Philippines Day 2: River Climbing

The day after I arrived in Moalboal (that's four syllables, by the way), I was able to jump onto a tour that had already been planned for eight businessmen from Manila, I think. This made me slightly nervous. Living in Korea has put a specific couple of images of "businessman" in my head. One is a quiet, middle-aged, straitlaced, besuited stiff. The other is that stiff, completely wasted, stumbling down the street at 9pm, hand-in-hand with another drunken stiff.

Luckily, these were not those businessmen. They were all in their 30's or so, and seemed pretty easygoing. They all spoke perfect English, which seems to be the norm in this country, so communication was no problem.

Another English teacher from Korea (you can't go anywhere in Asia in July/August without encountering us), joined up with us and we met the businessmen in downtown Moalboal (it took them forever to get there from Cebu City, where I assume they flew in from Manila), where the tour guides purchased food for our barbecue, and Sonya and I walked around (the subject of my next post).

We all piled into the Action Van and drove for a bit to the top of the river. Normally, river climbing means climbing up, but because of recent rains, the current was too strong for novices. Thus, we climbed down.

Here are Sonya and I in front of the Action Van:


This is us with Bubu, one of the businessmen (it was actually seven men and one woman):


I had it in my head all day to make a Yogi Bear joke, but in the end I never had a great opportunity and forgot to do it.

The first thing we did was climb down a path through the trees, which started off steep, but not too difficult. After a minute or two of climbing, it was so steep that it was impossible to climb it facing forward. We had to turn around and climb down it like a ladder. I'm actually afraid of stuff like this, as well as a lot of stuff this tour involves, but I do it anyway. It builds character. So I'm climbing down this thing, holding on for dear life to vines, roots, rocks, small tree trunks, and dirt, sweating bullets of exertion and fear. When I got down, my thighs were singing already, and I was almost soaked before getting into the water.

The first part was pretty nice, just some floating. These two pictures were taken as we were first getting in the water. That's one of the tour guides, Mario:





Pretty soon, though, we had our first obstacle, which was maybe a ten to fifteen foot jump off a rock. Some people took a few times of the guides shouting one, two, three, but eventually we all made it. That was pretty fun.

During the first half hour, one of the Filipinos was using a waterproof camera, but then (idiot) he put it in his open pocket while going over some rough water or making a jump, and it fell out. Miraculously, the tour guides were out at the river the next day, and they found it, still operative. I doubt I'll ever see any of those pictures, though.

I'm not sure when this picture was taken, and the rest are just in the order they were taken (by Sonya's camera), I assume by the photo numbers.




After another jump or two (I definitely remember a jump that must have been like thirty feet), we came to some harder stuff, in which we had to hold onto a rope to get down. One guide went ahead to hold the rope at the bottom and another held it on the top, then each person held onto the rope and swam to the other end. The first one was easy, and we did that because of the current. The second one was much harder, though. I don't remember the situation exactly, but I do know that it was very scrapey. There was a sheer wall to the left of where we started, and I don't think we had to jump with the rope in hand, but we probably had to climb down a little bit and and around the wall to a little cave to the left. I was hanging onto the rope, but getting totally scraped on the rock as I get down. Almost all my knuckles on one hand got scrapes, and there's a scruise on my shin that's only 80% healed that I think came from this maneuver, too.

The next few pictures are from when we had to go from one level of rock to a lower one, over water. The guides had previously put two bamboo trunks there as a makeshift bridge. One trunk we crawled/walked on, and the other was a rail. About five of use got through it first (I crawled about halfway and then stood up and walked the rest), and hung out on these rocks below:



Somewhere in the middle, it was Bubu's turn, and I was told later that she was scared, so Mario went along with her. I wasn't paying attention to the crossings for a while, just looked around at the scenery. Suddenly, I heard CRACKCRACKCRACK and as I turned quickly around, I could see the end of the complete splitting of the trunk, and Bubu and Mario falling into the water. They were both fine; the bridge wasn't even necessary, just put there to make it less scary, I guess. So the rest of the people jumped into the water and climbed onto the rock, and that whole bit went much faster.

I think this is the part of the river right after that incident, and the next several photos are from the same area:





I think after this part, or maybe before, I don't know, was the time when we had to sit on a rock and do a small jump, maybe only three feet or less, into the water. It was a really easy thing to do, but for some reason, when I landed in the water, I got assraped by what I swear must have been a wedge-shaped rock. That was probably the worst pain the whole day. My tailbone still hurts from that. To add insult to injury, the area of the river that one of the guides pointed me to (I was first to jump) was not quite right. It seemed like he was pointing me to the far right, where there was a little shore, so I swam across this current that seemed really strong, panting, until I could stand up and catch my breath. Then everyone else went to the left, and we swam that way instead (maybe the river forked, so it wasn't obvious which way we would take).




I don't know exactly when it happened, but sometime in the middle of the trip, I was climbing down some rocks amidst some minirapids, and had to step down into a little current surrounded on three sides by rocks a little bigger than a basketball. Most of the rocks in the river were slippery, of course, and this time I fell right in the area between the rocks. The rock I slipped on was what caught me, but my left hand went down first, and all my weight must have gone onto that hand. I felt my index finger separate laterally from the rest of my fingers, and it hurt quite a lot. My immediate thought was, "broken finger," so I yanked it out of the water and started feeling the bone. The bone seemed fine, but my finger was definitely sprained. It hurt kind of, but the water was cool enough to keep the pain at bay for the next couple hours. Later, I put some ice on it, and got it czeched out when I got back here. It's still bandaged, and I fell again today and pulled it again, probably setting myself back in the healing process another week or two, plus I added a brut to my list of wounds, courtesy of the bottom corner of the bathroom door, which my leg slid under.

Near the end of the trip, we reached little river cul-de-sac and transferred to a land trail, which we used to get to the site of the barbecue. There was a tiny store on the way and most of us had a soda. It was one of the best sodas I've ever had, and in a glass bottle, too.













The above are all just the river as we walked by it, I think.

Here's our barbecue, which was probably ready three hours prior to us getting to it. The guides told me it usually takes until about 2:30 to finish the trip (starting around 11 at the river), but since there were so many of us, and some of the others were kind of babies about it (I'm told--I was always in the front, so I didn't encounter anyone actually complaining or being really scared or slow), it took until about 5:30, I think. We were all extremely hungry.


This is the beach by where we were eating. Nobody swam. We'd all been in the water all day, and several people availed themselves of the shower facilities, even, instead of swimming.





The gossip I heard from the tour guides, the owner, and one or two of the Manilans was that about half of them had a great time and the other half did not enjoy it. None of them seemed to be aware of what they were getting into, although frankly, it wasn't THAT hard. Someone told me they'd watched youtube videos of it, and it all seemed very easy. The next day they texted the owner, Jochen, to say that they all woke up and couldn't move. There were also a lot of other messages, Jochen told me, like what a long drive it was from Cebu, how hard the trip was, etc. I actually had a similar problem with the soreness, but it's to be expected. It took me three days to recover from the soreness, which was lucky since three days later I went canyoning. Still waiting for those pictures to be emailed to me.

In conclusion, good trip.

Philippines

I only went to the Philippines for five nights, because our school vacation was from Thursday to Wednesday, and flights were awkward on those days. Almost immediately after I booked the flight and room, my boss changed our vacation to Monday to Friday, but I couldn't get a new flight, so I had to leave two days early from the others' vacation and make up the two days before the other foreign teachers came back. I was pretty pissed about that whole situation. I do need to save money, though, so three fewer days of vacation is financially to my advantage.

It actually took me 22 hours to get from my door to the hotel, since I had to fly out of Incheon, and the airport buses were booked early. So I had to bus to Seoul overnight, take a taxi to get closer to the airport and wait for the subways were open at 5:30, then take a subway to the airport. I had two flights into Manila and Cebu, then a three hour drive to Moalboal, the little town were I stayed.

Here's me totally alone in the corridor under Gimpo Airport in Seoul, from which I could enter the express subway to Incheon Airport. I got there around 5am, and met a gate at the end, which wasn't opened until a few minutes after I got there.



Here's my room at the resort:








The bathroom was Korean-style, but better. The shower head actually had an area of its own, so I'm not showering in front of my sink and toilet and getting them all wet.



Here are some shots of the resort:








This is the restaurant I ate at the whole time. It was right next to my room.




This is the office for the adventure tour company I used (owned by the same guy who owned the resort and the restaurant). It was right next to the restaurant. Everything was so convenient.




On Saturday I went out to some recliners overlooking the ocean and hung for a bit.

Then I noticed a kitty nearby. Find the kitty:




Here it is. I don't know how long it was there before I noticed it, but it seemed to really enjoy that little hole. I tried to go over and pet it, but it ran away.



The only major problem with the resort is that while it is right on the ocean, there's no beach, and the water wasn't that great, either. It was filled with plant debris and the ground was all either grassy or mucky. I only swam in it once briefly.




These show what little sand there was on the shore, and its just rocky cliffs above, with a stone staircase going down from the resort area. The local children seemed not to mind this beach, though.

Albert's Solo

The program we use at Kate LA for the lower levels includes songs here and there, and song CDs that the children can sing with. One of my students, Albert, recently took very strongly to a song about the seasons, and was asking to hear/sing it often during the last days that I taught that class (the schedule has since changed and they're with Emily now).

I'm not sure why he likes to sing this song, but I think he just likes to sing it in his gravel voice, mostly unintelligibly. I had my camera at school one time, so I had him sing it again (though he didn't want to sing ON camera, only FOR it).

Here are the two takes:

Mud Festival

I've gotten the pictures from Emily now, so I've added them below. Yea.

The annual Mud Festival on the west coast in Boryeong was in July. The agency that I got my job through arranged about a million buses in various cities and booked motel rooms for us to make everything easier and to guarantee accommodation. The town gets pretty busy for the nine days of the festival. The organizers also decided to send out the buses on Friday night, because it's quite a long drive from a lot of areas in Korea, and they figured it would be nice to get there late Friday night/Saturday morning and sleep in a bit on Saturday instead of having to get up at o'dark-thirty on Saturday and spend half the day on a bus.

I think this picture represents me and Leon pretty well:



We arrived at about 5am on Saturday and I had a lot of trouble sleeping (I had to use my towel as a pillow, because they place was so booked they ran out of the extra bedding that is usually provided in a room), so I got up around 11 and went outside to get some breakfast and czech things out.

I was a bit worried when I got there. It was raining, and I saw the mudslide, mud pool, etc....







...but there was no mud. For a while I was afraid that the Mud Fest organizers were going to cancel the festival for the day because it was raining--as if mud and water didn't mix. Most of what was going on was people walking around with umbrellas, looking for food and/or something to do, and some people were entertaining themselves on the beach.



After I found some food, I went back to the motel room to rouse Leon, Miker, and Emily from bed, possibly hung over from drinking on the bus all night. (It actually took us nearly an hour longer to get to Boryeong than it should have, because practically everyone was drinking for most of the six hours on the bus, and people had to get off to piss every hour or so.)


After everyone was up and ready to go, we went out again to find them some food and see what was going on. By that time, there was actually some mud around, but for the first hourish, we weren't really into it because it was pretty chilly out. Some people were going through mud obstacle courses and pools and slides, but it was just muddy water. Didn't really seem worth it.

We walked down the beach a while, and the rain stopped at some point. The others got a bunch of beer and we parked on a sitting platform (they're popular outside shops in Korea) for a bit while they drank. At one point I went to the bathroom and accidentally sliced a piece of my finger off when I hit it on the metal panel that covers the toilet paper. Before I even realized it had happened, I'd bled all over myself and the floor (where the hell did all this blood come from? I thought at first), and that made me feel kind of sick for a while. It also meant I had to be really careful not to fill the wound with mud, and it stung like a sonofabitch whenever I went into the salt water.



Upon walking further down the beach to the other end of the festival area, we discovered a huge mud fight that was going on next to a bunch of sand sculptures. There were these columns of really good, thick mud that people were pulling off from and throwing chunks at each other with. Someone slammed me right in the eye. That sucked.



The canopy over the mud and the illogically closely parked cars were also getting covered. We were all wondering what kind of idiots would park, or designate a parking lot, so close to the action, but we later found out that those columns of mud had actually been sculptures that morning, and all us dirty, inconsiderate foreigners were desecrating the art. That kind of sucks, but it actually was the best mud in the whole place, therapeutic-like. I covered myself pretty completely two or three times, then washed it off in the ocean. Good times.



Everyone looks stronger covered in mud.

Later, after walking around for a while, getting some snacks or something, and generally hanging out, we went back to the fight, but the police were there at that time, breaking up the battle hours after it had begun, and cordoning off the area where the mud sculptures once stood. Inconceivably, they went fascist on the scene and wouldn't allow anyone into the square area with the mud, now covering the ground thickly, despite that there were only a few people around and there was pretty much no more damage to do. Most people seemed to just want to take pictures in there with the mud, or grab some to cover themselves with, although Leon and Miker and a few others would discretely lob stray handfuls of mud over the canopy onto unsuspecting passersby and observers. I saw one guy whose SUV was parked about a foot from the canopy, who was dumping buckets of water over his car to clean it off enough to drive it away. It probably took him a long time, since he only had once bucket and I guess he had to walk pretty far to refill it with fresh water. It was probably a pretty pricey car wash he had to get later. Poor guy.

As evening hit, a concert began, and there were some hoses spraying water at the dancing crowd for a few minutes. We did a bit more swimming and sitting, then the others wanted to drink more beer or something, and I was getting pretty exhausted, not having slept as soundly as they had. So I went back to the room to shower and rest for a bit, effectively ending my participation in the festival. Later we had Korean food and hung out drinking on the beach with some other teachers from Ulsan until it was bedtime. We left at noon the next day for the long trip back. It infuriated me that we woke up to beautiful sunny and hot weather on Sunday, and it was going to be a great day for the festival, which we didn't have time to partake in prior to leaving. I've been trying to get to the beach as often as I can to make up for all of June and half of July being rainy, although this weekend I was too busy with various things to get there. Next weekend for sure.