Philippines, Tablas Island: Or cockroaches and aggressive gay men...

Okay...this is the last installment of storytime from the Philippines (though I still have more pics to show you guys and I really gotta get off my lazy butt and host/post my videos.

So...after leaving Carabao Island, I decided to head north to Tablas Island. I figured I would explore that place for a couple of days before heading back to Korea. I took the 6 a.m. boat from Carabao and arrived in Santa Fe, Tablas at around 7 a.m. and did one of the coolest things on my trip.

I went to board a local "bus" or Jeepney...basically some sort of a window-less bastard child of a million Jeeps and buses. How these things stay on the road is beyond me, but they're everywhere in the Philippines, as actual public transportation seemed to be completely nonexistent.

But...there was a twist. Since the boat had just come into town, everyone was getting on the bus...so, they had a rule. Women and children in the bus, men on the roof. This made for easily the most amazing and unique bus ride of my life. Being on the roof of one of these things, hanging onto the rack for dear life as it whipped around crazy corners and ducking massive palm branches hanging down from the side of the road was sublime! The scenery was bathed in perfect morning light and the whole experience was simply awesome. Something I could never experience in Korea or Canada, that's for sure.

Some of the awesome scenery:

After about an hour of bouncing around, I made it to Looc, my first stop. And wow, was the place ever a massive disappointment. It was completely run-down, half-abandoned buildings everywhere, people incessantly yelling at me trying to sell me stuff, etc. I spent a few hours there, and decided it was time to move on. So, I bought a Mountain Dew. Turns out, since they're all in refillable glass bottles, when you buy a drink, you only buy the actual liquid, not the container it came in...so here's my bottle of Mountain Dew:

I got on my Jeepney at about 10:50 a.m., since it was supposed to leave at 11 a.m. A few minutes after noon we actually took off...wonderful :)

I headed up to Odiongan, the main city on Tablas Island, and one I was told will be a pleasant place to visit. My impression was that for Odiongan to be a pleasant city to visit, you would need two things: a Jeepney from Looc to get you there, and a time machine to get you back to 1957, the last time the city appeared to have anything resembling charm and attractiveness.

The place looked like Dresden, circa 1946. You could tell that, at one time, hotels lined the streets and a beautiful walkway snaked its way along the seashore...but that was well before I was born. As it was, it was an unpleasant, broken down place whose occupants appeared to have no desire to beautify their city. And don't even tell me that they're poor, because you don't have to be rich to put your potato chip bag in a garbage can, instead of ditching it wherever you ate the last chip.

After a few unpleasant hours of hunting for something worthwhile to see, I boarded another Jeepney and headed back to Looc, anxious to get the day over with and get back to Carabao as soon as possible.

Once in Looc, I got a room at the local hostel (the horribly inappropriately named Angelique Inn...more on this in a minute) and went for a walk. First, I stopped at what passed for a local park (tiny patch of muddy grass in the centre of the town) and sat down to read my book. Soon, an overweight middle aged guy started talking to me. Not wanting to be social, but being a nice guy, I put the book on hold and chatted for a minute or two before he offered to give me a massage. Not realizing that I was being hit on, I casually told the guy, I'm okay and in no need of a massage. Then he winked and told me he was going to get some oil in case I change my mind.

Close the book, go for a walk. I headed to the water, where they were supposed to have a marine sanctuary. Unless their sanctuary is aimed at preserving plastic bottles and random pieces of garbage, it failed. It was, as expected, a disappointment. But, whatever, water is water, and I love being by it, so I went on my little stroll as it got dark and checked out the sorry little pier they had. I was admiring the dark horizon when a younger guy started talking to me. Being the nice guy, I talked to him, and things seemed to be going pretty normally. Then it started raining, so I told him I'd better get back to my hostel and started walking away. He rode his little scooter after me and stopped in front of me, blocking my way. He then asked me if I was straight. I told him, yes, absolutely. The next words out of his mouth made my head spin. "Is there any way I could suck your #&$*?," the young man inquired. No. No way. No how. Never. But, apparently, this wasn't clear enough for him, as he kept pressing the subject, even telling me that he had followed me from town to the waterfront. At this point, I was rather happy that, unlike in Korea, in the Philippines I'm a giant. At 5'10, 162lbs, I have a good 40lbs and 4-6 inches on most guys there, so while I was uncomfortable and at times tempted to end the conversation by introducing the young man's nose to the knuckles on my right hand, I never felt threatened.

I got out of that situation, went back to my hostel just as the drizzle turned into an all-out monsoon downpour, dragged a chair onto the balcony (after killing a roughly 4-5" spider in the bathroom...I'm not kidding, I actually broke the plastic pail I was murdering him with before the thing died!) and continued reading my book. Minutes later, the front desk guy came up and started talking to me. The conversation, again, started fairly normally. Then, about 2-3 minutes into it, he asked me if I was single. I told him yes. Then he asked me how my sex life was, being single and all. "Here we go," I thought. So, I told him  it's none of his business and that I'm going to sleep. I went into my room and closed the door. Ten seconds later I heard a knock on the door. Ignored it. Knock again. Ignore again. Knock again. Ignore. Knock again...open the door...before I could say "What the eff do you want?" The less than charming innkeeper uttered the following words (while leaning against the doorframe and making kissing faces): "I want to taste you." For eff's sake. I told him to get out. He resisted and kept dirty talking me. Finally, after asking him to leave nicely three times, I shut the door on him. And realizing that the fool had a key to my room, barricaded the door with the table and chair, packed my backpack and went to sleep fully dressed, ready to get out in 1 second flat, if the need arose.

You'd think this would all be enough for one day. But oh, no. The gods of Tablas Island had a few more surprises up their sleeves. About two hours into my sleep, I was awakened by a pinch on my neck. Immediately, I knew it was a bug biting me. I leaped to my feet, slapped on the light and heard three or four roaches scatter to safety behind the dresser and under the bed...and one massive (roughly 1.5-2", not counting the antennae) cockroach running around on my pillow and bed completely confused. Wonderful...I had just been bitten by a cockroach...exactly what I was hoping for. This was enough.

I got out of my room (after taking a couple of pictures of the cockroach) and went downstairs, to find the place completely deserted. I went outside, and saw that the neighbouring house was painted in the same colours as the hostel, and figured that would be the owners. I banged on the gate, woke up their dog, yelled, etc for about half an hour before they came outside. I demanded my money back...they asked me why. I told them that, aside from the guy at the front desk making sexual advances at me, the cockroaches biting me in my sleep were more than enough. I showed her a picture of the offending bug. Her reaction: She looked at me like I was crazy and said "What?? But it's just a cockroach!!". Thankfully, the front desk guy came out as well, and the more I pushed the whole line that him coming onto me is inappropriate, the more eager he was to tell the owners to give me my money and let me be on my way.

Finally, with money in my pocket, I resolved to walk to Santa Fe, I would guess roughly 30-35km away...in the middle of the night. It was a dumb idea, but I was wide awake and pissed off and that was the only place in town where one could rent a room.

Then, as I was walking, every stray dog in town (in the Philippines, there are roughly 27 stray dogs for every person) decided to howl at me...this got a group of local guys who were outside drinking beer interested and asked me what I was up to. I told them my story and my plan to walk to Santa Fe. They thought the idea was idiotic and I was likely to get robbed. Sweet. Oh Tablas, do thy charms never run out?

However, these guys were different...they offered me (every single one of them) their place for me to crash for the night before heading off the island. I declined, being weary of anyone and everyone. After they insisted for about half an hour, I agreed to just sit and drink with them (I still had some Mountain Dew I managed to find in a bottle)...we sat and chatted for a couple of hours (one of the guys was so angry at how I had been treated that he marched off to the hostel to yell at them), and I ended up sleeping in the guy's spare room.

On the whole island, these guys were the only genuinely good people I met.

After sleeping a few hours in the guy's spare room, I was up at 5 a.m., and got a guy on a motorcycle (after another one tried to rip me off, but having been in the Philippines for a week, I knew what fair prices were...I told the guy no way, then he started following me around until I told him to get lost). Anyways, after bouncing around on the back of the dude's motorbike (with no public transportation, this was my only option to get to Santa Fe), I got to the boat "terminal" and found out I missed the boat (I was told it left at 7 a.m., when in fact it was gone at 6). I'd have to wait for the next one for two hours...and just then I was told that another boat was leaving for a neighbouring island and that would have to go right beside Carabao anyways and they would drop me off in Carabao. When I asked about the fare, it was roughly 2-2.5x what it should have been. I knew I was getting ripped off, despite all the crooks hanging out at the pier telling me it was a great deal...but, screw it, I thought...it's only a few bucks, and I let Tablas take its last stab at me, as I got on the boat and mentally gave the finger to the whole island.

An hour later I was back on my beloved Carabao and the rest of the story I have already told you guys about in my previous posts.

Soooo....sorry about the negativity of this post, but it was a thoroughly negative and messed up 24 hours on Tablas. Here's my travel tip: If you're in the Philippines...avoid Tablas Island like the black plague.

Okay...I'm out...I'll have some more Philippines pics and videos up in the coming weeks, but I just bought a bike (more on that later), so I'm out riding as much as I can, rather than sitting behind my computer :)

Cheerio!
T