntie Jackie. I can't deal with this drama queen stuff. But I'm learning.

Let's play refugees!

The main attraction we were looking forward to in Leyte (there wasn't much else to do) was the prospect of taking a bus and ferry back to Davao, rather than another bloody domestic flight connection via Cebu or Manilagainagain. With Philippines exhausts the carbon saving would be negligible or possibly even more damaging than flying there, but we were both eager for the more 'authentic' travel experience and - most importantly - the ability to point to these islands on a map in the future and brag, 'did it.'

We didn't let the bus company's (misleading) claims of 14 hours' travel time deter us, despite having endured a similar length journey a few days earlier, though I was a little uncomfortable about how little information we had about what the trip actually entailed, with nothing to be found online and only minimal details from the one guy at the bus terminal who wasn't trying to scam us.

How much time would we spend on the bus as opposed to the ferry? Would we sleep on the bus or arrange a cabin on the boat? Would we be squashed into tiny seats with cardboard boxes filling the gangway, no knee room and the teetering Leviathan luggage of 30 cross-country migrants threatening to concuss us at any time? This epic 26-hour journey makes The Lord of the Rings look like a walk to the corner shop in your dressing gown.

See you Leyte

We stopped off in Leyte on the long journey from Sagada back to Davao, so Jackie's parents could size up this strange foreigner who'd be taking their daughter overseas (I think they bought it).

As ever, I was excited at the prospect of a brand new island to explore, but a lack of infrastructure and frustrating bus schedules in these provincial towns meant we didn't see a lot.

Seriously, there's nothing to see here.

Hello me, it's me again

Outside of tranniversaries, this blog has developed a small assortment of annual features (or biennial if I forget) that are useful for keeping tabs on my progress, as well as for filling time when I'm not getting up to very much. This one, a gallery of photos of my face taken over the past 12 months, is the most pointless post since last time I did it.

At least I thought it was pointless - that post has inexplicably racked up more than 1,500 views in a year, just shy of my all-time top 10 thanks to the efforts of dead babies, sexy teachers and used schoolgirl panties (if you haven't been following my blog you might be a little lost). What's going on? Why do so many people want to see mostly wonky or poorly framed photos of tourist sites spoiled by me being in them?

Whatever the reason, here's a load more. Fluctuating beard growth is a reliable barometer of whether or not I was travelling alone at different times.

Dead stuff in a cave

It's always a delight when my interests unexpectedly cross paths and we get a label crossover. If only they'd thrown some monkeys in there too, this might have been literally the best thing ever.

I've been enjoying surprises more since I stopped bothering to do even the most preliminary, misleading Wikitravel research before heading to a place, so when I walked around Sagada with vague notions of rice terraces and waterfalls I had no idea I was going to see a load of boxed dead guys piled up and left to fester in the mouths of caves or on perilous precipices.

But I did! Obviously. Otherwise, that introduction would have been superfluous.

Sagada? Yes son, your ma ain't as firm as she used to be

I wasn't sure what to expect from the lengthy bus trip from Baguio to Sagada, after reading contradictory accounts in two travel blogs. This guy described it like an ascent into hell while this girl thought it was 'pleasant.' They couldn't both be correct, unless she's some kind of sadomasochist.

It turns out the guy was dead wrong, as were the scenery-jaded people on travel forums advising fellow travellers to skip out the winding mountain route via Baguio and take a more direct bus from Manila. If the prospect of looking at some mountains, river valleys and rice terraces bores you, why are you even heading to Sagada?

Though I probably shouldn't dispel the myth of Sagada's inaccessibility, as this might be a factor in most of the unpleasant tourists being sieved out and left to lurk in the coastal cities. I didn't see any couples with a noticeable age gap here, which was a welcome change, nor even many innocent interracials for that matter, which probably made me and Jackie the most perverted thing there.