Friday, December 17, 2010

Oh, Santa Fe.


Another Friday in the office. The semester is winding down and I’m facing two more weeks of classes and a long break. It’s snowing outside and looking like a bitter cold winter is not only forthcoming, but already here. The sad news is that the Outkasts season is over—no football until spring. The good news is that we won the league cup to go with the cup we won in Ulsan a few weeks back. It’s been an amazing turnaround for the Outkasts in the last year, going from perpetual cellar dwellers to double champions. Tomorrow is the big end of season banquet where we start with a Brazilian buffet (meat, meat, and more meat!) and continue on the town afterwards, trophies in hand. Having gotten used to looking forward to soccer or a soccer related activity every weekend I’m now at a loss as to how I’ll pass the coming months and what I have to look forward to next.

An island might just be the ticket. Having a break in January, I’ve booked a ticket to Vietnam. With ten days to spend one might try to see as much as they could, cultural, country, city, and so forth. However, on my last vacation I learned a lesson and will stick to that blueprint this time around. As we know, I was in the Philippines without a camera, burned out on Manila, and tired from constantly being in transit. When I got to Bantayan after a week traversing Luzon it took about two days for me to decide that I wasn’t leaving and didn’t need to go anywhere else.
Having lost yet another camera was disappointing and annoying yet it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With no camera there was no ability to take any pictures and with no ability to take pictures there was no pressure to go anywhere. In the past the urge was always to explore every day and see as much as possible. However, my mindset changed this time to: I don’t have to do anything or go anywhere. This mentality led to the most relaxing ten days of my life in the little town of Santa Fe.

Spending all ten of these days at the family owned Onde Inn I sunk into a routine of getting up early and walking down the street to have breakfast. For the bulk of the time it was shark week on the Discovery Channel, which I would watch during breakfast. Not sure if it’s the best idea watching shark week before swimming in the ocean, but it was the perfect complement to breakfast and coffee. After eating I would walk back to the guest house and relax until high tide, which would come around 9:30. Then I would walk down the beach 1-2 kilometers to Youneek Resort, where the best place to swim was. After taking a long swim I’d then walk back down the beach to Onde where I would begin my daily reading on the front porch.

For the first several days I was completely engulfed in “Armageddon” by Leon Uris. One traveler I met asked me if that was the novelization of the awful Bruce Willis movie—it’s not. “Armageddon” is a historical fictional narrative set in post-war Berlin in 1945, when the city was under four-power control (Russia, USA, England, and France). At the onset of the cold war there was a power struggle and idealistic impasse between the United States and Russia over the governance, currency, and future of Berlin, as well as the challenge of de-nazification. This conflict resulted in a Russian blockade which cut off all avenues of transit to Western Berlin, which was occupied by the U.S., Britain, and France. This created the logistical nightmare of transporting food, medicine, and supplies to the devastated city right before what would be an extremely harsh winter. The solution was Operation Airlift, which is truly one of the greatest engineering achievements in human history, not to mention one of the greatest humanitarian efforts. This is a novel that, given my German heritage, hit very close to home and is one of the most rewarding and enriching reads of my lifetime. I would recommend that not only every German-American should read this book but would argue that every American should as well. I left this book on the island in hopes that some other traveler will pick it up and be able to appreciate it as much as I did.

After reading for an hour or two it would be time for a stroll down to the market to get lunch. Usually I would eat some chicken grilled on the corner by a nice lady and her daughters. At this point I should mention that Bantayan is the egg basket of the Philippines, producing two million eggs a day. Again I found myself surrounded by cocks. One day I was adventurous enough to try Tagoangkan, a local specialty which is basically a grilled sack of eggs, or chicken ovary. It tasted like boiled eggs wrapped in a crispy chicken skin… I didn’t get this again, but it wasn’t terrible. After lunch I’d stop by the same mart and get a big bottle of Red Horse, which is a powerful San Miguel. The rest of the afternoon I’d sit on my front porch reading while sipping a big beer. Once I was too buzzed to read anymore I’d take a nap in the hammock and then head back down the beach to Youneek.

The tide would come back late afternoon to early evening and travelers and expats would gather at the Youneek bar on the beach to drink really, really, really cold San Miguels and perhaps swim. I came to enjoy the company of the expats, who were all middle aged men who married Phillipinas and decided not to leave this island. Some might cynically call them dirty old men, but I would disagree. These guys seemed to have things pretty well figured out and they lead relaxed lives. Funny how these expats have their own little odd community there. All were from different places and all had interesting stories. I spent each evening hanging out this bungalow bar swapping stories with travelers and expats.

After sunset the group would go their separate ways for dinner and then regroup at The Hard Kock (no kidding) CafĂ© for a couple more San Miguels. The owner is an expat who freely exchanges books and dvd’s with travelers. It was this place where I left “Armageddon” and in exchange picked up a James Patterson novel, which didn’t quite have the same impact on me. This was the novel that I read in the airport before I left. My follow up to Leon Uris was Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”, which I very much enjoyed. Two out of three is not so bad I suppose.

For ten days I did this routine, and I stayed at Onde (garden area pictured) the entire time. The family treated me very well and I’ve since become chat buddies with Jolly, the nice lady who brought me coconut oil the evening I got stung by a jellyfish. I also should acknowledge that I borrowed some of her photos. The day before I left I did the same routine with a bit of sadness knowing I had to leave the next day. Who knows, if I wouldn’t have run out of money I probably would have never left. That evening I went to bed early after bidding farewell to my expat friends. However, I was awoken that night by very loud music.

The music started late around 1am and continued through the night. I could not sleep and finally, around 3:30 walked down the street to find the source. Who the hell was blasting this obnoxious music in the middle of the night and why? Following the music, I walked through a village through some woods and came across a basketball court where enormous speakers were blaring full tilt—with no person in sight. Finally I saw a local and I asked him what was going on, to which he replied: “Festival”.

Once a year they do this festival where they play music through the night and begin to prepare their feast at dawn. The ritual involved slaughtering a pig, which I was asked to do. We gathered near a fire next to the doomed pig and I thought of the task at hand: Was he really asking me to stab a pig in the throat? Could I really do this? My initial thought was: “Of course. When will I ever get the chance to do this again?” As daylight approached the other men and boys gathered and I nervously awaited the moment when we would seize the hog. Since I had not done this before it was decided that someone with experience in killing pigs should do the honors, seeing how I didn’t even know where the animal’s throat was. Whew. They did have me help hold the animal down while a man jabbed a knife into its throat over a bucket. Now is where I need to say very clearly that these animals know what’s coming and don’t go quietly. We grabbed the rather large hog from the pen and it let out a blood-curdling scream, which it would sustain until it’s death. I held Wilbur (I named him that before we killed him) down on the table with three other men while he kicked and screamed violently. After this was finished, we slaughtered a smaller pig, just for good measure, and the sun had fully come up. The family had invited me to spend the day with them celebrating the festival and eating fresh pig meat (come on, they cooked the things!). With great regret I told them that I had to leave and couldn’t stay. As fate would have it, the most interesting experience in ten days happened two hours before I was to leave the island.

I didn’t want to leave the island that day and considered going back this winter. However, there are other islands to explore and I’m greatly anticipating relaxation and unforeseen adventures when I get to Phu Quoc, Vietnam in January.