It has been a while that I wrote a travel blog proper. Actually, I’ve never done that because it strikes me as incredibly meaningless. I could share the places I’ve visited, the monuments, museums, and mausoleums with you, expound the hassles of traveling (traffic, customs, being ripped off, being sick, being looked at, have a sore foot, getting drunk, and so on) but I sincerely don’t think my persona undergoing all this isn’t any more interesting than the countless numbers who went before me, beating most of the tracks I’ll ever take.
So what is this, then? Those readers who’ve browsed through the ancient history of this blog might find an attempts of finding some kind of writer’s voice, plays with fiction and reality, masquerades, dilettante philosophical reflections, grammatical errors, self-irony, interwoven with some spontaneous observations. I was often inspired, through an obscure metaphysical turnaround, by the lack of readers. So I thought, maybe I should continue that, because I’m briefly on the road again.
Feeling like the boy I was yesterday. There really is no chance that I grow up, and I thank the heavens for that.
I arrived in Manila yesterday morning, and was immediately taken away by the kindness of the people. I did what I normally do, took a walk through the tropical heat into the city, in this case the Makati area, where I sat around in cafe’s doing my communications. No adventures, no skydives, no swimming with the sharks. And yet I felt wonderful. Being able to move here, and change your surroundings so completely from a cold rich country to a tropical poor one, with life on the street, and filth and colorful jeepneys and fresh fruits and markets and smiles and slums and – makes me realize that switch still works. I felt instantly at home in the craziness of Manila, which reminded me of Nairobi or Mumbai.
My host and me took a walk today in the central park of Manila proper, where we saw a nice exhibition of “a liter of light”, the initiative I had heard of before, turning soda bottles into indoor lamps during the day by filling them with chlorinated water. It makes sense, because people in the slums tend to sit in dark homes shielded off from the hot sun. Since they don’t have electricity, a smart way of lighting up their houses is by using “liters of light” fixed seamlessly into the corrugated iron of the roof. When it’s bright (but hot) outside, the bottle will light up and make it bright (but bearable) inside. “How many Filipino’s does it take to change a light bulb?”, I quipped. “Zero: they don’t use that outdated technology.”
There was a couchsurfing meeting at the Goethe Institute, which was nice; I had a few interesting conversations, and a few devoid of spirit. I met, for the first time in my life, a ladyboy and enjoyed that a lot, experiencing something like the deconstruction of gender roles that I was still unwittingly carrying along with me. My perception of a pretty girl with beautiful long hair and large eyes, pronounced cheekbones, shiny teeth and tender lips, knowing that I was looking at a biological male, confronted me with my own narrow preconceptions, my own intricate web of expectations, narratives, desires, that we weave for every new person we encounter. Such a confrontation can only make us better. I’m thankful for that.
Tomorrow night, I travel to Baguio, the “summer capital” of the country, where I hope to work on a permaculture-related project organized by a couch surfer. Stay tuned for how that works out.