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Since last blogging we’ve been pretty consistently on the move. In one marathon afternoon to night we made it off the pretty unimpressive beach at Panglao Island, from Tagbilaran to Cebu to the airport to Manila to a bus terminal to Baguio at 6 in the morning. The bus was nice except for the Beegees DVD played twice and the lights and the radio.

The Philippines is an interesting place and I’ve had lots of interesting thoughts, but I can’t remember them all. The Americana is eerie sometimes, and Baguio is full of country music. It seems that (other than the country music) the Philippines is one place that an American colonial presence hasn’t destroyed.

On our return to Cebu we encountered, amazingly, our first trouble with taxi meters. The cheeky bandits surrounding the ferry pier wanted something like P750 for a ride to the airport. We muttered a bit, walked around, and found one.

The flight was pretty normal.

Getting back to Manila, we lost P80 to some sleight-of-hand at the coupon taxi counter. Oops. We got to the bus terminal anywhere where we took our aforementioned hellish bus ride six hours north to Baguio, at the foot of the Cordillera mountain range (yes, that is a little redundant). There we took a taxi to Benguet State University in La Trinidad, the nearby capital of Benguet. We were escorted by security to the “executive house” and generally treated like kings as a result of the wheel-greasing by our host, Professor Mina, who had met Trevor at a student affairs conference in Hong Kong.

BSU is primarily an agricultural college, but also includes a teaching college and laboratory schools. They’ve done a lot with what look to me limited resources, including American-vintage buildings. They have a Marketing Center stocked full of delicious local produce, which we raided repeatedly. The pineapple-papaya jam tartlets are particularly good…

After a dinner with some of his colleagues and a very short night on the town (we were still tired) we left early the next morning for a less-comfortable bus ride on twisty mountain roads (not always sealed) to Sagada, in Mountain Province. Sagada was a nice enough little town. We had a ridiculous several hours in a couple caves, violating what would have been millions of dollars worth of safety regulations in the US and having a muddy and mostly fun time. It wasn’t so fun toward the end when the guides kept following the girls in the front and blocking the light from my next steps. My personal highlight was probably the dip in some bone-chillingly cold water.

The next day’s bus trip wasn’t any less exciting. This time I was in the back, needing to hold on to stay in my seat, and the bus was full. The views, however, of mountain passes and terraces, were no less spectacular. The whole region seems very… wholesome, down to the signs encouraging us to eat more vegetables and do no drugs.

The dominant language of the power structure, Tagalog (rebranded as “Pilipino”) is not so popular outside of the Manila area. English is the lingua franca even when tribal languages are the L1.

We stopped by the executive house on our way back before checking out the fireworks display for the end of the local flower festival. Unfortunately, many of the festival’s purported half-million visitors were too, and only sheer luck and unmitigated gall (a favorite phrase of mine) managed to snag us a taxi to return to our bags at BSU. Security arranged for a taxi to get us from there to the bus terminal, where the same hordes were going to Manila. We got tickets on what seemed to be an older bus pressed specially into service.

This bus ride was mercifully better, and I probably slept through most of it. There was a minor snag at first as the bus had individually numbered seats up to 45… and tickets had been issued up to 48. It got ironed out, though, and there was no TV, and the lights were dimmed, and the curtains were quickly pulled over the air conditioning vents. I can’t complain at all about the ride, and I sat in the middle of the back seat (at the end of the aisle) which afforded me unlimited leg room.

Once in Manila, we made our way to and checked in to an absolute dump, the Mabini Pension, which I may write more about if all our stuff hasn’t been stolen while we’ve been out. Not recommended.

The Philippine version of the popular Asian squat toilet seems to be the seatless toilet. I’m not sure which is worse.

Right now, we’re in a massive mall having sought out a specialty hot chocolate shop mentioned in Cebu Pacific’s inflight magazine. Pretty lame. Earlier, after resting, we ate at the Shawarma Snack Center (not bad save the yogurt sauce on my pants) and walked around a bit of the historic walled Intramuros (yes, redundant again for the hispanophones) area, including the seemingly cursed Manila Metropolitan Cathedral (take 6, dating to 1958) and the San Agustin church (stone, dating to the 15th or 16th century, and obviously less cursed).

Assuming we can make it back to the pension and through the night safely, tomorrow should be an early morning taxi ride for Trevor and Kerensa and a lazy progress toward the airport for Nicole and your truly, flying at 1455. You’ll probably hear from me next from Hong Kong.

We were late to the airport in Hong Kong (not so late, we could have made it), but so was our plane. We were in the 95th row of 95 in an aging 747. The flight was surprisingly good, with an unexpected meal and complimentary beverages (of all sorts). Looking next to me, apparently “beer” meant “Colt 45,” and my wine was on the tongue-rendingly sour side. Get what you pay for.

Airport (NAIA 2) was shiny but not so useful. One ATM in the place, slow immigration, and all the usual. Taxi fare has gone up substantially since guidebooks were published, but we had a friendly driver who taught us a little promptly-forgotten Tagalog.

Nice if slightly pricy hostel, Pension Natividad. The taxi driver thought we were European, because Americans can afford to stay at better hotels. I guess not so many cheap Americans end up on holiday in the Philippines. ATMs are surprisingly hard to find, but I finally tracked down a friendly Cirrus machine (why does everyone else use Plus?). The limit is low though: 5,000 pesos, at roughly 48 to the USD.

We are going to try for the Taal volcano and surrounds today, once we get all our money-changing sorted. It’s not quite as easy to change HKD as we’d wish; most of the banks take only USD.

Similarities to the States are kind of comforting… the banknotes, for example, are precisely the same size. Same electrical plugs (but running 220V). English is everywhere at a quite good level. Time to look up some more ATMs… more later, depending on how easy it is to get online. Here in Manila, dead-easy… Fancy place, nice chairs, new computers, weeks-old software, webcams and headsets… Elsewhere, we’ll see.

Yesterday, I went to the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence as part of my efforts to make good use of my museum pass.  I was pleasantly surprised, though not as surprised as I was by the History museum in TST (which I’ve still yet to finish).  Part of the museum is actually outdoors… you can clamber around on top of the old fort and through a few old gun emplacements and defensive structures.

The views were nice too—although the warm, cloudless beauty of the past week has come to an end, I managed to find a few fairly clear moments atop the Redoubt with nice views from more or less the northeastern corner of the harbor (as are to be expected from a former coastal defense fort). 

I also got to try out a few new transportation methods (and those of you who know me will know that that was at least as exciting for me as anything about coastal defense).  I used a slightly slower and slightly cheapest way of getting downtown: 67M bus to Tsuen Wan MTR (HK$7.8), from where I rode all the long way to Shau Kei Wan (student HK$5.7) in Eastern where the museum sits.  Shau Kei Wan is also the eastern terminus of the Hongkong Tramways streetcar system.  I rode a “Western Market” tram all the way back from the terminus to Central, zoning out occasionally.

It’s good tram weather now (unlike when I first tried it) and getting on at the terminus let me avoid the overcrowding (HK$2 flat fare will do that) which is its other major disadvantage.  I don’t have much use for the tram normally because if I’m going anywhere on the Island I’m usually coming from far away (Lingnan) and there’s no point (or monetary advantage) to getting off the MTR in Central and finding the tram when I can just stay on and cruise to Wanchai or Causeway Bay.  I think I’d use it all the time if I lived on the Island.

Today I was thinking of seeing some things on Lantau (and maybe Peng Chau) but the weather got a lot less gorgeous yesterday.  It still feels nice enough, but I kind of wanted sun.  I guess that will have to wait (unless Monday afternoon is nice).  Unfortunately, I should really be working on a presentation (to be delivered the day I get back from New Year in the Philippines) instead of sightseeing.

I’ve started to realize how little time I really have left in Hong Kong (don’t laugh).  I’m pretty much gone from the end of this week until March with New Year, and I might yet scrape up the funds to look at a couple law schools Stateside in April or so.  There’s so much in Hong Kong that I’ve yet to see, never mind China, Korea, Japan… Myanmar…  Hmm.

Been a little sick lately. Something’s going around. I did not let that chicken sneeze on me, no officer sir.  Hopefully I’m better for my day off tomorrow, or at least for the weekend.

On 1st January 2007, Hong Kong ushered in a new smoking ban.  Previously, a general indoor smoking ban had been in place, with some exceptions for food and drink.  Now… many bars and clubs successfully received a two-year stay of execution, the smoking areas on the Lingnan campus (already restricted) no longer exist, and smoking is banned in many public parks.  Upshot?  There’s no smoking in the smoking areas, so people gather outside the gate and flick butts into the grass or gutter instead of a waiting trashtray.  The parks have smoking areas, so if you are walking down the Tuen Mun Promenade, you get to walk through an intense cluster of smokers every few dozen meters instead of their sitting far enough apart for you to not even notice.  All this, and the bars and clubs will still smoke you up and the smoking in small shady arcades-full of mobile phone shops and whatnot continues just as illegally as before.

The only benefit I’ve noticed is getting to laugh at the tobacco executives forced to leave Asiaworld-Expo to sample their wares. Had that one coming, yessir.

On Saturday, I may visit the Dafen “painting village” in Shenzhen. Look it up, or I’ll post stuff for you if I make it out there.

I suppose it’s bad luck for me to even mention this, but I should anyway: I am trying to go to the Philippines for Chinese New Year.  I have a return HKG-MNL from 15-26 Feb.  Wish me luck, and don’t tell the typhoons this time.

Don’t worry, plenty is still wrong with Lingnan: however, so far, it seems I’ve done a better job picking classes this semester (made possible by the correction of the one of Lingnan’s less endearing faults last semester, the inability to schedule tutorial-mode classes online). I’ve been pleasantly surprised at least once already, and I’m taking a known good professor for another course. I’ll reserve judgment on the rest until I’ve had the full first week’s worth, but expect an early review of classes soon.

The past couple days have been fairly productive: I’ve once again lost my hair, made a dental appointment to take advantage of my student privileges again, taken a few books out from the library and generally failed to start reading them, made it to classes, been to Gold Coast, filled out myriad financial aid forms…

Digression: Graduate financial aid is easy! See, the Federal government automatically declares you independent, for aid purposes, if you are pursuing post-undergraduate education. So the schools make you file a (often non-free) supplemental form with all the missing parental data, and ridiculous estimates of inestimable future income.

Whew. I guess you’ll have to wait to find out what isn’t wrong with Lingnan. It really isn’t their fault, though: the pleasantly surprising professor was seemingly brought here by destiny. I’ll explain why on the other side of this dramatic cliffhanger of a post.