Exploring the Fabulous Philippines: Guest Blog by Freebird Stephanie Richards

Five years ago, my Filipino son-in-law asked me to meet his UK based parents. It went really well – then, smiling, they presented me with a heavy duty microphone. I swallowed hard. For Filipinos, karaoke is a big deal. But I remembered my Irish roots: I took the mic and announced my choice was number 1387: I’ve got you under my skin. Inhaling slowly, I just went for it, flying my inward green, white and gold tricolour high and aiming for douze points. Whether it was grand or like a howling banshee, I was immediately applauded and invited to visit the rest of the family in the Philippines.

Two years later, I left the December fog at London Heathrow and landed in Manila’s midnight heat. Though I had arrived in Weather Nirvana, the west to east time difference felt like I’d spent three weeks bumping through the space-time continuum in a straight jacket inside a biscuit tin. You know it’s nighttime but it’s nighttime the day after that. Your body clock is completely trashed. You are so wanting a cup of tea lying down, but the technicolour effervescence of Manila strips out whatever filters your brain had left and excitedly dumps them in front of the nearest jeepney. It’s full-on, multi-sensory scooters, roosters and karaoke, from dawn until dusk. In your overstimulation and fatigue, you aren’t sure if you’re going to pass out or give a spontaneous round of applause. And I absolutely love it.

My son-in-law’s extended family welcomed me with great warmth and hospitality. Much of our focus was on my then toddler grandson, brought home to meet the family, his European mama and grandma along with him. It is precious to me, the merging of our families and cultures. Our Christmas dinner was lechon (roast pig) served on banana leaves with rice and coconut, dried fish, bitter vinegar sawsawan and peach salads: utterly delicious. One relative had managed to acquire white sliced bread, a gift he presented to me with care. This was not lost on me and I thanked him with deep respect; I didn’t have the heart to say to my host that, as a coeliac, bread would finish me off. But, everyone was impressed that the English guest was eating dried fish and sawsawan like a Filipina!

I also took my daughter, son-in-law and grandson to beautiful Baler, a small coastal town at the mouth of a river on the south west coast of Luzon. Baler faces the full force of the Pacific which comes up over the underwater shelf, just off the coast. The surfing scenes in Apocalypse Now were filmed there. It also boasts what looks like a hand knitted hanging bridge over the river with recycled planks for the walkway, from which local children will impress you with their diving skills.

Here I sipped my first fresh coconut drink at a beach cafe. The proprieter shouted to a young lad lounging on a bench to get up now and fetch coconut! I watched him hug-jump up a very tall coconut palm with a machete on a rope. At the top, he hoisted up the machete and down came my drink.

Chickens are in the fabric of Filipino society. They play hide-and-seek in the undergrowth, attend you at gas stations and can be heard doing karaoke. Chickens give Filipinos eggs, meat and the national pastime: sabong, – cock fighting. Not for the faint hearted or radical vegan. The owners and managers are ever hopeful that their rooster will be the next poultry Manny Pacquiao. Sometimes champions are put alone into a cloche cage facing their next opponent, at staring distance. I have yet to attend a sabong event. My son-in-law explained sabong is BIG, like bullfighting in Spain. Winners and losers have chicken dinners afterwards. Simple.

Throughout the Philippines, scooters and tricycles are the way to travel and most tricycles are up for hire, scooters too, but my grown-up children begged me not to hire a scooter of my own. (Please, Mum, just don’t.) I complied. Mostly. This wonderful first Philippines journey brought new family and new ideas. I have travelled alone many times to visit worldwide family and friends, but suddenly, here in the Philippines, I wanted to go alone to places where I knew no one. Like letting go of the side in deep waters: I can swim but where would the tide take me?

The next morning, I flew from Northern Luzon to Palawan into a week of absolute joy. I waded out to boats, backpack held aloft, and sailed with tropical winds in my face as the island on my horizon approached. I stayed in bamboo huts and slept with the sound of the waves. By the time I met up with my daughter, son-in-law and grandson in Manila, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I planned to return the following Christmas but a little Filipina-British granddaughter arrived instead, so I postponed that trip.

So, two years later, back in the Philippines.I had booked a trip that provided all-inclusive island-hopping expeditions between Coron and Palawan. I flew from Manila to Busuanga Airport then boarded a bus. I have never been anywhere as lush, hilly and fragrant as the Philippines. Rice terraces, coconut forests, mangroves. Carabao (water buffalo) mooch through rice fields, white cranes riding on their backs. As we crested banana tree hills, seas with tall islands appear, like something painted on silk.

A crew of eight Filipinos and twenty world travellers assembled on Christmas Day morning on
the hot quayside. We boarded a double outrigger, open sides and canopied top deck strewn
with bean bags. We would take four days meandering through the islands of the Sulu Sea, on
our way to El Nido. We would drop anchor to snorkel around coral gardens, sleeping in bamboo
huts on islands along the way.

After much mirth the anchor was dropped for the first time. We were each allotted our own facemask, snorkel and flippers and told to get in and just have a nice time. I was fizzing with anticipation. Long ago, in the hallway of my English primary school, was a tropical fish tank. As a little girl, I wandered to it so many times, captured by the sparkle of tiny coloured fish. On cold days, the glass was warm under my fingertips and neon tetras appeared as living, darting fairy lights. I longed to be tiny and to escape from the tank with them, into a tropical sea. I was certain that one day I would do this without some dinner lady ejecting me into a freezing, concrete playground for “fresh air”.

In the Coral Triangle of the Philippines, my childhood wish of swimming with tropical fish floated back to me, and I felt myself smiling all over my head. For hours I swam, listening to my spontaneous joy fluting up through my snorkel tube. Curious fish will actually swim alongside snorkellers. A small yellow and silver damsel fish swam up to my facemask, fins whizzing at her side as she held my gaze, opening and closing her little pout. Another afternoon, an entire school of damselfish swam with me for an hour. I discovered my skills for fish-whispering. I would be betraying confidence to relate the content here but I spoke to them all whenever I saw them. They knew. They spread the word around the reef. More and more arrived. I got to know a lot of fish and we exchanged deep stuff. I saw rainbow shoals and puffer fish, large groupers and the floor of the gardens were strewn with waving anemones, clownfish and butterfly fish darting in and out. Large electric blue starfish lounged in the sand gaps.

The corals were many: forests of silver antlers, with fluorescent lilac tips hid puffer fish and squid. Tall twigs of red whip coral nestled next to what looked like gargantuan green brains, deep in thought. Big barnacled rocks supported fluted plates of pale mushroom coral. Rippling rays of sunlight revealed bearded breathing clam shells, some moulded into the rock itself, all with cerise curly lips. Clusters of black spike-ball sea urchins lurked on the bottom.

Finally, I swam with a great, dappled wheelbarrow-sized turtle, whose markings in the sunlight were like a fluid tiger. Eventually, the turtle swam on, out and deeper and further away. I hadn’t even imagined that in the tropical tank at primary school. I had been blessed so unexpectedly and I just wanted to cry: God was showing off and I was humbled. I lost myself and all sense of time in this trip. Something happened to my perception underwater.

The only sound that penetrated below the surface was our captain blowing the conch shell to let us know supper was ready. The food on board was delicious: rice, coconut, fish, fruits. Island children often swam to our boat to babble with the crew and dive from the outriggers. The crew consistently checked we had enough water during our expeditions and enough glasses to raise during our evening dinners on island beaches.

At night fireflies and shooting stars reflected on the still sea. I felt tiny again, swimming in a celestial tank. Even Orion was lying down as he lounged in the heat just above the Equator. We had the option after the evening anchors dropped, to go to the island by canoe or swim. Morning and evening I swam through still clear water. My fitness improved; endless, effortless exercise was a joy.

Filipino people are welcoming and love to talk and I consider the Philippines as the Ireland of South East Asia. There it sits, out at sea, at the south east edge of the Asian continent, just as Ireland, through some strange looking glass, sits in the sea at the north western edge of another continent, half a hemisphere away. In Ireland the seas are cold; in the Philippines they are warm.

Everyone is up for the craic, all possess the island dweller thing for welcoming the stranger, exchanging tales and drinking and singing together. They know the sea, they know their lands. Like the Irish, Filipinos have their own language but English is spoken everywhere. Like the Irish, they have had a history of imperialist invaders yet they have triumphed and found their place in an international world that sees them for the incredibly resourceful and lyrical people that they are. Every family has members living and working throughout the world. Most are Roman Catholic or evangelical and again, roadside holy shrines and big family communities took me back to an Irish childhood.

Sitting alongside Filipino Christianity, as with my own Celtic heritage, there exists a deep and ancient twilight; a blurring of folklore and superstition with the moral cohesion that gives this community both a deep sense of fair play and wisdom. On my second time travelling in the Philippines I decided I would be a regular. Both continents and both cultures now live in my grandchildren… and I wonder what they’ll make of it all?

Written by Freebird Club member Stephanie Richards from Worthing, United Kingdom.