Philippine Travel Notes

The engineers and officers arrived from that nearby hill they went to. Interesting to overhear them that there is actually another barangay on the other side of this island (Magsaysay). Ah, I should have gone with them! Too late for that. Add kalamansi to the wound, I still heard one of them say, "the views are great from up there". Argh! Mea Culpa! But I consoled myself with “at least I had just my first-ever tilang encounter”! Okay, lunch was: Fish, lots of them in various colors and sizes, some fried, some grilled to perfection. Do you know how to tell if grilled fish was fresh from the sea versus fresh from the freezer? I do now, thanks to these folks in Kerikite. No I’m not telling here! You have to roam the islands and learn for yourself! This is proof of what I keep saying that travel is mainly education too. Aside from being fun, our islands are big classrooms too! oops, sorry I only took pictures after eating! Pasayan (shrimps), some boiled in aromatic herbs, some sa...

Do you know what that is? Taklobo, in Tagalog, I think? Or a similar specie? Whatever, I just know they call it “tilang” - pronouced 'tee-lung' in the speed as how you would say "fillet", "obey", "belong", "along" etc. It was still alive being contributed by one man to the lunch fare being prepared! My first time to see this thing live! A woman told him to bring it to the right side of the stage, where men were grilling fish. Instruction was: immediately cook it (blanch) after the “masag” (blue crabs) is done in the big kaldero! I followed the man, eager to watch how they'd cook the tilang! Seeing that the pot was not yet ready, and seeing that I was tailing him eager to see more of the tilang, this manong instead placed it on a low side-wall of their barangay stage. I took pics of course. I was curious about that shiny slimy flesh protruding out of the shell. It kept moving! I attempted to touch it just at the tip. And OMG my de...

It still happens folks! At least on the island of Kerikite! While still with the kids, I noticed adults (men & women) kept darting in/out of the barangay multipurpose hall. Noticeably, the womenfolk were in some kind of a panic mode, while males were in their usual ‘coolness’ness! When anyone of them would talk, it seemed like the topic was food – so I understood. That is always the case when women prepare food anyway, right?! As if everything is a disaster, as if all is late, as if something is always missing, as if something is out of order. And if anyone asked what the problem is, with a smile you women actually say “nothing really”, right? Very! Curious at the usual womanly commotion that is really not, I went back inside the multipurpose hall to watch them. All very obviously went into that ‘prim, proper and very well collected’ mode hehehe. As if I don’t know. I have been a customer service trainer, mystery shopper, quality auditor, project manager, process engineer and a  se...

How do kids in this remote island play? Looks like the iPad culture has not yet arrived in this place (thankfully). I saw one boy, probably 9 or 10 years old, who sat by the external wall corner of their barangay hall, and he was expertly making a ball out of coconut fronds (he calls it “lukay”). I watched for a while and asked him to do it slowly so I would learn how to make a ball too. Hopeless! Can’t get how he makes the thing curve into a ball. Some, about his age or older, were down at the marshes (their knee-deep) catching crabs from the mud. I asked if they were asked by anyone to do it, their unanimous reply was “kami-kami la” (just us), and they told me they will cook the crabs later. Some others were armed with rubber-band slings targeting either birds or the crabs that would pop out from their mounds. Ah, I had to suppress my laughs at this dude in dark blue jersey who can’t even walk straight yet. His older brother caught another small crab, tied a string around it and g...

Familiar word/place? Haha, not me too! Locals pronounce that as “ke-ree-kee-te”. It’s an island that belongs to the town of Almagro, (Western) Samar. This island actually has 2 barangays (Kerikite and Magsaysay) but my destination was only Kerikite. Yep, the red thing you see on these map images. Fantastic views along the way. As we neared this island, boat mates were teasing one of our companions about food/lunch. The tone of the joke was something like “remember there are only 10 of us, you might have prepared for an entire battalion again”! This was the guy I saw busiest on the phone either calling or texting since we left Calbayog. I came to know he was coordinating with his barangay-mates for this lunch! He is barangay captain of Kerikite and known to everyone as very generous (aka excessive) when it comes to hosting visitors in his barangay! Hmm, on that, I suspected another hefty meal haha! Oh my life! Here are more views as we approached: As they did in Sto. Nino , exce...

After Sto. Nino, my friend’s group of engineers and officials (w/ me the kibitzer, of course) moved on to survey the island-town of Almagro. You may want to see this map of this whole island hop . Going there however, our boat had to skirt a bit of the island of Sto. Nino to reach a village named Barangay Baras as there were 2 ladies in our group that needed to visit for some official service. I realized this is how they do it in remote islands – it doesn’t matter to them if it’s a Sunday. What matters most is if there is a way to reach these places. And our boat was ‘occasion’ enough! Hey, I overheard most of the folks in the boat were appreciative of this barangay. They were saying that many houses here are relatively bigger and made of concrete compared to the town center where we just came from. The reason? They say there are many girls here who are married to foreigners! And they even joked that many mothers in this barangay sternly watch how their lasses learn the English languag...

With no pervious idea as to what might be worth my while on this island-town, I fished my phone and tried to google Sto. Nino. Nothing much to make me run all over the place in search of this and that hehe. The one thing that did titillate me was a speck of information on the web identifying something as “Moro Fort”. But awr, 3 folks I asked did not know, and an elderly I asked as she tended to her sari-sari store told me that it was just some kind of a lighthouse and lookout but ruined long ago with nothing much left for anyone to see. She added that it is now amidst thickets of trees and shrubs that might be snake-infested or scattered with human excretions. How encouraging hehe. So, thanking the Lola for that piece of “dirty” information, and after buying a pack of Marlboro Lights Gold from her (yes, she has!), I dropped the idea of trying to find that “Moro Fort”, especially that it was a Sunday, where the municipal hall was surely closed, making it impossible for me to get a learn...

“Oh wow” was all I could murmur as we approached to dock at this island-town named after the little baby Jesus. Yep, the Holy Child as they say in English. This island is not after all “little” and I had to correct my wrong impression judging from google maps earlier as we cruised. And this town is not really just one but two islands! Plus, a scattering of little islets. But we went just to the town’s main center on the big island. It’s a charming little seaside “pueblo” of fairy tale material as you approach it on a clear sunny morning. Quiet, not so bustling, not so many humanistic nor vehicular movements… just a few folks going about their daily lives… and the sporadic shrieks of children at play nearby. Here I go again with my insatiable desire for the laidback rural life…! Funny how people on this boat could talk to folks on-land with just their normal voices – even as we were still probably 20 meters away from the dock. This, I witnessed, soon as our boat’s engine was shut and th...