20 September 2005.

Well quite a lot was done today, or rather I should say quite a bit of traveling. Joel woke me up in my room just before 8:00am. I hadn’t been expecting him as today was going to be the day I was going to take off, and Joel was going to stay home. He being up quite a bit before me decided that it was a nice day as it was not raining, and thought that we should start out because you don’t know what the weather will be like the next day. Being awake as he had woken me up I said sure let me take a shower eat and we can be on our way. And so a short while later we were. Joel had rented a multicab so that we could drive ourselves around rather relying on busses or the motorcycle carts. He drove us around the southern province of Leyte visiting a number of towns and driving through many more. It is somewhat hard to describe the country here. Most of the roads that you travel on are nearly completely lined with nipa huts and the occasional concrete house. That is until you come into one of the towns or cities, and then it is nothing but nipa huts, shanties, and concrete buildings. Despite the sheer number of people and structures you can still see quite a bit of the country, and you get a very good idea how these people live. It is obvious who the rich are, the poor, and the middle class. There are very few rich, a whole lot of poor and a spattering of middle class. The rich live in spacious concrete houses, the poor in nipa huts, the poorer the smaller and less maintained the hut. The middle class usually seem to have concrete houses, or larger houses built from bamboo same as the nipa huts, but much better maintained. On our return to Hilongos Joel’s wife asked me what I thought of the Philippines so far. My answer was. The Philippines is a beautiful country filled with beautiful people, but is also filled with poverty. This pretty much sums up the truth of the matter as so far as I have seen. One thing that seems to be true to me is that while there are many people being equally poor as far as income goes, there are some that seem to do much better than others. Let me explain if I can. The poor in the towns earn very little and live in nipa huts, many in very rough shape, they also live on top of each other, with little to no space between huts, there is much trash and filth and often when there are heavy rains some of the huts have to contend with inches to feet of water. The poor that live further away from the towns may not have any more money, but what they do have is more resources and less filth. For instance there nipa huts are usually better kept because they have easy access to bamboo, because it either grows on there land or there neighbors. They can also grow food, and have wood for use. These simple things make much difference. A person in a town cannot go out and collect natural resources, even something as simple as bamboo; rather they will have to buy it. Those that live out further in the country also usually have something to sell, while those in the towns and cities have to find a job. Another thing that the poor have to contend with in the towns is that there are too many people and not enough jobs. What I have noticed is that many of the business are family run where it seems the whole family and some of the extended family work. What this does is spread the money a business makes out between to many people so no one person can get ahead, but all have just enough to survive. This is good in that it keeps people with food, and a job, but what you end up with is a business that should be run with five people being run by ten people, and so while there is a lot of hard work being done there is also a lot of people sitting or laying around waiting for something to do. A prime example of this is the put-put carts where there may be seven or eight at any time just sitting on the corner waiting to take someone wherever for 5 pesos, or about 10 cents. Chances are that two or three of them are taking a nap, because there are no passengers, or there all sitting or standing and talking. Because once again there are no passengers, or if there is one, well that is only one fair for one person. Yet another thing I am picking up on is that while labor is cheep here, to say that the Philippines is cheep is inaccurate. If a product is produced or grown locally, then it is likely to be fairly inexpensive, about one third the price you would pay in the states, but other things go for about the same price. Eating in Cebu for instance, if you eat in the local restaurants or quick food places, you may end up paying from 170 to 300 pesos. That doesn’t sound like much to me or you, but taking that the exchange rate is 55 pesos to the dollar we can round one pesos to 2 cents. So 170 pesos is $3.40 and 300pesoes is $6.00 about what you would be paying for a meal in a similar restaurant in the states. One of the differences is though, is that in the Philippines the portions are almost always small, so you may be paying more here for less than you would get in the states. Other places though you do fair better and get a better value for you pesos. Ok take this into account. I came here planning on spending as little as possible, right now I think that I may get away with spending $1000.00 for the 16 days that I am here. A good chunk of that is lodgings at about 1000 pesos per day, that is about $20.00 a day I will take that as a fair average because you pay more in Cebu. 16 days at $20 a day is $320. I plan on paying Joel 1000 pesos per day for his troubles, that will be for 8 days, which will come to $160. add in another $12 per day for food and water for 16 days, that is $192. That brings me up to $672.00. Dividing that by 16 days, that brings me to $42 a day. While you can’t get a hotel in the US for that, $42.00 a day is still no drop in the bucket. Now I still need to add in misc. expenses as well as transportation, being it by taxi, ferry, put-put, motorcycle cart, bus or a rented vehicle. So while this is still perhaps an inexpensive vacation most people in the states can get by on less than $42.00 a day. In order for me to call something, or someplace cheap, I have to be able to stay there for less than I can live in the states. Well that’s it for today, it may be the 21^st or 22^nd before I can get back and add more things as I will be headed up to the far north of Leyte tomorrow, and will most likely be staying there for the night.

More school children. Notice the umbrella. These serve a two fold purpose. The first one is what you might expect an umbrella to be used for. It can be sunny one minute and a downpour the next, but the Filipino women will use the umbrella for both situations. The Filipino women seem to be scared of two things, rain and sun, and as a general rule they try to stay out of both equally.

I don’t know what particular attraction I held for this boy, but he followed me around most of the time I was in town. He wasn’t begging as he never asked for money or anything else, he just kind of kept any eye on me. After a little while he overcame whatever fears he had of me and came over to me while I was taking pictures and just sort of watched what I was doing. He never said a word to me just watched what I was doing. A little while later his brother and sister came along and watched what I was doing as well. Shortly there after his brother and sister dragged he away and I went on to another part of town.

It began raining and then became a torrential downpour. These gentlemen and I all ducked into this buss stop at the same time. Notice none of us have umbrellas, and were all men. Perhaps those women have an idea there.

Yes this is a house under a bridge, you figure out the advantages, and then think about the disadvantages.

Port and Town of Sogod

Sign reads, Coast Guard Detachment Sogod

Cliffs at Padre Burgos, and Limasawa Island in the distance