The Philippines, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve been here. I mean that in good, bad, every way possible. From the most amazing sunset I’ve ever seen in my life to the rampant prostitution and poverty that surrounds you in every big city. The ride has always just begun here. I arrived in Manila first, and after having split up for a good while Steve and I finally re-united in a part of the city called Malate. Inexperienced in the sociological boundaries of the city, our first hostel lay in the prositution and debauchery slum of the town. Entertaining, educational, strange, absurd, a life experience, all these describe Malate. With 3 hookers to every person, bars with midget wrestling, buckets of beer, and poor children running in the streets 24/7 I’m pretty sure this is the first stop, or test rather, that some have when they arrive in the Philippines. You are either in hell, in heaven, or an anthropological observer. I was the latter of the three, treating every experience as a person watching a documentary. Sometimes you just have to watch and absorb, be a sponge. After the madness of Manila, we headed north to Bagiou, which was way oversold, but had a really great museum of modern and contemporary Filipino art. The BenCab Museum was its name-o, after it’s founder the famous Filipino artist.
After a much-needed escape from Bagiou we headed to Vigan, which is a small and amazing historical town, and one of the oldest Spanish settled towns in Asia. The old 18th Century Spanish Architecture was beautiful, the food was much better then we had experienced thus far, and it was cleaner and less crowded with an above average hotel room (no roaches!). In the Philippines you pretty much just expect to almost always have roaches in your hotel room no matter how nice it is. After eating Longannisa, the delicious local sausage, and checking out most of town, we escaped one Sunday and went to a cockfight with the locals, it was pretty great. It’s not really taboo here like it is in America, in fact most of the towns men show up like a high school football game. There is betting, cheering, and if you were worried about the seediness, even an on duty police officer. After befriending some of the locals Steve and I got front row seats and even got to hold a champion rooster, hey hey! We were given a behind the scenes tour of operations and had one of the most informative, ridiculous, fun times of my life. Our friends cock even won it’s big fight, pretty cool. The loser became dinner. There are even cock fighting stores in the mall that sell supplements so you can pump up your cock, no pun intended. Cockfighting is big business. There aren’t taxis in Vigan so Steve and I rode around in “tricycles” which are essentially motorcycles with sidercars. You negotiate a price, usually super cheap, and then Steve and I cruise around in the sidecar while the driver sits on the main bike, a pretty funny sight. After Vigan we headed to Pagudpud, which is in the most Northern point on the main island of the Philippines several 100 Islands. Pagudpud is a beach resort town, with amazing beaches, sunsets, and delicious seafood. This is where I spent Thanksgiving and my 30th birthday. On the big day I ate a big traditional Filipino seafood meal with huge prawns the size of small lobsters accompanied by a mango sauce spaghetti. For desert I had good whiskey and hand rolled local cigars, it was excellent. At midnight on my birthday Steve and I jumped into the big ass waves of the ocean and enjoyed my first ever November 24th 30 year old swim in the Pacific.
After Vigan we headed back to Manila, watched Manny Pacqiou, national hero, congressman, and pound for pound best boxer in the world, defend his championship belt. The entire country shuts down and the crime rate drops to practically zero during the actual fight, the locals call it a national holiday. It was a cultural experience for sure, waking up at 8am to watch him fight live from Vegas with locals at a packed, and I mean packed bar. In Manila I ate the second grossest thing I have eaten thus far in Asia, it’s called Balut. It is a hard boiled duck egg, but the duck on the inside is partially developed, so you are basically eating a duck fetus, pretty gnarly, but with a little salt and vinegar the task was completed and never to be repeated. We met up with some friends we met during the big fight and they invited us to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner American style. One of the guys had been married to an American girl for many years and decided to cook a feast. He made turkey, gravy, mash potatoes, corn, stuffing, cheesecake, the works. It was amazing, we were in disbelief and ate to our hearts content followed by a long stint of in house karaoke, it is huge here!
At this point Steve and I split up again as he had some things he still wanted to do in Manila and I headed south to Cebu City. It is in Cebu where I met up with my martial arts Doce Pares Supreme Grandmaster Cacoy Canete, now that’s a title. He is 92 and still spritely and kicking ass. I arrived a day early to his home/school just to visit and figure out it’s location. To my surprise he invited me in his home for tea and biscuits and we ended up talking for the next several hours, mainly him ha, about his life and all that he had done. He even asked me stay for dinner and I hung out with his family and some other students until almost 11:30 pm. In his 92 years he was a commando in WW2, has fought over 100 fights, never lost, and never had a fight last more than 10 seconds. Additionally, he told me his secrets to living a great life. Train 2 hours everyday in a martial art or physical activity of your choice, always continue to change and improve whatever you do throughout life and push yourself, eat chicken for lunch and fish for dinner, and laugh as much as possible. He told me he has over 800 jokes memorized, but his family told me he has over 1,000 written down. He just laughs and laughs all day in a great grandpa style old man voice, but usually while telling stories of his many victories or when beating up his students in sparring he laughs in an evil hilarious old man giggle, in true old man master martial arts style. Apparently, at 92 he is writing another book on martial arts and a joke book as well, the man is unstoppable. My first day of training was amazing, I was training alongside masters from all over the world and got thrown right into 4 rounds of stick fighting on my first day, INTENSE! After a few days my hands were covered with blisters and I have small welts and bruises everywhere, haha, but don’t worry we are pretty safe and wear armor and helmets when we spar. I have probably learned more here in half a week than I have in 4 years of training stick fighting, and that is not a jab a my instructors at home, they are fantastic, these guys here are just simply amazing martial artists and amazing teachers. People always use the term martial arts family to describe the sort of comradery that exists between people who train together, and it’s really true. My masters and classmates have been unbelievably hospitable and treat me in the manner in which they would treat and old friend, these guys are really great. I am proud to be a practioner of Cacoy Doce Pares and to have had the chance to meet so many amazing people. It’s not all stick fighting here though, Cebu is the first place Magellan landed in the Philippines when the Spanish attempted to take over. I went and saw the cross he put up in the ground and the oldest church established here named Santa Nino, it was a Spanish style cathedral with peaceful gardens swamped with people making pilgrimages, as this is the most holy site in the country. In an interesting connection I am training the martial art here, more broadly known as Arnis, that the natives, specifically the national hero Lapu Lapu, used to kill Magellan. I will be heading to Taiwan at the end of this week and will be leaving behind the unbelievably unhealthy food of the Philippines. Goodbye fried chicken and cheeseburgers, you will not be missed. I look forward to my apartment in Taipei as it’s in an artist village and a few quiet weeks of nothing but writing, relaxing, and maybe a little teaching. I’ve been training and traveling hard and I think I have some much needed r & r coming to me. It’s been a wild couple of months, over a 100 kilometers trekking through mountains, training with two martial arts masters, and exploring more cities than I count, I’m ready for a little Christmas break. So, Taipei here I come and Philippines I will miss your friendly people and their above average Asian English abilities. Until next time, have an awesome Christmas, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I miss everyone at home and I’m always thinking about you, I’m dreaming of an Asian Christmas…….
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