Pilipinas Kay Chaka (sort of...)

Just to conclude the account of my trip to Las Islas Filipinas...

I don't like saying this but I don't like going home if not for my family and friends. The Philippines has simply lost its amor on me. It's always exhausting, especially whenever I stay in Manila for a few days (thankfully we only stayed a little over 24 hours there this time). I don't see any improvement in its infrastructure; it's as congested and polluted as ever.

The city looks like grimy blocks thrown randomly. There is no sense of planning, or even an effort to plan at all. Public transport is as dilapidated as ever, and over-burdened by its roughly 20 million residents.

Lara Stone, surprisingly, was enamored of it, he said he would've wanted to stay longer. But that's most often the case for visitors who find something positive about Manila. They see something exotic in such a chaotic place, but they don't necessarily live in the city for an extended period. They don't experience the inconvenience of having to queue for the MRT or breathe its fetid air daily.

For me who has lived in Manila for several years I get frustrated to see it not just getting stuck in squalor but in fact getting worse and worse.

The same is also the case for my hometown. I'm sad to see many swamps in the city that used to be filled with mangrove jus rapidly overtaken by slums. The roads that cut across the swamps only sent a message to people that they can erect their houses by the road, clearing precious mangroves, and using the swamp as one septic tank.

There's nothing wrong with building roads per se, but regulation should've been enforced to keep encroachers at bay. Better yet, give people affordable housing options.

Also, there's such poor urban planning in the city. There are hardly any pavements to speak of. Tricycles (our version of tuktuks) over-run the streets. We even experience traffic congestion now in such a tiny city.

In fairness to my hometown, I'm seeing new businesses springing up here and there. This modest development is surely a call for the city administrators to plan ahead on how these developments are going to be managed such that the livability of the city is not compromised.

OK, that's the customary post-visit-to-the-Philippines whine, thank you very much.

***

Anyway, so the highlight of the trip was indeed attending my sister's wedding. This entailed meeting many of my cousins from my mother's side. I have not met some of them in ages, at least those who live now in the US and some other far-flung province.

I was thrilled to hang out with them. I realized how little we have changed, in fact. We're the same rowdy, crazy bunch that used to send my grandmother in fits when we regularly visited her in Siargao for many summers.

Because I had such limited time I only got to meet a few friends in Surigao. I find these meetings very precious because some of my friends are going through key moments in their lives. I have the utmost admiration for their tenacity and courage, something that I draw inspiration from.

By the trip's end, I felt thankful (to whom, I don't know) to be surrounded by such wonderful friends and relatives.

***

As expected, none of my relatives or friends made a big deal of Lara Stone. I meant that in the positive sense, of course. I am lucky to have open-minded people surrounding me, and I confidently introduced Lara as my boyfriend.

They welcomed him with such fondness, but then that's expected because Lara has amazing charm anyway (tse!). He was in fact more keen to hang out with my relatives than I was, after all I had ANTM episodes to catch, no? It was very heartwarming to see him blend seamlessly with the crowd, and he quickly caught up on Pinoy humor, too.

***

Having two weeks with Lara after not seeing each other for five looooong months was the most fun I've had in recent months. It's not all romantic time, of course. We annoyed each other a few times, but that's normal because we're both stubborn in our belief that one is always right and have no qualms expressing it.

For the most part, I appreciated more his openness to new experiences and people (I was more stressed during the trip than him). There are more things to say about his awesomeness but that's something I'd tell him instead of posting it here.

Castaway in Koh Lipe

A few days after arriving from Seoul I went down south for a short beach holiday with Lara Stone. It's about time I take a break as I haven't been on a holiday since May.

Our destination was the island of Koh Lipe in Satun. We stayed in the charming Castaway Resort on Sunrise Beach.

I loved Castaway! It was tastefully done and it does not have any of the tacky frills that one sees in regular beach bungalows in Thailand. The most admirable part of their operation is they try to go green. For instance, they recycle your bathwater to be used as water for flushing the toilet. And the people manning the resort are completely nice, on top of the wonderful food (we certainly got hooked on the fried somtam salad).

Koh Lipe is rather tiny. If I remember it correctly it's only like six kilometers square. The Chao Lay are the indigenous people living on the island, however since the boom of tourism, many people from the mainland have been living there, thus stressing the island's resources. Add to that the large number of tourists.

Koh Lipe's tourism is the only obvious industry on the island, with many construction projects going all over the place. We also saw heaps of garbage in some parts of the island, a common sight in many of Thailand's beaches. I hope somehow the residents and tourists of the island would get their act together to save it from becoming yet another beach that's victimized by unchecked tourism.

Other than that, Koh Lipe is quite a paradise. The views of the nearby island of Koh Adang, with its towering peak brimming with thick forest (most of the area is part of the Koh Tarutao National Park), is majestic. One afternoon Lara Stone and I kayaked from Koh Lipe to Koh Adang.

The green waters of Koh Lipe open up to a beautiful world of corals, fish, and other marine life. We snorkeled a couple of times, including a snorkeling day-trip, which brought us to a few nearby islands.

Other than that, it was a completely lazy holiday for us. We sat on hammocks facing the water, read, drank fruit juice, and took lots of nap. In the evening we had a few occasions of romantic walks on the beach or just sharing a hammock while watching the moon hover the water.

Weekend Report: Useless Tofu Adobo

Some good-old weekend report...

I had the temerity to cook adobo for Lara Stone last Saturday. We met at the supermarket in Silom and we got some tofu in lieu of chicken or pork because Lara is a vegetarian. I could have ran to the nearby Filipino store for Silver Swan soy sauce but we did not have time for it.

Instead I used some Thailand-made soy sauce, which was too light for my taste. I ended up pouring a whole bottle of soy sauce into the pan of diced tofu. Of course we know how salty that would get. I poured out some of the soy sauce from the pan and added loads of sugar, which helped little in the salty situation I was caught up in.

But that was not the only cooking emergency that evening. The red rice we were cooking in the rice cooker had too much water, it was nearly porridge-like. I had to scoop out some of the water while it was boiling.

I don't know why I braved cooking for him that evening when I know very well that I'm not exactly a kitchen diva. I don't even like food, period. I tried to be the hero of course by refusing Lara's offer to help in the kitchen (what does he know about Filipino food, aber?). Instead, I left him on the couch watching a football game between The Netherlands and Japan. The result of the match surely made Lara happy.

Back to dinner. I served the dinner with trepidation and I even warned Lara that it was not how I wanted the adobo to taste like. But Lara was kind enough to eat the adobo tofu. He said in fact that it wasn't as bad as I proclaimed it was. And we all know he was just being polite.

I swear the tofu was uber salty. I even ended up dousing it with copious amounts of vinegar, which all the more made the adobo taste despicable. The rice was good though and we ate most of it and left the salty adobo alone.

Time to say goodbye to my dream of becoming a housewife.

The evening progressed to us watching 500 Days of Summer. It was a choice between Cinema Paradiso and the romantic comedy. Obviously we chose the right film. Hahaha.

I always wake up an hour or two earlier than Lara. Yesterday I took that time to read the first chapter of Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado, which my sister gave me for my birthday.

When Lara woke up we had breakfast, after which he started massive cleaning of his apartment while I sat on the floor sorting out DVDs. The cleaning took the most part of the morning and we eventually treated ourselves to some laps in the pool at about noontime. I'm proud to report that I've significantly improved my freestyle. London 2012 here I come!

We took a ride to Little India in the afternoon to get some fabrics to drape his couch with. We decided to use three colors of fabric to give the living room a much-needed burst of color. I've never done fabric shopping before and it was quite a delight to rummage through rolls and rolls of dusty cotton.

Lara, I discovered does not like purple. I don't get it; tell me what's wrong with purple, aber?

Into the Lungs of Bangkok

I had a little adventure with Lara Stone last Sunday as we explored Bangkrachao in Phra Pradaeng, the so-called "Lungs of Bangkok". It's not in Bangkok per se, it's part of the province of Samut Prakan, but it's close enough to Bangkok. We spent some time on Google Map to find the area (link to map).

Bangkrachao sits on a kind of peninsula (or is it called a delta?) in the Chao Phraya River. Just across it rises the massive buildings of Bangkok and not far from it one can see a crowd of tall cranes jutting from the Klong Toey port.

Phra Pradaeng (where Bangkrachao is part of), on the other hand, is a verdant, swampy land that is a sharp contrast to the madness of the nearby city. It is called the "Lungs of Bangkok" precisely because it's simply teeming with plants that perhaps rids in some way the city's contaminated air.

We only needed to take a two-minute ride across the Chao Phraya from the Klong Toey pier to Bangkrachao pier where we rented bicycles for the morning. We immediately went on exploration mode. We had no maps of the area (there was a map in Thai in the pier) and there were no English signs either. We followed the two-lane road from the pier and once we found small alleys we ventured into them.

Well, they're not technically alleys but more of ramps, about two meters wide, over the marsh. They meandered around concrete and wooden houses, some of which are standing on stilts as protection from the rising water during the rainy season.

The residents were very friendly, hollering "hellos" from their verandas or giving us directions whenever we got lost. It was a generally genteel atmosphere, with nearly zero commercial spaces except for small stores selling chips and drinks.

The weekend scene in the residential areas were quiet aside from a few screaming kids swimming in the canals. At one time we bumped into a school ground abuzz with the excitement of a soccer game, but other than that it's nearly bucolic all over, obviously a slower pace of life compared with Bangkok.

In our wandering, we tried to avoid the main road so we pursued every ramp we found. We did not have any route in mind and I was just happy to be disoriented completely.

Nearly most of the time ended up in a trove of towering palm trees and bamboos, as well as what looked like fruit orchards. It was nice to be under the cool shade of palm fronds, with only the buzz of insects piercing the stillness of the afternoon.

Lara Stone was of course continuously fascinated by the "wildlife", in particular the tiny fish swimming in the murky water. I swear I could not see the fish but he insists they're there. He also noticed some huge fish raised beside temple grounds (which I saw at least).

Fish aside, there were of course the friendly soi dogs, but dogs in general scare the hell out of me, so I could live without them, thank you very much.

After three hours of biking, we magically found our way back to the pier. I swear I could've rode that bike until sunset, but we had a schedule to stick to. I felt we had more exploring to do, but that should be for next time.

For more articles about Phra Pradaeng, you may check these links to articles on Travelfish, My Krung Thep, Bangkok Day Trips, and Fah Thai Magazine.

Travel notes: To get to Bangkrachao, ask the taxi to take you to Klong Toei Pier, close to Wat Klong Toei Nok (we had to mention the name of the temple to the driver) and from there you can take a small boat, 10 baht. Bicycles are available at the pier in Bangkrachao. Bicycle tours are also offered by tour companies based in Bangkok.

Monkey Business

I just came back from a three-day trip from Lopburi and Ayutthaya. As mentioned in the last post, Thailand had a long weekend to celebrate a Buddhist holiday so Lara Stone and I decided to escape from the city. The plan was to find a place where there are potentially less tourists and that is not too far from Bangkok.

Three hours by train is Lopburi, a city known for its Khmer-style temples and the monkeys inhabiting many of these ancient sites. We saw the first signs of monkeys when we noticed three tails hanging from electrical wires in the middle of the city. As we went nearer Lopburi’s main temple, the number of monkeys around us grew.

They were casually walking around the city: picking on garbage, hanging from street signs, huddling inside phone booths, and sitting on top of cars. Some females were carrying baby monkeys on their bosoms and a few strong-looking males with longer fur seem to lead packs. Sadly, many of the monkeys do not look healthy, with patchy skin, and some had missing eyes and even limbs.

The magnitude of the monkey’s presence in the city dawned on me when one time I looked up and there were dozens of our simian friends of various sizes staking their claim on one side of the building.

They were just hanging there, watching the world go by, occasionally scampering quickly all over the facade, and making these shrill sounds.

It was a truly creepy and amusing sight. It looked like the city had been taken over by monkeys, a good material for a horror film.

Many of the buildings surrounding the main temple were wrapped in metal screens to block the monkeys from going inside the buildings. I also noticed a good number of buildings in that area had been abandoned, perhaps because the monkeys were too much of a nuisance already.

And indeed the monkeys were EVERYWHERE. One time we saw a pack of them – probably about seventy-five strong – crossing the street and totally oblivious to the traffic. The vehicles had no choice but to stop and wait for the monkeys to clear the street, who always seem to take their time.

Some of the monkeys were even brave enough to hop on cars AND hop from one moving car to another. Crazy, no? It was total pandemonium as monkeys exploded on a fighting spree in the middle of a busy street or humped on each other in broad daylight. Many were just happy to swing between electric wires.

There were too many of these creatures scurrying around, doing whatever they want to do like they bloody own the town! I wonder if the citizens of the city find the monkeys as pests or as objects of curiosity.

Fortunately, the monkey population is only concentrated around the Khmer ruins close to the train tracks (as far as we can tell). They are fed there as well. The rest of the town is pretty much monkey-free, say in the temple or the market, although still a few of them manage to wander around.

We hopped on a train headed to the ancient capital of Ayutthaya the next day. Both Lara Stone and I had seen the city’s ruins before so we just decided to chill in the guest house beside the river. From the train station, it was quite a drive from the city center but it was worth it as the place had a remote feel to it.

Just outside our bungalow is the Chao Phraya, perhaps Thailand’s main river way. The river was abuzz with small boats tugging humongous cargo hulls attached to one another, sometimes as many as five of them. The drone of these tug boats was the only sound we could hear, otherwise, the chirping birds give the place an ambience of being surrounded by nature.

The guest-house had a charming restaurant cantilevered over the river. Lara Stone was delighted to find out they serve deep-fried native chicken. The restaurant is quite popular among the Thais, which it quite deserves if only it were a bit cheaper.

Most of the time we sat in the porch, read, and shared a bottle of beer as the sun set behind the trees.

Travel notes:

Lopburi

• Getting there: Trains leave Hualamphong train station every 30 minutes or so (27 baht, 3 hours).
• Place to stay: Found in the middle of the city is Nett Hotel, 036411738, which has the most basic facilities. Very friendly staff and convenient location; with fan and air-conditioned rooms (800 baht up).
• Things to do: See ancient monuments and old palaces.
• Tip(s): See the market first thing in the morning. Food stalls set up near the train station in the evening.

Ayutthaya

• Getting there: Trains leave Hualamphong train station every 30 minutes or so (from 14 baht up, 1 hr 45 mins).
• Place to stay: Chow Praya Hut, 035398200, www.chowprayahut.com, is about ten kilometres away from the train station. A tuk-tuk will take you there for 200 baht. The place is very basic, but the riverside location is charming, although it can get busy as well no thanks to the cargo boats. The restaurant staff, who also manages the guest house, is very friendly but speaks practically no English. Also, for some reason the English menu comes sans prices, so always ask for the price of the food you order or be prepared for a surprise when your bill comes. The food is a cut above the rest though.
• Things to do: Ayutthaya is replete with ruins that are worth a day trip or even more. If you choose to stay in the Chow Praya Hut, the monuments are a long drive.

Like a Star

Like a Star
(2006)
by Corinne Bailey Rae

Just like a star across my sky
Just like an angel off the page
You have appeared to my life
Feel like I'll never be the same
Just like a song in my heart
Just like oil on my hands