Road Trip in Luzon

Friday night is here after a third consecutive week of the nose being planted firmly to the grindstone. Since returning from the island I’ve been fully entrenched in classes, preparation for classes, creating lesson plans, making quizzes, grading quizzes, and, oh yeah, soccer every weekend all weekend. OutKasts have begun their fall campaign and fell just short in their first match last weekend 2-1. The game took place in a muddy lake on a dirt pitch in the rain with our only healthy and in-country players totaling eleven—and fighting valiantly 90 minutes against a strong Moroccan side. Life in Seoul is good despite my workload getting much, much, much heavier. The days of blogging during office hours may be over; I must now do it in my—GASP—free time. Despite the constant barrage of rain (the monsoon season is working overtime this year), the huge increase in workload, and the games on Saturdays and Sundays (I joined a Sunday league team because I figured I should play as much as I can while I still can because that’s what I LOVE to do) I am fully relaxed, rejuvenated, and committed to sucking every bit of marrow out of my charmed life in Korea. Had it not been for my wonderful and relaxing 18 day stint in the Philippines, my attitude might be quite different.

There’s so much to cover and I’ve already divulged a teaser for the end of the trip in my last entry, so I presume the best place to begin is from the, ummmm, beginning. Friday, July 23rd I flew into Manila and got there late. Ugh, Manila. I think I made my point in my last entry so I will skip the city (and I didn’t do much there) but need to include a few details before I get to the meat of the first week. One, my camera was stolen. For those keeping count it was my third point and shoot that I’ve lost. I like to think it was a world class pickpocket for which Manila is renowned but it may have just have been your dumbf**k narrator foolishly losing yet another camera two days into an eighteen day trip. I would spend the first week beating myself up over this while my travel partners facetiously kept reminding me of it. Two, on my first night I spent time in a pub by the name of The Red Lion Inn and spoke at length with the owner, Lyle, an American expat who gave me many useful tips on traveling around the Philippines. Lyle owns two Red Lions, one in Manila and the other in Baguio. Third and last point on Manila: I saw the most AMAZING cover band! A five piece Filipino power ballad band started off with Air Supply and then continued with an array of Journey, Boston, 38 Special, REO Speedwagon, and every other cheesy eighties band you could name. They were so good at what they did that I honestly believe that if the actual Journey had performed “Don’t Stop Believing” that night they wouldn’t have sounded any better.

Having mentioned the “travel partners”, I went to the Robelle House (a decent hotel in Manila) to meet them Sunday morning. Digressing a bit, I have to explain my motivation for choosing the Philippines for my vacation over Vietnam or another destination. The timing had worked out where I had vacation at the same time as my long time friend and former long time neighbor Zach. Zach and I met in 2006 when he moved in next door to me and we were immediate friends and later (not much) discovered to be doppelgangers. Last year we were in Austin and went to South by Southwest together. The timing provided an occasion where we would hang out in our third country together. Twice in the last three years Zach has spent working holidays in Brazil with his best friend from Austin, Joseph Carter, who would be meeting him in the Philippines with his younger brother Leo. Joe is a documentary filmmaker who was born in Italy and later moved to an even better place: Austin. Joe speaks Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and (of course) English and has been living in Brazil for the last four years or so. Leo, right after graduating from university, spent a year in China teaching and his older brother decided to meet him and Zach at the end of his contract for what would be his first trip to Asia. I tagged along and never lost sight of how interesting and fun my company was.

We rented a car and the plan was to get the hell out of Manila and drive north through Luzon (the name of the big island where Manila is located) to Sagada. After meeting at the Robelle around noon we began our drive to Sagada, which was a good 8 hours away with the ideal conditions. We were on the islands during the raining season, and at no other time was it more apparent than when we drove out of Manila. Manila—not the best laid out, structured, or efficiently planned of cities has NIGHTMARE traffic, and the heavy, heavy, beating rain only made getting out of the city that more tedious and difficult. “Yeah, road trip! Road trip! This is going to be a great week! Wow! Look at all the sights—we’re in a totally different country; can you believe this?... Wait a second, we’re totally stuck and not going anywhere.”

Eventually we did get out of Manila, and later in the afternoon the rain subsided. Of all the days I was in the country (comprised of many different islands) this was one of the three rainiest. Eventually we got on the highway (if that’s what you’d call it) and headed north. It was pushing three by the time we got out of Manila and it wasn’t looking like Sagada was happening that night, so we decided, upon the recommendation from Lyle, to make it as far as Baguio and stay at the Red Lion. Having taken the recommendation from Lyle I was amazed at how friendly and welcoming his co-owner Tony was. He had been told that I might stay there and to my surprise was expecting me and the boys. Being treated like royalty there we consumed many San Miguels at this fine establishment and chatted with Tony late into the night. The next morning we profusely thanked him for his hospitality and set out toward Sagada.

I have to say that it has been a couple of weeks since I wrote this and I have been waiting for pictures but have nothing to use on this particular entry. The next one will have some great pics sent to me from Joe and I will go into more detail on Sagada. Thankfully I have this entire upcoming week off where I can escape editing papers, speeches, letters, placards, and everything else that has been landing on my desk (There is now a shortage of red ink in Seoul.) and frying my brain and finally dig into my trip. Perhaps it’s ironic that I’m spending my week off blogging about my last vacation but I’m happy to get into it. On a final note until next week… It’s Friday night and OutKasts have a game tomorrow. Our last game, the follow up to Morocco, was an historic come from behind victory where we beat a very good Itaewon FC team when we scored twice in the last twenty minutes to win 2-1. It was proclaimed the greatest victory in the history of the OutKasts and there was much, much rejoicing. In my next opener, expect good news from the game tomorrow and look forward to a few pictures to accompany what should be an interesting story with some good old fashioned dirty jokes