This is the china sea beach. The people living in these shacks use the fishing boats.

Not exactly a beach resort but a nice place to catch the cool breeze coming off the sea.

This is the wild lizard that was found in the house yesterday.

Me in LU drinking cheap gin at some tiny bar here in town.

1. Why is the lizard blurry but the mat in focus? That's a pretty damn fine focus distance, there big guy.

2. Were you even aware that you were drinking gin with orange soda, and are you alright?

Great pics, as usual. When are you coming home?

I tell you what , put a hammock on the porch of EATHER one of those shacks and I could hang there for a LONG TIME !!!!!!!

It never fails to amaze me how shitty one computer can be in some nice looking big city cafe and how reasonably well one way out fucking no where under a palm tree works better.

Anyway....

We went to Baguio yesterday and that trip was very interesting we both had a great time. Dont try to use the cafe at the SM mall though if you have the unreasonable expectation that your machine will work and that there wont be structural beams at about your nose height that you will nearly knock yourself unconscious with just trying to get in and out of the place.

1. The cheap cam has manual features and the focus distance and clarity is always hit or miss. Add to that the fact that if the camera is not perfectly still while the shot is made it will still come out blurry even if all other conditions are otherwise perfect.

This is my first trip here and I didnt want to bring an expensive camera not knowing all the situations that it might be vulnerable or too combersome.

We've got almost 6 gigs of clips and photos from here now with more than a week remaining. Honestly half are not of any interest but much of the clips from the winding mountainous busrides all over here many would find amusing.

As we enter any given mode of transport, I get a photo of the lic number and the driver in the event there are any problems we have something to supply to the police here. Whether or not even that info would be of any value is not known but it gives me just a bit of peace of mind.

2. Dont try this at home folks. Yes the orange seems to mix well with the cheap gin and at home we even have ready mixed Tang drink to add to the gin. It's pretty tastey but then again....who am I bullshitting....like it really matters, right?

Everything is fine though.

I wont be home for Christmas but will be coming back shortly before new years day.

There are still many photos that would be of interest for viewers there but there's no where to shrink the photos to postable size.

That would take all day at the palm tree net cafe.

More later.

There are some hammocks on those shacks with people sleeping in them as we pass sometimes.

For me, speaking as one who has been here for one month basically doing nothing productive, there is a limit to the liesure time that I can spend here.

There's not really much going on here, even in the city. Without booze, it's nearly as boring as watching C-span....with the sound down.

I'll see if I can sneak a photo of one of the hammock snoozers. Maybe someone can shop Zippy T into that image. :)

Don't bother. All the police want you to supply them with is a large payoff. They do not "investigate" traffic accidents, and there is no such thing as auto or liability insurance anyway so it wouldn't make any difference what the "investigation" turned up. Your only bet is to chase and collar the perp, beat the shit out of him or threaten to do so, and negotiate a payoff to "compensate you for your injuries". Then spend the next 10 years trying to collect it :mad:

The only time you want to count on the police is if/when you are an American who happens to get kidnapped or murdered. THAT they will do something about.

Well, if (Gods forbid) Slang gets killed or kidnapped by a hack driver, at least he's got that initial piece of evidence for the cops to go on, for all the good it will do him. :eek:

No he doesn't. That camera and any other possessions will disappear from the scene long before any police are notified. Wanna know how? I think "into thin air" just about describes what happens to anything of the most minute value in the Philippines the minute you blink. Wanna know how bad it gets? Luisa's family was having construction work done on the family mausoleum this summer, and while they went to lunch, all the metal attachments disappeared from the coffin of her uncle and the clothes were stripped from his corpse. All this within full view of the workers and "caretaker" and all the mob of squatters who live between the graves. Uncle Eddie spent the rest of the construction time in a plastic trash bag which was kindly provided by the "caretaker" while what was left of his worldly goods no doubt went straight to Market Market :mad:

The fact that Slang is still with us is due not so much to the fact that he is accompanied by a native as to the fact that, even drunk, he is capable of ripping the head off any Flips who mess with him. They are neither strong, nor large, nor brave. And as said before, they know Americans do not disappear unnoticed.

Okay...point taken. I then change my statement to, "At least pictures of the hack driver who last saw Slang before he was killed or kidnapped will probably end up on the Internet after the camera is stripped from his nude and bound body."

I don't think I'm going to visit the Phillipines anytime soon. It doesn't sound like much fun.

What is happening in the Philippines is the totally predictable result of massive corruption, frightening overpopulation, poverty and ignorance, added to Nationalism whose only base is "everybody has victimized us". Stir into this lovely brew an Islamic insurgency - not really much more than South Seas pirates on drugs but with real ties to Al Quaeda - which controls a lot of the boondocks and which wants to take the entire country back to the 16th Century where men were men and women were trade goods, before the Catholic Spanish conquerors came. The situation is unfixable, you would have to completely wipe the slate and start over. And it is being repeated all over the world right now, as tribal wars can rage unchecked due to the easy availabilty of weapons and corrupt rulers control the only resources and siphon off all the money. Eventually, all the infrastructure remaining from "the conquerors who oppressed us" will have disintegrated and nobody will remember that it was ever different from "the way things just are".

The breakdown of government and traditional cultures is often a result of the "vacuum of power" which results from the withdrawal of a strong force which kept the center together and inforced the laws, in the Philippine's case it was the USA, but it also happened in Bosnia, Rhodesia, Iraq, and much of Equatorial Africa. The next phase is the total breakdown of the ability to govern, which also has its up-side because without interference the people can create very original ways to rise to the top, and eventually another "strong man" or conquering presence will take over and restore order. HIS version, that is. Since very few non-expat Filipinos take vacations in the Philippines, most of the world will not notice that this country is self-destructing since there is no oil and we no longer need their ports and military bases. We will only notice if the Muslim insurgency overthrows the government and starts exporting terrorists. China and Korea will soon own anything that passes for an economy there, and the massive outpouring of Filipinos will continue to any countries who will accept menial laborers (Kuwait and the Emirates have more Filipino servants than they have native residents, and treat them like dirt because they know the people are desperate for work under any conditions).

Fun place to just lounge around in a hammac on a tropical beach and stay drunk? Sure, if that's your thing. If you have money and don't have to work, you can be God until your money runs out, or until you need a toilet, hot water, uncontaminated food, or a policeman or doctor. No responsibilities, no timetable, great environment. Nobody there has a job either, they'll understand perfectly ;)

Just for the record....


Not one time (have I noticed) that someone was trying to chop my head off. :D


More later, I'm out of time here.

I'm not going to argue with a native about their perspective of life here. They obviously have much more experience here than I do.


It's not paradise nor hell here from my experience though. Many interesting things, some sickening, some horrifying....but most certainly real life.