Domino in The Philippines

[X Man]

I would love to go to Samar. Some of the cutest Filipina rides I've ever had came from there.

Where did you go? I got a cute chat mate from Ormoc. Tempting.

X

[GoodEnough]

Domino, nice to hear you're alive and well, which is not necessarily counter intuitive but rather declarative.

I do take issue with the "cheap polo" categorization of our lovely member's only shirts, fabricated by old, toohless women artisans living deep in the jungles of Basilan, using antique wooden looms with yarn imported from Camden New Jersey. These are exquisite garments, with a carefully painted, tastefully executed dragon on the breast pocket. The pocket itself has been thoughtfully designed to hold only what is needed for an average night on the town; sort of a mongerer's survival kit if you will. Ralph Lauren himself might kill for this design if only he was made aware of it.

Stay safe and take care,

:D

GE

[Domino]

X man. I am fine and very busy making and losing money and having sex. As regards the latter, my advice would be to think counter intuitively. But don’t think too much. Better to go to Samar, to the pussy source, always thinking and acting counter intuitively. It is as simple as that.

To make it even easier for you, use all sources as informational depots whilst spreading disinformation and misinformation. Spend frugally but strategically. Look for the elephant in the living room. If you want to hunt elephants, go to elephant country. Avoid Manila, AC and Vigan. Avoid loud and aggressive people. Attend church. Buy a good pen. No short pants. Always wear a shirt and deodorant.

I will be back again in a few weeks. I don't think I will join Team Davao on the Groucho Marx principle. Also, I don't think lube and condoms should be carried in a shirt and cheap polo necks are not my thing. I found Cebu Local genuinely helpful even tough I never used his services. (Less thans $20 for a Makati room seems hard to beat). Speaking about beating, time to go:)

[X Man]

Domino!

Where are you? Still alive?

X

[Prov1]

We were a little worried about you. I'm glad you made an appearance, albeit a brief one. I for one would like to see you start posting again. I enjoy them very much. I'm sorry you got lumped in with the rest of us on this recent spat.

However, regarding the $19.95. This is the only thing I wish you would cease and desist on. Please let me know where to send a crisp $20 bill to make you whole again. That way maybe you will feel better about posting.

[Domino]

Greetings everyone,

Several points:

1. In the new Prov1 v Chocha Monger v several others, the administrator lumps me in with a group of others who have psoted on the Philippines board and makes disparaging remarks about us all. I have never been in any spats that I know of on the Philippines board.

2. My name seem to crop up a lot on the Thai board. To check when I have last posted there, just RTFF. I have not posted under any other name.

[Domino]

Joking: Your grandma was smart. Tell her thanks a lot as this is very important to me. I have ordered lots of lavender oil; as I like massages, this is a bonus. Seems cedar is really good too but the Japanese are allergic to it, so that might explain a lot.

Good to see some valuable information posted here for a change: beats guys complaining of Japanese overpaying during Golden Week. If they only knew what GW rates were.

Again, thanks a lot. More information like this is what we need. I gootta get more into all that stuff.

[Domino]

Xman: Xoomcom is pretty efficient and is much cheaper than WU but still expensive compared to a bank. You need a full name and address to send it to and you give her/him/it a password to mention. Then your buddy goes in to a desginated collection point (plenty in the Philippines) with two IDs and says the password and gets paid. It takes one to two days from when you pay Xoom.com with your credit card. If you can send the $ from a US bank account, it can be a lot cheaper.
I have used xoom.com and I like it.

[Domino]

X Man: Greeting to you, 11 am Tokyo time. Yesterday whacked me and I am late for the first one of the day. Man, this is the life.
Plus, I got the scoop on how to nuke those bugs. Looks like all out nuclear and chemical warfare is the way to go with them.
GE: Your drive seems like a classic worth seeing but not worth going to see trip. I would be interested in X man's take on it.

[GoodEnough]

domino, thanks for the kind words. i wish they were true, but if i was as level-headed as you suggest, i would not have had the trauma of the freddy encounter.

it occurs to me that one reasonably safe and interesting trek for the mindanao adventurer might be to travel from davao, through bukidnon, valencia and malaybalay to cagayan de oro. spend a couple of nights/days in cdo and then travel down to illigan and marawi. marawi is the only islamic city in the pi and, from the standpoint of the curious traveller, it's an interesting place. there's only one hotel, operated by the mindanao state university and located on its sprawling campus. it's safe and it's clean, if somewhat basic. from marawi, it would be easy to make short trips to surrounding, more isolated muslim communities which are rep001tered all over the place within 60-90 minutes of the city. this trip offers a reasonably secure means of getting off the beaten track, but not so far off that you lose sight of the path. the trip can be done in 3-5 days, and since it's all by road, the intrepid voyager will even get to see some interesting stuff from the vantage point of his car seat.

you will be in christain territory until sometime after leaving illigan, when you enter the province of lanao del sur, which is part of the autonomous region in muslim mindanao (armm). if you want to prolong the trip, spend a night or to at the pines hotel in malaybalay. it's a very nice place, with a pleasant terrace overlooking a reasonably large swimming pool. the food is western and very good and the service is excellent. the price is around $50 per night, and it's well worth the cost.

once you pass the dole pineapple plantation outside of malaybalay, you're entering an area that sees very few foreigners. the last time i was there, about 3 weeks ago, i stopped by a roadside stand to buy some plants for my garden in davao. i think that 98% of the community turned out to see "the white guy." the people were lovely to me and i spent about an hour buying stuff i could have otherwise bought in about 5 minutes.

this is a beautiful drive, over reasonably good, mountain roads, and the foliage changes at least three times during the drive. once you hit bukidnon, the temperature drops about 5-8 degrees from what it was in davao, so the air is really pleasant. there's no industry to speak of, and there's no pollution.

so there you have it. a safe adventure that's also interesting to those who want to see a bit of central mindanao at minimal to no risk. i should add that from calinan on, you cell phone will work only intermittently until you hit the towns.

:d

ge

[X Man]

Have fun. I'll be behind the Budokan tonight and Yoyogi Park on Sunday. Hell, who needs a liver anyway.

Also have a girl asking me to go to Chidorigafuchi on Saturday, but I was so drunk when I got her card I don't even remember what she looks like...which probably means she's fugly.

X

[Domino]

But moth balls smell and one moth balls at the end of summer. I thought Ralph Jackson might post, seeing as he lives in Japan and all. But any J woman will tell you they wage eternal war on these little fuckers. I can see how people would get carried away with these phobias/neuroses. So much concrete. Oh well, I am off to Ueno Park for hanami. Maybe Ralph Jackson could organize a hanami for us. We could get all the trolls to go early and book our spot. Or maybe just get the junior members. Or should that be juniour?
Better not go down that road.
Peace to all.

[X Man]

Put moth balls inside the plastic bags.

X

[Domino]

Today’s reality, from the point of view of Muslims, is that a war of terror is being waged against them. Although The Philippines, curiously perhaps, seems to be more enlightened in this respect than the Crusader in the White House, fools rush in…...
Having recently traveled around Marcos country, far north, there is nothing there worth seeing or doing. In Mindanao, my lady friends told me to watch my step which I don’t do on small things. About 8 people were killed the other day in an island bombing. Friends tell me to use ferries, not buses. Fr Rufus Halley, a friend of Mr O’Flannagan (Marcus?, his name escapes me) got whacked a few years ago in Muslim country.
My advice is to hone in on an area and get lots of chat friends from there to judge the risks for yourself. Move carefully and know your moves. I have been warned against bus travel in Mindanao and Mindanao is the place that primarily interests me. As regards traveling, it is easy if you go local. Just about anywhere you might want to go has a bus/jeepney going there. Not the Paris Met or UPS but they will get you and any flies you pick up on the way there.
An interesting thing about those shit heaps is they have a way for country bumkins working in places like Davao to send back 100 or 200 baht at a time to keep their parents and siblings in food. Kinda like the motorbike taxis/tacos you see in wup wup in LOS.
And with due respect to GE, there are guys would like a piece of you. This stands to reason if you think about it, about them and about why you might be there. I was involved in fisticuffs in the far north with a truck full. But I won, even though one of them was a big fucker (I don’t fight fair). Semper fidelis and all that. However, GE is too level headed and diplomatic for that bs. YMMV. We are not talking about 5 star hotels but jumped up flea pits with Pinoys on the make and no backpackers.
And as regards the posts in the Davao thread, the info website is also mentioned there by Tout in case you can’t decode my previous header. Because Davao ranks in the top four, you need another reason to stray beyond its confines. Same same Thailand. The only multiple posters outside the Bkk-CMai_Pattaya ghettoes were Freeler, Skinless, RTCA Knight and now Horatio in Udon.
A final word on GE and CL. If it comes to local knowledge, they are way ahead and have been quite generous with it. However, you are the one who must make your moves. There’s no 7th Cavalry there.

Caveat: The above are my opinions and before I wander around Mindanao again, I will listen to GE. CL etc. But, given that I have been a pig headed mf all my life, I am unlikely to change now. Go for it X man. Amen.

Trivial Pursuit: Amen is the hsortest verse in the Bible. I once got done on a Trivial Pursuit night over htat.
Xman: You live in Japan. How do you handle all those little summer moths? I hate the little fuckers eating my clothes. I oput all my clothes to the cleaners, plastic wrap them, remove all dust from my home, change my curtains, bed clothes etc but they keep coming. I aksed Ralph Jackson but he ain't sharing.

[GoodEnough]

X Man
The Phils is complicated by the towelheads, NPA etc. In Zamboanga, for example, there is a good chance you will be roughed up by the youth gangs who hang out there.

As much as I like and respect my buddy Domino, this information is simply not true. There is actually an almost zero chance, for example, that you will be "roughed up" by youth gangs. In fact, in 20+ trips to Zambo, I've never actually seen a youth gang, and I roam the streets there at all hours. The NPA does not operate in Zamboanga, but largely around Caragas, and there only in very small, very isolated rural hamlets. They are not "rag heads" but Communists, and they're on the run and diminishing in force here.

It's true that Thailand is much, much better organized to handle tourists, but the result of all that organization is that the whole place has become somewhat akin to Disneyland. It's gone so overboard to welcome routists and to organize tours focused on "the real Thai experience," that the whole thing is somewhat artificial. If you take the trouble (and it is a pain in the ass) to travel to the hinterlands here, you will experience the real thing, as the rural areas here rarely, if every, actually see westerners. For those interested in an off the beaten track experience, this can be very appealing as what you see is the genuine article and not staged for a National Geographic glossy picture. It can however, be very rough, with few, if any amenities to accommodate western sensibilities.

It is also true that traveling off the well-trodden path is probably somewhat riskier in the PI than in Thailand, if for no other reason than the lack of efficient transport and tourism amenities. On the other hand the risk of physical danger from kidnapping, hostile fire, gang warfare, or other manifestations of social unrest are negligible, particularly if you're traveling outside of Mindanao. Even in Mindanao, unless you're actually searching for the hideouts of the MILF or the NPA, your risk of getting in harm's way is extremely small. Western foreigners are simply not the targets of these groups, and I've met often with their representatives, so I have some idea of what I'm talking about.

If you decide to make the adventure, what you will find is almost unbelieveable hospitality and welcome in the small, rural communities and a fascinated openness to foreigners mixed with a healthy degree of deep curiosity. You will not find any hostility.

Finally, kidnapping here is a highly-organized, thoroughly commercial venture targeting wealthy Chinese Filipinos. Unless you fall within that category, your risks of getting held for ransom are about nil.

I'm not trying to "sell" the PI as a tourist destination. Rambling around the countryside is something that should be done only by those who seek the unusual. However, it's not particularly dangerous and it can be very interesting.

One final point. Do not confuse the Muslim insurrectionist movement here with the wild-eyed fanatics you see on CNN chanting "Death to the Great Satan." Filipino Muslims, who comprise roughly 30% of the population of Mindanao are not ideologically-driven. For the most part, they are poor people with historically valid grievances who want only a fair share of the development pie, having been denied equal access and equal opportunity for a long time. I've spent most of the last two years working with these communities, and I have found the experience extremely rewarding.

:D

GE