Time for school Billy!

.......LOL......

I got the chance to go to a couple of schools around town; one of my rellies had to do some work, so I tagged along. If I just rocked up to any school back home and started taking pictures of kids, I'd be in deep shit! Here, they were happy for me to walk around and take snaps. I had two teachers come out of class and ask if I could take photos of their students. Filo kids love to get their photo taken; I always receive a big smile from them when I show them the image on the LCD screen of my camera.

Got rice?

Rellies showed me one of their rice fields down the road from the house. From what I tried to translate, it's like a three month process: prepare the fields, plant the seeds, grow them, harvest them, and send it off to the mill for process.

Uhh, is that sterile?

Every Wednesday and Sunday, the town holds its fresh market days. It's like your typical Asian market: live animals tied up, fresh meats, exotic fruits, and veggies for sale. Hygiene went out the door, obviously.

Welcome!

I "safely" arrived at my destination in one piece, thankfully. It was a bit of a gathering at the house for my arrival. I've read on the internet that a lot of foreigners who travel to the Philippines tend to be treated like stars - well yeah, it's kinda true! It's quite uncommon for Westerners to travel to the Philippines, so it's a bit of a rare sight for locals to see foreigners walking around. They stand out like dog's balls so they treat them with great gratitude for visiting their town/city/shanty.

Anywho, met some more relatives. They explained to me who was who and then they pointed to this little squirt, in the image above. Have you ever heard stories of mothers ditching their kids in garbage cans? Well this is one of them. Though, it wasn't a garbage can, thank god. The story goes that a beggar/bum found this newborn, only a couple of months old, wrapped up in some clothes at a bus stop. Obviously, the mother had ditched the poor fella. The beggar didn't really have the funds to raise the kid, nor is there really an orphanage in this neck of the woods, so he passed the little one to one of my uncles to raise because he didn't have any kids. It's been over a year since that happened and, from what I've witnessed, he gets the much deserved love from my relatives.

Arriving to Mindanao

I was reunited with some relatives at the airport and we headed west, inland to a town called Pigcawayan, North Catbato. The trip there has to be one of the scariest drives I've ever been in. Like I mentioned before, they really don't take in road rules. With the roads being a little bit more quiet here, you can practically go as fast as you want, no speed limit. I remember going past a school at about 115kph, and this was on a single-lane road. Their overtaking is another thing to mention, if there's an "obstacle" to slow for, you're likely to just overtake the sucker, but make sure the incoming cars are a decent distance from you (and when I mean decent, I mean thirty-ish metres.) It's like playing chicken; even the buses do it, though they're the ones you don't want to go head on with. If it wasn't the dodgy rebels that were going to kill me, it would have been a fatal car crash. I remember I tried to fall asleep so I wouldn't have to panic every overtaking attempt, but because a lot of the commercial trucks love to overload, their weight would just ruin the roads, creating massive cracks and ditches and shaking me awake. It was one bumpy ride, I had no chance of falling asleep in a Suzuki Swift, driven like a rally car.

Heading to Mindanao

I decided to fly down to Mindanao, which is South of the Philippines, because I have some extended family living down there who I've never met. Mindanao is about an hour and forty minute flight from Davao (pronounced Dabow). The history of Mindanao is a bit dodgy. I was warned that the very west of the island has a stronghold of rebels, and that you really shouldn't venture over there. Let's just say it's a got a lot of history with violence. Beforehand, I was informed I would be staying in a very safe place, away from the wankers, so I thought "why not?", it'd be interesting to live in that type of environment during my trip.

Off to Tagatay

Click on the image for the higher-res

Another tour destination with the rellies. We headed South to Tagatay to check out the beauty of the Taal volcano. We had to leave at about six in the morning, a three hour odd drive. We had to cut through Manila, and holy crap, was that a pain in the ass! Traffic is just bullshit. We were probably in it for an hour. Now, in the Philippines there are no such things as "Road rules". That went out the window years ago! So the way it works, if there's a gap... Go for it! You hoot your horn just to let the others know you're nearby. And when I mean nearby, I mean 10cm away from you, and I'm not dramatising that distance. Anyway, we finally arrived to Tagatay and went to this lookout. I have to say, it's a pretty spectacular lookout.

After that, we got some chow down the road. Had some traditional Filo food and then headed back to the hometown and got on the San Miguel - which is like $9.50 for a carton. Yerpp, I got drunk :)