OUR 1 Year story in the Philippines

We were woken up by a smell of gas combined with burned plastic at 3 am. We take the flashlight, agree to not touch anything and investigate everything from inside (not to panic, but we have 2 Petrol Gasul gas tanks nearby). Anywho, the coast is clear! We step outside and there’s no sign of smoke. Our eyes are burning like crazy, our throats are dry and our mouths feel like we just ate a lemon. We go back to sleep and when we wake up we can only think… “Woah, that was so strange! What the hell was that?!”…

A few weeks later we encounter the smell in broad daylight. An expat that was a resident of the area for longer puts his hand to his nose, looks left and right and wonders what in the world scared the stink badger… He carries on with a long story about them… their courage… We rewind and add it to our list of experiences. We turn the page… It’s been a year since we lived in Port Barton, an ex fisherman’s village, nearly 200 km away from Puerto Princesa, in Palawan. A child dreaming to be El Nido, but will never admit it, abused by his older brother which admits the fact that as an adult, he will become Boracay. (Yes, San Vicente, it’s you we’re talking about 🙂 ).

We’re still starstruck by the fact that we came prepared for only 12 hours of electricity and how, in the energy of the moment, we thought we could carry a whole YouTube series…
What a joke! On year later of around the clock electricity, YouTube is still a dream, Netflix is a luxury, while Social Media is an effort. Thousands of people connected to a single GSM!!! antenna… you draw your own conclusions.

When it comes to Port Barton, the experiences split into 2 categories: the ones with tourists (and here we could split it into those that come for a day, or two or a month, but we don’t want to over complicate things) and those with expats (who live here for a year, 2, 10, 30, who have or don’t have business in the area, married, with children, etc.).
What we lived as tourists for 4 years cannot compare with the year we lived here as residents. The plethora of feelings is hard to put into words but we will make a common effort to write it in as much detail as we can, good or bad.

Living in the moment is an extraordinary concept when you look at people doing it. You almost wish you’d do it yourself. No, actually, let’s be honest… you do wish it! The problem is you can’t and never will. Same as they will never be able to transform the bukas (tomorrow) into a certainty. If you’re used to: paying mortgage, rent, going to regular checkups at your doctor’s office, have responsibilities of any kind, knowing that if you ain’t got it, no one will give it to you, earning, spending, living for money, having a schedule of any kind, get preoccupied, getting your car out of the snow, paying parking tickets, state taxes, wishing to, you’ll never get into your head that you could, from now on, live your life in a hammock between 2 palm trees.
We definitely couldn’t, especially since we didn’t want to let go of anything the modern world was offering us. Or better said, we couldn’t same as we will never be unkempt just because here we can, careless just because here we can or mean, just because there’d be people to be mean to here.

The idea of community we left with from Romania was rapidly shattered. We encountered here a society full of its stereotypes, in concentrated form. We share 2 streets with cheesepares, lucky people, rich kids, castaways, lovers, hustlers, visionaries, losers, investors, workers, ex successful corporate people, dreamers, lost ones, addicts, liars, shadows… all curious, unsure of themselves and all of them very eager to see the other one fail just a little.

We sleep better than ever on a cheap mattress and 3 pesos worth of pillows that never heard of memory foam or silver ions. I never thought I’d be bothered by cats. Actually, I never thought cats could be so annoying! Why are you fightiiiing? What’s your beef?

Port Barton has sewage problems as big as the dog problem. Another similarity, not that anyone would admit it. Would you still come here if I told you that all of the sewage goes into the gulf and that most dogs have skin diseases? That even though all dogs have an owner, only the pigs and the carabao are enclosed? If I told you that still, this place is a paradise, would you think I was bipolar? :))

Told ya, can’t look at this place with a tourist’s eye anymore. The easiness and slowness everyone comes here for is beautiful to live only when you know you have a plane ticket out of here. Funny though how easy we could adapt even in spite of all this. We don’t go banging our heads against a wall every time we’re lacking an avocado, mangos, tomatoes or papaya. We live seasonally and sometimes we long after the little shop on the corner that has it all and the only problem we had – who is going downstairs to satisfy the cravings. The lack of big ad panels, any kind of ads, the ugliness of the packaging and the products themselves makes us not have cravings anymore… commercial cravings.
The chocolate, the bagel, the pastries, the cake shop, the mall….all magically disappeared.

Things that would take minutes in Romania take hours, days or even months here. Resources are limited for everyone and Puerto Princesa has become too small to accommodate so many lookie-loos for better lives. The restaurants in Port Barton almost deplete all supermarkets of resources, the Philipinos are in over their heads, while locally, all of them are friends, everyone wants to help yet no one dares to admit they wouldn’t give the other a grain of rice. The place is too small for public feuds. 🙂

Alcohol, meat, rice, religion or any other thing consumed in excess gets its fingerprint on each and every person. This is how it has come to someone picking up a bolo(maceta) and be a vigilante every once in a while, how cancer and obesity rates have grown out of proportion, while religion has the correct answer for everything else happening.
It seems like Filipinos don’t ask too many questions and it also seems like they don’t have a lot of needs. Why would there be any tomorrow for people that have lived abundantly? How could the sea run out of fish? How could there be no more fruit in the trees starting tomorrow? They don’t need supplies, they don’t need to worry about what winter will bring. They are being tried by earthquakes and tsunamis but no calamity has irreversibly ruined their lives… until now, when they met us 🙂

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We were absolutely terrified by the rainy season. We imagined it being full of floods, tsunamis, canceled fights, strong winds, huge waves. In reality, the rainy season has been more pleasant than peak season. We had the internet to ourselves, the streets as well, and the rain was seldom but on schedule. We didn’t have mangos and few restaurants were open. And we didn’t have the certainty that the skies wouldn’t break if we leave for a long trip.

We live in the prettiest house in Port Barton — house we didn’t even want to rent at first arrogantly thinking we’ll find something better. Only 2 feet away, in the same yard live the people that rented us the house. A single mother of 4, the second Filipino met this year that I can rely on.

We are given the following data: the withdrawal ATM limit is 50.000 pesos per day and you need to withdraw 100.000. You have a local card from the first Filipino you can rely on. The money is sitting in an account in Romania. The ATM is in Puerto Princesa (180 km away) and you don’t want to pay commission. The ATM doesn’t always work and the internet connection is unstable. You want to do everything in 2 days with minimum resources. What do you do?

Our families are afraid we’re isolated and unhappy. That we’re wasting our time among strangers. That we were better off in Romania, that we could’ve done what we wanted in our home country as well. That we’re losing years of our life, that we’re missing Christmases and Easters to celebrate together, that we’re losing more modern friendships and opportunities. That we’ll end up old and alone, that we ask to many questions and that we contemplate too much about life. That we should go back and take an honest corporate job, that we should only worry about one thing moving forward… our retirement plan. They’re afraid that the language we started learning here about ourselves will soon become incomprehensible to them. We are the prisoners of our own questions and explorations. Prisoners to knowledge and not a lot of regrets. “What if” is a question we answered. We couldn’t have stayed in Bucharest wondering what our life would’ve been like if we had the courage to live in Asia. At the pinnacle of that question mark, there’s a black cloud and the disappointment that life on another continent can’t be as sunny as we envisioned it between 4 concrete walls.

What we imagined does certainly not exist! And it very well may be that it doesn’t exist anywhere the same as you could search in hope of finding it or stop where you like what you’ve found. We also realized we’re not sociable, we just successfully mimic it, that we can go on with our lives surrounded by almost no people at all, that we miss the evenings spent having deep conversations with people that might’ve shared our dreams or not. Although we are lacking, we don’t need anything. We don’t miss the city abundance although we prefer it for its comfort.

Generalizing is harmful to your health though I believe that among the people of Port Barton (and not only) we will always be seen as bags of money no matter how many fiestas you attend every week. You will always be a foreigner no matter how many years ago you married a Filipina. You will always have the means to provide no matter how low on liquidities you may be. You will always be suspected of the worst intentions and you will take with a grain of salt anything you’ve been told.

Things are pretty volatile in the village and you’ll always wonder if #ItsMoreFunInThePhilippines when you see police armed to their socks on the beach. Laws are changing, sanctions are being applied, discrimination is being made, things are being stalled, canceled, stonewalled. As would be normal when things that are to remain still are being shaken 🙂

The conclusion of this year is that we’ve reached no conclusion. We let things go over our heads without fighting them. We’ve learned a lot, we discovered a ton of new stuff about ourselves. The (sometimes hurtful) beauty of it is that you can’t escape yourself here. You stand up to yourself or give in to yourself. Shall we give it another go? :)) Stay tuned!