Whitewashing

Boat #1, Up the river to Nuts Huts in Bohol
Boat #2, Across the strait from Bohol to Panglao Island
Boat #3, Across the Cebu Channel to Argao
Boat #4, Private "speedboat" to the Shangri-La on Boracay

 I’ve always been fascinated by the way our minds work to cope with the vastness of the world, the uncountable places and landforms we move through as travelers over the course of our lives. A place, it seems, can exist in our consciousness in one of three forms. First, as a mere name, a place on a map, a dimensionless data point. Leaf through a guidebook, or browse the web, and thousands of these pop up. If the name is in a foreign language, it can prove stubbornly hard to remember at this stage. And why should the mind remember it? What good does it do?

Then, as itineraries start to take shape, places start to fall into place in relation to one another. Relation of distance (“Loboc is only 30km from Tagliabara”) and in term of desirability (“Bohol has decent weather this time of year”). The sea of names starts to fall into a hierarchy, sketched in pencil on the inside of a Lonely Planet cover, or perhaps posted to a Google Doc spreadsheet. One starts to be able to recall the names of such places. More information gets attached to the hierarchy (“the ferry to Cebu leaves at 2pm”, “the woman on the phone sounded alright, the rate was reasonable”) as a plan unfolds.

Finally, of course, there is the actualization of actually knowing a place. Set foot, glance around, have a meal, or even just drive through and you pass a threshold of experience which cannot ever be undone. I think back to my earliest, least documented trips, and there are places painted with indelible memories. My only recollection of Florence is a café where Moz and I found a meal all-you-can-drink wine for some 10,000 lira. But it means that I have been to Florence, and will always place it in a category aloof from Parma, or Segovia, or other places of which I know equally little.

Today I woke up by the side of a river, in a VIPA, a native hut set up as part of the backpacker’s resort known as “Nuts Huts”. It’s one of these fine establishments set up by European travelers (two couples in this case) who tire of the road but can’t bear reality just yet. Filled with passion for travel and understanding of the travelers needs, these places are priceless while they last. Understandably, the founders don’t tend to last more than a few years. They have a kid or otherwise come to their senses and sell the property to new owners, sometimes likeminded sometimes not, and move on, the magic lost in transition. Nuts Huts appears to have lost one of the founding couples, fled back to Belgium, but at least half the other is still around, with a two year old mixed-race boy a testament to some sort of interesting story and staying power.

The entire last week I was working in Manila, the city was under attack by sheets of rain, like a Hollywood portrayal of a monsoon. I glanced at the extended forecast for the places I wanted to go during week of vacation, and the icons turned up ominous for the entire length of my stay: the sun obscured by a dark cloud, with rain emerging from the bottom and a lightning bolt for good measure. Not great beach weather, and so we decided to head for somewhere a bit more “cultural”, less sun dependant.

Bohol, an island squarely in the gizzard of the alien-beast shaped map of the Philippines, is known for its jungles and bizarre topography more than anything – it’s got the Tarsier, the world’s smallest primate (not a monkey, a “pro-simian”), as well as some oddly shaped hills. Nuts Huts is in the thick of it all, accessible only really by river. It fits the bill for a wet-season retreat, except that the weather, this entire time, has been stunning – not a cloud in the sky, and just enough humidity to remind me I’m on vacation.

So we set a course for the beach. Bohol’s got a few well known beaches, mostly frequented by the Scuba diving tourists endemic to the islands. One such beach, Panglao, is actually an island unto itself, off Bohol’s coast, halfway to Cebu, our next destination. Panglao, according to the Lonely Plant has three resorts: one german, one dutch, and Filipino. Having had the reflection noted above on the expatriate-owned vacation lodge phenomenon, I decided to try La Estrella, the Filipino option. I called ahead and asked if there was a room, to which the lady replied “yes” in much the same way she might had I asked if she had two eyes and a nose. At 45 Euros per person, the place was fully ten times the price as Nuts Huts, and as such really couldn’t be that bad – ah, the signaling power of pricing. If it had been cheaper, I might not have come.

A boat from the pier on the mainland brought us straight here for 600 pesos, and we found upon landing that La Estrella is just fine. The rooms are clean, if possessed of a few more ants than Vivian would like, and the staff have none of their innate Filipino friendliness and hospitality tempered by the watchful eye of a North European boss. But then, there’s none of that familiar order, no real urgent need to attend to things that don’t really need attending-to. Finish that half-built outdoor bar? Whitewash the cinderblock wall around the property? Sure, those would be great ideas. But right now?
But I can’t complain at all. The kitchen let me come in and film them preparing our delicious dinner, as if having a tourist in there asking annoying questions was the most natural thing in the world. The ramshackle dive shop here has staff charming and low-pressure enough to have convinced Vivian to try her hand at scuba yet again. And from the vantage point of a hammock slung low between beachfront palms, it was starting to be hard to see what the big deal was about all that whitewashing anyway.

People Power

The four or five yellow-shirted waitresses stood in a neat line under the TV, volume turned up but oddly silent. The restaurant was part of a “Dampa”, a Filipino favorite combination of a wet market and pantry-less restaurants clustured about some fishing docs. There are a few in the capital, we chose the Roxas Blvd location, it took us no time to get there, as today was a public holiday, spontaneously declared two days ago. Cities can be all pleasure without traffic.

Corazon Aquino, the former president who died exactly a week earlier, was being finally being put to rest in a shrine of sorts, somewhere in Manila. We walked the length of the well-lit market, only slightly overwhelmed by touts flogging their masters’  restaurants. We bought a few pounds of prawns and crabs, and picked a food stall that looked reasonably clean, and seemed to be endorsed by the presence of a few large Chinese families. The Chinese boss of the restaurant weighed what we brought in (cooking service is provided by the kg), and then handed us over to the buzzing but subdued team of Filipina waitstaff.

The public mourning process had been ongoing for most of the time I had been in Manila, including a massive procession that marched down Ayala Avenue right beside my office. The entire office had stood against the window in a 5-foot-nothing mass, lamenting that the windows wouldn’t open wide enough to properly toss out yellow confetti as the crowds passed below. Chants of “Cori! Cori!” were clearly audible 29 floors up. That was three days ago now.

All week, every TV I passed had either live coverage of some or other memorial service, or some retrospective on the great lady’s life. A humble housewife, by all accounts. Not a politician, naturally, merely a Filipina, forced on the national stage by the brutal assassination of her husband, ordered by none other than the grand villainess of islands, Imelda Marcos herself.

In 1983, Dictator Marcos’s days clearly numbered, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was invited back from political exile to assist in a transition to democracy. As he stepped off the plane, the military escort sent to protect bared their teeth and gunned him down before he could touch the soil of his homeland. It was the beginning of the end, and a wave yellow-shirted protesters, of what become known in the country as “People Power”, was unleashed. Not even the United States could save Marcos now (although some say it did try). The Cardinal heading the Catholic Church in the Philippines pushed forward Corazon “Cory” Aquino into a snap election against Marcos. Marcos declared himself the winner of the election, but the People Power protests became too much. He boarded a US government plane to live out the remaining three years of his life counting his Billions in Hawaii. It all ended in 1986, and they say it was the world’s first bloodless revolution, the first in a series that runs to this day.

Cory served as president for two terms, then was the only president ever to not attempt a third. The current president, Gloria “GMA” Macapagal-Arroyo, has ridden outlived one scandal after another, and for months we’ve heard rumours of her trying to change the constitution to allow herself the forbidden “Third Term.”* I had lunch with a group of business leaders the other day, among the country’s most powerful, and the sense was that the tens of thousands of yellow shirts on the streets were a signal more than just misery at the loss of the a passed leader. GMA would have to be very careful from now on.

The meal in the Dampa was pretty damn good, and I have to admire the restaurant for stubbornly refusing to stock a single ingredient. They had rice, but we practically had to beg for a vegetable to be served alongside our shellfish. In the end they offered some stir-fried Kang Kung (water spinach), although not a few minutes after we ordered we saw a lad run out the door and jog back a few minutes later with a bag full of the stuff. Although we perhaps missed out on authentic “Filipino” cookery, we did wisely in choosing a Chinese establishment – the kitchen, overseen by a formidable Hokkien woman, was possessed of a good portion of the 3000 years of experience built up the Overseas Chinese peoples of the south china sea and thereabouts. The prawns, fine specimens, came out in a Shanghai-style sweet chili sauce. The crabs, hairy and blue, were fried with salt and pepper -- the grown up version of a dish I had prepared myself not a week prior back in Seattle.

A pair of cold San Miguel Pilseners gave me enough to savor as I sat back to watch Cory being jauntly lowered into her tomb as  scores of suited and uniformed serious people looked on. A trio of buglers played a fine rendition of “Amazing Grace”, and then “Taps”, and then just nothing at all as the camera panned the silent, massive crowd. One of the older waitresses, who may well have clad the same yellow shirt she now wore in the streets back in 1986, started to cry, just a bit, then made a joke about something, laughed, then ran back into the comforting din of the kitchen.

*  In fairness, it should be noted that a disproportionate share of her scandals are tied to the “First Husband,” Mike Arroyo. GMA is ever vigilant in trying to keep him away from the illegal gambling rings and massive kickbacks he seems to have such a weakness for. She banished him from the country for a month in 2005, although it seems to have little effect

Mangos

Philippine mango, as eaten by me on Panglao Island, off the coast of Bohol.

"The Mangos in the Philippines are the best in the world. End of discussion." -- Lonely Planet Philippines, 2009

The first time I came to the Philippines, back in June, I arrived in my hotel room to the sight of two Mangoes, laid out on a platter next to a knife, spoon, and white linen napkin. I ate them, and they were very good. I promptly called down to order two more. A deep love of Mangos runs in my family.

I showed up at work the next day, still abuzz with the pleasure of finally being in a country where one can get decent mangos. "Ha!," Sameer, my Indian colleague, scoffed at me. Philippine mangoes are no match for what you can get in India. Eager at the opportunity to get into a conversation about mangos, I proceeded to talk of my days working in Hyderabad in May, during the peak season of the Alfonso, India's best known mango. "Ha!" Sameer scoffed again. By endorsing the Alfonso, I had revealed how little I really knew of the world and it's mangos.

When I arrive back to Manila from the States a few weeks ago, Sameer was also just arriving back from his home. We went about our work for the day, and then, as we were packing up to head back to the hotel, he paused. "Oh! I nearly forgot!" He reached into his laptop case and produced a brown paper envelope, stapled shut, ripely fragrant.

"These are what we had lying around the house." The saint had brought two of India's finest, from his own collection, grown in Sameer's native Punjab, and in season this time of year. They burst forth with flavor, and later that night filled my entire hotel room with the most delightful, fresh aroma. The texture was a bit stringy, I had to floss afterward, but it was well worth it.

Any connoisseur of world class, ripe mangos must make a trade off between texture and flavor, and the Indians, bless them will take flavor any time. Filipinos, with their tastes running milder all 'round, have opted to cultivate for texture. The flesh of the better specimens, of which we had many, was every bit as silky as a flan, and shone a delightful orange-yellow. They could run a bit sour if under ripe, but I didn't mind; it merely added bite.

But, my verdict? The Indian mangos. What can I say. Chambra videshi hai, dil bhartia hai.*

*My skin is that of a foreigner, but my heart is pure Indian

Philly food

Adobo, a soy-based stew
Crispy Pata, braised then friend pork knuckle

Filipino food gets a bad rap back home, and I must say that I don't believe I've ever actually tried it, having heard that it was all guts and offal. Turns out it is a bit earthy, not quite the stuff of Thai refinement of Chinese indulgence, but it does stand on its own merits for flavor and character. It was explained to me that the Philippines never had a real royalty, having been fairy primitive right up until the Spanish conquest -- no royal court means no professional gourmet chefs.

Local food of course exists aplenty, but I never really got a chance to explore the city on my own, and so all of the local meals I ate were in the company of my Filipino colleagues. They of course insisted on taking me to eat in various modern shopping complexes, to have (albeit authentic) replicas of the cuisine of their people -- eaten in the comfort of air conditioning and the company of other Filipinos and their foreign guests. At one restaurant, we actually ran into Imelda Marcos and her retinue, which kind of made the whole thing worth it.

The national dish is, of course, Adobo, a pork and chicken stew actually reminds me quite fondly of some of the dishes I used to make when I started cooking. The thin broth is mildly flavored with garlic and soy sauce, but mostly retains the character of whatever was braised in it. The best rendition I had came served with handfuls of garlic cooked in the skin. The picture I took does not do it justice.

The only bit of offal I actually ate in the end was something called Sisig, an appetizer designed to be eaten with cold beer on a hot day, made of small bits of pork jowl and liver, grilled and then fried and marinated and served complete with bits of bone left in for texture. The fat and carbonation disguises the humble ingredients nicely. It's a dish much better suited to be eaten on plastic stools squatted by the side of the road rather then in frigid air con next door to a Balenciaga store, but I was able to let my imagination do its work.

As in all of Filipino culture the Spanish influence is basically completely gone, except in the names, where it lives on fiercely. "Crispy Pata", was a brilliant rendition of a braised pork knuckle, breaded then fried before serving to give it texture. (Pata means leg in Spanish). I was thrilled to see it served with a pickled cabbage -- basically a sauerkraut, which makes it very similar to what loyal readers will recall was my favorite Luxembourgish dish -- Judd mat Gardebounen. I'm guessing this is a coincedence.

I apologize for the dismal pictures, taken with my phone. I'll be back to the islands on another trip next month, and will redeem myself.

A few days in Phily

The trip to Jamaica, the subject of my last post, back in February market the end of a halcyon month of sitting on Vivian's couch and doing a spot of work, between cooking myself breakfast, lunch, and dinner in her Harvard Business School dorm room. The months between now and then have been sparse with content due to their being full of labor, and being spent in settings such as Scottsdale, Arizona, with very little to distract me in the way of pleasure or alimentation.

It's a sign of my aging that I was not perhaps as pleased as I one would have at the opportunity to take a trip overseas, to Asia, no less -- but I thought to myself that AT LEAST I would have the opportunity to eat something other than the strip-mall and hotel fare that I'd been surviving on.

I spent only five full days in Manila, but "days" can't really be used to describe my trip, since I as I had to match the schedule of my call-center clients, I was working mostly nights. Call centers are something of a success story in the country, standing for fully half the new urban jobs created in the past ten years or so. Legions of young people troop into modern office buildings starting around nine pm, and stay in shifts until about noon the next day. I worked late most days, which meant until about 3pm -- at which point the offices were starkly deserted.

The guys I was working with were high end, doing a bit of support, but mostly sales and technical work. The call center "agents" are almost entirely college educated, and slouch in their chairs, cheap headsets jauntily perched atop their heads, as they dispatch with Americans with probably half their intelligence. They are modern men and women, raised on computers no doubt in internet cafes whose endless line of small computer-filled cubicals probably matches their work environments quite well. Their fingers fly across keyboards, windows flicker open and closed across their screens, and they patiently walk their customers through whatever steps are required to un-fuck their computers, or phones, or whatever.

The sales calls were the best ("Press 1 if you would like to open a new account…"). I listened in as one agent handled a woman from St. Louis call in about a software product.

"What sort of company do you work for ma'am?"

Cabinet manufacturing.

"So that's a manufacturing business? Did you know that we have a special version of our software just for the manufacturing industry? Let's talk about that later and first get some more information about you."

I had the image of a volleyball player setting an easy serve up in the air, then waiting poised for the ball to crest its arch.

Three Jerks

Jerk Pork on the beach at the Ritz

Jerk Chicken getting the sauce at Scotchie's
Viv enjoying a Jerk Fish down by the beach

Ackee and saltfish is the national dish of Jamaica, but the Jamaicans I spoke to admitted, when pressed, that actually, when it really came down to it, they preferred Jerk.

A simple barbeque dish, Jerk refers both to a set of spices used to marinade chicken, pork, and fish alike, as well as to a sweet-and-spicy sauce that the resulting meat is drenched in. It's served in "jerk centers", mostly shacks with a few tables and a steel-drum barbeque and a few drunks.

Chickens are the most classic food to Jerk. The birds, whole, are splayed opened ("butterflied"), rubbed deep with spice mix, left to marinade in a cooler for a day or two, then cooked slow over a wood fire. The meat gets cooked to a juicy perfection, but the skin barely caramelizes and hardly gets a chance to render, leaving it fatty and delicious.

Upon an order, a chicken is pulled from the grilled, and hacked into bite sized pieces by a strong armed man with a cleaver. The meat is piled into a stryrofoam box or piece of tinfoil, in a manner not a little reminiscent of Chinatown.

The classic sides are "rice and peas" (what we would call "ice and beans"), although this being Passover I focused instead on the popular alternatives of (humongous) roast sweet potatoes and yams, breadfruit, and something called "festival", which as far as I could tell was a cornmeal dumpling. I hope it was cornmeal, because they were good and I ate a lot of them.

In the four days I was in Jamaica, I think I had 6 jerk meals. The best, by far, was a Scotchie's, a roadside joint whose charming ramshackle local character is somewhat diminished by the expensive looking flat screen TV under thatched bar, and, gasp, a white woman who looked like a proprietor darting around in the back. The food was good, and the many local patrons didn't seem to mind the lack of complete ramshackle authenticity. Those I spoke to agreed it was the best, and apparently it recently won some sort of award from a magazine.

I'm almost ashamed to mention it, but the "Jerk center" at the Ritz, right down the beach, actually did a pretty damn good jerk pork, which may have been better than Scotchie's. It also cost $17, about five times as much. BUT, when served directly to our immaculately turned out lounge chairs facing the beach, and eaten with the sea breeze at our backs in pina coladas in our spare hands, we were not counting pennies.

Ackee, rice, salftish is nice

Ackee and saltfish. The yellowish bits that look like fish, are actually the ackee.
Ackee on the vine
Mackerel Rundown, another Jamaican breakfast specialty

One of the themes of this blog is salt cod (bacalao). I'd heard of course about Jamaica's national dish, ackee and saltfish, but I just assumed it was dried local bream or river fish. So imagine my pleasure when we pulled into Dolly's Café in Montego Bay, and I was served a plate of unmistakable bacalao.

The fish, like all salt cod, comes from the North Sea, Scotland and Norway and thereabouts, and is dried by wealthy Europeans before being processed in EU-standard factories and shipped to the New World for consumption by the simple folk here. So understandably, the amount of saltfish in the dish was pretty low, maybe just an ounce or two.

That's where the Ackee comes in -- a handsome purplish fruit, when boiled it yields a firm yey flaky texture which closely resembles that of the saltfish. It's rather flavourless, and so easily adopts and the tastes of salt and the see when its sauteed with the cod. I actually thought it was fish until the second or third bite. A practical filler.

Dolly, a septuagenarian restaurateur, seems to operate mostly for the benefit of expatriate Jamaicans returning home from the US for a vacation. She was a bit surprised to see the two of us white folks, remarking, "you're escaped!" (form our hotel).