Steven: May 28th and May 31st

Monday May 28th, 2007


Today we played some more hoops with the local kids. We had to walk partway up into the mountain to find another court since the one by the school was full. The one up there also had some people playing but they were happy to have us shoot around with them. I’m getting pretty anxious lately, definitely ready for things to get going. I also think I’m starting to get out of shape, which is not good. I’ll have to get some sort of regimen going up here. Just get back to the basics and I should be alright. My diet is mainly bread and rice, the staples of the Philippines here. They have this really good sweet bread, it’s basically like a donut. I can’t get enough of that stuff!
I really enjoy the wealth of wildlife around the island. Everywhere you go there are horses, goats, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, etc. I'm a big animal guy so while some might cringe around pigs, I think the big guys are kind of cute. Although one of them got mud all over me when I decided to pet him.

Thursday May 31st, 2007

We spent the past couple of days in Cagayan de Oro. It was nice to get out and stay in a decent hotel room for 2000 pesos (about 40 US dollars). The entire journey from Camiguin to Cagayan de Oro takes about 4-5 hours and consists of a few bus and ferry rides. Apparently you can get a bus from Cagayan de Oro all the way to Manila. After hearing that the journey takes close to 3 days with no stops in between I quickly ruled that option out.
Hotel room A/C was great and on full blast, although both nights we had various disturbances. The first night it was a howling German Shepherd, the second it was a karaoke bar right underneath us. I must also say that the staff in these hotels are ridiculously formal. For example they cite rehearsed, drawn out sentences tinged with a fear that they might be saying something you don’t like. It can be frustrating having to listen to this when you just want to get a room for the night.
While in town we had a good time touring the Lim Kai Kai mall (possible spelling error). It was basically a huge indoor complex similar to any mall you might find in America. During the early weekday afternoon we were there it was packed with people of all ages. Crowds gathered around plasma screen displays, I wondered who could afford such things in this country. The mall was laid out like a catacomb as Trevor and I got lost several times. There must have been close to fifty cellular phone stores, it’s apparently a huge phenomenon sweeping the country. You’ll see rice farmers in the middle of their fields squatting down to send text messages. We also came across a stand selling pirated computer software/games. For a couple of bucks you could get the latest games and the new version of Windows Vista. As I mentioned all this stuff is pirated and its quality is suspect at best.
While at the mall we decided to take advantage of the movie theater. We entered into an enormous, pitch-black movie theater with an ambient temperature near the freezing point. The selection of the day was the new ‘Pirates’ movie. While the audio was really bad and I couldn’t understand what the actors were saying, I could tell the flick was not exceptional in any way. The locals seemed more engaged in texting than paying attention to the movie.