The Philippines: I found heaven and hell

This is gonna be a long post, but so much stuff happened - it feels more like a month of experiences.
I hope you enjoy it.

So on the 9th of January it was finally time to leave Taiwan.
My next destination was the paradise-beach resort of El Nido on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. My friend JiaXiaSha and some other exchange students had recommended it to me as the perfect beach place and also as not too touristy.
My flight was in the morning, first to the Philippines capital Manila and then to Puerto Princesa, the main city of Palawan and south of El Nido, where I finally arrived in the evening. From there I had to take a further van ride in the night to El Nido.
Unfortunately the ride took place on a bumpy dirt road and the supposed 4h ride (according to the woman who had sold it to me) stretched to 7h. In short, highly unpleasant. On the ride I met Richard, an English guy who has been travelling for the last 20 month and he even told me that this was the worst ride he had had during all his travels. -.-
This though, turned out to be a price worth to pay.

How would you imagine the perfect beach to look like?
Yeah, that’s El Nido!

I stayed at a small guesthouse that was run by the warm-hearted Filipino woman Oring and her funny little cat Simba. All in all, my stay was a bit like living with a small temporary family and I often played with the cat and talked a lot to Oring, who told me a lot about the Philippines and the corruption everywhere and also about her future business plans and in the evening she sometimes cooked vegetable curry for us and some other guests. During my stay there I also met a few other travellers who had some cool stories to tell. And again I found that during travelling, you never have to be alone if you don't want to. However, for this week I often chose to go for some solitude.

my room, first time ever sleeping under a mosquito net. One night my feet got stung really bad though because they touched the net - the curse of beeing too tall :-/

me, my host Oring and Adil from Belgium, who is already travelling for 3 years by now!

On the first day, together with Richard, I went for a guided ciff climbing tour that would definitely not be allowed in Germany - climbing on steep walls of sharp stones without any security gear. Definitely in the top 5 of most dangerous things I've done in my life! But our guide told us that he had done it barefoot before and during the way back we encountered an other group with the guide in flipflops and a woman in sandals. Nice job! :D
But again the view from top of the cliff was kind of worth it.

May it begin! Richard and our guide

Holy shit!

What a view!

Yeah, we were also carrying this rock up.

The second day I decided to take it easy and just relax at the beach - white sand, palmtrees around and drinking coconut juice.
And bumped into a friend from Taipei. What a small world!

sharing a tricycle with my German friend Timo, who also studied at NTU

The third day, I took a so called island hopping tour, I'm not quite sure, but that might have been the most beautiful experience of my life. Gorgeous mountain islands around and beautiful beaches everywhere. Furthermore we had some cool activities as diving through a small tunnel hole to a so called hidden beach, snorkeling and also delicious food, that our guides prepared on one of the beaches.
I'm not too happy with the pictures I took, but a Czech guy I met on the tour had brought a good camera and might send me some of his pictures soon and then I'll update it here.

The next day the weather got a bit worse unfortunately. Nevertheless together with Richard I started a Kayak tour to a nearby island. The woman that rented out the kayak to us, looked slightly amused when we departed from the beach, that was probably already a bad sign...
And yeah, about halfway we decided to turn back as the wind and waves just got too strong. Fail...
After that I took a tricycle to a slightly farther-off beach that was completely empty. I jogged down the beach for about 15 min without encountering anyone.

The day after that I strolled around town a bit and ended up in a slum-like area, with houses made of trash, poor children playing on the streets and a cockfight taking place!


So now some general impressions about the Philippines and Filipinos. In general it is completely different to Taiwan. The living standard is much lower and I had seen some really bad poverty. Everything is also quite cheap, but the food is in my opinion not so good and really not special. To me, some people had been quite nice, many competely indifferent and some openly unfriendly. In general Filipinos are rather laid back, a bit slow, taking things easy and not worried about efficiency. For example in restaurants it takes ages to pay the bill: First you ask for the cheque, after around 5min they bring it and walk off, eventually they take your money and walk off again and 5min later they finally bring your change -.-
Also it's much less safe and scams are taking place all the time and you have to do lots of bargaining if you don't want to get ripped off. The island of Palawan is supposed to be quite safe generally though.
However, Manila was yet to come...

So that was El Nido and I had a really great time there. However my plans for leaving civilization a bit behind, meditating in solitude on lonely beaches and writing stuff had only worked out partially. The place was just a bit to touristy and also there was just too much really cool stuff to do that I didn't want to miss out on. Yeah, whatever...

In the evening of the 14th, after 5 days in El Nido, I took a night bus to drive back to the bigger town Puerto Princesa from where I'd get my flight to Manila. While the bus was much more pleasent than the horrible van ride I had taken a few days before, I encountered some very unpleasent situations.
After a few hours of driving I was wearing an eyemask and earplugs to try to get some sleep. Then I noticed how a guy sat down next to me and after a while, I started to feel his hand carefully feeling around my side at the hip (No, not in a sexual way, you pervert!).
I'm not sure if he was really a pickpocket, but I immediately took of my eyemask and looked at him (probably a bit sleepy-confused) and he made big eyes and gestured to his phone strangely. At the next stop he got off and I noticed that pretty much all seats behind me were empty - so it was additionally strange that he had chosen to sit next to me. Scary!
Just recently I had heard about other travellers who had been pickpocketed while sleeping in a bus... Maybe after all it's not so bad that I practically never can find sleep in buses (and airplanes).

After a few more hours, around 3:30am nighttime we arrived at the bus station in Puerto Princesa. The problem was that I had not yet organized an accomodation as I had decided quite spontaneously to leave that evening already and a good place that my host knew down there was only available for the next night. I had hoped for other travellers that I could just join or a group of locals trying to sell their rooms. However that did not work out and instead there was only a bunch of tricycle drivers aggressivley trying to sell their service to the arriving people. So I approached one and asked if he knew a good accomodation for 500pesos (~10€) for a single room and I added that I would not take anything else or anything more expensive - if he's really sure that he knows a room for this price (beware of scams!). He said sure, sure and as I expected that he knew some place where he would get commission for bringing me I asked if the ride would be free and he agreed. So far so good.
Then we arrived at a guesthouse and the receptionist wanted to sell the room for not under 800 :-/ So we moved on... The next place was 750 and the next one was booked out. Thanks man, good job!
As I was really getting tired, I finally gave in and accepted the next places 700peso room - at least it's my fault not having organized something before. But when I said goodbye to my driver he complained that I hadn't paid him yet. What the fuck!? (You remember - he had agreed to drive me to a 500peso hotel for free) I was still curious though, how much he would demand (I had read in a guidebook that the usual price for a ride around town is 20pesos). So he said his price is 650 pesos.
Well, you know that I pretty much never get angry.
But that was a bit too much. So after some heated discussion I told him to piss off, just walked off to my room, locked the door and went to sleep furiously.
Not the best start in Puerto.
It didn't really improve matters that I didn't have a mosquito net in my room (the receptionist had told me that's no problem) and after a few minutes I saw those beasts flying all around me :-/
But the next day got much better and I got a pleasent acoomodation, started the day with a nice massage for 6€/hour (massage counter: 3) and strolled around the town a little.

tricycles everywhere

and everywhere

not the best area, slums in the background

In the evening I went to a bar to meet some locals and this time someone succeeded in stealing my money.
The value of around 50€, fortunately only the cash, no cards or other valuables.
Great!
I like to trust people and generally believe in the good nature of people. And in terms of this, Taiwan had been such a paradise - everyone you could trust, really everyone!
But in the Philippines now, it had become hard for me to trust anyone. Not a nice feeling.
So at this point I was kind of fed up with the Philippines.

The next morning was my flight to Manila.
However, I had heard some really crazy stories about taxi drivers. For example that after loading your bag in the trunk, they would drive off, or that they would spray some narcotic through the airconditioner to make the passenger unconscious and then rob them,or after a short ride just inviting a guy with a gun in who makes you leave all your stuff in the cab and then drive off without you.
In short, I had become a bit paranoid.
So I decided to take an expensive shuttle service from the airport to my hotel, sent the plate number to Karl after getting in and switched off the airconditiong - better safe than sorry, right!?
And finally arrived at my 4-star hotel in Manila.
What a relieve!
Karl had opter for the luxus and I had originally argued for a cheaper accomodation. but now I was really happy in the comfort of the hotel.

Except for a short walk to an ATM and to get some dinner (plain rice and some plain veggies, thanks to the wide selection of vegetarian dishes -.-), I didn't leave my hotel room for that day.
It seemed the surrouding mostly consisted of various banks protected by heavy-armed (shotguns or M16 assault rifles) security guards against all the poor people living on the streets. And those were really lying around on the street everwhere. I have never seen such a misery.

Ankers flight from Hong Kong was supposed to arrive quite late, after midnight - the receptionist was supposed to call me, when he would arrive - and around 11pm I fell asleep on my bed.
Then, suddenly I woke up from someone entering the room! A bit confused and pretty thrilled I called "Who is this?!", and the person left again. Then I heard voices on the floor and someone asking cautiosly "Lino?"
And Anker came in!
It had been Anker all the time what I had not recognized without my glasses on. Scared from my resolute call, he had retreated the first time :D
I'm still laughing when I think about this. The Philippines just fucked with my mind. Damn!

The next day after a good round of sleep we started the day with a nice lunch buffet from our hotel and then went of for some sightseeing. (Of course only taking as few valuables with us as possible) First was an old fort and the historic part of the city which turned out to be quite nice.

However, after leaving the by entrance-fee restricted area of the fort, things got pretty fucked up again and we experienced continuing upsetting situations.
A tricycle driver that didn't leave our side for about 15minutes, all the time proposing a tour and completely ignoring our rejections.
And then slums everywhere around and poor people living on the streets and probably most sadly: A small child in torn lumps and covered in dirt.
Some of these people seemed to have lost their humanness to some degree. Living more like animals, day by day in the dirt, no planning for the future, probably very limited social interaction, beeing completely on their own, derived of their dignity as humans.
On the same time, we got to feel shame just for the fact that compared to them we were the rich and that most of this is probably due to the bare luck of beeing born in a different country. We thought that they must think about us the same way, that we think about the super-rich in Western countries that invest a fortune in a stupid sportscar, expensive dinners or redundant other luxuries.
And further there is a social coldness. Most people treated us very submissive, but without any warmth or honest appreciation.
Our minds just filled up with negative emotions. Distrust, anxiety, shame, pity, anger.
And now imagine all those people living their whole live there.

We didn't really take many pictures of poor people and slums because we felt uncomfotable about doing this. But at night this is a home for some people. 

a tricycle driver and his son

I'm pretty sure that the root cause for all the misery is the massive corruption taking place in the country. I've heard outrageous stories about it and it seems that corruption is rooted so deep in society that you endanger your life with the simple act of speaking out against it. This of course goes hand in hand with massive inequality and the rich using their money and influence to get richer and richer and the poor beeing on their own. It's not that whole Manila is a slum, right next to some slums are massive shopping malls and vast mansions surrounding by high walls and armed security.
It's just outrageous and for me seeing this made me want to somehow fight for some change. It's just how? What can you do? If you give people on the street some money, does it really do any good? If you get a massage for 3€/hour or a tricycle ride for 0,10€ is that exploitation or do you support the people? What can you do politically without risking your life? Should we pressure our homecountries governments to speak out against those grievances?
Tough questions but I think it's good having to think about them.
In general these experiences I've made felt pretty shitty. But after all, I guess it's good I made them. It gives a new perspective. Maybe these places would not exist if everyone got to see them. Go and travel!

I also seriously think about donating some money to those four countries I'm travelling to now, as they are all pretty poor and my money surely has more value for the people there than for me. But again the difficult question is to whom and how to donate it. I talked to some people about this issue and everyone has different opinions. I haven't made a decision yet but it's keeping me occupied.

To be upfront, I feel a bit uncomfortable about writing so much bad stuff about a country but this is just what I've experienced and I just want to be authentic about my feelings.
It might be biased from some particular experiences and places I've seen. At least my friend JiaXiaSha after school spent a voluntary social year in Manila and he could stay a whole year there - for me pretty much one day was too much^^

The next morning we finally got our flight to the next destination, Vietnam.
I have never been so happy to leave a country.