Bohol

When you visit the Philippines and land in Manila it is often easy to lose sight of what the country really is. Manila is a modest urban nightmare of traffic and concrete.  Towering condominium towers compete with with massive bill boards as they both block out the world outside.  Rivers dark and murky flow through the city filled with pollution.  At times I find the whole thing almost reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner.  Traffic clogs the roads like red blood cells meeting arterial blockage.  The pollution has colored everything with a dirty coating that never seems to wash away.

When confronting this concrete jungle it is often easy to forget that it exists in a country filled with beauty, sandy beaches and sun.  It is not the norm, it is the exception.  It seems that progressively there is a move to fly tourists directly to resort destinations avoiding Manila all together.   It is as if the best strategy to deal with the nightmarish urban center is to simply forget it is there.

Swimming into infinity

During my time in the Philippines I had the chance to escape for a few days.  It was to a resort called Amorita that sits up on a cliff overlooking the ocean on the tiny  island of Panglao near the larger island of Bohol.  Located in the central Philippines it seemed like it was a million miles from Manila.  When flying in to the nearby airport in the town of Tagbilaran (say that ten times fast) the jet crosses a vast crystal clear blue ocean with huge coral reefs visible just below the surface of the ocean.  Islands appear in every direction each with a mountainous spine that rises above a carpet of green.

We were met at the airport by a driver from our hotel and for once in my life I was the name on the little sign as you walk out of the terminal.  I half expected the man to look like Ricardo Montalban and say, "Welcome to Fantasy Island."

We hopped into a mini van and crossed a long causeway to the Island of Panglao.  Panglao is a rapidly changing place.  I can only imagine how it must have looked twenty years ago and I shudder at the thought of what may happen to it twenty years into the future.   There are real people that live there in small communities yet you can feel the pressure of resorts and hotels being constructed everywhere.  Despite this modernization, the journey to the south end of the island navigates a narrow two lane road and passes through fields and hamlets still reminiscent of the time before tourism.  Groves of palm trees sit as islands in lush fields of green.  Goats munch on grass and Filipino carabao look lonely and board.

Years ago I traveled to the island of Saint Lucia and while extraordinarily beautiful, I hated it.  On many islands in the Caribbean every possible attempt is made to isolate the tourist from the native society around them.  Visitors travel into the confines of gated resorts where they are fed and pampered.  If they do venture out it is in a highly escorted caravans shuttling them to a tourist spot and back.  Every effort is made to discourage the adventure seeking tourist from visiting with the local population. 

The Philippines is different.  Resorts and hotels grow out from the communities around them.  While the resort itself is often gated beyond the reach of those not counted as guests, beyond the boundaries, there is no attempt to keep the natives and the tourists apart.   All you need to do is take a stroll out past the guard and you are in the real Philippines. While there are regions of the country where this is not a good idea for safety reasons, most of the islands are quite secure. 

Having left Manila only an hour before the contrast could not have been starker.  I remember thinking, "this is what the Philippines should be."  When we pulled into the resort I immediately sensed a relaxed feeling of tranquility.  Gone was the bustle of Manila.  Gone was the traffic and pollution.  In its stead what a place where time no longer seemed to matter.  Amorita was remarkably peaceful, its small size made it extremely personable.  It is a place where in an instant, everyone seems to know your name.  Owned by a bus magnet from Manila it seemed like he made every effort to build a place where diesel buses belching black smoke no longer existed.

We had paid for a garden villa and after following a winding path through beautiful flowers and trees we were soon escorted through a private gate to a deck outside a tiny house's bedroom doors.  Landscaping was immaculate and wild flowers seemed to accentuate everything.  A small deck bordered a private sitting pool with an infinity edge.  When we entered the villa and were greeted with a scintillating scent of perfumed oil.  It was remarkably tasteful and led me to ask our guide if I could live there?  While I am sure they took it as a joke, in truth I never wanted to leave.  The bathroom was actually outside and in the mornings when I showered in the open air I felt like I was bathing in the rain.  Even using the toilet was simply the most relaxing experience ever as birds chirped and a tuko sang its song - "Tuuu- ko."  Oh the poor tuko.  The latest fad sweeping through China the country that will eat anything, is the consumption of the gecko as a cure for AIDS.  As a consequence, Filipinos are hunting the poor creatures to near extinction and selling them to the Chinese.  Perhaps for these innocent bug eating sopranos, my beautiful oasis of tranquility was also their refuge.  Happy and content, they sang and sang.

Perhaps I am just simple with few demands but in my world the service at the Amorita was the finest I have ever known.  The staff would go out of their way to please you.  Sitting at the pool they would offer fresh fruit popsicle and clean your eye glasses.  The first time they took mine away it seemed to take them forever.  I was just waiting for them to return with great apologies as they showed me a giant scratch.  Instead, they gave me glasses cleaner than I have ever known in all my life.  When I left the water they wrapped me in a towel. One waiter named Robert I took to calling my BFF (Best friend forever).  He was so in tune with my every need it seemed like he would always arrive like magic.  We would chat a bit and then he would disappear again only to return the next time I needed something.  It was as if he knew my needs before I did.

The food was wonderful and when the darkness descended on the world they would show up at the door of your villa with a plate of fresh cookies or lemon bars.

My true love Alona

Alona Beach

Alona beach stretches out from the hotel and it is reached by a small stone staircase.  Set back in the palms that line the beach are other hotels, small restaurants and shops.  One hotel on the beach had a small area with a few animals tastefully living in cages.  My favorite was a monkey named Alona.  I befriended her and as I held my arms up to the cage she would groom me plucking tasty pieces of dead skin and hairs.  No woman had ever done this for me and I immediately realized there was a bond between us.  I am quite certain she loved me.  Well she loved me until her interests changed, then I didn't exist. This in fact was behavior similar to most women I have known.  I am however content to live with the dream that Alona was my perfect monkey.

The Chocolate Hills of Bohol

Our guide Adoy

On the beach we met a nice Filipino man named Adoy who offered to take us on an excursion.  His prices were vastly cheaper than the hotel so we took him up on the offer.  The following day he met us at the hotel with a van and we all climbed aboard.  He took us on a journey to some of the beautiful parts of Bohol.  We were of course on a tourist route but it didn't matter.  Anoy led us to the first Catholic church built in the Philippines and to a small boat that took us up a beautiful jungle river to a waterfall.  I came face to face with one of the most beautiful and innocent tiny creatures in the world, the Tarsier.  We climbed a steep staircase to the top of a small hill and looked out upon the not so brown Chocolate Hills.  They are a geological oddity consisting of perfectly shaped mounds that stretched out as far as the eye could see.  It was as if I was surrounded by a thousand breasts, each perfectly formed and perfectly firm.

The blind singers of Tagbilaran

A Tarsier

When our time came to leave Bohol and return to Manila we sat with great sadness in the tiny airport terminal of Tagbilaran waiting for our flight to arrive.  In one corner of the room a blind band was singing Beatles songs and Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.  With voices a bit out of tune they sang out to an audience they could not see and held a can that held surprisingly few coins. I only wonder what they thought when a Filipino woman married to a white man stormed past screaming at another woman sitting in the waiting room.  In my best estimation she was once a bar girl who having struck gold with a white husband wanted to impress all the room with her newly found nobility.

Leaving Bohol and returning to Manila was like a cold splash of water to the face.  I felt as if I sipped a wonderful beverage and I longed to have another taste.  In an attempt to placate myself and my depression of the concrete jungle that awaited me, I reminded myself that finally I had found the real Philippines.