The fantasy that almost existed

Disclaimer: this is an article charged with maybe too many personal opinions that may fall under error. Sprinkled here and there with anger, sadness, despondency, but in the end, with hope. A subjective narrative of the state of fact and a foray in our lives on Filipino land in a sensitive and much personal perspective of the reality we live…

We decided to move from Romania because the experiences we had outside it, in the moments we traveled, were in line with what we wanted our path to be. Yes, maybe Romania didn’t offer us the best legal support and the most comfortable living. Maybe we felt that we were paying too much for what we were offered, maybe Bucharest is too busy, the laws too strict and too many, the walls too cold and the buildings too gray. But it was something we grew up with, got used to, and dealt with. Fully aware that we will miss the places we’ve seen so far, and more so, those we have yet to see. Aware of the fact that we will miss our families and friends, chats, and the known, we wanted to reach for a simpler life, more connected to what we are and what we felt. A lot of people said our decision is selfish, but how else is a decision you make FOR YOURSELF if not selfish.

I think I’ve mentioned before that we chose the Philippines out of a jar that included Thailand and Vietnam, our choice coming down to the ease of getting and extending our visa, and all the way to the possibility of building a business. The fact English was spoken everywhere and that we had someone we could trust to help us with absolutely everything, the fantastic landscapes and the slight proximity to other Asian areas (older crushes) made us move to Palawan, an island with no major seismic danger, no devastating tsunamis, compact, with an international airport (so to speak) and views that make it top 10 for several years now. We chose Port Barton specifically because we wanted to live in a tourist area that wasn’t too crowded like his friend El Nido, with access to food and restaurants, a variety we didn’t discover years on end, not even in Manila (I’ve said countless times that being a vegetarian in the Philippines is a great challenge), with access to the beach (or nearby beaches if not the one in the village), and basically something with a touristic potential with everything that entails (transportation to wherever you need to go, the possibility of renting a car, a place to live in, etc.)

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Because we came here 3-4 years in a row, we got to see it’s weakness from the beginning. At least the obvious ones 🙂 We’ve clearly seen this from a tourist’s perspective (albeit one a hurry at times, but a tourist nonetheless), but we hoped, and believed that no challenge would be too great, no problem would be unfixable, that everything is possible if you want it and hope for it. We were also aware of the fact that we would be giving up a lot by coming here, but that we would fill that void with other things till our cup overfloweth. The comfort of a couch, the painstakingly slow internet, the lack of water pressure, or, at times, even hot water. The cultural distancing and the distance literally speaking. All of these would be covered by other things. New and exciting ones.

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I thought that good intention, the power of example, argumentation, or logic are universal and perceptible languages to everyone. On the spot, the expat community is “a community” just because there is no other word to encapsulate it while the locals are torn from the times of machetes, rice fields, and (at times) fish in the ocean.

The environment created by expats is of extraordinary competition and non-assumption. All those who come are likely to take your bread from your mouth, while all those who have no intention of investing (in anything, the size of the business not important being ) are kept at a regular distance, but close enough. Because it’s impossible just to want to stay and enjoy what’s around you. You have to have a hidden thought and you don’t share it all the time. Just like everybody else does, that’s the only way you know 🙂 And the truth is, at some point, the pressure and the competition are felt. You come to think it’s been too long and you haven’t done anything. That everything you’re trying to do doesn’t work your way. Like whatever you do, it has to be more special than what was done before. That’s while you’re acclaimed, supported, encouraged, “acclaimed,” “supported” and “encouraged” on the sidelines by… everyone in the community.

As far as we are concerned, our plans have been significantly reduced to the point where we have stated, after almost a year, that we cannot spend our lives (or at least the next and most important 5 years) correcting mistakes, trying unsuccessfully to understand, alert every second that something fatal will happen and tear down what we want to build. Starting over every day with problems that should have been solved the day before. Surrounded permanently by insecurities, childishness, absurdity, carelessness, misunderstanding… Surrounded by laws that change from one season to another, by people who misunderstand the letters of the law and pass it on as they interpret it or understand it well and transfer it just so you burn a little … or more. We’ve narrowed it down where we’ve decided that whatever we’re going to do from here on out it’s an outsourced process, given to a team in the capital to manage the problems at the scene. Even so, the problems have not ceased to appear from the very beginning and we have reduced everything again to the point where … the pandemic came and I laughed relieved that the dragging along and anticipation were auspicious.

This stage has come, with a price we can’t measure yet, with answers and solutions for many problems. We realized that:

• privacy is something that needs to be protected and a couple’s privacy is the most important thing for them to have a chance to work. Our luck was not only that we knew that and we decided to put our privacy into play precisely because we have the tools to handle and control it but because we are a strong couple for so many years. We decided to get it back and keep it to ourselves.
• the quality of life that I sought leaving Romania has not improved significantly in this place. And during the quarantine, it was downright horrible. Truth be told, with it, now, came a pile of anxieties, the lack of prospects for the future, or the distance, but the often departures we’ve made outside the Philippines have made us shift our focus on other things and lose sight of the problems on the ground. In Palawan, there is only one decent place to get supplies, Puerto Princesa and this place is at hand and targeted by every … a natural or legal person, an inhabitant of the island. That means every restaurant that has a modicum of decency will be stocked from decent places. And every man with a modicum of decency over what he ingests will supply himself… all from the same places. Because the purchasing and storage power of restaurants is infinite compared to that of a person… like us, let’s say, resulting in the fact that everything is bought and that nothing remains. This combined with the fact that no supermarket chain make a connexion between demand and supply… you tell me what’s going on. Yes, the same chain of events. The same result you can get when you travel 400 km round trip and come back or not with something in your bag. A chain of events that we’ve decided to interrupt. And even if Matei had strong arguments to argue that our lives have improved, I stick to the statement at the beginning of the sentence: I don’t think it has improved significantly. Or maybe only certain shortcomings have come to weigh more for me than the things I came and met them for on the spot.
• we need to live close to an international airport that allows us a direct connection to any city in Europe. No broken ferries, no connections you can’t rely on, no haggling, no discussion. We must stay close to an international airport that we know we can access anytime, with conventional means of transport, quickly, at any time!
• the self-sustainable life that we hoped we would put into practice here not only is it a damn complicated project but it’s something I don’t think we can … support. Yes, I don’t think we can sustain a self-sustaining life in the truest sense of the word. We have managed to be sustainable in a society-mediated setting, but voluntarily giving up the things we value in society is something we are not yet prepared to face… I do, however, have a feeling that we’re going to get back to this topic by the end of our lives 🙂
• we need fresh and diverse produce. A market, a supermarket, a anything where we can get constantly, safely, and quality supplies. We need access to sports, massages, spas, salons. We want to be close to civilization but as far as possible so that we can enjoy tranquility and nature without giving up the tropical climate and everything it brings.
• because everything will revolve online, we need a stable internet connection. The internet joke that we had so far not only made us anxious and annoyed us to the fullest but made us lose contracts, opportunities, projects, and, most importantly, TIME. And as little as we like that we’re increasingly connected to the virtual environment, it’s a reality we can no longer deny. If you are not online (mail, blog, social media, Whatsapp, Telegram, Facetime, you name it) you do not exist. We can’t wait an entire day (ONE DAY!) to send a mail of 100kb, we can’t wait a day to buy two plane tickets, we can’t wait an entire day to get an SMS from a bank, we can’t wait an entire day to upload a video on IGTV, and we can’t say goodbye to anything YouTube related, for example. Maybe you’d like to ask us if we didn’t know that in the first place? Yes, we did. But we hoped that in a short space of time (due to tourism that had started to grow in the area) someone would come up with an idea created (we ourselves tried to intervene) to bring fast internet to the area. Not only was the project in a distant plan but now… Well, now, I don’t think it exists at all.
• we don’t want to be part of such small communities any longer, where everyone knows everyone, where the doors if they are not closed they can be opened with ease, where we are forced to socialize just so we don’t look “weird” weirder than culturally different or the way of approaching some things can create it.
•  we need a fast and safe courier system. That’s done directly and that we can control. No intervention, no someone who knows someone, no favors, no delays, carelessness, poor management, or prioritization. To get an idea, all packages are collected in Manila by the only person we entirely trust and can manage their delivery to us. From there they are sent through LBC (a top-notch service we never had issues with, which is rare) to then have one of following things happen: either the package is collected by someone who can send it with a van to Port Barton, either it’s picked up by someone who is in Puerto Princesa and is coming to Port Barton, or we go ourselves and pick it up personally. The last option is also the one we choose almost every time because the vans tend to disappear into nothingness, sometimes. To have accidents. To be withdrawn to the garage. Let the stupidest and most absurd things happen. In October 2019 we ordered from China an ATV that caught the Chinese New Year, the Chinese pandemic, and then got stuck for months in Manila (that’s because the lockdown in Manila was a total one). When do you think we got it?… In June! It doesn’t even matter that we found out later that it could have been delivered earlier, it doesn’t matter why it didn’t happen. The important thing is that you can’t hold your breath and that things like that can (have and have had) major repercussions on a business, for example. And what’s more important is they have no real chance of resolution, no horizon of “better,” no hope that it could be otherwise. Shall I tell you about Matei’s phone? (a more special one, to be honest, but let’s not go into too many technical details:) ) which was found in Manila, ordered from a site the size of Emag, paid in advance and we received another product? Advance paid and to this day unrefunded? Without any explanation beforehand and no solution? No answer on the phone for months. It was easier for someone to order the product from Singapore and send it to Manila (then take the delivery thread above). Anyway, you get the point, we’re in an endless vortex of absurd, hilarious, unprecedented events that put your nerves and patience to the test. 

“We’re too old for this,” I say always and “too young” to drown our days in finding explanations and solutions. As much patience as we’ve found in us during this period, as little as we can give it. As much as we try to understand, we have so little desire to dedicate our lives to projects that can fail at any time. Of course, the things we learned here could not have been learned otherwise, except by trying. And we strongly believe that this is the only and best way to answer your questions.

If we hadn’t stayed during the pandemic in the Philippines we would most likely have been among those who filled walls, feeds and blogs, nostalgic for palm trees and sunsets, mangoes, and bananas. We understand you perfectly! This time has helped us realize we don’t want to stay here anymore. We want to have days whose meaning is not to satisfy basic needs (what we eat, where, how), to give ourselves the freedom to think more about ourselves, the quality of life we have and last but not least, the dream for which we left on this journey. We also realized that “hope” like “fear” is a consuming feeling, like any feeling without explanation and horizons that could be understood in concise words, like any inexplicable thing and felt from the depths of being.

We decided to protect our family, our connection, our dream, and our lives. To stop clinging to hope. Stop waiting for IT to happen (this reflexive that annoys any man with a minimum sense of control). Just stop waiting altogether… Stop connecting to projects, people, and situations. To be flexible and most importantly, mobile. To not anchor ourselves and build stone castles to hold us back, so we can say “no,” so we can say “goodbye,” so we can say “nice to meet you”, so we can say “thank you” or “sorry”.

Thank you the Philippines for everything you’ve given us so far, thank you for being our home for almost two years. I’m sorry we didn’t get to understand you, and I’m sorry if I judged you too harshly. We may never understand anything that happens to you, but we strongly believe that you are no worse than others. We were just too unprepared to deal with you.

As for us, we’ll move on once the flight situation stabilizes and once we’ve settled things in Port Barton. We have a house to hand over, things to sell, luggage to prepare. We have to breathe and say goodbye calmly and respectfully.We stayed too long to run out the window and too little to enjoy, in the end, what’s around us. I’ve said before that the Philippines is like an untamed island girl with long hair and a child’s smile. It’s like a love relationship that you know won’t work (that’s why you meet so many strangers who sit here and snore through their teeth. Who decide to leave and then return enchanted by its wilderness). I don’t know if this will be our case, but we understand the phenomenon 🙂

We will not move back to Romania but we will come back for a while. We miss our parents, our friends, things we know. Old food, the Romanian language. We even miss the feeling that in a short time we’ll want back to the sun and warmth. We miss starting over, differently. We’re ready to take our dream from where we left it, more knowledgeable and more committed. To be continued…