itinerant's blog

I have become one of those people

Thu, 5 Jul 2007 15:11:02 -0400

I have become one of those people

Penn Yan, New York
Finger Lakes Region
USA
Thursday, July 5, 2007
3.12pm

I have become one of those people who lets his travel blog wither away when he returns to his home country.

Before I left I had time at work to look at people's travel blogs. I was always annoyed when someone just stopped making entries. What the heck happened to them? Now I have become one of those people.

Making blog entries is like exercising or eating healthily. No one really wants to hear excuses about why you didn't to it; you should just do it every day. So I won't go into a long introspective analysis about why they haven't been there.

Andy (hobotraveler.com) is great: he says just write whatever comes into your head. He is right, of course, and that is why he has thousands of web pages and thousands of readers.

To fill you in: I am working at a winery helping with production and retail sales. I am in a beautiful area of the world, the Finger Lakes of New York State. It is not a very well-known travel destination. However, it is becoming better known.

I have that contradictory feeling I had in other places I have visited. The place is beautiful and I feel lucky to see it. However, as the area inevitably changes to accommodate more visitors, some negative effects are occurring. This is the contradiction that is cloaked in the words "development" and "globalization".

I grew up here, but I have been away for a long time. So I am both a foreigner and a local. My ties here are more permanent than the tourist, especially if I decide to live and work here. But I see the place through a foreigner's eyes at times.

Every day I have memories of specific moments of my travels. I might remember having breakfast at the hotel near Khao San Road in Bangkok or the hotel in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India or the guesthouse in Kaza, Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India.

If you wonder if I am aware of how much more I can do with my website: I am. I imagine I am as aware as anyone. I have hundreds of digital photos to put online; different ways of organizing the information that I learned about places I visited; personal reflections on my travels; stories to tell; and maps to make.

I have gotten kind emails from readers. One suggested I put my finances up. He is absolutely right. This would help a lot of people. It is the kind of information I was looking for before I left. Another reader encouraged me to write a book. Receiving these emails is very gratifying.

My idea with this website has been that this website is about "places" rather than "travel". Wherever I happen to be should be subject matter for the site. So I have wanted to write about places in the U.S. as well as abroad. Like a geographer, I should write about the unique things about a place that a person who has never been there would find interesting, and that a person who has lived there all of his or her life never noticed.

While traveling, even though I wasn't "working", I still had internal conflicts over whether I should be "seeing things" or "working on the website". If I had let it, the website could have taken all of my time and I wouldn't have actually done anything.

Now, I am letting my life become even more complicated by working, and working without a set schedule. I also let myself become conflicted about what I should write about, since I am living in a place that is very familiar to me.

These are actually perennial problems with writing, and, just as exercising or eating right, I should "just do it".

I have become one of those people

I am working at a vineyard and winery in the Finger Lakes

Sun, 3 Jun 2007 22:39:47 -0400

Sunday June 3, 2007
10.39pm
Finger Lakes region
New York State, USA

I am working at a vineyard and winery in the Finger Lakes

I started working at a vineyard and winery several weeks ago. Today I collected soil samples from the vineyard. They will be sent to a commercial laboratory for analysis to determine if there are enough nutrients in the soil for the vines. In this area the following grape varieties are grown: Vignoles, Seyval Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, and Lemberger.

Soil coring tool and sample bags in the vineyard

Coring tool filled with soil sample after coring

Primarily I have been helping with bottling. Tomorrow we will bottle Vignoles. Bottling wine is a matter of keeping a multi-step process running smoothly. The wine, which has fermented over the winter and is now ready to drink, is stored in a very large tank. The wine is pumped from the tank through a series of filters to a bottling machine. The machine is automated. At one end a person loads the empty bottles onto a bottle-width conveyor. The conveyor takes the bottles to be filled with wine and corked. Next the machine places foil capsules over the mouth of the bottle and heat-shrinks them in place. Then the bottles are automatically labeled. Lastly, another person takes the bottles as they leave the conveyor, places them in cases, and stacks the cases on a wooden palette to be stored.

View from the vineyard on the rainy afternoon I took the soil samples

I am working at a vineyard and winery in the Finger Lakes

I'm dreaming of tropical beaches

Sun, 6 May 2007 15:42:54 -0400

6 May 2007
3.42pm
Keuka Lake, Finger Lakes region, New York State, USA

I'm dreaming of tropical beaches

I will be doing something and my mind will flip back to some moment that occurred in the past fifteen months.

Most often I have a vision of the beach on Malapascua Island in the Philippines: white sand, aqua water, ocean breeze, perfect temperature, low humidity, palm trees, and a dive shop a sixty second walk away.

The beach at Malapascua Island, Philippines, February 25, 2007.

Sometimes it has been to Krabi, to some weird happening going on after dark in town involving foreigners and locals and eating and drinking.

When I have gotten my hair cut I flash back to barber in the "American barbershop" in Mysore cutting my hair or the place in Makati, Manila, Philippines, or the one in Leh, Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir when each time I stopped there was never any power to run the clippers. There was that place in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India with the hand-powered clippers with the dull blades which gave me the most excruciating haircut.

I have visions of the steep valleys and high mountain peaks of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh.

All of the vendors near Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand on the street brightly lit by the tropical sun come back to me.

I get a thousand little flashes of the schools of shimmering fish under which I snorkeled near Ao Ton Sai near Krabi, Thailand.

New Smyrna Beach in Florida reminded me of the beach in Calangute, Goa, India, although the beach at New Smyrna is nicer. But the beach at Malapascua beats out the beach at New Smyrna.

The beach hut at Malapascua Island, Philippines, February 24, 2007.

I'm dreaming of tropical beaches

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months

Sat, 5 May 2007 18:53:32 -0400

Saturday, May 5, 2007
6.28pm
Keuka Lake, Finger Lakes Region, New York State, USA

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months. I've been to two weddings, seen relatives on both sides of my family, caught up with college and grad school friends.

I landed in New York City, and stayed with friends in Jersey City, New Jersey. I flew to Florida for a Disney World wedding. I flew to Rochester, New York, to stay with family in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. I drove for my niece's first birthday party in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Then I went to visit friends in Washington, DC. After that I went back to Jersey City again for a wedding in Connecticut. And just a week ago I flew back to Florida to visit family in New Smyrna Beach.

The weather is finally turning warm here. I watched the lake go from frozen to melted. Still, though, people talk about how warm it is and it still seems cold to me. It's about 65F or 70F during the day.

The Finger Lakes region is devastatingly beautiful and I keep finding myself looking around all the time. I really don't like to talk about it because we'll get more people coming here than there already are.

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months

Advice from the grave for a young traveler

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:15:16 -0400

20 April 2007
Penn Yan Public Library
Penn Yan, Finger Lakes, New York State, USA
6.15pm

Advice from the grave for a young traveler

On the road from Canandaigua to Gorham in the Finger Lakes in New York State, there is a graveyard at a crossroads. The crossroads intersect in the middle of rolling farmland. The graveyard is little more than a hillock with old oak trees surrounding it. The graves date from the the early nineteenth century, and the trees probably do too.

The gravestones are crumbling and some broken pieces are piled next to the trunk of a tree. One in particular stood out for me. Apparently people would sometimes choose a standard verse for the carver to put on the stone.

A gravestone of a certain Luther, son of David (and ?) Elizabeth, died Jan. 30, 1810 aged 2 years (10 months?) & 20 days, has this inscribed:

Behold young traveler as you pass by,

As you are now so once was I.

As I am now so you must be.

Prepare in youth to follow me.

Advice from the grave for a young traveler

SkypeIn is useful for the homeless traveller

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:01:03 -0400

Penn Yan Public Library
Penn Yan, Finger Lakes, New York State, USA
20 April 2007
5.01pm

SkypeIn is useful for the homeless traveller

Yesterday I set up a SkypeIn account for myself. SkypeIn is a Skype service in which I choose a U.S. phone number. The phone number is not associated with a mobile phone or landline. Callers dialing the number can speak to me if I am on a computer connected to the internet and I am logged onto the Skype application.

SkypeIn is a separate product from two other products offered by Skype. SkypeOut allows someone on a computer to call people in certain countries as if they were calling from a telephone exchange in that country. As a result the cost is low -- for many countries it costs US$0.021 (2.1 cents) per minute. The Skype product refers to two people at computers using the Skype application to talk, the use of which is free.

What is even better is that SkypeIn comes with a voicemail account. So when I am not logged into Skype (which is most of the time), the caller can leave a message for me in voicemail. I can check the voicemail whenever I am on a computer that has Skype running and has a broad-enough band on the internet.

As I am still a homeless traveller in the U.S., this service may still be useful to me. At the moment the prepaid T-Mobile SIM card on my mobile phone is out of the T-Mobile network range. So people could call me on the Skype number.

The real clincher is that calls may be forwarded from Skype to another number. So I can forward calls to the number of the house I am staying at or to my mobile phone if I know it will be in range. If the call is not answered Skype voicemail will pick up the call. Since I get a new SIM card and, consequently, a new mobile phone number each time I change countries, forwarding phone calls from a single U.S. phone number could be very useful for keeping in touch with people in the U.S.

This service is really useful as a U.S. number to leave for banks, credit card companies, and online retail companies. All of these entities want a U.S. phone number at which someone can be reached. Leaving an international number generally is not acceptable. If I had a SkypeIn number registered with all of my financial institutions when I was in India, I perhaps would have found out about outstanding credit card fraud more quickly when my wallet was stolen in New Delhi.

In short, the service lets someone have a permanent U.S. phone number that they can use, maintain, and check while they are in another country for long periods of time. It is usually not possible -- and it is almost always not economically sensible -- to maintain a U.S. landline or mobile phone if someone is going to be out of the country for more than three months. Maintaining an identity for financial and tax purposes in the U.S. is partly dependent upon maintaining a phone number. (The other major component of maintaining an identity in the U.S. is maintaining a physical address. This is a huge topic, and for the American traveller is confusing and even Kafka-esque.)

The price for this convenience is US$12 for three months or US$38 for twelve months. It can be set up, maintained, and paid for online from anywhere in the world. As of this writing, other countries for which SkypeIn numbers may be obtained are Australia, Brazil, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China), Japan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

SkypeIn is useful for the homeless traveller

Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain

Thu, 5 Apr 2007 12:58:30 -0400

Finger Lakes, New York State, USA
12.58pm

Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain

In three days I spent more money fixing my car than I spent on a month of travel in India.

This fact is difficult for my brain to reconcile.

In general I am still going through sticker shock in the U.S. When I converted Filipino pesos in Manila and realized I was spending over six dollars for a Wendy's combo meal, I thought perhaps there was a markup since it was overseas. But now I walk into a Wendy's here and see that it is the same price. I have been caught in a time warp for fourteen months and when I see the prices of ordinary consumer goods here I notice the inflation over that time because it jars with my idea of what prices ought to be. (Prices ought to be what they were fourteen months ago when I left!)

Maintaining an automobile is a big money drain in the U.S. (and in the rest of North America and Europe, I conject). In India, Thailand, and the Philippines most people don't maintain a car. This is not by choice - most cannot afford to own and maintain an automobile. However, because most cannot have automobiles, there are alternate modes of transportation. With a combination of bus and taxi you can get just about anywhere.

Most Americans probably do not want to admit the economic drain of the automobile or, more likely, do not even think about it. A car is considered a necessity. In many ways it is. We have built an infrastructure here where you really cannot go anywhere without an automobile; not only that, you need to own your own personal automobile. Granted, it is a big country with a lot of open space. But I am sure there is a silent minority (or perhaps majority) who are breaking their budget every month with the automobile loan and maintenance as one of the principal culprits.

The other zinger about maintaining an automobile is that repairs can be a crapshoot. You may go for months without a repair and then suddenly get zapped with several. Using busses and taxis are a more constant and plan-able expense. And if you don't have the money, you just don't make the trip -- and you don't have a fifteen thousand dollar white elephant sitting in your parking space.

In words of Ivan Illich and other critics of the development project, the technological transportation conundrum I just described is known as the "social construction of scarcity". Because of societal and economic decisions about transportation infrastructure, transportation becomes scarce and thus expensive.

I found that describing the cost of living in the U.S. to people I met in Asia usually went nowhere; there were few points of reference. The best I could do was say that even though some people in the U.S. made more money, houses, cars, food, and other costs were more expensive. This usually did not mean a lot to the person with whom I was speaking. And in the end, I was the one who could afford to visit their country and not vice versa, right?

Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain

Cold weather, hot weather on the US East Coast in March and April

Thu, 5 Apr 2007 12:10:01 -0400

Thursday April 5 2007
12.10pm
Finger Lakes, New York State, USA

Cold weather, hot weather on the US East Coast in March and April

It's 27F (-3C) outside and there were actually snowflakes - little snowdots, really - blowing onto the porch from the lake. The wind is whistling through the trees and a few minutes outside feels very cold.

I was in Washington, DC last weekend and it was 75F (24C) and sunny. The cherry blossoms were out in the metro area in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Last week just before I left the ice had finally melted off the lake here. The previous weekend I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the temperature reached almost 90F (32C). The previous week here the lake was frozen and eight inches of snow fell and the temperature was about 20F (-7C).

When it was snowing two weeks ago I checked and it was below freezing here and above freezing in Leh, Ladakh on the Tibetan plateau. Now I just checked and its 27F (-3C) and overcast with light snow here and 39F (4C) and clear and sunny in Leh.

It's really blowing out there and the water looks cold. It is cold - if I measured it it would be just above freezing.

Cold weather, hot weather on the US East Coast in March and April

Thoughts after two weeks in the U.S. and a year of travel

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 01:24:04 -0400

24 March 2007
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
12.27 am

Thoughts after two weeks in the U.S. and a year of travel

I have been to Jersey City, Florida, Upstate New York, and North Carolina in the two weeks and three days in the United States.

It has been crazy cold here. The lake in New York was frozen when I left two days ago. The weather was warming up but a couple of days before it was in the twenties and snowing and blowing.

My thoughts keep going back to Bangkok and Manila and the beaches of Thailand and the Philippines.

Two days ago I made the six hundred mile drive to North Carolina. I was struck by how spread out things are here. We covered six hundred miles in eleven hours, which is pretty amazing: how much ground can be covered on an expressway by car. But you have to spend some of the time driving, which requires alertness, unlike a bus or train. And we made a couple of wrong turns.

The past week in Upstate New York I have been getting my car running. In a space of a few days I have spent as much money on my car as I would travelling for a month in India. In my graduate school days I put myself through the debate about whether it was better not to have a car. But it really is difficult to get to places without a car in the U.S., and it can end up costing a bit of money.

For example, in the small town where I was staying there are no buses passing through to the neighboring towns. There is not one bus an hour, there is not one bus a day, there are no buses. Purportedly there would not be anyone to take the bus; people believe that they must have a car even if they are unemployed or don't earn much money.

I am also struck by the rows of stores selling me stuff. There are plazas full of huge stores: Target, Toys R Us, Lowe's, supermarkets.

On the one hand these things are great. You can find tons of different things. It feels like Christmas. On the other hand, can everyone here afford all this stuff?

There are many large houses, on large plots of land. They are furnished with new-looking furniture. Understand, the houses are bought with hefty mortgages. Perhaps the furniture is bought outright or on credit. No matter, they are impressive.

No wonder people I met in the countries I visited thought I was rich. But when I was there I didn't have any income, I didn't have any assets except a car in storage, a few years in a 401(k) retirement account, and the savings I was spending on the road. Was I rich? Did I have more freedom than they? Of course the answer in some way was yes to both questions.

In a drugstore in Cebu, Philippines I bought two bars of manufactured soap. Among a selection of tropical scents I chose green papaya. I really liked them. The second one was used up a few days ago. I have been keeping my eye out for something like it but I haven't seen anything. All this change in my surroundings and I am thinking of a bar of soap.

Thoughts after two weeks in the U.S. and a year of travel

Why are you so cold, U.S.?

Fri, 9 Mar 2007 16:02:22 -0500

Friday March 9 2007
Continental Flight 692
Newark to Orlando
2.25pm to 5.14pm
4.02pm

Why are you so cold, U.S.?

When I was landing in New York on Tuesday evening, I looked out the window and saw snow in the fields. I looked closer and saw what could have been a crust of ice on the Hudson. The Kuwaiti attendant announced that the temperature outside was minus seven degrees Centigrade. That's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

No, no, no, I thought, I've made a mistake, take me back, take me back to the lands of Tagore, Kipling, Jim Thompson, and Imelda Marcos. Take me back to where I can walk around in short-sleeves and sandals day and night and putting on a sweater doesn't cross my mind.

I was supposed to miss this winter; I was supposed to travel from February 2006 and not see cold weather until November of 1007. I was supposed to catch some early Spring weather of 50 or even 60 degrees Fahrenheit or more. That was my plan. Instead it is record-breaking low temperatures expected in January, but not March.

I took the Airtrain, the rail system for the John F Kennedy Airport terminals, to Howard Beach station. On the train I am wearing sandals, khakis, and a short-sleeve blue shirt; everyone else is wearing dark wool coats and hats.

There outside the turnstile I untie the stuffsack tied to the bottom of my travelpack. I pull out my running shoes and socks and put my sandals back in their place. I pull out the fleece jacket and imitation Hard Wear shell jacket that I have been hauling around from South Indian city to Thailand tropical beach to Philippine tropical beach. I bought the jacket in Leh, Ladakh, in August 2006 for fifteen dollars.

You have to pay to exit the Airtrain outside of the terminal. Clever scheme, eh? I pay seven dollars for a combination Airtrain and subway fare card. I go down the steps to the A train platform. I have just missed a train to Manhattan. It is bitter cold. It is dark now and the wind is blowing; I read on the web the next day that it was ten degrees Fahrenheit, zero degree with the wind chill. What a shock it would be for someone from one of these countries I've been in to land here in this weather for the first time!

I really need a hat and gloves but I don't feel like digging them out of the stuff sack. The A Train arrives and I go aboard. New Yorkers are not afraid of strangers and like to talk. I see one or two people talk to each other. We pass through Brooklyn stations with the name of the stop tiled on the wall. I get off at the Chambers Street exit and walk several blocks underground to the World Trade Center.

The World Trade Center is still a big hole in the ground. There are big signs for the PATH train to New Jersey. I take the PATH under the Hudson River for US$1.50. I get off at the first stop on the other side, Exchange Place. It is below freezing outside. Behind me is the South Manhattan skyline, minus the twin towers. Ahead I walk down familiar-looking, American streets. Without hat and gloves the five blocks to my friends seems too far.

Why are you so cold, U.S.?

An American in Kuwait who is not a contractor meets a Filipina worker

Tue, 6 Mar 2007 23:07:17 -0500

Kuwait Airport
March 6 2007
GMT 7:08 +0300 (7am Kuwait time)

An American in Kuwait who is not a contractor meets a Filipina worker

I could be taken here as another American contractor, just as in the Philippines I could be taken for another American man arrived to meet his Filipina bride whom he met online.

There are not too many people here at seven in the morning, but a large number of them appear to be American contractors. I have also spoken to a Filipina airline attendant and a Filipina McDonald's employee; now that I have been to the Philippines I will notice Filipinos everywhere. In fact I asked the McDonald's employee, "Are there are lot of Filipinos in Kuwait?" "There are a lot of Filipinos everywhere," came the reply.

An American in Kuwait who is not a contractor meets a Filipina worker

If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs

Tue, 6 Mar 2007 10:00:36 -0500

March 6 2007
3.00pm GMT (London)
London Heathrow Airport
Kuwait flight 101
departing from gate 13, Terminal 3

If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs

I didn't know that this flight was stopping in London. When I bought the ticket from Nat Travels on Khao San Road, the e-ticket receipt was so cryptic that I could not pick out the London stop. I didn't spend much time looking at the flight details online at the Kuwait Air site.

We flew directly over Iraq and Baghdad after leaving Kuwait City. At forty thousand feet in post-Hussein, post-UN inspections I guess flying over Iraq is de rigeur. It was cloudy and I was dozing so there is nothing to report.

At the beginning of my travels in February of 2006, Air France flew me over Iran in the night to get me to Mumbai. At the time Condi Rice was sounding belligerent. A year later the talk over Iran is still fiery. That February I looked through the clouds onto cold high desert dusted with snow. I wondered that there was so much fuss about this little country. I finally saw roads crossing through the desert; it looked as it would from a flight looking down on Nevada during the winter. At last I saw a small city lit up in the distance.

I have not been to London since I was a student here eighteen years ago. Going through security (again) for an hour in Heathrow and reboarding the same plane does not count as a visit to London. Being in London is not being in London without visiting the stores, the concert halls, the pubs, the streets, the Tube, and hearing those varying London accents.

Instead what I got was a tease. But it was a delicious and effective tease; I peered out through my little 777 window as the plane did a wing-tilt over central London. There were the bridges over the curving Thames; there was Parliament; there was Hyde Park. Hyde Park may be my favorite feature of London. The unmistakeable Serpentine dominates the scene. I found my Kensington neighborhood at the northern border of the Park and remembered walking across the Park to class at Picadilly Circus or hopping the Tube lines to get there in time.

There were some new additions since I was here: the Eye right smack-dab in the middle of things, and that funny stadium they built.

I suddenly realized as we pulled up to the gate that even on my short visit I might be able to score some Hob Nobs. These would be a pure nostalgia trip for me; we had as many Hob Nobs as we wanted every Sunday night at our hotel near Queensway after Mass. They were served with whole, non-homogenized milk, and dipping the sweet, chocolatey cookies (biscuits!) in the milkfat floating on the surface was pure heaven.

It turned out that not only was I allowed to disembark from the plane, I was required. Everyone disembarked and then went on a ten-minute plus walk through Heathrow with carry-ons to go through Heathrow's security. By the time I passed a woman was holding up a sign saying "Final Call Kuwait 101".

She was just holding up the sign to keep people from dawdling in the huge duty-free area that I entered next. I ducked into the first shop -- Score! -- chocolate Hob Nobs. I picked up two small cans at US$3.50 each. I'll have to pick up some whole milk in Jersey City and share them with my friends there.

When I got back to the gate, I went through another security checkpoint. Of course the plane was not boarding -- the "Final Call" sign was exposed as a ploy. After a while we reboarded to the same seats we were in when we landed.

The flight is another seven hours to New York. It will be early March and I am in sandals and short-sleeves. I'll decide after I'm in the cold if I want to dig out my running shoes and fleece jacket.

If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs

The latest update about returning to the U.S. has been sent and posted

Mon, 5 Mar 2007 09:52:25 -0500

The latest update about returning to the U.S. has been sent and posted

The latest update has been emailed to those of you on the list and posted here:

Update 19: Returning to the U.S after one year; a milestone in my travels

The latest update about returning to the U.S. has been sent and posted

Little travel mistakes when leaving the Philippines

Sat, 3 Mar 2007 10:13:25 -0500

Ninoy Aquino International Airport
Gate 9, Cebu Pacific Flight 5J 931 Manila to Bangkok
Manila, Philippines

Little travel mistakes when leaving the Philippines

There is such thing as a bad day of travel. The clincher a few moments ago was that I realized that I had lost a small stash of U.S. bills that I had kept in my passport pouch. I pulled out my passport several times today to look at my airline tickets. The passport and e-tickets are in one ziplock bag; the bills were in another; I must have inadvertently pulled out the bag with the bills with the bag with the passport and tickets; this could have happened in the internet cafe or the taxi.

Generally I make little "mistakes" like this when I am tired. "Mistakes" are when I misplace or drop something, or leave my daypack pocket unzipped, or leave an extra bag of snacks behind at a store. When I'm tired I do this sort of thing constantly, which is why it helps me so much to get some rest while I'm travelling and try to plan rest into my travels. These little mistakes can turn into really unpleasant situations where one is missing one's passport or airline tickets or money. More often I cannot find something that I just purchased or some other little inconvenience. Every time I pull one of these on myself I feel like I have had a tiny failure and that I ought to have better concentration.

I was distracted by the taxi driver. I tried to save some money by not taking a taxi from downtown Manila to Ninoy Aquino International airport during rush hour. This is possible by taking the elevated train to the last station of Baclaran and then getting a taxi from there. You pass above all stopped traffic below. You can take a pedicab to the domestic airport -- it is very close -- or a regular taxi to the international airport which is several kilometers away.

It was raining and the taxi driver took me for a stooge. I asked him to turn his meter on -- he wouldn't, which should have been a tipoff. He said we should settle on a price. How much? I asked. He wanted me to name a price but he finally said, a hundred U.S. dollars. I just laughed. Perhaps I should have gotten out there. But it was raining outside and I had boarded on a busy street. He went down to twenty dollars and then ten. I finally told him I'd give him five dollars. It was almost as much as I had paid for a taxi from the international airport to downtown when I had arrived in Manila -- it was about eight or nine dollars. So I did not save much money in the end. But then at this point of course I just wanted to get to the airport and I am not a hard-headed enough traveller to change taxis and get the best price.

Mixed with all of this is a general sadness I feel at reaching the end of my travels. I will fly to the U.S. on Tuesday morning. I have really liked the Philippines. The parts I have seen are beautiful and I can tell there are many other beautiful parts left to find. The dissonant tone in the beauty of the Philippines is that so many people here don't have much money, from what I can tell. Things are not that cheap here -- I think the Philippines has been battered by inflation until recently -- and compounding that unemployment seems to be high. There is the flight of young people from the countryside to the cities to look for work, which I also saw in India and Thailand. So it is a beautiful place but the economy is not as it should be. This makes me sad when I meet people who will not get what they want: money; to go to another country; to get married and have a stable family life.

Little travel mistakes when leaving the Philippines

I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines, pondering coral

Thu, 1 Mar 2007 04:33:37 -0500

I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines, pondering coral

I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines; at least, I'm in the area people generally refer to as Puerto Galera. Puerto Galera itself is just a port, as the name says, where one disembarks and goes to other places. The other places are beaches for the typical tourist traveling from Manila.

I took the SiCat bus from Manila to Balangas. At Balangas I disembarked at the ferry terminal and took a small outrigger called the Blue Penguin 1 to Sabang, a one hour ride across the water. The cost of bus and boat were 600 pesos. It leaves from Citystate Tower Hotel on Mabini Street in Manila promptly at 8.00 am. You can buy tickets the same morning.

I had been told that Sabang was very touristy. Most people had told me not to stay there but a couple of people had said yes, it was not that bad.

But from the boat Sabang and Small La Laguna Beach and Big La Laguna beach just looked like resorts piled on top of resorts and stacked up the hills. The beach itself was a tiny strip of sand not worth lounging on. Against the beach was concrete wall holding back bar after girlie bar.

So I stayed on the boat and let it take me to Puerto Galera. The shoreline actually looked more attractive the longer I traveled. There is some development but also empty beaches on small islands forming a harbor.

At Puerto Galera I caught a tricycle motorcycle taxi. It took me to White Beach. White Beach is two steps better than Sabang. It still has many hotels but the beach is wider and the scene is not as crowded and is more subdued. It looks like a popular place for Filipinos to go on weekends and Holy Week.

I rejected the beach and had the driver take me to Aninuin Beach a few minutes further. This place is much more pleasant, with only a few resorts. First I checked out Aninuin Beach Resort, which is listed in Southeast Asia on a shoestring. But they have knocked down the huts listed in the guidebook, and are in the middle of building a small hotel. The rooms were 2500 pesos a night, so I passed on that.

Contrary to what the tricycle driver told me, there were a few other, less expensive places to stay on Aninuin Beach. (He was gunning to put me in the first hotel on White Beach.) I found a decent place called Tamaraw Resort, which has both air-conditioned huts and hotel rooms for 1500 pesos each.

The place is right on the beach, and the beach is quiet. If I really want to I can walk to restaurants and dive shops on White Beach, or take a tricycle taxi for about fifty pesos to Puerto Galera or another fifty pesos to Sabang.

This place is pleasant enough, but nothing like the white sand paradise I found at Malapascua Island. This is a place where Filipinos get away on the weekends from the huge city of Manila. As such it appeals a lot to the common denominator, such as average food, snorkeling trips to broken coral, and rides on inflated torpedos behind runabouts on the shoreline.

I went on a snorkeling trip today and it was heartbreaking compared to my dives off of Malapascua Island, Philippines and my snorkeling on the small islands near Railay Beach, Thailand. The "Coral Garden" is a "Coral Graveyard" of broken coral from hundreds of snorkeling boat anchors and hundreds of tourists paddling around in life jackets and standing on the coral. The handful of fish were diverse but were paltry compared to the huge schools of fish dancing a ballet around me near Railay. The coral was broken and gray compared to the colorful stuff near Malapascua. At least they keep bringing the life-jacketed tourists to the same patch of coral over and over again, I concluded. Maybe it limits the damage to other places. (There are supposed to be good dive sites near Puerto Galera.)

It is a taste of another slice of life, and perhaps an incentive for conservation and preservation: perhaps I should not be so cynical and we still need to save the planet from ourselves.

I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines, pondering coral