Local ways of living

I've been feeling tired and working long days in the office. Over the weekend I walked around the local area, and the locals thought I was loco. Philippinos obviously do not walk, as you might get tanned in the progress. Every little distance is covered either by a jeepney or a tricycle ride. So seeing me walking around the town was confusing to them, I got a lot of shouts of "where are you going?" and tricycles stopping next to me - obviously I wanted a ride. In the same way Chinese people didn't understand that if we had the money to take a taxi to the base of the holy mountain, why would we want to climb up instead of taking the cable car! I ended up going to a hot spring spa, which turned out to be a couple of swimming pools. It was a hot day and I had walked for a couple of hours, so a swim in any kind of a pool was welcome. I met a local girl of my age who could not believe that I had walked all that distance! We spoke a lot about normal things like boyfriends, marriage, children, study and work, but it was interesting to hear the local attitude and approach. People here marry soon as this is a strongly Catholic country, but her boyfriend was trying to go to the States so it was better for the visa application that they weren't married. But she seemed hopeful. She was well educated, worked in a good job and considered a further degree to become a teacher.

On my walk in the area I saw lots of university buildings, busy high streets and a lot of residential area. There were posh buildings next to smelly shed-like homes, but people seemed happy enough and as it was lunch time, most of them were having a meal outside their sheds. The area was definetely dirtier than anything I saw in China, and the living conditions worse. Apparently the Philippines have the biggest gap between the rich and the poor, and 33% of the population lives with less than 1$ a day, and third of them are 'absolutely poor' (what this means with respect to income, the news article didn't say). What I'm curious about is how the people I saw fall into the poorness categories. How much do they earn, are they considered poor or even absolutely poor? Their houses were awful, but they had houses. They had food. They were smily and one family even asked me over for a drink (I politely declined). Some of them had chickens. All of this considered, they might not even be those classified as poor. I don't think I will ever know. I keep hoping that the money here would be more evenly spread.

Food, glorious food!

Then a complete change of the topic! The food in the Philippines is a lot of rice. Every meal here is a cup of rice (pressed together into a little cake in the middle of your plate) and then a selection of curry-type things or fried/grilled fish or chicken. I've sampled all kinds of things in the cafeteria here, and everything has been tasty with a lot of garlic. I fell in love with aubergine in China, and the relationship has been carrying on here. The vegetable dishes feature a lot of green beans, aubergine, pumpkins and squashes. The high point of the cafeteria food is the fresh exotic fruit available at breakfast time. The local delicacy buko pie is made out of fresh coconut flesh and must be one of the tastiest pies in existence! And for the disgusting but tasty treats, balut takes the first prize. It is a duck egg that has been allowed to develop for a week before boiling it, so basically it looks like a normal egg but inside there is the yolk and a developing duck embryo that you just munch away.

And then quickly about the food in China, as I never wrote about it. The Chinese restaurant food was surprisingly somewhat like the Chinese food in Western restaurant food: you'd order two million dishes and share them with everyone on the table. And when I say 'somewhat similar', I think I mean not at all. The Beijing duck wasn't crispy as they lead you to believe in the restaurants of London. The conference banquets and dinners were overflowing and allowed sampling so many different dishes. The spicy food didn't feature that much in Shanghai or Beijing, but the spicy region is more to the south (Sechzuan etc). The stinky tofu actually smelled so bad that I couldn't eat more than a mouthful. Augergine and seaweed became my absolute favourites. Oh I'm struggling to remember what I ate in those two conference weeks! After the conferences, the dining went down a notch and majority of the food came from the streets. Steamed dumplings, baozi, filled with shrimp, pork or vegetables were my typical breakfast. Hand-stretched la mian noodles in a soup were delicious and the cooking was exciting to watch. Unfortunately the hostel I stayed at served also Western food, so I found myself too often craving for spagetti or fries, so I ate a lot of that instead of the delicious cheap Chinese food!

Where next?

So the travel plan has slightly changed. Instead of returning to China at the end of this week, I will first spend a bit over a week in Hong Kong. I will be meeting some friends from back home there, which should be super. After HK I will travel by land to Southern China. The plan for it is not definite, but I have heard so many good things about the Yunnan province that I will be headed there. So at the end of the week I will finish work, spend a couple of nights in Manila (which I find frightening if it's like the rest of this country, it's going to be a hectic mess!) and fly out. I will be unfortunately missing the Banaue rice terraces and any further islands and beaches. But this gives me a reason to return to the Philippines one day!