Travel: December 2005 Archives

At breakfast my brother-in-law informed me that our services would not be required until 2pm, so most of the morning was spent lazing around, taking laps around the hotel lobby, catching up on email, and hanging out with the best man and groomsmen. The ladies were under strict instructions not to stray too far, given the massive amount of time it would take them to have their hair and makeup done, but us guys were free to goof off.

Around noon, the wedding planner, Teddy, showed up in Victor's room with his assistants and the photographers. Well, more like the photography CREW. Two still cameras, one video camera, and one lighting guy. Combine that with my camera, Vince's camera and the other people coming and going, and it prompted Victor to comment that it looked like a CSI crime scene with all the flashes, inspections and rearrangements. The photgraphers asked for his barong and shoes on the bed, along with other stuff like cufflinks, belt, cologne. Victor, like his sister, is asthmatic, and in a flash of inspiration - no doubt stemming from the case of jitters and hyperventilation he was no doubt suffering from - he tossed his albuterol inhaler on the bed as well. The chuckle all of us needed, I think.

Finally it was time for our pictures, and we got ready in record time for a few snaps before Mrs. Dave came back all prettied up for her starring role in the ceremony (she had been asked to read the responsorial psalm and the call to the faithful). And then it was off to the church. While we arrived way early in true American fashion, things were running late in true Filipino fashion - ours was the fourth and last wedding at that church for the day, and we got there an hour early and started half an hour late. Fortunately, that gave us time to take some pictures outside and practice our line up just inside the entrance, since we hadn't gotten much chance to rehearse the night before.

The wedding planner's crew was out in full force, directing traffic to and from the pews, to and from the podium/altar, and a minor mishap was avoided when we narrowly missed lighting the wrong candle. As part of a Filipino wedding, two secondary sponsors are supposed to light candles on-stage that the couple then uses to light their own candle together. Except due to the lack of rehearsal, we weren't sure exactly where to go or which candles to light...and we almost lit the wedding candle by mistake. As far as I know we're forgiven.

One ceremony and eight schmillion pictures later, we piled back into the shuttle fans (the happy couple got a white Benz - high style) and headed to the Maynila Ballroom for the pre-dinner cocktail hour. I had one of the strongest margaritas I've ever had - my toes AND hair were curling, my eyes rolled back in my head, and I think my tongue ran for cover in my esophagus - and we mixed and mingled with other wedding guests. Dinner came in about eighteen separate waves, giving us ample time to dance - DANCE! - and watch Mrs. Dave's cute cousins' girls play in the smoke/bubble machines. They even commandeered the microphone from the MC's podium and shared their vocal talent with the rest of us. There were slow dances, fast dances, conga lines, odd segues and remixes (including a DJ-skipped version of "YMCA" that had everyone going "down at the Y-Y-Y-Y-YMCA" - dude, don't mess with the YMCA). We ate mounds of food, danced until we were sore, and practically closed the place down. Actually, we did - we helped the caterers/organizers take some stuff down, and brought the wedding presents up to the bridal suite. My brother-in-law was now married. Welcome to the family, Imelda!

After another sumptuous breakfast at the Cafe Ilang-Ilang, the newlyweds-to-be had to go run a plethora of errands, including his first confession in ~25 years. Apparently the Hail Mary-to-sin exchange rate is also way lower here in the Philippines - he got something like five Hail Marys, five Our Fathers, etc. So Stefan, Mrs. Dave and I thought we'd hit up the local golf course, the Intramuros Club. Technically, it's not intra (inside) any muros (walls) - it runs around the outside - but it's in that area. Our cabbie dropped us off, and the soaking began.

First, he offered to wait for us at the rate of P230 an hour (about $4.50, which is cheap, but the round-trip would have cost P170). Then they foisted some caddies upon us (P250 each). Then club rental. And balls. And tees. And greens fees. And maintenance fees. By the time the cash register stopped ringing, we'd been tuned up for P4720 (about $100)! But hey, we were going to have a morning of entertainment, right. We got up to the starter's box, and our caddies disappeared for some reason. Then the starter pointed to the dress code sign we'd missed before - Stefan didn't have a collared shirt. Of course they offered to sell him one, but the whole experience was just too bizarre and irritating, and we decided to cut our losses, get our money back, and hit the driving range instead.

Perhaps it was just this driving range, but one peculiarity was far too interesting not to mention. That is, other than the solid dirt platforms from which to drive. And the fact that the range was only ~175 yards long, necessitating a hundred-foot-high netting around the entire area. Or the fact that just off to the right of the driving range was the red tiled roof of the shrine to the national hero we had visited yesterday. Or even the fact that the netting had fallen halfway down, meaning everything that we sliced had a very real possibility of clonking some poor shrine visitor on the head.

No, it was that in our P85 fee per bucket (of 80 balls!) was included a "tee girl" fee. The tee girls basically sat next to the divider between tee areas, and teed up the balls before we hit them. Or at least, they were supposed to. But Stefan hadn't been golfing for about three years, and he was so fearful of rocketing a ball shooting off the poor girl's kneecaps that he pleaded with her to get out of the way lest he incapacitate her permanently. We did observe the tee girls on other tees - they would scoop together a small pile of dirt, place the ball on top, and then pick up the ball along with a small cylinder of packed earth beneath it, and set it out in the driving area. Lather, rinse, and repeat. 80 times. Kinda made my blister seem insignificant by comparison.

Since the driving range experience had lasted somewhat shorter than a round of 18 holes might have, but since it left us both with wrenched backs and sore shoulders (wimps, I know, but we were wayyyyy out of practice and probably could have just handled a bucket between the two of us), and since we had a few hours to kill, back we went to the spa in Quezon City. The bride and groom would be meeting us there since they had missed out on the previous day's festivities and didn't want to be left out completely. The groom was sporting a freshly-shaved head and the bride had just had her nails done at the salon next door, so it was really an afternoon of comfort and pampering for all of us. Stefan was interested in getting the full-body treatment but after hearing our rave reviews of the "foot reflex", he opted for that instead and was not disappointed. Mrs. Dave splurged on a foot reflex AND a facial at the same time and we left feeling refreshed and ready to...go to the rehearsal dinner. After what MAY have been 15 minutes of "rehearsal" in the ballroom's lobby - the church wasn't available to us, so we couldn't really rehearse much other than to line up - the 20 of us traipsed over to the Harbor View for the dinner itself.

Our table for 20 was out on the jetty that juts into Manila Bay - nothing like an open-air dinner on December 29th! And there we were, 20 of Victor & Imelda's closest friends and family, just enjoying life halfway around the world (well, halfway for a few of us, anyway). We got to see more fireworks - in an odd twist, Thursday's participants were the South Africa and the US! - while dining on local delicacies. The highlight of the menu - well, other than the ridiculous assortment of cakes for dessert - was the lapu-lapu, or grouper. If you could get past the fact that it was served with head and tail still attached, the meat itself was delicious - very tender with a pineapple glaze. One of the cousins informed me that lapu-lapu was actually named after the tribal chief who refused to subjugate himself to Magellan when the explorer landed in the Philippines in the late 1500s, and whose men were responsible for killing him. Sort of the first national hero, in a way.

Dinner wrapped up around 11 and we waddled our way back to the hotel, fat and happy and ready for a good night's sleep in preparation for the wedding festivities.

And now greetings from Manila (or "Maynilad", as it was originally called - Tagalog for "There are mangroves")! We're paying the thrifty sum of p175 (a little over $3) for the use of one of three machines here at the Hotel Manila's "executive services center". And since Mrs. Dave can't check her email due to this spyware-infested contraption, we decided to make a visit to the un-spyware-blocked vividgreen.net. Such is our dedication to all events blogworthy that we keep vg.net spyware-free! As spyware-free as the Philippines are bird-flu-free (picture coming later).

It's quite seasonable here. Apparently it's the tail end of their summer season (though there's really only two seasons here - dry and wet) and the forecast is hot and sunny, low to mid-80's all week. I got a bit pinkish walking around Intramuros yesterday (the old walled fortress area of Manila).

We got in at 12 midnight on Tuesday night, and spent 45 minutes in line at immigration, another 45 minutes waiting to be picked up, and by the time we got to the hotel it was 2am! I managed to sleep all of two hours on the JFK-Hong Kong flight and only about three hours Tuesday night Wednesday morning, then had a huge breakfast with the soon-to-be-weds, Mrs. Dave's mom and Victor's best man Stefan. I am currently in Tevas, shorts and a polo shirt, trying not to look too pasty, but in a land of short-statured brown people, I can't help but stand out. Though Stefan is taller than I am. We jokingly refer to ourselves as Victor's security detail.

Yesterday we saw the Casa Manila, a typical 1800's-era house where rich folk lived, complete with harp and piano imported from good old Boston, MA. Nothing like a taste of home (not counting, of course, the three Dunkin' Donuts we saw on our way back to the hotel last night). Then we walked to Fort Santiago, home of a museum dedicated to the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal. He was the main driving force in national independence from Spain and the US, but was put to death by firing squad before the country was liberated. We saw the cell he was held in, and are actually staying at a hotel in front of the pavilion where he was executed. Very thought-provoking.

After a brief snack of Cokes and some halo-halo (a traditional desert that literally means "mix-mix" - it's a mixture of shaved ice, milk, fruit, ice cream, jello and other random stuff) it was off to Quezon City with our tour guide Peter (my wife's cousin) for a stop at a spa. This place is absolutely crawling with cars and crazy drivers - there's really no point even putting stripes on the roads, as taxi and jeepney drivers (a jeepney is basically a pimped-out, chrome-riddled stretch Jeep with a roof and benches in the back, we got some great pictures) pretty much drive on a space-available basis. 30 harrowing minutes later we were in QC at a local spa, where the three of us got the most extensive foot massages we'd ever gotten. For the low low price of P384 (about seven bucks), we had a foot massage that began with a foot bath, then proceeded to a head, shoulders, and back massage before some serious foot attention and then a legs and thighs massage. Oh, and this lasted a solid hour... truly ridiculous. We came back to change and then went for a walk on the Baywalk - a strip of open-air restaurants along Manila Bay - while we listened to local cover bands (there was an all-female band doing a disco medley, and they were damn good!) and watched fireworks (the first annual Pyro Olympics were being held on the other side of the bay) before hitting up The Aristocrat for some local food. By then it was 10pm and I was exhausted - apparently upon getting back to the hotel I fell asleep before my wife, probably the first time in years...

Sometimes it pays to be four hours early for your flight. Or to have a ticket clerk who is easily swayed by women in tight shirts. And sometimes it pays to have both.

Thanks to a generous ticket agent, a wife with the aforementioned tight shirt, and the inclination on both her part and mine to accept what amounts to a thousand-dollar upgrade, per ticket, for the two of us AND her mother, today's edition of D&V's Excellent Filipino Adventure comes to you, live, from the British Airways/Cathay Pacific business lounge. An excellent way to kick off what will be the interminably lengthy leg of our cross-Pacific voyage.

I wonder what the common folk are doing right now. (insert snooty laugh)

We're on our way to scenic Manila to attend the wedding of Weird Brother-In-Law and Mysterious Fiancée (so named because our side of the family has yet to meet her). It began with a quick jaunt in a puddlejumper from Boston to JFK, and then a walk from Terminal 9 to the "Air Train" that was longer than our trip on the Air Train to Terminal 7, and arguably longer than our flight from Boston. We then met Mrs. Dave's mother at checkin, and a little dip, wink and smile later, here we are in the plush confines of JFK's finest.

Of course, Mrs. Dave has been wheeling and dealing from the start - she managed to wheel and deal her way into getting us a ride to the airport from a carless co-worker of mine (long story, but basically, he's in the US from Mexico for a couple of months, and instead of renting a place for two months, he's living in my boss' basement. As a result, he's also at the complete and utter caprice of her comings and goings (not to mention the object/target of Anklebiters both Jr. and Sr. - he's rousted every morning by squealings of ¡Tío Cliff! ¡Tío Cliff!). So Mrs. Dave casually appealed to his sense of independence, offering up the use of our car to him during our week's absence. One gear slowly turned another, and he, of his own volition (though not exactly without forethought on Mrs. Dave's part) offered to be available at 6:30 to accompany us to the airport for this morning's 9am departure. And so it was that we again availed ourselves of the generosity of others.

At the moment, I am blogging on one of a dozen free computers, while my wife lunches upon a sumptuous cup of Maruchan's finest shrimp ramen (an essential part of this prelude to our impending Asian odyssey). My mother-in-law is contemplating a vacuum-wrapped apple, having polished off a few pieces of crustless mystery meat sandwich and a Coke. The gentleman across from me is struggling with a packet of individually wrapped raisins, while another is reposing on a leather easy chair. There is a fountain 50 yards away below the sign for the "pre-flight supper", large paintings on the walls, decorative vases, model galleons, and, hidden from view at the moment, a satellite TV room. I'm guessing the jacuzzi is downstairs, right next to the chauffeur's quarters and down the hall from the private bowling lanes.

I can only hope that if we get a female ticket agent on the way home, that my charms work to equal effect.