A cock in one hand...

Hi friends!

Yesterday I went to a cock fight! It was wicked! I'll put some pictures up probably tomorrow, Today is going to be a travel day once I get my things together.

For those of you who don't know, here's what I can tell of how a cock fight works.

Two roosters are prepared for the fight by attaching a knife like claw to one of their feet. They're held by their owners or trainers close to each other for a moment in order to develop a mortal hatred for each other. Usually the roosters are paired up closely to a specific weight class. After a few moments of encouraging the chicken to fight, the trainers release the birds into the arena and the fight begins. The crowd cheers, odds are given, people make bets with signals and the birds fight to the death.

I thought a lot about the fights yesterday. It's violent, a little gory and it involves killing for sport (although the birds are eaten). If you have a problem with that, I just ask you this before you start picking up mental stones to throw at the people who enjoy and participate in the sport...... Who the fuck do you think you are? That's what I said to myself. First off, How can I be the slightest bit condescending to this cultural event when the movies that my country makes are so graphically violent and that if I didn't know better, I'd think my own culture had a sort of detatched HUMAN bloodlust. I thought to myself that it's so easy to say "aww this is horrible, these people are making chickens kill eachother, it's so gruesome" But it's funny, this is the friendliest culture in the world that I've ever met! They don't have an army that invades nations, that fights violent and bloody wars that kills people. Fucking real people! Our news hardly even talks about the people we killed over in the sandbox. We demonise insurgents to make it OK for us to kill people while making cultures who practice things like chicken fighting evil because they're an easy target. I know everybody says things like "derrr, I didn't support a the war, killing's bad, I couldn't support that" Guess what, Everybody in the world knows that it's bullshit because if your country does something, YOU will be held accountable for it! No shit! bombs don't care if you point the finger at somebody else.

Look, I just got way off track. I do know that things are winding down over in Iraq and things are looking more to the bright side with our new president that I support. I'm just trying to make sense of things in my own mind. Life has many contradictions and I want to make it clear that if I sound like I'm lecturing someone that it only applies to you if you're one of those finger pointing, no responsibility taking people.. you know, the "California" type who love to tell people how the world should be run who can't even run their own state.

I think that maybe we should start public chicken fights in the USA so that we can see what real dying looks like. It's not pretty but it gave me a respect for life... and a wallet full of cash! I lost 3 fights, won 6 and tied two. Yes, you can tie- both chickens die at the same time!

I feel like a rock star.. and tall too!

Ahh.. Lemme say it again.. Ahhh.... My internal thoughts need to vocalize for sake of a headache which hasn't yet lost the inevitable war against the invading forces of Ibuprophen... You will die headache.. Give it up!

It's a dehydration headache.. Wink! Before I get to why, I'll dip into something more culturally magnificent.

I woke yesterday morning at the crack of dawn, the road was telling me that it was time to leave Puerto Galera so I listened. At morning coffee I chose Baracay.. How to get there was another thing. The guide book really doesn't mention the particulars on how one might travel from puerto galera to baracay but if you look at the map, there are roads and ferries and it didn't look THAT far away. So, At 800 I hopped on board my first jeepne. You can see a picture of what the jeepnee looks like in the photos I uploaded the other day. Three jeepnees later in different towns through mountainous jungle along ocean cliffside, one minivan ride, 14 hours without seeing another tourist and two boat rides later I arrived in what I found to be "pretty good" time. It was an awesome day spent with locals happy to have me as company. Here's some of what I scribbled in my daily journal about the jeepnee ride. (Advil is starting to work.. ahhh take that head!) *Opening journal now to find that my normally poor penmanship is quite worse when I write riding on bumpy roads*

5-30 10 am
I ride in a crowded capsule down half paved, swirling jungle roads bordering hairy shades of greenery. If there weren't so many children riding ontop of this half bus, half jeep, all stainless driven bullet, I bet you could see it from space right now in the hot, bright tropical afternoon sun. We speed as fast as we can to the next town rounding mountainous curves in whatever lane feels appropriate to the driver to avoid the many muddy pits and potholes. I stare at ankles, knees and hips against constantly retreating jungle looking to the back exit of our ride. The rest is enclosed with natural air conditioning. I sit in the middle of it all on my backpack because there are no seats left for passengers inside. My cohabitants stare at me and smile. It's not often that they see a "joe" like myself in these parts riding with them. Today, half of the passenger space is filled (near the front) with crates of empty beer bottles. I catch a wiff but only if I try. The humid ocean air meets the smell of jungle and cools my face with a breeze most of the time. Meanwhile, A proud mother comforts her amused infantontop of a yellow sponge bob pillow beside a weathered, leather faced old man who catches my reciprical stare and smiles big to show me his six or so teeth pointing in different directions. We continue our climb up this jungle mountain cliffside. A motorized trycicle with a passenger load of large and weary pink pigs wizzes past in oncomming traffic. I watch them make their descent as long as I can but they dissapear around the bend of the ocean bay and violently encroaching jungle. Our vehicle slows for a moment around a corner to about fifteen miles an hour and three smiling well positioned children hop on to hitch a ride. I am a scribbling spectacle- when I look up to my neighbors they smile.. but I give up finally just like the pavement.

So, On my last ferry ride, I met charlie who offered me to stay at his grandfathers hotel. I atfirst didn't want to because everybody has a place for you to stay but given the time of night and the fact that I wanted to go out and see the beach night life, I gave in. Baracay is THE island party life in the Philipines. Charlies uncle was with him too and it turns out the he had just run for mayor of the town. With that in mind, I figured that these were good people and accepted. The hotel is a building tucked in a few alleyways from the beach. My room is more like an apartment. When I arrived, I met the entire smiling family- half of them atleast which included two aunts, several unkles, charlies father and his friends and some of what seemed to be twenty children running around and playing.

Out on the beach- It's difficult to walk five minutes without meeting someone fun to talk to. I was hungry and stopped at a grilling station where to my surprise they were grilling kababs of various types.. If you are the mac and cheese type, stop reading!! Get this, The kababs were of various intestines, gizzards and feet. I tried the chicken and pork intestines( I like the pork better) and later came back for some gizzards.

(i'm running out of internet time and don't want to be late for the sunday cock fights so I'm going to make the rest of this quick) Later in the nigh, I met some really cool people who introduced me to a few more "exotic" dishes. Sisig (my favorite so far) which was goat face, intestines, skin and ears, finely diced and served in some sort of .. no shit.. Brain sauce with garlic, onions and who knows what else and Finally, "Balut" chicken eggs boiled which are about to hatch. Yes, you can taste the beak and feathers but it was pretty good. Tomorrow or later today I'm going to upload some pictures directly to this blog.

Last- I feel like a tall rock star because I met three less than 5 ft tall girls who danced the night away with me in pure fun. It was a wild booty train philipino brian sandwich. Seriously, It was all in good fun, nothing physical- not that I have to explain myself but what a riot! Rock star status!
I love this country!

Pictures probably later.. I'm going to my first cock fight.

Shit smiles and the devil laughing

Hello there everybody. If you're still reading this then you can tolerate my bad grammer and shitty spell checking. Today, I'm in Puerto galero, a place called sabang to be exact. Just to let you all know first off, My Anthony Bourdain style of eating is still paying off for me. The other day after slurping cow stomachs I took it a step further. For dinner the other night, I ate fried pig intestines mixed with the skin of a baby pig, onions (all finely diced) with rice.. Sounds frighteningly satanic I know.. praise satan. (that was totally a joke)

So, I'm uploading a few photo's at the moment but I have to admit that I still haven't busted out of my photographic bubble. . . I'm getting there though. The truth is that I love being a photographer, I just feel like an ass sometimes flashing a nice camera in the faces of people who have so little. That said, The poor here seem to be the happiest. I met a lady today also who is a missionary from Canada who invited me to photograph the children who live at the big trash dump in Manilla where she does her work for God. I'm going to see if those kids look happy, I doubt it. Since I slipped that Satan joke in there and some of you are still grinding your teeth about my heathenism, you should know how inspired and heartfelt I was for her cause.. and yes, in the name of God. Nuff said!

So, yesterday I took a ride to this little island on a pretty cool passenger boat. Then got a room and fell asleep until late enough to do the usual evening walk, get a one hour (professional-meaning no happy ending!) Massage for 5 dollars and have a few beers. We're getting close to the rainy season here (I love tropical rain) so every night there's a lightening storm over the ocean. I watched mine last night in awe of the power that is our earth.

Today, I rented a moped and drove around the island. First to some waterfalls where ,cool enough, the owner of the mopeds sons raced out there to meet me to show me the best swimming spots. We joked and laughed, I let them play with my camera and swam.

Today was hot! At first It was silly, I felt the sunburn coming on and told myself that my skin was just "drunk with the sun" .. Yeah.. Now my skin has a hangover!

After the waterfall, I drove to the other side of the island to "white beach" for lunch and told everybody my name was Santiago ricardo domingo smith for fun and that I was from a place near Holland called "you'llnotknow" and that since it was actually an island and that if one was to refer to my home as a nonresident they would have to call it "isle notknow" --- Jerk! I know. I always give in and tell them it's a joke in the end and we laugh whoever it is.

Now, Sunburnt like the bad ass mopedrider that I am, I'm taking it easy waiting for that evening lightening storm.

Here's my attempt at a moment of ZEN- how commercial I know! (I could stop here and that would totally be it. But I wont)

I met an old Filipino man who when asked where a good place to eat exotic national food was told me just to find the most expensive place to eat saying in a loud and pronounced v oice "cheap will cheat you" Now it's funny because I talked to an ex pat living here the same night who told me that the reason to live here was because it was so beautiful and cheap.. but even further down the chain of conversations of that night another ex patriot that I spoke with who had lived here for even longer than the first expat told me the same thing as the first old Filipino man.. mostly spinning yarns of all the times he thought he had a good business deal in this country which turned out to cheat him or his friends. I asked the last man- " would you ever live some where else?" He looked in my eyes and said "Never because if the world falls to shit, these people have a lot of practice making it beautiful!"

Peace, the pictures are at face book but their image loader is so slow that I have to give up half way through until I can find a better way. I have no privacy settings for viewing pics there so even if you're not on my friends list you can look up Brian Stelter and find the photo's in an album called " a little bit of the philipines"
Brian

Breaking the ice in great heat and humidity

Phew! Here's to my first real day in Manilla! First off, I can't believe how friendly the people are here. It's strange that everywhere I go people stare at me but when I catch eyes with them, they smile and say something nice. In short, here's how my first day went (you wont get pictures for a few days because I can't get into the habit of uploading them daily).

I woke early this morning with butterflies in my stomach. Last night, I arrived at the hostel around midnight and had a beer on the 5th floor balcony of the hostel alone. A lightening storm sparked the night sky for the not so distant ocean. After watching a city below not sleeping like myself, I couldn't resist going out for a walk around the town that seemed to be well lit and still bustling with small crowds, dance music, street vendors and night life. My walk was short and mostly uneventful. After a quick beer at a roadside local pub, I realized how much I should sleep for tomorrow and called it a night.

Oh yeah, back to this morning. I started my day with a walk to a restaurant called chefs choice where I found a traditional Philipino breakfast of eggs, rice, a small slice of fish belly, pork sausage and beef tapas. I've made it a goal to try to eat the most local and varied foods I can find (god help me!)

After breakfast, I talked with fellow hostellers about possible itineraries and destinations then headed out to the streets to see what I could find to do for the day. To start, I rode a bicycle taxi which was something more like a tricycle taxi. Moments after departure, A 5 yr old hopped on my leg for the ride- He pointed at the driver and told me it was his Dad peddling. I'm cool with take your kid to work day. The bike taxi took me to a historical district where I walked for about an hour before meeting Rolando, a horse and buggy driver who insisted that I accept a ride with him around the best places in manilla. Rolando turned out to be a retired sailor of twenty yrs and his horse was named "rambo"! How could I refuse? The ride turned out to be an unforgetable, educational and awesome experience. In a side note, on that ride, I photographed so many local people who seemed to smile at my slightest recognition. I tell you, these people are warm hearted! You'll see in the pictures. Whilst on the buggy ride, Rolando, aside from giving the usual practiced lectures of local history, shared and exchanged sea stories with me as we genuinely laughed and listened wholeheartedly. Strange----While saying goodbye to Rolando, He took my hands and asked me to meet his daughter. He told me that he would be proud to to hear me call him "PAPA" someday. I greatfuly declined but said thanks papa.

It's now later in the day, I've just eaten at a local restaurant the second strangest thing I could find on the menu- Tripe and cow knuckles in a tomato, olive sauce with a side of rice. The first bite (or perhaps I should say slurp) was the toughest. I'll tell you about the first strangest thing when I actually eat it.

Tomorrow, (Philipino flag day) I'll be on the road closer to a beach and hope to do some scuba diving in a few days. I'm going out tonite but getting up early.

Peace!

Hong Kong airport

I'm here in the Hong Kong international airport after a 15 hour flight. I think Hong Kong is something like an additional 14 hours ahead of pacific time which puts me at 723 pm the 26th. I stepped off my plane a little groggy after sleeping the entire flight meaning that my plan of staying up for nearly two days prior to departure was a success. It's humid here and alot of the people are wearing swine flu masks. I bet that somewhere in the world drywallers and woodworkers are laughing. I was a little dissapointed that the entire flight crew on my plane also wore masks because I couldn't liken them to the twisted version of that Robert Palmer song "simply irresistable" that sometimes plays in my head when I fly to asian countries (remember the video?)... Now don't get me wrong.. It's true that I do find them somewhat attractive- I'm just more so impressed with how they all seem to look the same like one might expect from flight attendants in the Us 20 or thirty years ago.

Flying in to Hong kong was mystical. Clouds bubbled and rolled accross the sky over top of islands, masses of cargo ships and sea lit well enough by streaks of evening sun and speckled by cloud shade. Our landing approach took us directly over head of rows of huge towers and buildings. My respect for this culture has been immediately sparked by the wonderous beauty of its surroundings. I'm looking forward to exploring Hong Kong near the end of this trip after Indonesia. My flight to Manilla is boarding soon.. I'm still a little sleepy, I've checked though.. I'm not dreaming.

Brian

That was easy

Hello everyone and Welcome to my new Blog! I've created this page for any of my friends and family to keep track of my travels this summer throught parts of SouthEast Asia. My plan is to travel frst to the Phillipines (tomorrow morning actually for me) Second to my ole friend Singapore for a few days, Third to Indonesia where I expect to do the most exploring and finally to Hong Kong for a few nights before returning to the states again in the beginning of July.

I'm not sure what kind of things you'll find in here. My intentions are to simply share with you some of my experiences through my eyes and my perspective which we'll surely, atleast in some circumstances, differ on. I have no intentions of padding down my language or tone but please be sure that it will not be my goal to offend you if at some point or another you find yourself cussing at the monitor at me for something I said. P.S Fuck you too! if you do. It's what we are you know.. Our actions and our words, our perspective and thoughts on what we see and experience. I hope that atleast one time- when you read my future posts that you have the opportunity to enjoy with me the wonderlust that fuels my soul or at the very least you find something in here that atleast brings out a Wow (even if it is under your breath).

If you were one of the three people who read anything from my last travel blog then you should know that I'll be posting teaser pictures or atleast links to the places where I upload the rest of the pictures to the internet. The address to the remaining half of my old blog (the first half was lost in translation) is here http://www.pacificogsteller.blogspot.com/ . None of the picture links work there because time kills, changes and creates technology. They are at new places. But if you find yourself really bored and are wondering wether or not you should add this page to your favorites or ever read it again, you could get an idea of what to expect from that old thing.

It's Midnight here in Bend Oregon where I call home. I plan on writing tomorrow at one of several airports I'll be passing through in the next 24 hours. My stomach is filled with butterflies at the moment as I write this. I still have so much to do before I leave for the airport in 4 and a half hours. So, I'm going to leave this post at that for now and see if I can get all the things I need to do before locking the doors to my house done.

Cheers everyone!
Brian