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    Postcards From The Philippines
    Postcards From The Philippines
    Postcards From The Philippines
    Ebook109 pages3 hours

    Postcards From The Philippines

    By Mark Nelson

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    About this ebook

    Sprawling across several sun-drenched latitudes lies the 7,100 islands of the Philippines whose personality bursts at every natural seam. This most westernized nation in Asia owes much of its character to its turbulent, multicultural, and multilingual history and the Filipinos have maintained their low-key naturally friendly approach to life. This collection of short essays, written over a 2 year period and ublished in various magazines, aims to provide information and opinions about the Philippines from a variety of angles, with no chirpy promises about how you'll travel around the islands for free, and no sugar-coated advice followed by lots of exclamation points. I believe that the Philippine is one of the best kept secrets in the world.After you read this book, I think you will agree.Topics include:
    Yachtie’s Haven: Bonbonon Bay
    Inampulugan Island
    The Discovery of the USS Lanikai
    The Cata-Al WWII Memorabilia Collection
    Everything is Big in Davao
    Davao Classic Car Club
    A Visit to Corregidor Island
    Seeing the Islands on a Banca Safari
    The General's Jeep
    Cats and Dogs: A Cultural Perspective
    Davao: A New Nightlife Destination
    The T’boli of Lake Sebu
    The Hellships Memorial
    In Search of the Golden Lily
    The Pinoy X-Files
    Memories of “The Rock”
    Manila American Cemetery and Memorial
    Gensan's Tuna Festival
    Fort San Felipe, Cavite
    Exciting Davao Fashion
    Soaring High!
    A Taste of Europe in Davao
    Bite the Wax Tadpole
    “Sow the Wind”: The Massacre at Balangiga
    Lettuce in Pain
    The Valuable One Peso Coin

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMark Nelson
    Release dateOct 3, 2016
    ISBN9781370399734
    Postcards From The Philippines
    Author

    Mark Nelson

    Dr. Mark Nelson is a founding director of the Institute of Ecotechnics and has worked for several decades in closed ecological system research, ecological engineering, the restoration of damaged ecosystems, desert agriculture and orchardry, and wastewater recycling. He is Chairman and CEO of the Institute of Ecotechnics, a U.K. and U.S. non-profit organization, which consults to several demonstration projects working in challenging biomes around the world as well as Vice Chairman of Global Ecotechnics Corp. and head of Wastewater Gardens International.

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      Book preview

      Postcards From The Philippines - Mark Nelson

      Postcards from the Philippines

      by

      Mark Nelson

      Copyright 2016 by Mark Nelson

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means — whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Yachtie’s Haven: Bonbonon Bay

      Inampulugan Island

      The Discovery of the USS Lanikai

      The Cata-Al WWII Memorabilia Collection

      Everything is Big in Davao

      Davao Classic Car Club

      A Visit to Corregidor Island

      Seeing the Islands on a Banca Safari

      The General's Jeep

      Cats and Dogs: A Cultural Perspective

      Davao: A New Nightlife Destination

      The T’boli of Lake Sebu

      The Hellships Memorial

      In Search of the Golden Lily

      The Pinoy X-Files

      Memories of The Rock

      Manila American Cemetery and Memorial

      Gensan's Tuna Festival

      Fort San Felipe, Cavite

      Exciting Davao Fashion

      Soaring High!

      A Taste of Europe in Davao

      Bite the Wax Tadpole

      Sow the Wind: The Massacre at Balangiga

      Lettuce in Pain

      The Valuable One Peso Coin

      For Jennylyn

      Introduction

      These twenty-seven short essays were written over a 2-year period and were published in various travel magazines. They are my take on travel and culture.

      YACHTIE’S HAVEN - BONBONON BAY, NEGROS ORIENTAL

      I swallowed the anchor three years ago and never looked back, said Australian Nigel Roberts over a cup of morning coffee. Seeing the surprised look on my face, Nigel explained with a smile that swallow the anchor is a term used by yachties – those adventurous souls who live for months or years aboard yachts – and means to leave the sea life and settle down on shore.

      Nigel is the owner of the Tamboo Sail Inn, nestled on what he calls his hectare of paradise at the entrance to Bonbonon Bay, a wind-sheltered basin on the southern tip of Negros Oriental. Australian photographer Kevin Hamdorf and I had arrived that morning, riding down from Dumagette on rented motorbikes. We settled into two of the Inn’s cozy native-style open-air cottages, agreeing to meet later at the bar.

      The Inn’s small, inviting bar is a typical yachtie pub fueled by beer and full of sailors spinning tales of ships, storms, pirates and ports, but it’s also an interesting and comfortable place for those land lubbers among us.

      The yachtie community here is vibrant, friendly, and colorful with a constantly changing membership, said Nigel who spent 40 of his 55 years of life at sea, I’ve seen as many as 35 yachts anchored in Bonbonon Bay but usually there are 15 to 25 in at any one time. With a lot of the yachties coming by here you can really hear some great sailing stories, some of which are even true!

      Ron, an Irish yachtie who lives part of the year in the Philippines and the rest in a 400-year old stone cottage in northwest Ireland told me, Bonbonon is a most surprising hideaway; the entrance is narrow and not visible until you’re within a mile. It’s a well-protected anchorage and pretty much safe from typhoons. There are 18 foreign yachts anchored here right now.

      Not all the visitors to Bonbonon Bay are yachties. Alex, a Cebu-based French jewelry designer and exporter, and his Taiwanese wife Justine brought their SUV from Cebu on the ferry to Dumagette. They were exploring Negros with no particular plans when they stumbled onto Bonbonon and decided to stay for a few days.

      This place has a kind of Michener quality about it, what we call in French, romantique, Alex said.

      What I like about it is the informality. It’s very comfortable here and you feel close to nature, Justine added.

      As the golden sunlight changed to pale purple twilight, I joined Alex, Justine, and several others around a long stone table overlooking the beach. The tide was out and the jagged reef across the mouth of the bay was exposed.

      In the fast fading light, a young boy and his dog explored small pools of seawater left in the reef by the falling tide, the dog barking excitedly at small crabs scurrying across the rocks. The gleaming white hull of a large boat anchored in the bay picked up tints of tangerine and fuchsia from the setting sun.

      Soon we were bathed in the light of a full moon as we recounted the day’s events, made plans for the following day, or sat in the silence of our own private thoughts.

      Early the next morning, we awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Nigel’s wife, Pilar, prepared a huge breakfast of eggs, sausages, bacon, potatoes, rice and toast. Pilar loves to do most of the cooking at the Inn and her specialties include thick toasted sandwiches, spicy curries, her famous Aussie BBQs, and a full range of tasty Filipino dishes.

      We left the motorbikes behind to explore the surrounding area on foot. Less than a kilometer down the road was a small fishing village where men were busy patching nets, repairing engines, and preparing their boats for long fishing voyages. Derelict boats beached on the sand told of the hard times facing these fishing families. Several men crouched in the shade of one of the abandoned boats as they ate a breakfast of rice, fish, and tuba, a mild bubbling wine made from coconut sap.

      A fisherman, his face weathered and brown from years in the sun, paddled by in a small banca with his young daughter. Sailing silently except for the rush of water over the outriggers, they were on their way to the open sea, hoping to catch enough fish for their family and maybe a few left over to sell.

      In the morning low tide, old women were wading in the shallow water, talking and laughing, slowly nudging through the mud with their toes, then reaching down to pluck up shellfish and drop them into their baskets. Amid barking dogs, crowing roosters, and giggling children trudging off to school, we left the village as the road wound up the side of a mountain, the exposed rocks revealing the volcanic origins of this area.

      Hugging the ridge of the mountain is the village of Bonbonon, clustered loosely around a Catholic Church. A plaque in the churchyard proclaimed that the Spanish colonists held the first Mass in Bonbonon in 1580. The townsfolk proudly showed us the stone columns of a monastery built around 1700, their tangible connection to a centuries-old history.

      Life in Bonbonon is unhurried and colorful in its own down-to-earth way. Old men sat around small tables playing dama while sipping sweet morning tuba, dogs sleeping peacefully at their feet. Across the road, near a lush tree with flaming red flowers, a young mother in a faded flower-print dress hung out her daily wash on bamboo poles, her children noisily playing around her. Shirtless auburn-skinned boys played basketball on a makeshift court scratched out on the concrete road. The only businesses in the village -- a tire repair shop and two small sari-sari stores selling the usual assortment of soap, snacks, cold drinks, and cigarettes.

      Just past the village, we stood on a rocky vantage point overlooking the sea approach to Bonbonon Bay. We could imagine that over the centuries, villagers, Spaniards, Americans, Filipinos and Japanese had all scanned the horizon from this very spot, searching for approaching enemy ships. No doubt, many anxious wives had also

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