Speaker's Corner on a sunny day

This afternoon we headed down to Speaker's Corner - working our way down the London check-list we drew up - and were surprised to find glorious weather waiting for us in Hyde Park.  It was hard, to be frank, to listen to the orators when the sun was shining, footballers and frolicking children were enjoying the green open spaces, and deck chairs were waiting out beneath the white fluffy clouds.

But we tried - Speaker's Corner, after all, is a grand statement on the importance of free speech, and what good is free speech if nobody is listening?  So we can report that there were, of course, proselytizers from all three religions of the book (I had never seen a Jewish street proselytizer before - I thought Judaism wasn't quite so expansionary - but hey, what do I know), as well as an impassioned atheist, loudly mocking the Bible's math (crucified on Friday, rose on Sunday, how is that three days and nights? ha, ha! he said) and a fervent nationalist belittling her hacklers (you are all just foreigners, why don't you go back where you belong)

but the sun was shining on the green grass so we went and sat in striped deckchairs and looked for shapes in the clouds.  Freedom of Speech was buzzing behind us - boisterous but not violent - while a toddler chased pigeons and rollerbladers circled the trails.

How do you think you can come here and be British - you don't belong here!  and how can you leave your own people in your own country, leave them there all by themselves --  she was white-haired and slightly trembling, eyes intimidated by the crowd but voice strong.

Are you born again?  [No...]  Well, what's your problem?  (and old man, and his listeners shying away from him) I'm serious, what's your problem?  You - do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?


but there's no MONEY back there, a skinny, brown-skinned man shouted up at her.

that's two days, tops - two nights, not three - (the biggest crowd by far, for this charismatic man in a winter hat) so, what, can God not count?  (loud laughter)


And you are only allowed in here temporarily, you won't be staying here forever, because that's not the way of things - things can't stay like this - even on her stepstool she's barely taller than her audience-

what I don't understand (an American accent, in a sequined jacket) is why we're here talking about details - why you're going on about three days, two days, three nights, two nights - when what we should be doing is arguing, discussing, putting our opinions out, celebrating that we disagree and learning to live side by side-

But I like it here!  I'm comfortable here!  I'm not going anywhere - I'm staying here forever! (loud laughter)

Are you going to listen to me?  Are you?  (painfully polite tone of voice from this man the charismatic atheist calls 'Minister') Or are you just going to talk - I'm telling you, this "three days" thing, you must understand that the Bible is metaphor, is allegory, is parable...

As the afternoon crept on, the clouds got a little darker, the wind a little colder - it would rain soon, but not before we were safely within the walls of the Oxford St department stores.  The voices stayed surprisingly strong.

"It feels so safe here," William mused.  "Did you notice how the maintenance vehicle slowed down when it got near all the children?"  Like clockwork, a man came by to politely request payment for the chairs.  People were eating picnics, playing with their babies.

There was murmuring behind us, and a cluster of synchronized motion.  Men across the park laid out prayer mats on the grass or gathered on the bare asphalt, kneeling down for salat al-asr, the evening prayers.

Go back to where you came from, shouting the white-haired woman, still going strong, and her audience replied in a loud voice: NO!

Angela Merkel has declared multiculturalism to be dead, but the prayers in Hyde Park continued unabated and undisturbed, groups of men facing Qibla- reciting, Allahu Akbar- bowing, prostration, and again.  The soapboxers and the hecklers didn't pause for a moment.

The atheist had changed his tactic, preaching now on the unjustly low salaries of police officers and teachers, this time to no rebuttals.  We walked by, the wind a little too chilly, now, as he talked of cuts and government responsibility, and we left the public park, walked past public art and under public monuments, back into the British public space where debate is, while legal, considered rather uncouth.  And maybe I'd have some thoughts about that but I've put off my homework long enough.

in which i am no longer the whitest person in the room

I've experienced a new kind of culture now - backpacker culture!  I spent the last two nights at a guesthouse catering to the backpacker population, and it's been quite the experience. I've stayed at hostels and pension houses before, but not ones with really popular common areas, so I hadn't really hung out with other travelers, but at Friendly's a whole slew of nomads were hanging out in the rooftop lounge.

And I really would define it as a cultural experience, because the backpacker community does seem to have its own distinct culture.  Though hardly any backpackers here are American or British, English is the language of currency, so that Dutch and Spanish and German and French travelers can all communicate with each other.  Cheap hostels, cheap food and cheap beer are the staples of life.  Everybody is reading, and talking about what they're reading, and swapping books, and everybody drinks, and everybody smokes.  Hot damn, do they ever smoke.

Talking to strangers is completely acceptable - no, more than that, it's absolutely essential.  There's an almost desperate friendliness to some of the travelers, in fact, which makes sense if you consider just how lonely travel can be.  Especially if you're traveling by yourself.  Especially if you've been on the road for as long as many backpackers have - when I asked, "and how long have you been traveling?" the answer was almost always counted in months, and sometimes in years.  One guy hadn't been to his home country in a decade.

Nobody has firm plans - at least not that I've met.  Everybody is making it up as they go along, asking each other for tips and advice, stretching out their money and their time, changing countries so they don't have to get visas.  "Travel buddies" seem to be shifting alliances, as people who started together go separate ways, strangers who just met in the dorm rooms plan to visit the next city together, and everybody, after a while, just tries not to be alone

and gawd, can these people complain!  Manila isn't "Filipino" enough, it's all Americanized, the Germans complain while they sit in their hostel.  They even have Wendy's!  Where's all the Filipino food?  I (rather gently) suggest that they visit one of the turo-turo canteens, the carinderias locals run out of their home, where adventurous eaters can point at whatever looks tasty - and they say, "Oh, I haven't seen any of those yet," although they are on every single street.  And they say they can't wait to get to the provinces, where it will be beautiful and they can see the "real Philippines," whatever that means, and I suggest (humbly speaking from painful experience) that they bring their own mosquito nets, and they say, "oh, we'll be staying at beach resorts, I'm sure they'll have some."

and I remind myself that the only reason I've eaten at carinderias and met, you know, actual Filipinos is because I have family here and I'm doing research that forces me to, and who am I to judge how these people choose to travel?  but when we're talking about malls I mention the squatter communities in the same city as the massive Mall of Asia, and a German backpacker laughs and says "Just like an American city, huh?" and I say, "um, no, actually.  I have pictures.  Would you like to see them?" and show the scrap-metal shacks hanging precariously over trash-filled rivers, and the children swimming in the same water where the sewage goes, and talk about electricity-tapping and floods and typhoon damage.  And they say, "Great pictures."  And they probably think I'm a sanctimonious asshole but it was driving me crazy to hear them say that Manila is "just like America," especially when the derisively ask what happened to the culture here.  And I said, oh you know, five hundred years of colonization and a world war that completely destroyed the city, and they said, "yeah, BUT..."  Anyway, maybe I am a sanctimonious asshole.  I mean, who pulls out slum photos during a casual conversation about the sights in Manila?

And the backpackers certainly are a friendly community, and it would be a gross and offensive generalization to say that they all think Manila is like America, or that the "real Philippines" can be found at beach resorts - there are a lot of travelers pretty aggressively seeking the unfamiliar.  Looking for limit-experiences, I guess, or maybe just bored, or who knows!  Something keeps them traveling month after month, arriving at new ports full of strangers and another unfamiliar language.

Anyway, I had some really interesting conversations that unfortunately distracted me from the passage of time, so that I didn't make some phone calls that I really needed to make.  And in the evening, instead of updated my list of expenditures - kind of essential because right now I don't even know how much money I have left - I wound up watching Funny People with an awkward Israeli.  Poor life decision.  But hey, cultural experience, right?  :P

Guimaras island and a bad resort

So today I decided to take a vacation.  I had to really talk myself into it... I mean, I'm not here for vacation!  I'm here for research!  And EVERY DAY there's something I could be doing!

But as of last night, my best-case scenario schedule for today involved touring a coal-fired power plant and interviewing a disaster-relief activist... neither of which, you will note, is really related to my research subject.  And I was tired.  And stressed out.  And, apparently, emotionally drained or something.  And Guimaras Island was 15 minutes away, and there was a beach resort highly recommended by my guidebook that cost exactly 2 dollars more than my cheap downtown hotel, so what other excuses did I have, huh?  huh?

And after that antagonist exchange with myself I packed my bags, boarded a boat, and went on a beautiful tricycle ride through the mango-growing, rainforested island of Guimaras. (Maybe this would be a good time to note that tricycles are motorcycles with passenger-carrying attachments... like sidecars on steroids.  Not, actually, little red trikes for kids.  Just to clarify).

So I arrived at this resort - a collection of individual bamboo cottages on an idyllic cove - to find it was empty.  Almost completely empty... me, two staff members, a cat, a dog, and a bunch of chickens comprised the entire guest list.  Furthermore, what my Lonely Planet described as a "warm, friendly, family-run" resort was looking kind of like a poorly-maintained, poorly-managed dump.  A dump, I will note, on an absolutely BEAUTIFUL patch of real estate.  I reminded myself of this after finding bird shit on my bed, and discovering that the resort's sole (!) snorkel mask was leaky, and that they no longer had sailboats to rent out, and that even the hammocks were old and absurdly uncomfortable.  Also, it was raining.  I am really good at taking vacations, friends.  Anyway, I told myself, look at the turquoise water!  And the sandy beach!  The rocky cliffside, the view from your balcony, the rainforest!

And the food is delicious - fresh fish and shrimp and crabs, cooked by some guy who for some reason won't put on anything but boxer shorts but is, whatever his attire, a hell of a chef.  So, as you can imagine, that has cheered me up enormously.

Tonight at dinner - oh man am I bad at eating crabs, in case you were wondering, they are like tiny scraps of deliciousness trapped in STEEL SAFES - I learned the reasoning behind the resort's failing condition.  It turns out it is not just that Lonely Planet sucks... this is, in fact, what happens to a warm family-run operation when the marriage at the heart of that family falls apart.  In a country where divorce is illegal.

My dinner companions (who eventually arrived to break the scary silence of a resort with only me in it) were a charming Spainard, his friendly Filipina girlfriend and her two sisters.  Side note - this is a really discombobulated post, sorry for my lack of structure, I'M ON VACATION - I got to practice my spanish!  His English seemed about as good - which is to say as weak - as my Spanish, so either we talked in English and he pretended to understand, or we talked in Spanish and I pretended to understand, and I think I was a better faker.  Have you ever tried to have a discussion about the current economy of China and the reasons behind the American embargo on Cuba... in Spanish?  Have you??  It is hard.  Now you know.

His girlfriend, of course, showed us both up by being fluent in English and Spanish.  And Ilonggo.  And, I presume, Tagalog.  Oh, and working on Chinese.  And also she was beautiful and clearly brilliant.  God damn.

ANYWAY, he is filthy rich or something because he said he has been trying to talk the owners into selling the place to him, but there's lots of legal complications what with them being separated at all.  And suddenly it all made more sense - why guests were avoiding it, why the place was falling apart (because why invest in something you aren't sure if you'll own for much longer, and when if you sell, you'll only get 50% of the value?) and why the owners weren't there and even some weird parts about the text-versation i'd had to reserve my room.

But a failed marriage cannot make Guimaras less beautiful, I am pleased to report, nor can it make fresh seafood less inherently delicious, nor the sound of the waves less relaxing.  So the report from the Philippines today is, if not an unqualified and enthusiastic shout for joy, at least a peaceful sigh.

Scuba diving and snorkeling off the southern coast

In the shallow waters by Talikud island, I try to remember to breathe slowly.  The divemaster floats above me, one hand always on my tank, the other in front of my mask, pointing - see the starfish?  the anemone?  the hidden urchin?  He waves a warning not to touch, and moves his own glove very close to a rock that, in a flurry of motion, turns into a surprisingly large fish.  He reminds me to equalize and we sink a little deeper, while a bright-purple crustacean, as long as my forearm, scuttles across the ocean floor.  I remember the warnings not to touch anything, but especially not anything too brightly-colored or too beautiful, while a stunningly pink, completely foreign animal waves gently from its coral habitation.  The sun has come out after the morning rains, and beams of white light shine through the shallow water as we slowly travel down the reefs.  Schools of tiny fish part around us while the larger creatures dive into dark shadows near the sand, and I am bug-eyed, watching it all.  When we surface, I pull off my mask and laugh.

Back on the boat, we chug our way around to another side of the island.  A school of flying fish pass by, bursting out of the water in a fleeting silver wave, bodies tiny and glistening in the sunlight, and we watch admiringly as we drop a new anchor.  Once we're settled in, and the flying fish have passed, I borrow ratty flippers and an old snorkel and jump into the comforting, warm water.  The water here is so shallow I have to work not to kick the coral when I tread water.  The sea is clear, blue, endless, and I swim over the reefs and marvel at the bright-blue sea stars and the forests of spikes.  I'm alone, a few other snorkelers visible only when I surface and look around, and I float so easily in this salty water that I feel like I could swim for hours.

But as I travel towards the island, the coral gets closer and closer to my mask until it fades away into sea grasses and patches of sand, and finally I stand, pull off my flippers, and walk onto a white-sand beach, littered with bits of coconut shells and dead coral, shaded by palm trees.  A few well-kept nipa huts stand on the far corner of the beach, fishing gear before them, but I don't see any inhabitants.  I stretch my arms up towards the sun, then I kneel in the sand, waves lapping at my waist, and stare out at the sea.

I dive back in the water, pushing myself back towards the boat, and reach the edge of the shallows - a coral-covered cliff that continues down into darkness.  As I float on top of the water, occasionally diving beneath to come face-to-face with a new kind of fish, I can see the real scuba divers as shadows, far below me, with bright-colored fins.  Columns of bubbles, glowing white in the water, rise from the deeps to mark their locations as they sink down along the cliff.

I circle the boat, and find myself above the spear fishermen, sitting perfectly still near the top edge of the cliffs, waiting.  They nod to acknowledge me, and I carefully paddle away, back to the shallow fields of coral, with their hiding fish and spiky dangers and the tiny, colorful spirals of fronds that vanish at a hint of movement towards them.  We've been on and in the water all day, and I am nowhere near tired of diving down to watch the life beneath the surface of the sea.

It's a hard life, huh?  Well, yes - just not for me.  On this trip, I'm with a woman's rights activist, one of my major contacts and a new friend, and another American student working as an intern for her group, and a whole slew of Germans and Filipinas working on issues of conflict resolution in Mindanao.  So between our conversations about colorful fish and arguments over dive equipment, we touch on issues that are currently tearing Mindanao apart - land disputes, religious conflict, the cycle of violence.  So oh, yes, life in these islands is hard.  Hard for the guerrillas in the mountains, I'm sure, and for the people who must live in fear of them, and for the soldiers always on high alert, and for all the families of the tens of thousands of dead.

But not for me, no.  Life is definitely not hard for me.  I pulled off my snorkel mask and wrote this in my journal on the prow of a boat slicing through sky-blue seas, beneath a warm sun, on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Unfair though it is, my life is good indeed.