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White
power
A couple more observations about Sulawesi that don’t fit anywhere
else. First – and I may have mentioned this before - the place gives
you a nice insight into what it would be like to be famous. Half the
people in the street will greet you ‘Hello Mister!’( yelled with ear-splitting
enthusiasm if they’re kids). Then they all ask you the same set of
questions: ‘Where you come from? What’s your name, etc.’ Most of them
want nothing more than to have a brief chat with you, but it quickly
becomes unbelievably tedious. It also explains why most of the people
who really, really want to be famous (Geri Haliwell, Big Brother contestants
etc.) are complete morons.
The second thing is, dermatologically, Sulawesi is the polar opposite
of Essex - that is to say, it’s full of dark people who desperately
want to be white. Indeed, it must be the world’s biggest market for
skin whitening cream, which, in its own way, looks just as bad as
the orange slap that Basildon tarts plaster themselves with. I suppose
it’s no more stupid and unnatural than bad fake tan. But is pretty
funny seeing people touch Jane’s arm and say: ‘So beautiful’ before
following with the clincher, ‘So pale, so white.’
Death air
We needed to renew our visas, so decided to head north to Davao in
the southern Philippines, another of South East Asia’s must-see trouble
spots with it’s own health warning, this time the FO devoted an entire
page to why you shouldn’t go there. Even the Lonely Planet, which
is normally fairly cavalier about these matters, began its entry with
‘It would be extremely foolish to...’ But we were meeting my old mate,
Stuart Green who lives in these parts. And he was both unfoolish and
probably more up to date than either the FO or the LP.
But before we could risk our lives in Davao we had to risk our lives
getting there. And the cheapest way was Bouraq Air, an outfit I have
never used before and hope never to use again. For the ‘bargain’ price
of US $85 (return) Bouraq would fly us from Manado into kickin’ Davao.
So, without further ado we made our way to Manado International, northern
Sulawesi’s shockingly swanky airport. It’s swanky in the way that
massive foreign aid funded infrastructure projects tend to be in the
third world. How about adequate water and sanitation? No, but you
can have an airport that can land 12 jumbos at once as long as our
construction companies get the contracts.
Anyhow, shortly before boarding, there was no sign of Bouraq and Jane
was getting a little jumpy. She scanned the runway for a Bouraq jet
but all we could see was an antiquated looking twin-prop with ‘Bali
Air emblazoned on the side in lurid pink. ‘I hope that isn’t our plane’
she whimpered. ‘Of course, not,’ I replied carelessly, ‘no way we’re
flying on that piece of shit.’ But of course that piece of shit was
our plane. Why even I felt a little nervous as we boarded a rather
tatty looking craft whose elegant, classic lines recalled the golden
age of aviation.
Still, to their credit, Bouraq didn’t kill us and even managed a passable
breakfast. And, at Davao we were greeted by the frighteningly friendly
airport police with some incredulity. ‘Are you missionaries?’ one
well armed man asked. No. ‘Well do you work for an NGO?’ No. ‘Well
what are you then?’ Err, dumb tourists. Once over his shock, he roused
the chap at the tourist desk from his six-month slumber. After rubbing
the sleep from his eyes, he was happy to recommend a hotel and even
find us an honest taxi driver.
Terrorists, sex tourists and football
But back to Davao’s problems. The southern island of Mindanao should
be one of the Philippines’s biggest tourist draws. It has the country’s
highest volcano, the glowering mount Apo; it has miles of unspoilt
coastline; and it has innumerable idyllic offshore islands. But it
also has the Abu Sayaff terrorist group, a sort of SE Asian Al Quaeda
wannabe, which would like a separate Muslim state in Mindanao. Not
quite as ambitious as its Afghan counterpart, the group usually contents
itself with kidnapping tourists (usually Americans from resorts);
more recently, they’d also beheaded an American missionary. I guess
if you’re an Islamic fundamentalist, a yank who is also a proseltytising
Christian makes a pretty irresistible target). Anyway, the Americans
had recently gone after Abu Sayatt (the leader) and, like Osama, he’d
had a lot of superior
firepower aimed in his direction. Now, also like Osama, they were
pleased to report, he was either dead or he wasn’t.
For all this Davao is hardly a city under siege. In fact the only
visible signs of its current danger-zone status are rather a lot of
security guards and cheap hotel rooms. For somewhere that is supposed
to be a hotbed of fundamentalist unrest, Davao looks…well it looks
like America would do if it was a third world country. Public squalor
and private splendour, shopping malls and slums. There is no culture
to speak of and the whole
place is busily engaged in the kind of vapid and desperate consumerism
that only works if you’re very rich. (which is why Aspen is cute and
Davao is not). After a couple of days there, I was beginning to think
that old Abu just might have a point.
Disappointingly, during our time there we didn’t see anyone who looked
remotely suspicious: clearly the dead/ not dead Abu had bigger fish
to fry. So we met with Stuart and headed up to Cebu City. Surprisingly,
by the standards of third world cities, this is a pretty nice, if
very westernised place. Still all this consumerism has it’s upsides
– you can, for example, get good coffee almost everywhere. As well
as its downsides: western and local tastes have combined to give the
world the Durian cappuccino. Anyone who ever smelled a Durian will
know that this is not a good thing.
Still, there was enough calorific western fare in the Philippines
to have brief stab at reversing the effects of the Indonesian diet;
I currently weigh in at about 9st and have the physique of a 17 year
old. We also availed ourselves of fantastic diving and a fine Filipino
massage. Our co-massagees were a group of Japanese businessmen who
defied all stereotypes by trying to touch up their masseurs in mid
session. Speaking of grotty, predatory foreigners, the Philippines
is probably the sex tourist capital of he world and the number of
75 year olds/ angry misfits with cute young Filipinos on their arms
is quite shocking. There’s not really that much to be said about these
repulsive letches, except that if you can’t get laid in your own country,
you really shouldn’t be doing it in someone else’s.
Being in the Philippines made it a real bugger catching the World
Cup. Unlike every other nation in SE Asia, the Filipinos don't give
a toss about footie. No, their national sport is basketball, a fact
that is all the more remarkable in a country where the average man
in 5' 5". Still, after missing most of the first half we found
the only English pub in Cebu city, the Windsor Castle (where else?)
and settled down with half a dozen ex-pats who supported England and
about 100 locals who all loved brazil (3rd world solidarity, I guess).
A sad day indeed.
Pissing in the wind
And then it was back to Davao (Still not so much as a ‘boo’ from Abu)
and from there to Sulawesi. This time we took Philippine air (motto
‘Fly high Filipino!’) which is a surprisingly pukka outfit. Towards
the end of an utterly uneventful flight, I chose to go to the loo,
and while I was in mid-stream, our aircraft chose to run into an authentically
terrifying patch of turbulence. The plane dropped several hundred
meters and bounced around like a ship in a storm, the stewardess was
hammering on the door, and a scream of terror from the cabin identified
Jane. As for me, well, I was rather like one of those cartoon characters
who loses control of a hosepipe. Presently the plane righted itself
and I regained my Johnson, but by this time, I’d already given the
toilet – and myself – a good hosing. I spent the remaining 20 minutes
of the flight in damp ignominy. Wetting yourself, aged 30, even if
you have a good excuse, is about as undignified as it gets.
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