Ok, wait...

I just wanted to quickly talk about our last meal, which was possibly one of the most interesting and delicious we had eaten in a whole month. It was traditional, innovative, and delicious at the same time.

On a tip from our homie Theo, we went to Greenbelt 3, to Sentro, which claims it pioneered new Filipino cuisine. This is what we ate:


Queso Puti (carabao cheese), covered in breadcrumbs and fried and served with cream and chili sauces.

Ukoy with delicate shreds of camote and kalabasa and shrimp.


And then, corned beef sinegang. No, not out of the can, as we thought, but with rich, beefy, and sumptuous threads of tender corned beef and shank, with just-tender sitao, onions, sili and tomato. Can you believe that when you order this, they bring you a tiny coffee mug of sabaw so that you can judge whether it's sour enough or not?




And then, to finish, a cold, crispy and creamy halo-halo, rich with ube helaya, chunks of leche flan, nata de coco, sweet beans, freshly crisped pinipig, and shaved ice.

This meal covinced us to come back next year!

Home...

We are home now in San Francisco. We left Manila on a balmy Saturday morning and arrived 16 hours later in San Francisco...on the same day (we gain a day on the return).

Our apartment is a mess, our sleeping patterns have gone awry, and we're simultaneously sad to leave the Philippines and elated to be home.

I'll post soon with links to our pictures. Thanks for reading, and for keeping us in your prayers for our safe journey.

Now, onto the Filipinos in Stockton booklaunch (Feb 24 in Stockton), finishing my book manuscript, and Super Tuesday. Who are you voting for?

Cavite: Heart of the Revolution?

We got a Feb. 2 flight to SFO so we decided to go visit historical sites/shrines in nearby Cavite province on Friday, Feb. 1. Lola Isabel, Tatay's mother, was Isabel Timtiman Tirona before she was married to a Mabalon, and Tatay was very proud of his Tirona middle name. Apparently, the Tirona family is an enormous and famous clan from Kawit and Imus, Cavite. Candido Tirona was among the first Katipuneros killed in the Philippine Revolution. The elitism and strategic power play orchestrated by his brother Daniel, a lawyer and leader in the Magdalo faction of the Katipunan, led to the imprisonment and execution of Andres Bonifacio (I was very embarrassed to learn this in college, that a relative of mine killed Andres). The spouses of Emilio Aguinaldo and Emiliano Tria Tirona were sisters, making the two Katipuneros very close. In the early 20th century, Tatay was proud to talk about the fact that a relative, Francisca Tirona Benitez, founded the Philippine Women's University, where Auntie Puring Pastrana (Tatay's Manang) studied. In any case, we are the poor, provincial Tironas: our great-grandfather, Lola Isabel's father Juan, was the black sheep who left Cavite to become a provincial official in Aklan.

So I decided to hunt through Cavite to find the ancestral House of Tirona, which the internet told me was a beautiful family home located in G. Maestro Tirona Street in Imus, Cavite. After a 30 minute drive there, and several close calls (every street in Imus' town plaza is named after a Tirona, so if you stop a tricycle or jeepney driver and ask for the Tirona house, they look at you as if you were in Boston and asked the bus driver to take you to the House of Smith or some other Anglo-Saxon name), we finally got to the house, hidden behind a thick fence. The housekeeper told Jesse the owners had closed the house to the public. Sadly, we turned west and went to Kawit to the ancestral home of Emilio Aguinaldo, site of the declaration of Philippine Independence, June 12, 1898.
We had to wait 20 minutes because may the Virgin Mary help you if you interrupt a Filipino security guard on lunch break. The Aguinaldo ancestral home, which was built in 1849 and renovated continuously until the General's death in 1964. The house in enormous and situated on the Kawit river. The first floor, where Gen. Aguinaldo had built a bowling alley in the 1920s, is a nicely done mini-museum of Cavite and Katipunan history, featuring clothing, flags, and weapons owned by the General. Did you know he was only 5'3"? He would have towered over Rizal. In any case, I'm ambivalent, like many, about Aguinaldo's legacy. As the first president of the Republic and leader of the Revolution, he fought American colonialism until his death. Yet, he was willing to sacrifice the founder of the Revolution (Bonifacio) and also his own dignity (Pact of Biak-na-Bato, when he went into exile right before the Americans arrived in May, 1898) to survive. His house is quite interesting, however.
Kuya (I won't share his last name, so as to not get him in trouble) was our tour guide. When I told him that I was a history professor descended from Juan Tirona, cousin of Daniel, Candido and Emiliano, he immediately changed his formal demeanor and proceeded to show us every nook and cranny of this amazing house, which is built of beautiful narra, molave, and kamagong wood. Kuya holds Aguinaldo in extreme reverence, so I kept my Aguinaldo criticisms quiet, so not to insult him. The house itself is magnificent, but what makes it really interesting are the tiny details. Kuya explained that Aguinaldo always had to protect himself against enemies: the Spanish during the Revolution, Americans during the Philippine-American War, and then everyone else until his death in 1964. Aguinaldo designed the house to contain several secret stairways, entryways, hidden doors, escape hatches, underground tunnels, secret doors hidden in kitchen tables, and secret attic hideaways for his five children. At first he said that only dignitaries got to see these places. Then, he softened and said that I, as a distant relative of the General, could see everything off-limits to the general public. So here we go, folks: some photos of the inside of the inside of the Aguinaldo house:

Kuya: "I'm not really supposed to show you this, but this is the secret stairway that leads up to the secret bathroom and escape hatch for the three daughters..."

"And this is the General's library..."

General Aguinaldo's haven: his old bed, chairs, and a grand view of Manila and Cavite through the capiz-shell windows. Kuya made sure we specifically asked Lolo (the General) to take a picture, lest his spirit be irritated at us. We hurriedly complied.

I won't show anymore since Kuya made us promise to not share the photos. Here are some more general ones:


Students from Emiliano Tria Tirona High School were visiting the same day.

University of Santo Tomas

Our Tatay was always very proud that he graduated with his undergraduate and M.D. degree from the oldest university in Asia, University of Santo Tomas. After he served in USAFFE in his mid-teens during World War II, he finished high school and then went to Manila to study at UST. Our Lolo Ambo wanted a doctor in the family, though our Tatay's true loves were athletics and history. After graduating with his M.D. degree in the early 1950s, he stayed on at UST for 10 years as a volleyball and basketball coach. One of Tatay's most prized possessions was his old maleta from UST. It was ancient, brown, mottled leather, with UST stickers on it. In it he kept his old UST basketball shorts, his UST photo album, and all important papers. I remember thinking that the maleta held all the secrets to my Tatay's life before he married and had us, and that it smelled like the Philippines, or at least, what I thought the Philippines must smell like. When he passed away in April 2005, I immediately asked for the maleta and we opened it, finding so many treasures and clues to the person he was. One of the photographs in the maleta I loved the most was of Tatay walking on the UST campus, sometime in the 1950s.Before he passed away, I always imagined that I would one day go to UST with Tatay, so he could show me his beloved alma mater. After he passed, I resolved that I would still go, and moreover, I would find where he took this picture. Yesterday, I felt that he was with us when we arrived on campus. It is a beautiful campus, a venerable one, rich with history. At first, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find the exact place where he posed so confidently, cigarette in his lips. Then we saw the distinctive main building, and turned towards what the campus map told us was the gymnasium, where I know he spent the better part of his 20s to his 40s. And then, there was the picture, and we felt as though Tatay took my shoulders and pointed us in the right direction. The trees are much bigger, there are cars now where only students must have only been allowed, but here it was. And I realized that my father was swaggering confidently in that photograph towards the gymnasium.
We were able to later go inside and watch the women's volleyball team, which my dad had coached for many years. Then we went to the Public Affairs office to buy some T-Shirts. There, I talked to Aristotle Garcia from that office, and explained why I was visiting and showed him some of the photos I had of my dad in his UST days. The office asked for digital copies of the photos for their university archives -- they loved them, especially the one of Tatay walking to the gym. Here are some of the photos I shared with the UST folks:


Tatay is second from the right in the front row.
Tatay, the coach of the UST men's basketball team, is first on the left in the top row.

For many years, Tatay (center, crouching) coached the UST women's volleyball team.
Tatay was a talented coach; here he poses at the UST gym with his trophies in the 1950s. Yesterday, we watched his former team get their puets kicked by Ateneo.
I always wondered what would have happened if Lolo Ambo hadn't forced Tatay to leave UST to come to the US; I know he loved coaching. As I was taking pictures, I imagined that the coach (in blue shirt) very well could have been my dad had he made different choices. And if he had stayed, I think the Tigers would have won yesterday, but I wouldn't be blogging this.


Being on campus helped me to imagine a certain person Tatay must have been, in a time when he was young, ambitious, passionate about sports and history and the city of Manila, a time before the work in the fields wore his body down and the frustrations of life in the United States embittered him. We love you, Tatay. Thanks for coming with us to show us your beloved UST.

Shopping in Manila

We arrived in Manila on Monday, early afternoon, after leaving Zambales at 4am. We slept at Jesse's uncle's house, or at least, tried to sleep, as the kids and family across the street were blastic Magic Mic power ballads until at least 1 am. We stopped in San Fernando, Pampanga, to buy parols (ground zero for parols). How we are going to pack them in our balikbayan boxes without them getting crushed is beyond me.

We went to Divisoria to pasyal (shop around). It's heaving, dirty, chaotic, and full of all of those Filipiniana giveaways. Want a Precious Moments parachute wedding favor? They've got millions in Divisoria. I stepped in unidentified wet stuff (of course, wearing my tsinelas) and wanted to suka in the street, which, considering the atmosphere, would have made me fit right in. This is the dirty, real, unforgiving, bag-snatching, cut you in the throat Manila that one is warned about. Unfortunately, or maybe, fortunately, they didn't have the Filipino crafts, trays, carvings, etc. we were looking for, so we went to Quiapo, under the bridge, which is balikbayan nirvana for shopping. A lot of the stuff -- carvings, baskets, shells -- we had come across in our travels across Luzon and the Visayas was here! We got some great, cheap stuff here, including capiz stars for our Christmas tree for next year, tubaws from the Muslim vendors, etc.

Yesterday, after spending about seven hours doing research back at University of the Philippines, Diliman, (I ran into a colleague there who is working on post-WWII Philippine politics, particularly the Recission Act that stripped veterans of US benefits, also working with the Carlos P. Romulo papers), we went to Greenhills, which is Divisoria and Canal Street (NY) without the bagsnatchers and anti-pirating police. Now, THIS was a shopper's paradise. No wet stuff to step in in the streets, no black diesel jeepneys and tricycles farting in your face, no open sewers. This is tiangge style shopping (like Divisoria), with hundreds of stalls selling everything from fake Prada, Gucci, Chloe and Coach purses to glasses, wallets, Old Navy and Gap overstocks from the Philippine factories, fake Lacoste, everything fake or brandname overstocked you could ask for. We imagined taking Allyson and Leenie here and then joked that we probably would have to leave you guys there for about 8 hrs. I bought two purses. Then we went to the MegaMall in Ortigas, and tried to find some stuff for which some have you have texted or emailed me.

It's interesting what you can and cannot find in Manila, and the city is a nightmare to navigate, especially during rush hour. Now I totally appreciate ten times over every pasalubong ever brought back for me. Mare Donna, I can only imagine the journey you had to make to find me a capiz lamp, that wasn't the size of a toy or monstrous!!! Certain kinds of art and handicrafts my family brought back by the boxload in the 60s and 70s are now considered very baduy (corny) by pretty much all classes of rich and poor: sungka sets, capiz lanterns, narra wood platters and serving items, Weapons of Moroland, Filipiniana wear that is casual (seriously -- I have been looking far and wide for casual, cute and simple barongs and embroidered dresses for Pumpum, Laya and Taytay with no success), woven purses, etc. Items we bought on our trip to Davao in 1997 are so hard to find in Manila -- you really have to go to Mindanao to get kubings, tubaws, a good selection of malongs, and tribal art and artifacts from the South (such as the T'boli bells I bought by the dozens last time), or to the Cordilleras to get Ifugao and Kalinga weaving.

I found a lot of some stuff in Quiapo, but the average mall will not have any of that (except for Filipiniana sections, or Kultura stores). People in the urban Philippines buy and want the same stuff in their malls that we have in our American malls. We went to a Vans store yesterday! For example, here in the Philippines, it seems that the only kind of Filipiniana wear one dons is in weddings. I remember having these really cute, embroidered dresses and shirts folks brought back for me when I was a kid, and am trying so hard to find them for the godchildren, with frustration. When I ask folks in the shops if they have casual barongs or cotton embroidered shirts for kids, or jusi dresses for kids (I had this really cute, embroidered casual dress when I was 3), they look at me like I'm crazy. Why would I want a casual barong?, they ask. But if you want fake Lacoste, a fake Bottega Venetta woven leather purse, plasticware of every shape and kind, Body Shop lotions, or Le Sportsac fake stuff, I can bring it back by the boxload!

Anyway, despite this, we have bought TONS of stuff, and we will have two balikbayan boxes plus bursting luggage. Today, we are going book shopping at La Solidaridad and last minute barong shopping at Tesoro's around the neighborhood we are staying in, Malate/Ermita, then to Sampaloc for University of Santo Tomas, Tatay's alma mater, so I can see it, then in the afternoon I'm going to the National Archives and National Library for some research.

We are set to leave on Friday morning (Feb. 1), but are on a waitlist to leave Sat. Feb. 2. Will keep you all posted.

Zambales

We are in the ancestral home of the Perez family, Jesse's maternal family. We left Baguio today at 11am and spent six hours through La Union, Pangasinan, and then through Zambales. We arrived here at Masinloc at 6pm. We're staying at Jesse's cousin's house. Jesse hasn't been here to the province since he was in elementary school, so it's been very sentimental to him to see his grandparents' old store and his Lolo's old dental office, and the old property, and old friends and relatives. Some of his old barkada are back here visiting too and he's having fun reminiscing with them, and laughing at how much they have grown in 25 years. The nieces and nephews here, all under 10, have spent the last three hours singing Celine Dion songs on Magic Mic at full blast. They're actually pretty good!

I am writing this at an internet station here at the sari sari store owned by Jing's mom's friend here in Zambales. Can you believe the internet was down mostly in Bohol, nonexistent in Banaue, and I didn't bring my laptop to take advantage of the wi-fi in Baguio, and then we get to this tiny town in Zambales, and they have wi-fi? "Oo, wi-fi na talaga!" they said, laughing. Hey, even the Lolas are texting here in the market, so nothing surprises me in this country of ironies.

We just had the best diniguan I have ever had since my Lolo Ambo's and my Grandma's and Mabalon cousins....made by one of the aunties here, close family friend and owner of the sari-sari. I wish my family could have been here to taste it. It might have been the best I ever ate since my Lolo's, though I don't want to insult the rest of my family...

Anyway, we will be going back to Manila at 4am to get to the Divisoria Market to get last minute pasalubongs. I messed up our tickets and waited too long to extend, and now Chinese New Year has jammed all the flights Feb. 2. We may be seeing you earlier than expected so everything is so rushed now.

We are missing home and missing here already.

Do you know the way to Banaue?

In one of the most sadistic itineraries ever, we made our way to Banaue after Bohol. We arrived in Manila at 5pm (Cebu Pacific is inevitably late), went to San Juan to check out the custom made barongs at Patis Tesoro in San Juan, and then picked up our luggage in Makati, dropped it off in Malate at our condotel, rearranged our clothes, and then had our driver (our cousin in law Christopher hooked it up with his friend) take us to Sampaloc to the Autobus station, where we boarded a 10pm bus to Banaue. You're supposed to sleep on this bus, which is hard because the brakes sound so bad you don't want to nod off lest you find yourself lurching off the side of the mountain into the Cordilleras. I won't even discuss the bathroom at the rest stop, but let's just say that this is the Character and Resilience Building part of the trip.

We arrived in Banaue to a cold, wet, rainy, and foggy morning. After dropping our stuff off at the cavernous, dark, and, for Banaue standards, luxe, Banaue Hotel, we were picked up by Mang Abe, our Ifugao tour guide/expert jeepney driver, and taken on a six hour tour of the rice terraces. It was raining hard by then. I kept my eyes closed through much of the traveling, and held onto the rails inside the jeepney praying to every spirit possible that we wouldn't fall off the edge. Hail Marys too, just for insurance. The terraces at Hungdaan are amazing. Unfortunately, the day we arrived turned out to be the one day in the entire dry season it rained incessantly, bringing in blinding fog. By the time we got to the Banaue Viewpoint, it was pouring, all the terrace views were fogged out, and I felt heartbroken. I did see some amazing ones, and I do have to say that you cannot truly appreciate their grandeur without seeing them in person.

We blew a bit of money at the Banaue shops and then went back to our hotel, where a group of Ifugao musicians and dancers were holding a cultural show. It was the first time we had seen Ifugao dances outside of the Bayanihan style; there are no formations, lights, or makeup. Again, an eye-opening experience. By this time, my sipun had abated a bit and we packed to leave for Baguio the next day.


The bus to Baguio was at 7am. Too early to be able to see some terraces, though the day, of course, was beautiful and clear. It took 8 long hours on a crazy bus trip to get to Baguio. We went back down to Nueva Ecija, through Nueva Nizcaya, and then through Pangasinan. At one point, I woke up and we were in Binalonan. Which famous Filipino American author was born in Binalonan? (Clue: he wrote America is in the Heart). After eight hours and about twelve provinces, we finally arrived in Baguio. Baguio City was founded by American colonial officials, who found a cool valley in the Cordillera Mountains and turned it into their administrative center because of its temperate climate. It used to be a mountain retreat -- think Lake Tahoe or Yosemite, but now suffers the fate of Manila. It's crowded, polluted, and jammed with traffic constantly now. Jesse was so excited to visit where he spent many a summer vacation in a bucolic atmosphere. Now he's more than a little disappointed. We met up with Jesse's mom here. She hired a driver to take us around. We shopped at the City Market, went to the SM Baguio City, and then crashed at this really cute bed and breakfast, PNKY.

We left for Zambales at around 11 am.

Daghang Salamat, Bohol!

So much drunken dancing in the streets for Ati-atihan caught up to me. I caught a bad cold on our last day in Kalibo, Monday the 21st. After lunch with the Ureta cousins and nieces and nephews, we boarded a plane back to Manila. Funny, DonDon and Weng and Dion were also going back the same time. I was a little sad at leaving Aklan. It was a great time, and I realized so many things about my province. Because there were so many Aklanons in the United States, I imagined this barren province, with everyone left pining for those gone. I realize that was such a naive perspective; life certainly goes on in the province, which is as bustling and bursting as ever. The huge balikbayan houses stand out amongst the more humble ones, but otherwise, life really does go on without us. We're the ones missing them. We saw Lolo Ambo's deteriorated house and lot.

Anyway, after a night in a random Best Western in Makati, we arrived in Bohol on Tuesday and were whisked to http://www.amarelaresort.com. What an amazing place: a boutique hotel on Panglao Island full of Bohol antiques and historical books. We loved it. We did a tour of Bohol the next day (Wed) with Kay's family friend Mang Del Sumampong. Our first stop was the Blood Compact Site -- the first time Spanish and Boholanos made some agreement about friendship. Of course, there's no site for the moment the Spanish broke that promise. Our next stop was Corella, for the Tarsier Sanctuary. After minutes of trekking in mud (it had rained, I was wearing tsinelas), we finally saw the tarsier. For those of you in love with this little rat with monkey pretensions, I hate to disappoint. Now I'm certainly not against saving this animal, and surely I don't want it to become extinct. But we were a little freaked out out how rat-like this animal is! It's got the head of a bat and the body of a rat, with a long, ratlike tail. Jesse got close and it bared its fangs and we were like, oh, hell. I thought about Mugs and I think she would have run out of the forest screaming.

We did the river cruise and met some cool Manileno girls in their 30s also vacationing in Bohol, then we visited the Loboc Museum. Our tour guide at the Loboc Museum/Church (one of many amazing Bohol coral churches built in the seventeenth century -- the santo rooms will give you nightmares) is from American Canyon! He spends half the year home in Loboc. We walked the hanging bridge, and the Chocolate Hills. We'll post pics later -- we're at an internet cafe in Zambales. The Chocolate Hills are amazing. Bohol is also a really beautiful province. I'm thinking very deeply about these provinces from which thousands of immigrants have come. Read the book -- the thoughts will be in there. I specifically wanted to go to provinces that sent the most immigrants to Stockton: Aklan, Bohol, Pangasinan, Ilocos, etc.

The next morning we awoke at 5am, went dolphin watching at Pamalican Island and snorkeling at Balicasag. We were irritated because we paid $100 for a banca there, then two guys charged us another P300 to "guide us" to the corals, which were only 20 feet away, it turned out. Anyway, just imagine Jesse and I geared up in our snorkel gear, flotation devices, camera, asthma inhaler waterproof neck case, etc., trying to get into the smallest banca ever made to go 10 feet. But the snorkeling was the best ever. Imagine walls of fish, huge and small, everywhere.

Sadly, we then boarded a plane and went back to Manila.

Hala Bira!

Greetings from the land of the Ati-Atihan. What a surprise that my cousin To Willie showed up on Friday morning! He and the Ureta cousins are so great and they have been taking such good care of us. And To Willie took us to sabong derby on Friday and we won $250! At first I felt so sad for the dead chickens. But as soon as we were on a winning streak, i was yelling "Kill him! Kill him!" to our roosters. When you win, you taste blood. I can see how addictive it can be. Old men were peeling P1000 peso bills from their wallets one right after the other.

My legs are all dirty from our drunken street dancing today (called sadsad) in the town plaza here in Kalibo. This is the mother of all festivals and that is an understatement. This festival, in which Aklanons cover themselves in black paint and elaborate and outlandish tribal costumes has been celebrated every year for about the last 800 years. It's the modern world's most unabashed blackface ritual, in which the fairer skinned Aklanon lowlanders pay homage to the indigenous, and much darker, residents of the mountains, who, in 1212, agreed to allow a bunch of Borneans to occupy the lowlands of Aklan, on an island eventually named Panay by the Spanish. So every year, hundreds of Aklanons black up, put on crazy and elaborate costumes, and make like the Atis and dance to addictive drumbeats and xylophones tinging out pop tunes for HOURS on end, beginning at 5am into the night. In the 1500s the scandalized priests injected Santo Nino into the whole thing to make it respectable so it's supposed to be a compromise, but really, this festival has indigenous roots and the Sto. Nino part is really appeasement to the priests. Today when riding a tricycle (cab attached to a motorcycle) I saw a Santo Nino on a bar surrounded by beers. I wish I had a pic, but you don't ask the driver to stop here.

SoiImagine dancing drunk in the streets, you're drinking a cold San Mig with thousands of your provincemates, and the drums and xylophone band are playing Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" to the Ati-Atihan beat. The aim is to drink as much as one possibly can AND try to make it to Mass. I love my province. Aklanons know how to party! My cousin in-law Manong Don laughingly said, "We drink until we're...swimming (in alcohol!). It's not social drinking. You don't stop until you fall down. And what is usually done around a table in the backyard is brought to the streets during Ati-Atihan...men and women bring bottles of rum, whisky, scotch, tequila and more on the streets with plastic cups.

Anyway, I'm a little drunk right now! We will post Ati-Atihan pics and will write more when we get back to Manila. I met a very distant Bohulano relative today. We had lechon in Tangalan on the beach Thursday, and met Manang Tere, one of our Mabalon cousins. Also, all the streets here are named after our relatives, but no Bohulano or Mabalon streets. That's what you get when you leave for America and petition everybody over.

Aklan

Quickly, I just want to talk about Aklan. As many of you know, and of course, my family knows this, with the exception of my Cebuano Grandma Conching, we are Aklanon. And until yesterday, I had never been here. This is the province where we can trace our roots back five generations. This town, Numancia, is where the bulk of my family is from, and where my father, grandmothers and grandfathers, and ancestors were born. Thousands of Aklanons live in the US.

When we landed on our Cebu Pacific flight in Kalibo, everyone cheered. Clapped, yelled, screamed. Everyone was so happy to be home; I had never experienced such elation on a landing amongst other passengers, and I was moved to tears. I was sad that my Tatay wasn't with us, sad that this is the trip I thought we would take together with my sister, but then felt as though he will be with us too, and felt the ancestors welcoming us home.

Aklan is a beautiful province, something out of a postcard, Jesse says: green rice fields endless into the horizon, carabaos, nipa huts, coconut trees, even lining the airport runway. Uncle David Villanueva welcomed us at the airport and brought us to the beautiful new Ureta house of our cousins 'To Willie and Mang Nellie Ureta. Manang Gerlie, 'To Willie's sister, stuffed us with cake and sodas and fruits, inihaw na baboy, crabs, beef nilaga, rice, paksiw na isda, sinegang...we knocked out on our ride to Caticlan, where we took a ferry to Boracay.

We're here in Boracay now, until Wed., then back to Numancia, where we'll probably go to the sabong derby, see the site where my family had their old house, and then onto Kalibo for the 796th Annual Ati-Atihan festival. Boracay isn't much to write home about -- Palawan is truly the last paradise -- but I'm having fun people watching all the tourists. Totally overdeveloped here. There is even an outdoor mall that's just like the International Market in Waikiki.

Also, for the cooks in our family: the tour guide in Cebu talked to me about real Cebuano pastries. It turns out that the real torta is actually very coarse and dry, made from coarse flour, lard and tuba, or rice wine. It's purpose is to keep your stomach full when you work in the fields all day. Binangkal is the same. They are little, hard as a rock golf balls. The torta in the country is like that -- so tough and tasting of lard and tuba I gagged. But the torta in downtown Cebu at Anita's Bakery is so good, and so like Grandma's, I wish I could have taken some home.

We had such a good time in Palawan we can't help but unfavorably compare Boracay. We made great friends in Palawan, Liezle and Donald, both Cebuano Filipino Canadians our age, and we had our meals together and went on bangka island hopping trips. Dolarog was a beautiful resort, so peaceful and intimate, only 10 others there, all Europeans. Imagine water so clear you can see 100 feet, so blue and green, and enormous limestone rocks jutting a mile into the sky, covered in forests where monkeys live. Our guide Ezeqiel was such a cool guy -- he took us snorkeling where there were walls of fish (i saw barracuda and eels!) and protected us. We got stung by a few jellyfish and a sea snake almost jumped out of the water to get me (terrifying fangs -- you never saw fat German tourists swim so fast to get out of the water, screaming SEA SNAKE!!!!)...but we survived.We four were the only Filipinos at the resort (everyone else, about 10 others, were Europeans), so the cook hooked us up with diniguan, rellenong talong, nilagang carne, alimasag, and extra rice! I know in 10 years Palawan will look like this mess, and we will be so sad. We were so scared on the bangka ride back to the airport: a storm hit and we thought we would capsize. It was the "Oh shit, why didn't we buy travel insurance before we left" and "God, I hope Auntie Virg keeps watering my plants if we die" moment. Liezle prayed the Hail Mary while I prayed to Bathala, but we made it, barely in time. The departures area was a mangrove river. We were dripping wet from head to toe when we got to the little airport, which is just two nipa hits and a small runway. Baggage claim is a wheelbarrow!

We'll post pics when we return to Manila on Monday. We're in an internet cafe here at our resort, Nigi, so we haven't downloaded pics. Anyway, just as an update: we haven't gotten sick, no mosquito bites to speak of, and we're having so much fun. We miss you all and wish you were all with us here. And as a correction to an earlier post, Jesse doesn't feel so American. And we're eating everything we can possibly get a hold of. Good and bad. We're eating Shakey's a lot! As well as liempo and chicken inasal (barbecue).

Boracay and Other Thoughts

After pounding rain last night here in Boracay (this place is an overdeveloped mess, a mini Waikiki Beach with Germans and South Koreans everywhere), we awoke to hazy, now turning sunny, skies. I think I will go get a P500 massage (that would be about $12 to you there in America). Actually, $12+ and counting as our once might dollar continues its slow international death (thank you Mr. Bush and the war machine). Last Tuesday night, before Palawan, we hung out with Allan Manalo, at the hipster joint Magnet Cafe near UP Diliman, where we watched Noel Shaw's film "Kung Hindi Naman" and got to see his sister, Angel Shaw, now based in Malate -- it was so cool to see her and meet her bro and watch his film. Filmmaker Howie Severino was there too, and we got to chat for a bit. We went to another really cool spot on Sat night the 12th-- Saguijo in Makati, where we watched a bunch of great indie pop bands, most fronted by Pinays all playing lead guitar. We loved Parokya ni Edgar, Moonstar 88, Cambio, and Imago.

Lest you think this trip is all hipster clubs, Greenbelt mall, torta, barbecue pork, garlic peanuts, ampao, white beaches and baby shark sightings on snorkeling trips, I have done a good bit of research. I went to the immaculate Ateneo de Manila campus on January 7 and did research at their American Historical Collection in the Philippine High Commission papers, circa 1911-1946. My pare fo life Ben de Guzman hung out with us that Tuesday the 8th, which was my day to do research at University of the Philippines, Diliman. That was a little bit of a nightmare. The building is huge, no airconditioning, four stories tall with no elevator (research +cardio, very multitasking), I couldn't seem to find as much as I needed, we got yelled at three times for being too loud in the Filipiniana room, the microfilm printer was broken and its repair is not in the budget, and the microfilm readers were made circa 1965, but it was the only room with aircon. Imagine that it's 90 degrees and humid inside and you're running from floor to floor. Then I saw the sign: University Library closes today at 3pm. We didn't get there until 11am because of Manila crosstown traffic (and yes, Kay, it's horrible during rush hour-- two hours to go crosstown, and that's when we catch up on our sleep!). And then the whole joint closes down 12-1 for lunch. I was like, LUNCH BREAK?!?!?! WHAT THE HELL! We get so used to our work-all-the-time American cultural values! We ate barbecue and rice with the students at the stands in front of the university for P40 ($1). By 2:30pm, I finally got to where I wanted to go -- the University Archives, where the Carlos P. Romulo papers are housed. Historians among you may remember Romulo, who was MacArthur's aide-de-camp during WWII, and was a Resident Commissioner in the US during the Commonwealth period. In those papers are communiques between Carlos Bulosan (then based in Stockton) and other Stockton community leaders circa the war. But of course, just as soon as I cracked those boxes open, the entire Archives staff, all wearing their "UP at 100 Ang Galing Mo!" white T-shirts, stood over me breathing fire and telling me their closure was imminent.

So at 3pm, Ben, Jing and I joined the thousands of alumni, staff, faculty and students to watch the 100th anniversary parade. And I had to admit, I got a little choked up for the love everyone had for their university and alma mater. The most moving sight were the thousands of students from UP Diliman and Los Banos marching behind the Serve the People banners. I thought of how hard everyone was working to go to college in the Philippines, and how lucky and blessed all of us are, in the US and the Philippines, whose families worked hard so that we could be college educated. They even had a theme song: "UP: Ang Galing Mo!" that was so catchy. They had helicopters dropping balloons and confetti, and Philippine military parachuters!

American colonial officials founded the University of the Philippines in 1908 to secularize university education in the Philippines (prior to UP the only choices were the Catholic Ateneo and University of Santo Tomas), to inculcate the Filipinos with American liberalism (in the traditional sense), and as a tool of colonialism. But UP by the 1960s and 1970s had become a hotbed of student political radical activism, especially the fine arts dept. From there was birthed the movement that unseated Ferdinand Marcos, and to this day, UP produces fine minds and fiery activists. One newspaper columnist in the Inquirer noted that the UP students rearticulated the American liberal ideas forced upon them and fused them with the values and ideas of the Philippine Revolution to change the Philippines. We were proud to be there that day as that legacy was celebrated.

Palawan: The Last Unspoiled Place in the Philippines

I saw a baby shark, a sea snake, a secret cave used by Japanese soldiers to hide Filipino POWs, and more.

aargh

it's 3:30 in the morning, we just got back from Saguijo, a hip little indie spot here in makati, where we saw a bunch of Pinay-fronted pop and indie bands tonight. we arrived in manila from palawan at 6:30pm. we're all packed and ready for boracay tomorrow morning, a week in aklan, and then ati-atihan.

i'll post pics and discuss palawan soon. it's almost too beautiful for words.

i'm so tired.

Cebu

Cebu was lovely. We went to Larsian, the famed (and DIRTY) barbecue pavilion, Basilica de Santo Nino, did a tour of the provinces, including Carcar, and Carbon, the famous and enormous outdoor market. Here are some highlights.



In Carcar, Roy the basketmaker tried to show me how to make one. I was really bad at it.
In Carcar's town center, a white American woman leads a Filipina (on her knees) to modernity. The statue was built in 1912 at the order of American officials.Larsian Fuente is an open-air barbecue market where dozens of family barbecue stalls try to win your business. You choose what you want, they finish cooking it, and you eat your bbq with rice, cooked in coconut leaves (aka hanging rice or puso in Cebuano). You get calamansi, sili, toyo, and Hep A on the side.
When I told my Uncle Beboy that we were having lunch there, he responded with a shocked silence. When we asked the Marriott front desk guy how to get there, he said, "Well, ma'am, you know, ahem, it's not, um, how do you say this, expensive?"

Dinner at Ayala Center with my Moreno relatives: Jaycel and her new baby Jaylyn, Auntie Jennie, Janelle, Uncle Beboy, and me. Uncle Beboy is my mom's first cousin.
Another reason to go to Cebu: torta. I ate about twenty. Okay, twelve.
Have you ever seen a mountain of dilis? We did at the Carbon Market, a historic, chaotic and beautiful mess in downtown Cebu.

Intramuros with Carlos Celdran

On January 3, Jesse, Ben and I took the Intramuros Deluxe Tour with Carlos Celdran, a Manila native who is a visual and performance artist, historian, historic preservationist, tour guide, and lover of all things Manila (celdrantours.blogspot.com). Celdran's three-hour walking tour of Intramuros was one of the most inspiring and mind-blowing educational experiences of my life. What is incredible is how he does so much with very little: Celdran hooks up a mini-mic to a tiny speaker, accessorizes according to theme (during the Spanish period, shown here on the right, he wears a top hat, and then dons an Uncle Sam hat during the American period, etc.). The tour encompasses major areas in Intramuros, the historic walled city built by the Spanish after Legazpi burnt to the ground the 10,000 strong city headed by Rajah Soliman at the head of the Pasig River. His breadth of knowledge about Manila and Philippine history is astounding, and love for his city is so inspiring. I also appreciated how he incorporated the newest historiography, including critical remarks on the invention of Rizal as the national hero by the American colonizers (and did you know Rizal was only 4'11"? That's what Carlos said). Imelda Marcos, Celdran notes, spearhead the restoration of Intramuros, which was mostly flattened by Americans during World War II, when much of the city was ravaged (Celdran agrees that the city -- once the most exciting, cosmopolitan and urbane in the world, has never truly recovered from the bombing). The tour included Fort Santiago (me and Jesse are in front of it), St. Agustin Church, the oldest in the Philippines, which was spared destruction during World War II because it was the Red Cross headquarters, and Casa Manila, a reproduction of a typical elite 19th century home in Manila, one of Imelda's pet projects. The tour also included a calesa ride (I think when the horse saw us three chubby Balikbayans coming, he started to cry silently inside). Through it all, Carlos didn't mince words, sparing no one from his criticism, skewering everyone from Legazpi to Rajah Soliman to Douglas MacArthur. A priest who was in the tour group was so offended by Carlos' very incisive criticism of friar abuse and excess that he left halfway through the tour. His moving tribute to all those killed in Manila during World War II, especially at the hands of ruthless Japanese soldiers, brought us all to tears. We gained a completely new appreciation for Intramuros and for our people, and a burning pride, really, at the risk of sounding corny, for all those who came before us. At the end of the tour, we gave Carlos a Little Manila 2008 calendar and I told him that we had a connection: he gives tours of big Manila, and I give tours of Little Manila. How corny, but true!













After the tour, we just had to go to Aristocrat restaurant in Malate and eat barbecue pork, pancit canton, laing, and fried rice, because, what else are you gonna do after learning so much history? You have to eat it to really digest it all.

Manila, My Manila

So we made it here on Wed. Jan. 2. We didn't have to put $5 in our passports like Grandma always does to grease the wheels. After we landed, it wasn't the melee I remember from 1997. Everything is much calmer -- they only allow airport personnel in arrival, so nobody is grabbing your bags screaming "Ma'am, Ma'am!" Official bag helpers in uniform stand there and only help if you ask. It was actually kind of quiet and boring -- SFO is even crazier. It was kind of a jarring reminder of who we were in the global economy to stand in the OFW/Balikbayan/Filipino Resident line (see pic). We checked into the luxurious Makati Shangri-La Hotel, this absolutely amazing place that has now forever spoiled us on anywhere else we could possibly stay. After hanging out for a minute and taking photos of the place before we made it messy, Jesse's mom and a driver picked us up to take the balikbayan boxes to her house in Marikina.
Honestly this room was so over the top, the service so unbelievable, the breakfast buffet so incredible, that we didn't want to leave. We had to, of course, to leave for Cebu. Breakfast buffet @ the Shang was more than words can even describe, and Jesse and I still think it's the best meal we've had so far. Imagine the Bellagio brunch buffet...and it's twenty times better and it's all Filipino. I ate bangus with garlic rice and egg, pan de sal, corned beef, potatoes, ube ensaymada, a tiny square of sweet biko with a complex salty sweet latik topping, juicy kuchinta and fresh mangoes...We actually called and took the later flight to Cebu on Friday just so we could eat there again.

The thing is, I'm beginning to really love this city and hate it the way people do who really care about a place. In 1997, we stayed not more than a minute, and connected immediately to Cebu. But this time, I'm experiencing the city as an adult -- without the neo-indigenous cultural nationalist pretensions of my 20s, and on my own schedule, and I feel like I see it with new eyes. Instead of deriding the malls, we've been having fun exploring all of them, especially Glorietta, Greenbelt, Market!Market! and Megamall (which is just hella, hella, big...so big for us today that we were just completely overwhelmed). It's this horrible, ugly, tragic, disgusting, beautiful, historic, and incredibly rich place that crackles with electricity. I have a completely new appreciation for this place and our people. Have you ever watched a barefoot toddler navigate traffic? Or watch six year olds push carts of bananas twenty times their weight? Or stood where Rajah Soliman once presided over a bamboo hut settlement 500 years ago? Or be surrounded by millions of people swirling all around you under flashing parols in the middle of a mall? Tatay said after his visit in 1999 that Manila should be carpet bombed back to antiquity and planners should start over, because the sprawl was horrible. Yes, I do see what he meant -- yet there is beauty in this here city all the same. Jesse's Manila has changed so much he's visiting a whole new city -- and realizing how American he really is. Now I'm here at 35, humbler, here to observe and learn more than judge, and feeling so at home here yet completely out of place.

In Cebu

We love it here. We haven't posted because we've been out all day and night having fun, going back home to the hotel late, and then waking up again, and internet is $20/day!

We're in Cebu right now @ the Marriott. We left Manila early Friday morning (hated to leave the Shangri-La in Makati...wish I could win the lotto to stay there the whole time). On our way now to downtown to Colon Street (oldest street in Asia) and the Lapu Lapu monument on Mactan island here. Last night, we had a great dinner with my mom's first cousin, Beboy Moreno, his wife Jenny and his daughters Jaycel and Janelle. We stayed with them in 97.

Tonight, we're heading back to Manila where we'll have broadband in our new hotel and not this horribly expensive by the hour internet here at Marriott that has prevented me from blogging.

More to come, soon, on malls in Manila, Intramuros, the Cebu southern towns and provinces, the Larsian barbecue market here in Cebu...

Coffin Ship to Asia

We are writing from the Hong Kong airport, waiting for our 8am connecting flight to Manila. I thought Cathay Pacific would be a bit more luxurious than PAL; we were so wrong. It was so cramped that I never even got into my backback for my reading material and my book manuscript draft to mark up: once the guy in front reclined, i hit my head on the mini TV monitor and couldn't even reach down past my knees to get under the seat. Smallest airplane bathroom ever, but we won't get into the gory details.

Anyway, we made it -- only my carryon was overweight. Auntie Addie and Uncle Mel brought us last night to SFO and here we are. Too bad none of the shops open until 7am...right now...ok, we're going to the duty free shop and change money.

We'll post again when we arrive in Manila!