Language and Love, Summer Adventure Part 3

"Give me your eyes. I need sunshine."

Riding in a tricycle in Puerta Princesa the day I had terrible food poisoning.

While in Manila, I learned that the Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. After living in South Korea for almost a year and sometimes never uttering a properly formed English sentence in an entire day, it was nice to haggle, argue, flirt, and charm with the locals without having to wave my hands up and down, point at items I needed, and mis-pronounce words in an attempt to slow down speech to comprehensible levels.

Being an English teacher in a country so eager and hell bent on learning English as quickly as possible, I have developed this feeling of superiority to the Koreans who can't speak English.  Parents here do everything possible to make sure their babies get a head start on learning English and speaking it well.  Street signs, store signs, and menus are scrawled in both Korean Hangul as well as poorly spelled and badly conceived  English sentences.  I know it is not right to feel superior for knowing a language I grew up learning in a country who has it as an official language, but it makes me feel greatful too.  Especially when I'm here in Asia and I meet women my age there, and I see their lifestyle, their workloads, their aspirations, and limitations, it makes me thank my parents, love them a little bit more for taking me away.  (Because Canada is the shit, son!)

After missing our flight, we rented a scooter for 300 pesos/a day and let the sound of the engine drown out our pain.

In a jeepney into town. My G10 could've captured this picture without blurring me :(

Story: In Thailand, while driving in a van with about nine other people on a tour to ride elephants and whatnot, my friend and I were talking loud and boisterously about the events of the night before, being sometimes cocky, arrogant, personal, adding some jokes about Korea in our dialogue, and declaring our shared ignorance of the dutch people and culture. Of course, we do this all the time in Korea, at a higher level of assholeness, insulting and banishing ourselves, others, and Koreans all at once, but in Korea, we are protected behind our English shield.  No one can understand us when we delve into personal matters in the subway, at the bus stop, while waiting in line at Mr.Kebab, or wherever else regretfut secrets and sinful stories need to be told.  But, on this bus, we later learned that two of the men were Korean with very proficient English skills and two other guys were dutch, which I did not learn until much later on the trip when I happened to ask them where they were from.  Needless to say, they were humourous and hopefully did not get insulted by our jokes.

"Ill believe in anything."

A Nasty Hangover. A Four-hour Date. and A Marriage Proposal

The first night in El Nido, myself with four mates were enjoying ourselves during dinner, playing the "would you rather" game amidst guzzling down cheap drinks on the beach.  As some of us dispersed into clubs and bars, the other Canadian (born on my exact birth date), a joyous me, and a French-speaking Belgium brought a bottle of rum and gin along the beach until we found an abandoned boat situated next to our hotel.  We climbed on board and spent hours drinking and sharing stories. 

Meanwhile, a local man, also 23 (I think) came to warn us we might get in trouble for being in the boat, but we managed to coax him into joining us.  Sharing stories, personal histories, while refilling our drinks, we spent the night in good spirits.  Anyways, the next morning, amidst the nastiest hangover of the trip, I missed the island hopping tour of that day.  By the time I came to, I got dressed, left the hotel, and tried to find the restaurant my drinking buddy of the night before was having lunch at.

On my way through quaint streets lined with huts selling clothing, food, and convenience store items, a man on a motorbike calls out my name. I turn, a bit of nausea floods me for a second, but I manage to throw out a kind smile.  He says "Do you remember me, we drank together last night." "Ohh!" I respond.  He says where are you going and I said I am looking for this restaurant, do you know where it is.  I am under the impression he does and is taking me there as I hop on the back of this strange dude's bike.  He doesn't take me to the restaurant as any place in El Nido is only a ten minute walk from the beach and my hotel. 

He drives out of El Nido on towards Corong Corong, the next town up.  We stop at his house where I am introduced to Elle Needo (real name, Perry), his beautiful sister who me and my two boys talked to briefly on the phone the night before, and other family members.  I thought it was the friendliest thing ever, a local showing me around his island, meeting his family members.  There, they fed me noodles, an ice cold commercial ready bottle of coke, and gave me a pack of cigs.  I was  extremely sick still, kind of happy and appreciative at this act of sweetness, but also a bit annoyed because I just wanted to find my friends.

Anyways, after about half an hour there, I thought I was being taken back home on the motorbike. Nope, this man drove all the way up to Corong Corong, parked his bike, and we walked for almost two hours, first down this muddly swampy pathway secluded by bushes, in order to find this beach where eventually, a long eeeeeeventually, there would be some restaurants/hotels.  Now if you would call El Nido the "town", Corong Corong's hotels and beach resorts are so very hard to get to that it would be the suburbs.  And there were only foreign couples there.  As we walked along the beach, it started to rain, so I was muddly, hungry, nautious.  I was still up for it all until I realize, it hitting me hard across the face all of a sudden, that this was not a random act of friendliness by a local like I experienced before, but a date!  He was asking questions like "what do you like in a man" and before I knew it, he said "you have to come back and bring your mom and dad and family and you can live in my house on my land." Some "I will miss you's" were thrown in there and that about sucked away all the happiness I had in me at that ime.

Ehm, I don't think I am too committment phobic, that word doesnt exist for people my age, but the moment this dude mentioned me living with him like he had a burning chance in hell,  I was unresponsive, pretty pissed off, and didnt try very hard to hide my boredom and discomfort.  I avoided anwering questions, and although I would smile a little and give one-worded responses beacuse I am a polite Canadian gal, the last thing in the world I wanted was to get stuck in a strange place that wasn't El Nido with a strange dude who thought all it took to woo a girl (from another world) was a motorbike ride to a secluded beach.  Hellz no.

Anyways, never saw him again and when he dropped me off and tried to walk me to my hotel, I was Miss Bitch.

The point of this story is that from this trip, I learned that men from all over the world are gross.  And sometimes you wholeheartedly believe that they just want  to be your friend because thats all you want. And then you realize they just wanna get in your pants. And it makes you sick to your stomach and it makes you lose faith in selfless acts of kindness.  (This was extremely evident in Angeles, north of Manila where young Filipina women were bought by a slew of disgusting, wrinkly, old, caucasion men.  But old Korean men can be gross and perverted too.) 

So. If my little sisters are reading this, I would like to say: we are taught to respect our elders so much that when an older man stops and tries to have a conversation with us, out of politeness and I guess duty, I do so.  Sometimes its with the sweetest intentions, but at other times, mid way through, you want to punch them in the nose and taser them.  So, little sisters, just be careful and cautious, and know that although there is kindness in everyone, other times, if you need me to stun gun someone, I'm an e-mail away :)

Oh, what a depressing ending to this story, but I will leave it with pictures of my first snorkelling experience where, get this, I saw a Green Sea Turtle, a sea cucumber, a Finding Nemo clown fish, and Dori! Not to mention the most beautiful coral ever!

Me with my super cool tourguide, Donde, who personally took me snorkelling with him.

I had to wear the kid's lifejacket.

Poison fish we caught along the way.

A delicious feast!