Homeless Diver

Pinoy Blog Machine mentions some interesting items about PAL’s new EconoLight (super economy) and how the cheaper fares dont even allow for a simple drink of water , 15 kg max allowance (33 lbs) the same as a single backpack, and peanuts… erm… well, even though PBM says they’re all-u-can eat for all flights (as well as sodas), I dare anyone to prove this correct. I have many PAL and CP flights where nothing of any kind was ever offered. PAL is my preferred complaintaint - I asked for another ‘cup-o-water’ and was refused  on most flights.

As things find themselves, I will find out again in a soon fashion if the standards are still there. But either way, kudos to PBM for the info.

UPDATE: these are two different stories I had thought were in the same area. The fire was a huge area of squatters that were filled with burka wearing women selling souvenirs at tons of stalls and had partially clothed kids running amok. Personally, I disliked walking thru there, it felt like taking a wrong turn in a bad neighborhood. They had tried kicking them out before but the wire was ripped down and they moved right back into the buildings.

One thing happened for sure—- there were gunshots fired, buildings on fire, lots of tear gas. A friend of mine was pulled out of the tear gas by police when they saw him as being a distinctly ‘old white guy’.

• http://beta.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=413436
  
• http://www.gmanews.tv/story/131761/Fire-violence-mar-demolition-operation-in-Boracay
• http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/11/06/08/fire-guts-20-boracay-homes-violent-police-demolition
• http://www.gmanews.tv/story/131908/Aussie-resort-owner-holed-up-in-disputed-Boracay-lot
• http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/regions/view/20081107-170698/Demolition-in-Boracay-turns-violent
• http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/gunmen-holding-us-australians/2008/11/07/1225561054249.html

..but he did it to himself by accident, with cyanide.  Click below the fold for the whole article. (source link)

MANILA, Philippines—An American diver was pulled out of salvage operations at the wreck of the M/V Princess of the Stars in Romblon on Friday for numbness and shortness of breath, a suspected case of chemical exposure that occurred away from the sunken vessel and its remaining toxic cargo.

John Hancock, a 38-year-old diver of salvor firm Titan, was airlifted to Manila by a Philippine Coast Guard rescue chopper Friday morning after experiencing chest pains and numbness on the left half of his face and the left arm. (more…)

The Highlites that the article seems to spend a lot of time explaining:

• Resort properties on beaches will be declared ‘agricultural’ areas to put control back in Gov’t hands
• Supposedly, this protects occupants so they can finally put their name on the property by means of application
• Most resorts do not OWN the land but instead are subleased thru 2 or 3 different levels of people
• Owners (tax mapped) will have to pay the government AGAIN for the property they had been paying for over the last 30 years
• Because everything will be open again, and this is the philippines…pretty much anyone with the most money will see their application for ownership approved.

So…If you just invested 2 million Pesos in your building and several years left on your lease contract….you can lose it all if a new person comes along and has more money to offer the Government for the newly for-sale property. You will lose, your contract will become void. The new owner will have a nice turn-key resort business package.

the article and link are below here:

(more…)

I’m back in Manila after a long bus ride and its been raining this afternoon. I was hanging out with some local friends and finally broke down to eat with my fingers….something I swore I would never do. These people are just way too cool and fun to be around. Lunch was BBQ whole fish, pork chops, rice, veggie mix, grilled eggplant, avocado slices, salted shrimp paste (didnt try), and…I think that was it. - served on 2 large banana palm leaves covering the table. I was the only one with a plate and fork/spoon. Everyone else plopped it down in front of them and dug in, so I did likewise (but with a plate still) with my fingers. I guess I was looking awkward because I was instructed on how to properly ‘push’ the food from hand to mouth - and that shit works!

I’ve always had this phobia of eating whole non-gutted fish with head, tail, skin, and scales on it. But honestly, its easy as hell. I enjoyed the whole lunch!

I asked why there were so many police check points along one section of road. The answer: New Peoples Army. Yup, the NPA was in the mountains to my left. The person described them as revolutionaries that went after corrupt government officials and business leaders. I’m not sure what I should read into that. They have support from within the military and police ranks yet are enough of a danger to have frequent vehicle check points.

There is certainly a difference between deluxe and the cheaper first class buses of Partas lines. Perhaps is due to the time of day, but first class is a step above chaos, a small step. Its not the bus itself but the operations.

The deluxe was 805p for a 7 hour trip from Manila to Vigan. Nice seats, kickin’ aircon, western movies, frequent stops for dropping off people and rest stops.

First class, on the other hand, is 200p cheaper. However, there is one HUGE flaw and that is they let these damn vendors on the bus at rest stops and seemingly random spots on the road. At the rest stops, u cant even get off for a snack or smoke before these annoying people start blocking the narrow isle hawking everything from peanuts to grapes to newspapers to something looking like a taco bell burrito that had been run over in the dirt (but was actually coconut based).

The ones that get on randomly, they dont seem to pay for traveling a few blocks or a few towns while standing in the isles leaning their butts on seated people.

I think we all know what i think about pushy vendors.

Some minor things would include the constant stopping all over the place for new old people like it was a city bus line while lacking all but two comfort stops for a trip thats now already into its 7th hour and only halfway there, mediocre aircon, lacking movies, and leaky ceiling.

To be fair, I should point out that the deluxe trip was late at night with no traffic. This one is middle of the day with traffic all over the country side.

(UPDATE: the trip was 10 and a half hours total)

Today, July 1st, 2008 marks my one year anniversary on Boracay.

I had parted ways with Iraq and The Company in mid June 2007. No more contractor for me. They gave me a ticket going to Texas by the most lengthy and impossible route imaginable. I had no intention of going back to the USA. In Dubai, I purchased my own ticket to Manila - one way. Copped a squat there for a few weeks for some dental work (bad decision), new glasses (that broke in 4 pieces when a took them off and they refused to replace them), and to wait for Chad. He had been visiting Boracay for 3 or 4 years constantly and suggested staying here for a few months before we parted and looked into other fields of work. Neither of us had any great plans at the time so it sounded like a new plan in motion.

We set foot on July 1st, 2008 and walked up to Blue Mango where Chad secured us a couple of rooms at monthly low-season rates with ease. Vaughn was very accommodating and the party began!

It honestly doesn’t seem like it’s been a whole year.

We might have our differences Chad, but for this past year, I say Thank You. I can easily say that its been a blast and the best time Ive had.

Almost came and sat right on top of us. Wind speed estimates were from 90 to 120 km/hr. I dont think anyone actually recorded it here in Boracay.

Apparently Fengshen means “God of Wind” in Chinese…which is odd and retarded at the same time. This wasn’t a Chinese storm and only hit Hong Kong after is settled down (as expected). And really, God of Wind? Yes, it was a lot of wind……thats normally the idea behind typhoons….its windy. I’m not knocking the Chinese, but how did they come up with this for the name? ahhhhhh….I found the answer:

http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/genmet/rpnames.html and http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/jma-center/rsmc-hp-pub-eg/tyname.html

These names are preselected in advance and they just go down the list as the storms occur. I had not known this. The first list is for use within the Philippines only. I have no idea why they’re the only Asian country to be so obtuse about what they’re calling it - and theirs was “Frank”. Everyone else is all one the same list, which is the second link. If they had made it to 25 storms last year, the Philippines would have named it…hehe…. “ZigZag”. BWHAHAHHA!!!!! I love it, a typhoon named after rolling papers!

The main Asian list has words/names donated from most countries that touch the Pacific basin. Next one will be Kalmaegi meaning ‘Sea Gull’ donated by DRP Korea. but the USA has some entries I dont get…

I had to look this up…what the hell is a Chamorro? It seems they’re the natives of Guam. Apparently, theres a huge anti-american wave going thru there. I mean, look up their web sites…seems like they truly and utterly hate the Americans.  I dunno why we would submit their names, must’ve been a PR move.

Palau is not even an American territory, its independent.  How did the USA manage to submit those words under its name? Thats like Texas claiming a polar bear as its official animal.

Aere is Latin….and it does NOT mean storm, (that would be ‘tempest’). Its just a general Latin term for ‘air’. Oddly enough, I found a lot of references that it IS the Marshallese word for storm. What are the odds of a pacific native language having a word in general common with Latin?

AaaaHooo!!!!

5 Days now the power has been out on Boracay. The typhoon “Frank” (I know) came in as a mild warning on Friday…nothing special expected here and was supposed to peak around 2pm that day.

Whoops.

I have too much cleaning up to do now that the power and water are back on so I’ll post the details later. The house smells like mildew. The winds drove palm fragments/fronds all the way thru the house. Water made it from the back balcony, left turn, down the hall, right turn (and under a few doors), into the living room, onwards to the kitchen. The hillside smells like a huge urinal. Palm trees are down. Electrical and cable lines were down, some still are. I have no idea why I have internet because I can see my coax cable drooping almost to the ground under a fallen banana tree.

I had some good partying, and some bad decisions….but still enjoyed most of it. A bunch of boats were lost including the Blue Mango boat. They pulled it as high as possible to drydock, but the water came up even higher. I have video of one that broke free out front and crashed to bits a few minutes later on White beach…give me some time, I’ll post it online.

So there I was, reading this diving magazine and it was pretty cool. The adverts for dive computers were friggin HUGE wrist units with tonnes of display face. Like something off a sci-fi underwater movie. Oddly enough, these ads for BCD’s look like the simple rental ones in diveshops but they are touted as innovative. And the articles, they described a crapload of places in SE Asia with facinating pristine pictures and looking undisturbed completely. I was like YES! All these new cool dive spots and they’re all nearby! But something is off…

Whats this? An article about someone making an underwater IMAX movie? Who still does that? And that Sea Shepard guy, these people are actually supporting him? Daymn! Not even Green Peace will associate with him.

Halfway thru the magazine I recognize this place in Palawan but the article says its off limits. Hmmmm…. Pictures of remains on the cave floor underwater…hmmm…… Then I spot it, a picture of these people underwater conducting the survey - and this guys mask is the old fashioned round faceplate with the metal band holding the rubber skirt to it. WTF?!?! Thats some old skool shit they dont even sell anymore!

Ok, here’s an article about the University of Philippines placing some area offlimits to harvesting turtles … now I know something is wrong because there is no chance in hell of that actually having any worth. Its so retarded that no-one bothers posting stories like that anymore since they’ll be ignored anyway by fishermen.

Lets check something here - - -oh….. the magazine is 10 years old.

I have to roll back the date on this one to accurately capture the date of the brown-out, again. When did that one go out? Around 09:00 am and lasted until about 13:30 afternoon. Man, it was hot as heck that day. Power outage, not even in the high demand for consumption. Boracay at its best…erm, well I guess I should say at it’s average. Philippines most famous island…can’t even keep the electricity on.

Apparently today is the Philippine Labor Day holiday. From what I can tell, no-one got the day off except government workers. And today was the day I was  walking all over the island trying to pay bills. I even worked myself up ready to refuse to pay for a 6000 peso bill because our house cant possibly use 6000 pesos of electricity in a month. But nooooo…they were all closed and I didnt find out about the holiday until I was on my way back.

As usual, I didn’t buy the few things that I actually needed while down there.

I have to wonder though, not to be rude or anything but just what is the holiday symbolic of? The Philippines is one of the most labor intensive countries that I have ever been to. Among the lowest paid in the world and I don’t believe they have much in the way of labor laws. Something about getting paid once a month or so.

I looked it up and learned this is an international holiday and also called May Day. But they all have one thing in common - it is a holiday based on the movement to create non-slave like working conditions of basic workday hourly schedules without people losing pay. I dunno about that, I see the same people here making the same daily wage regardless if they work 8 hours or 14 hours. And most of them seem to work from around 0700 am to 2200 at night. As hard as people work in this country, I think that if the government workers (obviously not even close to being considered labor-class) can get a paid day off, then that same government should subsidize the wage of every person in the country for that day that is not offered the opportunity to take the day off by their employer.

One bit of humorous trivia about this holiday:

” In Germany, Labour Day was established as an official holiday after the Nazi Party, or NSDAP, rose to power. It was supposed to symbolize the new-found unity between the state and the German people. However, just one day later, on 2 May 1933, all in 1933 after the free unions were outlawed and destroyed” Source:wikipedia

Well, the ratings are in and Boracay not only lost the questionable rankings they had but this time, it’s from the largest traveler site around and they didnt make a single list!

Trip Advisor Awards 2008 - it’s a pdf file so you should know how to save it.

The thing is that a few years ago, it somehow mad a top-10 list on AskMen.com as one of the best beaches in the workd. It was odd because there wasnt a poll conduucted and no research was done. If you looked, you could not find where they came up with the list…several dozen commentors asked that same question and never got an answer. Hundreds of commentors total and not a one agreed with the list.

Then, last year, a Yahoo list came out that listed it in the top 10. But they admitted on the travel pages once that almost every vote came from the Philippines itself…not exactly very accurate to list it as a world class location when almost all the voters are people that have never been out of the country. And that list is STILL being used today. But thats OK, if they want to believe it then cool, I’ll use it too on my commercial sites and make money from them.

But the largest peer/traveler site in the world is www.TripAdvisor.com . It used to be Lonely Planet but they simply stopped updating the site and its a pain to navigate as well as having to hold multiple logins for different sections. Trip Advisor, on the other hand, had a massive amount of features and its really easy to navigate and best of all…it has the most travel reviews of any site around. Sure, theres a lot of fake stuff, just look at the Boracay pages and you’ll see reviews by single-post accounts that are obviously written by a resort owner or a marketing person. (real people don’t use travel brochure words to describe a trip). But I’m getting of topic.

They have Top 100 lists and then Top 25 lists for each region and Boracay didnt make it onto ANY list. OOPS!

Trip Advisor 2008 Destinations

I’m laughing my ass of about this. Unlike Yahoo and AskMen, this is compiled from real travelers reviews and not quickie polls.