Bohol: Party all the Time
09:01 on Friday, January 23, 2004 • 1 response
The ferry ride from Cebu wasn’t so bad. In my last entry I described how the ferry was being delayed for several hours due to rough seas. While I’m glad the departure was held for safety reasons, I can say that the seas were not rough. The seas between Spain and Morocco—those are rough. On that ferry ride, luggage was flying from one side of the ship to the other, and that was on a boat which carried roughly 40 semi trucks. On this boat, a super catamaran which carries maybe 150 people and no vehicles, the roughest part of the journey may have occurred just out of port, where I think we may have bumped a goldfish.
Tagbilaran is a small, dusty port town on the island of Bohol, and it’s here that I’ll be spending one evening before heading off into the jungle interior of the island. It’s my first night in a hostel on this trip, and almost as soon as I walked in I was invited out by a trio of English people from Cornwall. I absolutely love hosteling. I’ve met some people on trips with whom I’m still in contact (hello to all of you), and the kind of personality which chooses to stay at a hostel (instead of at a hotel) for the most part is quite compatible with mine. AJ is a rather upbeat metal fabricator who works at a shipyard in Cornwall, England. I don’t quite know what the other two do, but they’re a lovey-dovey couple and they’re very lovey-dovey, which has been a subject of many discussions between AJ and myself. He explained to me that it was just supposed to be him and his mate, Chris, on a 6-month surfing trip to the Philippines and Australia, but then Josie came into the picture and the whole thing’s gone “off”, as he put it.
As such, AJ was on a mission to cause some trouble and in inviting me out for a beer, I suppose I (and to some extent, Chris and Josie) were recruited to assist AJ in his endeavors. First up: something to eat.
The problem with Filipino food is certainly not its taste. Just about everything is absolutely delicious, no matter how strange the ingredients (I won’t get into some of the stranger things on offer). The problem with Filipino food is that it’s generaly cooked in the morning and left out all day, even at restaurants, so that if you’re out for dinner and ask for a gander at what’s on offer, you’re usually presented with large pots of congealed sauce and meat. Unappetizing? Wait—there’s more. The first restaurant we went to was described as “waterside” in AJ’s travel guide. Water, check. Side, check. Waterside meaning “adjacent to putrid cesspool”, check. We wandered in and something about the absolutely vacant dining area, the aroma of fresh cesspool and the presentation of congealed sauces just didn’t scream “eat here”, so we left. On the way down, we all noticed a rather busy rotisserie restaurant on a side street, so we went there and ate our fill of lechon and chickens. And when I say our fill, I mean until we were absolutely stuffed. And when I say that three people ate their fill for 520 pesos, I mean less than 10 dollars.
Next up on AJ’s trouble-causing smorgasbord was nightclubbing of the “down and dirty” variety. AJ had sifted through the travel book for two of the choicest spots. The first one was just blocks away from our hostel and we went there first. As we walked up, I have to say—the place looked promising. Lots of young people standing around outside, the dancefloor lightshow strobing through the darkened casement windows.
Then we walked in and found out that Sunday night is ballroom dancing night.
Sure enough, the discotheque management featured some very odd and very loud mix of Julio Iglesias, disco-ized Chopin, and slow, interminable electronic rhumba straight out of the best Casio keyboards. The dance floor was populated by three couples—two of them probably over 70 who basically walked back and forth in a way that vaguely resembled dancing, the other a gay couple who were absolutely terrific and flamboyant dancers. The only thing they didn’t do was throw each other into the air— a good thing because the ceilings were almost as low as their glitter shorts were short.
Needless to say, AJ was quite disappointed. We had a drink and left, and on the way out AJ asked one of the young people milling about outside (turns out they weren’t waiting to get into the club, they were just standing around in a well-lit area) about the other club. The young woman said, “Oh, that club is much better.” So we flagged down a tricycle-taxi and ventured out to the Bohol Beach Club.
Tricycle-taxis, by the way, are the most popular way to get around in Filipino cities. They’re loud dirtbike-type motorcycles—a much smaller version of the kind you see on televised motocross stunt shows—onto which a steel cage has been welded. Keep in mind that these bikes, having a motor about as powerful as the average lawn mower, were really intended for one person. But that doesn’t happen here. Here, it’s not unusual to see them carrying five or six people, and once I saw a tricycle carrying ten. Of course, they mosey forward at about 10 mph, engine growling at unsafe decibel levels when carrying that many people, but no one seems to mind.
Upon arriving at the Bohol Beach Club we were informed that ballroom dancing night wasn’t exclusive to the first club we visited—it’s an island-wide ballroom dancing party every Sunday night! We had another drink then taxied back to the hostel. AJ’s trouble-rousing evening will have to be rescheduled, and I’m afraid I won’t be with him to witness it.
Today after breakfast I’ll try to figure out the bus system here. The hostel at which I’m staying next is about 30km out of town and they don’t have a phone. Apparently there’s a sign for the hostel is at the side of the road and I’m just supposed to tell the driver to stop there. Then I’m supposed to walk about 15 minutes into a jungle where I’ll find a set of stairs which will bring me down into a river ravine, where the hostel is located. It all sounds rather Indiana Jones to me, but I’m up for some adventure.
[This entry was written on December 22nd. Its date will be corrected after all entries and photos from my trip to the Philippines are online.]