As I mentioned I'm going to be making these posts as a series to catch yall up on what I've been doing since January.
I've finished my mapvivo site for this trip, a website that mixes texts, pictures and google maps. If you want to see the pictures from the journey below, just click:
http://mapvivo.com/journey/10984
After travelling in around the Philippines for about a week, we did this cruise thing. I say 'cruise thing' because its hard to call what we did a cruise. The journey took us by boat from El Nido, a small tourist center on the north end of Palawan island, through an tropical archipelago sparsely populated with fishing villages and subsistence farmers over the span of five days. Here's an article on Tao expeditions that might be helpful in explaining things:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jun/13/Philippines-boat-tour-beach-safari
Some of the islands were actually pretty much deserted islands, with rich people living on them for only two or three weeks a year, and then abandoning them for the rest of the year. Others had small fishing villages trying to eek out a living on them by selling their catch in some of the nearby market towns. None of the places we went had roads connecting them, just dirt alleyways of the town, and maybe a few dirt motorcycle paths connecting the village to other parts of the islands.
This is basically a kind of eco-tourism, a new form of tourism that encourages people to travel in environmentally and culturally sustainable ways. Thus, the guy who runs this company has a lot of projects to help the people in the area, and most of the places that we stayed were in huts attached to the villages he was 'sponsoring.' In one village, he was tripling the government salary of a teacher; before the post was unfulfilled since the salary was just too low and no one wanted to work on Bumbleflip Island for next to nothing. Now, the village is building their own school house and Tao Expeditions will soon have a teacher willing to teach there.
This kind of corporate sponsorship has made the company very popular in the area and the boss is the godfather to a lot of people on these islands. On one of the islands we were stopping at, one of his godsons was getting married and lots of folk from other islands were there to attend the wedding. One of the Brits we were sailing with broke out his guitar and we got into a little jamboree, the four British passengers enjoying their rum and the Filipinos crooning away in Tagalog on the guitar. The climax of the night occurred when the captain of our boat stumbled up to us and broke out with Elvis' "My Way." We were amazed that he could sing it so well, but it turns out that the song is so popular that some people have been murdered over the song in Karaoke bouts. See below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/world/asia/07karaoke.html?ref=world
One final story, in one of those fishing villages, we were walking along a sandy path when we happened to pass by the school house. The second graders turned from the blackboard with subjects, verbs and objects scribbled on it, and the teacher greeted us with a loud, "Hello." We responded and the children also echoed our "hello." Then the teacher informed us that we were the first white people that the children had ever seen. "Look children, their big noses are so..." she paused to think of the most polite thing that she could say "...interesting." We talked to the children for a minute or so and then headed into the village, energized knowing we might be the first Americans who had ever been there.
As we were getting back on the boat, I was just feeling like I couldn't be any farther away from everything I had ever known, like I was on the edge of the world, a world almost untouched by modern society. But I heard a song playing from a nearby radio. It was a song that had been playing everywhere in China, by a Korean Girlband now touring with the Jonas Brothers. Just before, I had thought the world had been quite large, but hearing this K-pop sensation reminded me that in a globalized world, you're never that far from what you know. And its that song that I'm going to end this post with.
Lyrics:
I want nobody nobody But You, I want nobody nobody But You
How can I be with another, I don't want any other
I want nobody nobody nobody nobody
- Nobody by Wonder Girls
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI1MzcwOTE2.html
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Central America in Asia
It's been a while since I last posted. I apologize. I've been
quite busy. For a while, there wasn't too much interesting to say. I
was just finishing up with finals, writing papers, and what not.
Then, Lisa arrived. It had been 8 months since we had last been
together, so yall might imagine that I was somewhat excited.
After a few days of tying lose ends together, I left Nanjing. Lisa and
I traveled to Macao and Hong Kong, and then on to the Philippines. We
spent almost three week in the Philippines, and then, after a brief
stopover in Nanjing, Lisa returned to the US, and I left Nanjing for
good.
Now I'm in the south of China, just a mile or two from the Burmese
border. But more on that later. The next series of emails will try and
catch yall up on my travels, from the Philippines to here.
While in the Philippines, I was been struck by how much it reminded me
of the trip Lisa and I to Central America in the summer of 2008. Like
Central America, the Philippines was colonized by the Spaniards, but
then was dominated by the United States for most of the 20th century.
The Spanish influence appears widespread. Most people have
Spanishesque names, Romeo, Juan and Gloria. And Catholicism is big.
The few Sundays we spent there, we saw people standing outside of
cathedrals, peeking over the heads of their neighbors, trying to hear
what was being said by the priest.
But the Spanish influence is more superficial, whereas the American
influence runs deeper. American English functions as the lingua franca
in the country where almost 80 languages are spoken, and hotdogs are a
favorite breakfast dish.
This seemed to have created a culture similar to nothing I had seen in
Asia, but instead, something a lot like Central America. Rum is cheap,
$1.30 for a big bottle, and the people indulge in it, much like
Central America. Getting things done is not so important and the
somnolent atmosphere of siesta seems to hang over all activities.
10% of the country's economy comes from remissions of Filipinos
living in other countries, working on cruise ships in the Caribbean,
as nurses in Los Angeles or as maids in Oman. Filipinos who want to
work hard get out of the Philippines, because something about the
country seems to stifle opportunity.
And just in the way Central America took the US boring yellow school
bus and painted the heck out of them, Philippines took American jeeps
and converted them into 'jeepneys', about the size of a short bus but
only as high off the ground as an SUV.
Wandering through the Philippines has been strange, like a journey
back to a place you had traveled before.
Anyways, I'll tell yall more in the next post.
writing 1 mile from Burma,
Lee
quite busy. For a while, there wasn't too much interesting to say. I
was just finishing up with finals, writing papers, and what not.
Then, Lisa arrived. It had been 8 months since we had last been
together, so yall might imagine that I was somewhat excited.
After a few days of tying lose ends together, I left Nanjing. Lisa and
I traveled to Macao and Hong Kong, and then on to the Philippines. We
spent almost three week in the Philippines, and then, after a brief
stopover in Nanjing, Lisa returned to the US, and I left Nanjing for
good.
Now I'm in the south of China, just a mile or two from the Burmese
border. But more on that later. The next series of emails will try and
catch yall up on my travels, from the Philippines to here.
While in the Philippines, I was been struck by how much it reminded me
of the trip Lisa and I to Central America in the summer of 2008. Like
Central America, the Philippines was colonized by the Spaniards, but
then was dominated by the United States for most of the 20th century.
The Spanish influence appears widespread. Most people have
Spanishesque names, Romeo, Juan and Gloria. And Catholicism is big.
The few Sundays we spent there, we saw people standing outside of
cathedrals, peeking over the heads of their neighbors, trying to hear
what was being said by the priest.
But the Spanish influence is more superficial, whereas the American
influence runs deeper. American English functions as the lingua franca
in the country where almost 80 languages are spoken, and hotdogs are a
favorite breakfast dish.
This seemed to have created a culture similar to nothing I had seen in
Asia, but instead, something a lot like Central America. Rum is cheap,
$1.30 for a big bottle, and the people indulge in it, much like
Central America. Getting things done is not so important and the
somnolent atmosphere of siesta seems to hang over all activities.
10% of the country's economy comes from remissions of Filipinos
living in other countries, working on cruise ships in the Caribbean,
as nurses in Los Angeles or as maids in Oman. Filipinos who want to
work hard get out of the Philippines, because something about the
country seems to stifle opportunity.
And just in the way Central America took the US boring yellow school
bus and painted the heck out of them, Philippines took American jeeps
and converted them into 'jeepneys', about the size of a short bus but
only as high off the ground as an SUV.
Wandering through the Philippines has been strange, like a journey
back to a place you had traveled before.
Anyways, I'll tell yall more in the next post.
writing 1 mile from Burma,
Lee
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)