I knew nothing of the Philippines before arriving here and I’m happy to report I discovered many pleasant surprises. The biggest one would be everyone speaks English. Ok, maybe not everyone, but even in small villages most locals can more or less communicate in English. They all learn English from kindergarten but my guess is it’s probably because TV and movies are in English and not dubbed. Even those that don’t are helpful and nice to me for no apparent reason. What a difference from China!!!
One of the colorful jeepney’s
Manila reminded me of Tel Aviv but once you leave it, it’s a different country and definitely a third world one. Getting around is quite difficult, there are no real bus schedules and the king of the roads are the Jeepney’s, which actually have their own wiki. They started out as old U.S jeeps but today some have progressed to modern small trucks. They are decorated with colorful art and sometimes come with massive loud speakers and really lousy music.
Some tricycles, not yet crammed with people.
Their little brother is the tricycle, the local adaptation of a tuk tuk, but here it’s simply a motorbike (or bicycle) which has a cart attached to its side. I was crammed in the tiny cart with 4 other people and two others were siting on the back of the motorbike, one of the sitting on a folded wooden chair attached to the back!
A nude sculptor of Maria Magdalena in Manila university.
Christianity is also a very big thing here and there seem to be more churches than McDonalds. I have to be quite careful not to blurt “Jesus Christ” every time I see something strange, which happens quite a lot. But it is a strange brand of Christianity, one that doesn’t seem to try and dress women’s bodies, maybe it’s just too hot for that?
Right now I’m in Contanbaco, a small village which has a nice climbing crag 5 minutes from the village center. I’m the only foreigner in the village right now but I still feel surprisingly comfortable. I was happy to discover that there are local climbers here that come climbing every weekend and even happier to discover quite a few women amongst them.
One of the women lead climbed a hard 5.12!
If you do plan on coming climbing bring your own gear as unfortunately the gear some of the locals use is not up to safety standards.
Local climbers showing true professionalism bringing a Coffee maker and a hammock to the crag!