moving forward

Let’s start with a little gossip: The Philippines has not resumed domestic tourism even until now (05.07). In fact, what we’re saying here: you can’t travel within the country for purposes other than to leave the country for your home country. THAT’S IT and with great difficulty. This comes in response to the many questions you’ve sent :). How many don’t dream of reaching El Nido or Coron and how many of them wouldn’t give anything for these fantastically beautiful areas to be theirs, just for a minute?
Many pay a small fortune for private tours that take them on detours or on the opposite side to be able to get to Small Lagoon before everyone else, to Baracuda Lake to be first or to whatever wreck of in Coron and not get smushed like sardines with others.
Well, we’re not even 200 kilometers away and we can’t get to see them. It’s ok, we’ve seen them a few times in life and we’re not going to let the frustration get to us (even if that was one of the reasons why we decided to stay a little longer… how naïve we were, weren’t we?:) ) but we cannot fail to notice, beyond any local decision, good or bad, beyond any grounded or unfounded fear, beyond any existing or non-existent infrastructure, that the inertia in which some places in Palawan had entered (and not only) was suddenly and violently interrupted.

Stories are meant to circulate to keep them alive. The tourist places that started last year to pull their heads out of the pile must be kept burning so that they still exist… At the risk of repeating myself, I strongly believe that certain places have simply been deleted from the map and if tourism will return (for the sake of optimists), it will be at a beginner level. By the time we get to Romania, we will have come from a place that many hope to reach, when “this madness will end”.
Unfortunately, the place you want to go to is not the same as the place you wanted to get to before… And this time we don’t accept the argument that it’s better this way, without tourists or that now the sky has cleared, the waters have filled with fish and the corals have started to recover. What made the place attractive is gone, what made you experiment and feel ceased to exist, what made you want to come back is over.

In Port Barton, many have become aware that they will be in January 2021 (mega optimistically speaking) where they were 5 years ago. Most of them have done the tabula rasa and are starting to think of ways to survive this moment, even if it means selling Pancit Canton for many years to come.
Others have sold or are trying to sell their businesses and many others are broke. The pandemic caught them right when they were making the leap to the second phase of development: those who had no business were now caught trying to make one, those who had a restaurant were surprised to make another one, those who had a hotel opened a restaurant and so on. Many speculate on the despair of others and so many who are waiting for even more despair to gather. Small businesses have gone down the drain, family businesses are close to collapse, smiles have long been wiped off everyone’s faces and I don’t think that’s specific to a place but it’s happening all over the world. Most likely hostels will no longer exist in the form that made them so attractive, decent hotels, if they want to exist, will have to comply with the new regulations in order to re-enter and be competitive on the market while the big hotels will probably be the ones that will manage to survive through consistency, services, quality and most importantly, by capital. And that’s in conjunction with the fact that the Philippines has always taken from the overflowing cup of others.I sincerely doubt that there will still be backpackers who will want to stay in a 4 or 5-star hotel as I doubt that there will be people who do not ask that the resort they will stay at offering them the safest experience possible, from beginning to end. And, with all due respect to the place that hosted us for two years, but the Philippines is going to have to work hard for that…

The plan is to think about the “Departure Plan” only after July 15th and Matei suggested that until then I try not to worry, to enjoy what’s around me, and to absorb everything as if nothing was happening. I cannot overcome the fact that in the meantime The Palawan has registered several more cases and that, as it happens elsewhere, these places have been isolated together with others who want to isolate themselves preventively.
That’s what we found out, the very day we renewed our visa that we have to go back because we’re going back into lockdown (it’s right that we interpreted everything as quarantine and that we’ll have to stay in this house if we’re allowed to enter the village, as not seldom it has happened to others). It was hard for me to admit that there are people who want to leave for weeks or maybe months and do not succeed because their flights are canceled, because they lose the connection that connects the only ferry (2GO) to the capital and then to the only company that has shown confidence (at least in the Philippines) throughout this period, namely Qatar Airways. I also find it difficult to accept, internalize, and act accordingly on the inconsistency of the information we receive. The inconsistency of statements, the speed with which things change. Literally a week after a case or two is declared in an area, it is 99% possibility that the area will close without a prior announcement and the thought of sitting with your luggage packed and being ready to leave at any time, terrorizes me. In conjunction with the fact that we are now avoiding Dengue and the fever that could radically change our plans…

In the meantime we bought two large suitcases to make it easy for us to carry everything we have with us, the initial plan being that we will take only the bare necessities the rest being sent later by courier to another future address. We gave up the idea, we want everything with us (even if there isn’t much) but clearly we do not want to drag, make it difficult, and rely on others. We’ll start “migrating” towards Manila probably around August 15th, hoping that by then the flights will stabilize. We still don’t know if we’ll get a plane ticket from Puerto Princesa directly to Bucharest or if we’ll go to Manila by ferry (or plane) and then book our plane tickets home. We’ll see…

Many say that it would be good to stay here, that nothing forces us to return, that at least we have nature, and warm, and sun, and moments of silence. It’s been like this up to a point, now, although things have relaxed, the situation is not at all compatible with the things we want, the things we can accept and the things we believe in. We know that we will not find Paradise once we arrive in Romania, we know that it will be difficult and we also know that we will wake up in the middle of the night without hearing crickets or frogs around us. We’re probably going to meet a different kind of scared people and a new environment that we have to adapt to.

I have to admit that what I’ve seen all this time, here and there, is something that made me sad and has me thinking a lot. I can’t help but notice how the people I knew have changed in a way and I can’t help but notice that we’re living, now more than ever, immersed in errors.
Without asking questions and thinking about ourselves. We’re a messed-up machine, with the confused and dusty poles that have been put in quickly and need to be cleaned even faster. We should find ourselves, before it’s too late, logic and reason, compassion, common sense, and understanding. We should understand that we are what we want to be and that we should never become what others want us to be. Let us be more careful about what we accept with ease and more cautious with what we wish for ourselves but especially for others. Let’s do more research, think more, do more. Let’s be less judicious, less arrogant, and less intrusive. Let’s listen more carefully to what the voice that screams vehemently at each other says about us. Let’s pay more attention to what we’re desensitizing now and make time for ourselves and our ideas. Let’s go deeper and be less superficial…

To be continued