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.
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.
1 comments:
Even once we've been to a place our concept of its layout will change as we figure out where is the best cafe, a favorite park, a friend's house.
And more versions of a place can be found in the depth of stories - my fix for exploration was satisfied by hearing about Claude & Margarite's family life on the olive farm going back 100 years. We hardly needed the scooter (except, of course, to desperately return to the internet like it was oxygen).
On the other side of the coin, we rode through a lot of towns on this trip and I wonder, What are the criteria for being able to say that I've been to a place?
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