Golf and Papaya Juice

Temple at Lotus Lake.  Wikimedia sourced image by Benjiho

Anyone for golf?  In two smiling rows they stood, on the steps into the vestibule from the port-cochère.  The mini-bus stopped at the exact point where the uniformed employees made a human gate.  As we walked between them they cheerfully applauded: I’m not sure what they were happy about. 

Of glass and wood the building was modern and grand, and as porters attended to luggage waiters moved about serving complimentary juice.  I believe it was papaya.  All the staff members were Filipinos; the guests Taiwanese.  I stood in bemused bewilderment that I was, by luxurious accident, there.  I’d never been on a Taiwanese golfing tour before.  There was nothing to do but sip papaya juice.

It was perhaps a basic matter of wu-wei.  In the Chinese religion of Daoism wu-wei is the concept of non-action.  Surrendering one’s will for action aligns oneself with the world’s natural ‘dao’ or path: the recipe for harmony. 

It’d taken a week to move from Taipei along the island’s east coast to Kaohsiung, the city in Taiwan’s south.  There’d been traditional towns like Suao and a stop at some hot springs.  Taiwan is a mountainous island of some beauty and everything had progressed satisfactorily except the budget.  In Kaohsiung I wondered how my finances would last for ten more days before my return flight to Bangladesh.

Taiwan was remarkable for its English schools.  There were billboards everywhere and book-carrying students seemed to make their way to coaching centres at all hours until late in the evenings.  I had no intention of teaching.  I already missed Bangladesh.  So when the middle-aged guest house manager pulled me aside to ask slyly if I wanted to teach and stay for free, the vision that came to mind was not money in my pocket but a subsequent police raid in search of undocumented foreign workers.  No, the budgetary dilemma made me think rather of the Luzon Strait, the water body to Taiwan’s south.

It’s not for a lack of courses that I’m not a golfer: in Sydney there’s more than a few golf links.  When I was at school some of my friends had an interest in it, and against my better judgement they persuaded me to try.  When Phillip invited me to Lane Cove Golf Course, a significant challenge had been to actually hit the ball.  More often it was a clump of dirt that went flying.  The most difficult hole required the ball to be hit across a small gully onto the fairway.  It was a hopeless endeavour.  Each golf ball I hit duly took its place in the scrub.  I gave up and took a stroke penalty, restarting on the far side.

The Luzon Strait was like that gully.  On the other side wasn’t Phillip but the Philippines, a much cheaper destination than Taiwan.  I had happy memories of slow and dreamy Tagalog songs and easygoing people.  Was it not possible to fly from Kaohsiung to Laoag City in Luzon’s north?  I’d been to Laoag before. 

Globally speaking, the Luzon Strait is a modest stretch of water.  Perhaps as at Lane Cove I could simply take a stroke penalty and start again in the Philippines, this time for the sake of the budget? 

I saw a Kaohsiung travel agency advertising Laoag flights but only the destinations were written in English.  There could be no harm in asking.  The girl behind the counter spoke no English but was very cheerful.  When all I could do was point at Laoag written on the wall she wrote a price on a piece of paper and with a calendar we pointed at dates.  She called a friend who had a little English for me to speak to over the phone.  ‘Come back tomorrow evening,’ I was told.

The next day I visited Lotus Lake, one of Kaohsiung’s attractions.  It features Chinese style pagodas and a number of temples.  In Buddhism the lotus symbolises purity and Confucian scholar Zhou Dunyi wrote, ‘I love the lotus because while growing from mud it is unstained.’  There were the tiger and dragon pavilions set out on the water, the pagodas of autumn and spring and a Confucian temple on the northern shore. 

Taiwan is interesting for its several religions.  Often they intersect inside the same temple and the Taiwanese have no qualms about believing in all of them at the same time, although their teachings must contradict.  Perhaps it’s the Chinese expression of religion that best conveys even to outsiders the universal quality of spirituality and the strength of peaceful coexistence.

Yet for this tourist the day at Lotus Lake was marked by a different question: what was going to happen about the Laoag flight?

It was so sweet what she did, so helpful.  She’d written a small letter in Chinese and with her friend translated it into English.  I was presented with a very neat script that evening explaining the details.  One thing that puzzled was her written insistence on re-confirming the date of the return flight beforehand.  I imagined searching for a Filipino phone and trying to figure out how to use one, so at some pains I made her understand I would not be doing that unless I wanted to change the return date.  I wondered why it was an issue.  I handed over the fare and she wrote up the ticket by hand.

It was the other passengers’ clothes that first raised the prospect that the flight to Laoag wasn’t ordinary.  There appeared to be an over-representation of tweed and tartan patterns among the chosen apparel.  There was tartan in some of the carry-on luggage; and while there was no reason to be concerned about too much tartan, it’s not exactly Taiwan’s image.  There was also a young and not unattractive Taiwanese lady, travelling alone, who kept glancing my way.  I was unaware she may have been imagining leisurely walks together around the golf course.

The reality of the situation fully dawned on me when from the plane window I noticed that in the luggage being lifted into the undercarriage were a number of golf club sets.  Taiwan is heavily populated.  The Philippines is cheaper, plus northern Luzon has the available land for golf courses.  It was a charter flight.  I’d become a golf tourist! 

The Philippines didn’t disappoint.  Even within the terminal the laid back disposition of the immigration officials, that hammock-swinging version of English accent they have, the heat, the lack of rush: it was as I remembered.  But there was a problem.  Laoag Airport isn’t in Laoag and there wasn’t any public transport into town.  In the car park was only a white mini-bus from the resort in wait for the latest flock of Taiwanese golfers.  I was really just standing there considering what to do when the hand of a mini-bus attendant grabbed my luggage.  He was very efficient.  Before I could say anything he’d loaded it into the mini-bus.  I thought that perhaps the bus might pass the town on the way to the resort.  So I got in, and that young woman kept glancing towards my seat. 

The resort vestibule was spacious and along the right hand side was the reception counter.  After finishing their papaya juice each of the Taiwanese guests made their way to the desk to collect the keys to their rooms.  I went there too, to say, ‘Excuse me, but is there any transport from here into Laoag City?’ 

They said there wasn’t but someone from the resort might be going into town for supplies in a few minutes.  I could get a lift. 

And I wondered about the East Asian sentiment, renowned as they are for their wish to travel in groups.  The particular horror they show at the mention of travelling alone: their fear of loneliness.  By contrast, for the western traveller, for the real travelling travellers, going solo is probably the best circumstance there can be; because travel is about wu-wei and following the dao.  Because the world’s way will arrange the elements of daily life better than any human ever could.   Sometimes the dao is a luxurious accident; sometimes it’s golf and papaya juice.

Kaohsiung Harbour.  Wikimedia sourced photo.

Of course the wu-wei doesn't only go on in Taiwan.  There's a bit of the old wu-wei, surely, in the toss of a coin for a cow, in the sweet misfortunes of a villager come to the city, in Transylvanian knitwear, and even in the way people think...

The Buffalo Matter

Buffaloes ought surely to be remembered

 

Travel grants time for introspection, valuable opportunity to learn new things about oneself.  For example, it was on my first trip to Thailand I learnt that I’d once been a buffalo farmer.  The revelation surfaced on the day I’d gone with Pa to Suphanburi and it was curious because, to be frank, I have no recollection of ever having partaken in buffalo husbandry, not in any manner, not at any time.

And of all agricultural endeavours one might assume that an activity involving heavy beasts like the buffalo would be one of the more difficult to forget.  I mean, while it might be understandable were one to overlook a strawberry-growing past or even a short stint tending potatoes, buffaloes ought surely to be remembered.

I was twenty and everything was new.  Thailand was the first sojourn in the ‘third world’, although these years later I’m no more enlightened as to what that term really means.  Back then it seemed mildly frightening.  There’d been the advice of Australians of the non-travelling variety, who equated stepping off a plane in Bangkok with contracting an unpronounceable tropical disease, probably spread by mosquitoes.  There were warnings of people hiding drugs in your luggage which would inevitably lead to the death penalty.  ‘But millions of people live in Thailand,’ I’d reasoned, ‘and such events don’t befall all of them, surely, at least not all the time.’  Nonetheless, with a resolution not to be bitten by a single mosquito during my stay, I was cautious.

15 metre Buddha in Suphanburi

I was fortunate enough to have not only a Pa but also a Maa waiting in Thailand, and I should mention that transcribing these titles into western script as they are actually pronounced in Thai is no easy feat.  Maa and Pa actually belonged to my Thai friend Gaew who’d lived in the same Norwegian town as I had for a year, and the three of them were waiting at the Don Muang terminal on the evening I arrived.

I didn’t know how to greet them.  I’d read about the Thai greeting system, the wai and how it was that Thais don’t favour physical contact such as shaking hands in greetings.  Perhaps it was best to just say hello?

Crouched alongside Gaew in the boot of their wagon we rumbled home along bumpy, massive freeways of up to three levels, while from Thai into Norwegian Gaew translated the conversation concerning my western bulkiness in relation to the potential for my head to meet the vehicle roof in response to the bumps of the road.  Gaew and I always spoke in Norwegian.  It was the language that had settled in as standard between us; and it was before she spent about a million years in the States becoming the world’s most educated person, or something similar.  Her English was less fluent then.

The first stop when we reached the home town, Ayutthaya, was a night market beside the river for some food.  Unfortunately the scattering of mosquitoes there didn’t agree to my not being bitten, so within hours my health plan was foiled.  Fortunately, sometimes mosquitoes keep their unpronounceable tropical diseases to themselves.

Suphanburi temple building

The Thai house was modest in those days.  A downstairs portion of a larger house, the singular main room had green vinyl flooring with piles of books populating the corners and a whiteboard and a chart of the periodic table on the wall, primary exhibits that Maa and Pa were schoolteachers.  The bedrooms had floor mats to sleep on and the bathroom plumbing consisted of a large earthen pot and a hand bucket in pink plastic shaped vaguely like a frying pan.  It was all new to me.

Gaew's place, back then!

 The first days covered the sites of Ayutthaya, an ancient capital of Thailand, and of Bangkok, and a little shopping.  In Australia everybody said Thailand was full of bargains.  With a few clothes in hand and a fake Tag Heuyer watch that my sister had ordered, Gaew asked if there was anything else to buy.  I was about to say no but out of my mouth came instead, ‘oh, there is one more thing, I really need a new kjøleskap.’  ‘A kjøleskap?’ she said, surprised, and she knew that in Norwegian it means refrigerator, and what a nightmare that’d be to take home on the plane!  As Norwegian was a first language for neither of us, in such circumstances, when I repeated the word while giving my most sincere face, it was only natural that instead of doubting me she began scouring her brain to see if kjøleskap really meant fridge, or if it had some other meaning she’d forgotten.  After some moments, still puzzled, she attacked the problem head on.  ‘But kjøleskap means refrigerator,’ she challenged, using English for the final word.  I started to laugh!

Meanwhile Maa and Pa had been facing their own communication hurdles.  Sometimes Maa started teaching Thai.  ‘Tang moh’ is watermelon and ‘nam’ means ‘water.’  Sometimes there were scribbles on the whiteboard.  Still, at times when Gaew was at university class we’d sit around the table staring blankly at each other, Maa, Pa and I.  It was an activity that was sufficiently ridiculous that on one occasion several minutes of silence were broken by Maa bursting into sudden laughter, followed by Pa and then me.  It was hysterical, side-splitting, falling-of-the-chair laughter at the utter futility of our communication predicament.  And when Gaew was there, they’d still be frustrated.  ‘Speak English!’ they were always telling us, on the off-chance they’d catch a word.  But after a few minutes, instinctively, there’d be a switch back to Norwegian.

Suphanburi streets, back in the day...

Suphanburi is a typical regional town, hardly a tourism magnet, but with all the nearer sites seen and Gaew in class… Pa had some business to do in Suphanburi and the night before our trip there’d been a bit of jest and wonder at how the two of us might communicate on our own.  If I spoke English really, really slowly, was the advice…

Suphanburi streets

The drive was completed in silence, unsurprisingly, and we seemed to get around the few sites: a fifteen metre Buddha in a temple and a tower from where you could survey the entire town, without adding anything to the sounds of traffic and life in Suphanburi.  Then it was time for Pa’s lunch meeting, not that I knew it.  I just followed him into the restaurant where he’d parked the car.

It turned out he was meeting someone from the army, although in Thailand teachers seemed to sometimes wear military-style uniforms so it might’ve been someone from the education department.  Wherever his associate was from they talked for a very long time.  Lunch came and went and I sat at the table with nothing to do but sip water from the glass in front of me.  And with the conversation in Thai there was no telling if it was wrapping up or just getting started. 

Even the water drinking became a strange and foreign experience.  Pa’s associate had an associate who stood beside the table and whenever I took a mouthful of ‘nam’, from the ‘nam’ jug he’d promptly re-fill the glass.  I thought to leave the glass empty.  I wanted to be polite. So after he’d refill I’d drink a bit more. It was refill, drink, refill, drink.  Pa’s associate’s associate was very efficient and I was too slow in trying to tell him not to refill it again, plus I had no words for it.  In Australia I’d never seen a water glass refilling guy.  It became a challenge.  I kept drinking and by the time Pa finally indicated it was time to leave, I felt rather like a fish.  My stomach ached and I’d wager that when we left the restaurant that glass remained full.

Pa at temple gate

It was on the way home to Ayutthaya the matter of the buffaloes came up.  We’d stopped at a ring of large wooden poles called the elephant kraal, where Thai kings presumably once hosted elephant tournaments.  Still thinking to make conversation rather than complete the whole day in silence, and with nothing particular to say about the kraal, my attention turned to a buffalo in a nearby field.  ‘That’s the first buffalo I’ve ever seen,’ I said to Pa, slowly, very, very slowly.  It was true, for while Australia has buffalo in its north, I’d never been there.

Pa was smiling and nodding and he might’ve attempted a reply, and I arrived home with the satisfaction that we’d made at least one small linguistic connection.  It was after Gaew came home that she said to me, slightly puzzled, ‘Pa says you used to have a buffalo farm?’

But as nice as the buffalo is, a life cannot only be about livestock, surely.  There also should be an ink black sea, wild lemon trees and a bit of Chinese.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Buffalo Matter

Maa, ironing and smiling and wishing I wasn't taking this photo

Temple bell

With Gaew, Maa and Pa

Robert's List

The hills of Luzon

 
Comfort is not the thing at twenty-two when there remains yet the energy to drive curiosity and the endurance to put plan to action.  The road across the mountains of central Luzon, the Philippines, from the misty reflection of Banaue’s hillside rice terraces to the provincial capital of Bontoc wasn’t easy.   Hours of relentless vibration negotiating the curves of the hills: it was like one of those alien exercise contraptions that attach a band around the human waist to deliver a continuous electronic tremor supposed to dissolve fat and make one look slim.  The bus and its passengers were the band, so it seemed, with all the rattling and shaking the bellybuster designed to flatten the very curves and bends of the rugged, forested hills.  It was quite a workout.

Bucketed by dust we must’ve looked not dissimilar to mud creatures getting off the bus, the mountain’s exercise machine, finally in Bontoc, but our relative youth didn’t worry about such things.  Of course along with the chickens, from grandparent to child the other passengers, the Filipinos, were not twenty-two.  What we called adventure was for them merely transport.

Luzon countryside

Beyond Bontoc on a more civilised road was the hillside town of Sagada, a modest settlement of about ten thousand people that for its caves and tribal influences attracts tourists.  Visually the most impressive sites of easy access are the cave cemeteries featuring the hanging coffins of traditional burial practice.  The hills around Sagada were remote enough for some traditions to have withstood the Spanish colonial period and the subsequent American colonial period; and it’s not just anybody who’s awarded a hanging coffin.  Among other things the person would need to have been married and to have had grandchildren to be eligible.
Along with the pleasure of the hills which seemed all the more beautiful when not trying to get across them on a bus, Sagada brought with it a problem.  It was a few weeks of detour, the Philippines, on our way home from Iran and, having left the bulk of our luggage in a Manila hotel basement so that we could travel light and fast we sought to move on from Sagada to the island’s western coast, then northward still.  But the mountains wished to push us southward instead, eight hours back to Baguio, a city we’d already seen, then the following day several hours northward again on the coast road.  The alternative, real only in our imaginations and eliciting serious contemplation from the locals with whom we briefly discussed it, was to hike westwards to challenge the mountains on foot.

By the time we understood the logistics there was just ten minutes to decide for the last evening bus, two hours, to the first village on the way to the sea was leaving.  Without a map or compass, with me wearing business shoes since we’d not planned on hiking, and with my day pack’s contents featuring two wooden buffaloes I’d bought as souvenirs at the carving shops along the Banaue roadside, we took the decision of our twenty two years, rushed back to the hotel, packed the few things and paid, and ran up the road to join the bus just as it was setting out for the first village, Besao.

There would be no hotel in Besao, we knew, for it was a village; and if there was no place to stay we might have no choice but to hike in the darkness back along the road for several hours to Sagada, plans defeated.  Yes we were concerned about that but we’d also learnt to trust the world for in our travels whenever there’d been a problem there’d been a solution and in any country there are locals who know well how to assist the traveller.  And so we threw ourselves into the care of the Philippines.  Why not?

Fortunately on that bus everybody was friendly and very curious about our choice of Besao.  Fortunately it was Mountain Province where English was widespread.

Besao

He lived like a hobbit, Robert, without perhaps the penchant for lavishness and comfort that hobbits are renowned for.  But in his simple house overlooking the paddies of the valley and listening to the silence of all the disconnected roads it was possible to imagine him blowing smoke rings with a pipe, like Bilbo Baggins, although the newspaper he leafed through was in English and I don’t believe he smoked.  We’d discussed our plans on the bus and thankfully he’d said he could put us up for the night.  His housemate Gem had cooked a simple rice dinner and we’d talked into the evening about our coming journey and life in Besao.  They’d been sure to wake us with the sun as there’d need to be time for a breakfast of eggs and the sea was far.

Storehouses on the roadside

Before we set out Robert gave three things: a list, a letter and a warning.  The list was of villages we’d need to pass through, asking in each the way to the next, to take the right largely trafficless dusty roads which he’d said started on the far side of the valley.  The letter was to his sister-in-law who he’d suggested we could seek out upon reaching her village in a half a day’s time.  But by nightfall, he’d said, we would have reached South Ilocano Province and while the people of Mountain Province were friendly, we should take care with the Ilocanos.  In this world it’s usual for people to have misgivings about their nearest neighbours but having heard of the Ilocanos for the first time we paid attention to his words.

We had not yet crossed the first valley, mist rising, morning not yet of full form, when we came across an old lady ambling through the rice terraces with a walking stick.  Instinctively I wished I could talk to her but in many countries where English is not the first language it’s reasonable to assume the elderly in particular may not know it.  ‘Good morning,’ she said with clarity the sky was yet to achieve.  Ah yes, this was Mountain Province!  We could pause to explain our plans, discuss the rice crop and the beauty of the valley.

Swing bridge

After an hour we had found the first swinging bridge of the metallic and wooden rung type that cross the small mountain rivers in central Luzon, and made our way up the far side again to the first village on Robert’s list, Kin-iway.  We took in the village church, the wooden storehouses by the road we found there and the views back to Besao from whence we had come.  And so it went, up and down in pursuit of the river that became our companion from village to village on the list.  At a side stream by the roadside we met Jane, who was busily washing her clothes by hand in water directed through a bamboo pipe.  She wanted our opinion on a hydroelectric project planned for that valley.  It would inundate areas of rice paddy but there was the promise of electricity.  Did we think electricity was good?  The best part of electricity, we said, is that you don’t need to wash clothes by hand.  That’s hard work!  But if the benefits outweighed the disadvantages in the case of her valley as outsiders we couldn’t say.

Jane

By mid afternoon we had reached the village of Robert’s sister-in-law and we sought her out at the local school where she was a teacher.  She was surprised by the arrival of foreigners but we were able to deliver Robert’s letter.  To this day I don’t know the words he wrote but it might’ve had ‘feed them’ written in it for she took us to her house for lunch.  Her village, Robert had said, was last in Mountain Province; after that the Ilocano lands would start.

It was a very long way to the next village and afternoon was on its wane while still we walked not knowing how much further it would be or what we would find.  Fortunately there came a jeep full of passengers, a rare sight on those roads and rather than leave us they offered a lift and suddenly the last of the way into Quirino was made easy.  I wondered what they’d do next, our first Ilocanos, and they also wondered because we heard discussion going on.  Ultimately it was decided to deliver us to the house of the mayor where we stayed as guests.

At the mayor’s house were sacks of food aid, rice with the word ‘Australia’ stamped across them.  We’d hoped to see the sea from the Ilocano side but of course from Quirino you can’t see the sea: there was another quite large mountain in the way.

A village house

The way over the mountain was tricky, the mayor of Quirino told us but his sons had agreed to be our guides to make sure we took the right paths the following day.  It took several hours, there was no road and it was steep but eventually we made the pass near the summit and there she was!  In the distance, across a plain with the outline of what looked like a decent road to it, we saw the sea.

The mayor’s sons continued with us down the far side until we reached the outskirts of the village of Gregorio del Pilar.  Then they bade farewell and turned homeward.  It seemed the only treachery to be met in the Ilocanos was hospitality; but I guess when ordinary people meet the most likely outcome is friendship.  It’s not from there the divisions come.  And it’s just as well we’d learnt to say ‘thank you’ in Ilocano: ‘agyamanak.’

There’s an irony in Robert’s warning, which I discovered only recently.  The name of Robert’s village, Besao, may have been derived from the Ilocano word Buso meaning head hunters.  There’s a likelihood that once it was those from the Ilocos Region believed the earlier people of Besao took part in such activity.
It’d taken a day to cross that mountain and once more in Gregorio del Pilar we were directed to the house of the mayor.  He sought our opinion about how to protect the environment, explaining that in the past several logging companies had been active in the area and the locals had not properly comprehended the damage they could do.  More recently he said they’d better understood how important the environment was and that logging company promises sounded perhaps better than what may eventuate.

Upon hearing there were foreigners about, several of the villagers came to meet us that evening.  They took us on a tour of the village, to show the school and the other public amenities.  They showed us the main square where the annual village fiestas were held and we saw village kids hanging about on slapped together billycarts they’d made to race each other down the hills.  From Gregorio del Pilar, we were informed, there was a bus to the sea on the next day.

And so on the fourth day, at twenty-two, with me in business shoes and with two wooden buffaloes in my luggage, we reached Candon City on the main coastal highway northwards.  It is said we get wiser as we age but in truth if there came again the choice between the bus to Baguio or walking across the mountains of central Luzon, my choice would be the same.

The river that was our companion in Mountain Province

If you've made it as far as the Philippines, it's not that much further until you suddenly become a golfer, or meet the frog and the snake or retrospectively take up buffalo farming.  Just about anything can happen when on the road!


This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Robert's List