Dispatch from Manila: April 6

We’ve been out of touch for a few days now. (Let’s say Guimaras isn’t quite as technologically advanced as we thought, which is just fine with us.) Today we’re taking an excursion back to Iloilo City (motorcycle taxi and pump boat) to get to an Internet café, do some shopping, and eat seafood. So I’ll send our dispatches in four entries, which also has the advantage of not frightening you into thinking you gotten into an obscure Russian novel.

Dispatch from Manila:
Jeanne says it was 43 hours door to door, and in that time we traveled from one world to another. Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, and LA on Monday. Actually we arrived in LA at 11:30 am, and our flight to Manila didn’t leave till 10pm, so we had a whole day to spend anywhere but in an airport. So we rented a car for $15 (upgraded to a PT cruiser too) and cruised LA. Well, we got lost a couple of times, but we did find the REI store to get a Gore-Tex hiking jacket on sale for Jeanne, and had a fabulous lunch in a nearby Italian restaurant. Then we rushed back to LAX because the ticket counter for Philippine Air wasn’t open in the morning when arrived, and we were told it would open at 3pm. So we were standing there at 3pm and no sign and no one in sight. Then a woman appeared who told us the counter didn’t open till 5. I told my sad story the best I could (this is the land of aspiring actors after all) about being told it opened at 3 and how I had come all the way there just to get an exit row, and was paying exorbitant parking fees. Can’t you just hear the just-right masculine whine? She disappeared into some offices behind the counter and came out with exit row seating passes. Let me tell you, the exit row is a big deal for a 6’4” person like me on a 15-hour flight. That woman was our first angel of the trip, and I told her later that night when I spotted her at check-in.
The rest of the afternoon and early evening (we had to be back about 8) took us on a leisurely drive a few miles down Sepulveda Blvd. (Pacific Coast Highway) till we found a nice beach for a walk. It was a windy and somewhat cool afternoon (giving Jeanne a good chance to try out her new jacket), but with bright sun and big long waves on the Pacific. Suddenly we were hungry, the kind that sneaks up on you after an Italian lunch, and leaves you feeling faint. So we’re swung back on Sepulveda and spotted a “Whole Foods Market.”
For those of you who don’t know, this is the Holy Grail of whole, natural, organic food, and Jeanne isn’t about to pass one by. (By the way, blessed is anyone who opens up one of these in South Bend (ain’t going to happen, maybe Mishawaka.) This place is Garden Patch Market on steroids, a super market a’la Martins on 23 with a huge all organic deli and a meat counter featuring only what Jeanne calls “happy meat”. We wandered through the store oohing and aahing, and generally advertising ourselves off as Hoosiers. (“Did you see those huge organic artichokes, harvested with care by Jungian therapists?) Eventually we got our take out supper (great Middle Eastern wraps, oranges, and a yogurt drink we remembered from Turkey, slightly bitter and sour to “cleanse the palate.” We brought it back to Manhattan Beach and dined while watching the sunset along with lithe young Angelinos (they’re all under 40) jog, skate, bike, roller blade, and jump rope by. Now I ask you, does this beat sitting at the airport and eating airport food for 10 hours?
Getting back to LAX at about 8pm, we joined the long line for baggage check in. (We had our prized seat assignments but the angel couldn’t take our baggage in the afternoon). We were two of about a dozen “Anglos” on the flight filled with tired but unendingly friendly and courteous Philippinos. We soon learned that these are among the world’s most open, friendly, and hospitable people, who, contrary to our expectations of world travel these days, loved Americans. They also seldom use luggage. The terminal area looked like a UPS loading dock, cardboard boxes piled on boxes. I discretely asked a Philippino next to me in line with whom I was conversing, why all the boxes. It wasn’t poverty, as I naively and prejudicially assumed, It turns out boxes weigh a lot less than the typical 15 lb large suitcase, which means 15 more pounds of whatever they are carrying (grapefruit juice, for example, which, strangely, is unavailable here and the Philippinos love). I’m not sure the baggage handlers were quite so enamored with the idea.
The plane took off right on time, and the whole flight was smooth and efficient under the calm leadership of Captain Ramos. Now, as we all know plane food isn’t going to win a prize anywhere, but we’ve come to expect a certain culinary panache on international flights. I was looking forward to a taste of Philippino cuisine, which I got. Philippinos eat lots of starches and sweets, which, shall we say, doesn’t fit well into the “South Beach Diet.” Those of you who know her well can all imagine Jeanne’s face as these delights land on our tray tables by fabulously beautiful Philippina flight attendants, who I wasn’t supposed to notice. There’s this “thing” we get on every Philippine flight which is either yellow or pink (like women’s clothes this spring), and consists of some kind of ultra light cake-like stuff that makes the non-filling part of Twinkies seem like pound cake, and practically floats down onto your tray. I hand it back to the flight attendant when she collected the food trays, and she looked crushed or upset, I couldn’t quite tell, like stupid American that I am I’d turned down the official national dessert.
It was a long, long flight with an hour-long “technical” layover in Hawaii, so at least I can say I’ve been there. (Technical layover means they clean the bathrooms, thank goodness, oh, and also refuel). The flight was kept bearable by my exit row leg stretch, Joe Caruso’s kind prescription of Ambien (I usually can’t sleep in anything but bed), and Sue Monk Kidd’s magical novel “The Secret Life of Bees.” Also, our three-some was completed by a large muscular Philippino-American, who, I gathered, had once played in the NFL, and whose name I can’t remember. Now if a real sports fan had been there, it would really have been a very interesting flight. As it was Jeanne, who sat next to him, and knowing nothing of football at all, discussed family and fabrics. It seems he was just married in February to a Philippina and made a trip back every couple of months until she could get her coveted green card, which evidently come with as much difficulty for Philippinos as Canadians.
[It’s 4:45 a.m. Thursday morning here on Guimaras [gee-ma-ras]--we collapsed in bed at 7pm-- and the cocks are crowing outside my window, telling me the sun will rise soon. I hear the cockcrow again and again during Morning Prayer later. This being Eastertide, it reminds me that Peter, who denied the Lord and went out weeping at the predicted cock crow, was reconciled and sent when, at the beach, Jesus asked him three times, “Peter, do you love me?”]