This was Loboc.

(Click on a photo to enlarge and view in a carousel…it’s better that way.)

(* means the photo was taken by Joe)

But I want to tell you about the jeepney ride to Barangay Valladolid, and the Cathedral square lit up with white lights, and show you the Loboc River, and our jungle hut…

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The air in Tagbilaran was warm and dark when the boat to Bohol docked.  Men rushed toward us as we walked from the long port exit into a parking lot, calling out, “Where are you going? Where are you going?  Where are you . . .” We’d been instructed by the staff of Nipa Hut Village to catch a tricycle from the port to a jeepney pick-up point called Island City Mall, then ride a jeepney for an hour to a town called Loboc, getting off at a village called Barangay Valladolid.  A man would be waiting with a motorbike to drive us to the huts.

A tricycle–one of the most common forms of transport in the Philippines–is a motorcycle with a ceilinged sidecar and a third wheel.  The bench accommodates two, but another seat is attached to the back and one or two people can share the driver’s seat, and with laps put to use the whole contraption can carry five or six, the motor chugging up hills, crosses and little plastic Jesus’ or Mary’s hanging off the mirror along for the ride.

First of many tricycle rides

The jeepney pick-up was chaotic and crowded.  Our destination, it turned out, wasn’t one a jeepney was headed to, at least not this night, which was Christmas night and appeared to have altered routes and times. A light rain began to fall as we piled into the back of another jeepney going to the Plaza Cathedral, told by a man we could transfer there to one heading our direction.  Hands tapped on my back as we waited to pull out calling ma’am, ma’am, Merry Christmas, palms ready to open.

The jeepney took us elsewhere, Plaza Central, where none of the tricycle or jeepney drivers we asked seemed to recognize the words Barangay Valladolid.  We asked one and suddenly ten would crowd around, shaking their heads, pointing, talking to each other, then eventually wandering off.  At last a tricycle driver told us we needed to be at Plaza Cathedral, drove us there, convinced a jeepney driver with a full load of passengers to extend his route and take us to the outskirts of Loboc, where Barangay Valladolid would be.  Across from the cathedral white lights lit up a square, dangling from trees, people jostling through the pathways, jeepneys honking up and down the street.  We sat with the driver up front, waiting.  Would someone with a motorbike really be waiting at Valladolid?  The journey was taking twice as long as we’d predicted, the time we’d said we’d arrive creeping closer.

We took off, the stick shift swiping my thigh, the driver, a short, round man with wavy hair, dropping his cigarette out the window.  The engine rattled as we drove, climbing out of the city, stopping once for gas, a boy, maybe ten years old, hopping down from the jeepney’s bumper to the station and back, then swinging the bottle of gas to the driver, who set it down by his feet.  “Your son?” Joe asked him.  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “My son.”

The jeepney wound out of the city and onto the main road; there would be no further turns.  One long road and the night, maybe fifteen passengers in back, two young girls on their mom’s lap directly behind our heads.  I rearranged my legs to avoid the stick shift, my bag somewhere on the roof, Joe’s pack between his legs, the engine chugging loudly.  People hopped off at unmarked stops, one or two at a time, until only us and one other man remained, close to an hour gone.  At last we pulled over, one of the signs to our left reading “Nipa Hut Village” with an arrow pointing down a wide gravel path.  No one was there.  “This is your stop,” the driver said, as we tried to explain there should be someone waiting.  He shrugged, already on the road late on Christmas night, driving foreigners to a destination off his regular route.  We sat like that a couple minutes, not wanting to get out with no one around, unsure how far the huts would be to walk.

And then two men, only one visible at first, then the other, pulled up alongside the path; the driver called out, they nodded.  They were there to pick us up.  Sitting on the back of the bike I wedged my duffel bag between my chest and the driver’s back and gripped the metal handle behind me, saying “Slow, please,” cursing myself for not bringing the backpack my friend Amanda had offered to lend me for the trip.  We rode, Joe and his driver behind, passing through Barangay after Barangay, which, we would learn, was the Filippino term for village. The Loboc River was beside us but I couldn’t see it in the dark, my mind focused on the speed of the bike and the grip of my fingers, a small gasp emerging every time we hit a bump.  Ten minutes later, we arrived.

Nipa Hut Village in daylight

Home for two nights

Inside with the mosquito net up

Our jungle hut bathroom

Loboc River

Pics of Loboc coming soon… xo

Palazzo Pensionne, home for the night

At the port we learned our noon boat wasn’t sailing Christmas Day, which hadn’t been mentioned on the site Joe searched back in Busan.  Another boat to Bohol with a different company would depart, we were told, at 3:30 that afternoon.  It was 11 a.m.  Killing four hours at the ticket office didn’t appeal to either of us, so we climbed into a cab, rode it back to Palazzo, stored our bags, and left to walk through Cebu City, a black and white map folded into the pocket of my shorts.  The trees were an iridescent shade of green against the concrete. People called out Merry Christmas everywhere we walked, past homes with barbed wire strung above the gates, down a narrow side street where a church service was ending, along a busy main road crowded with jeepneys–colourful trucks that delivered citizens around the city for a few pesos, stopping when someone tapped the ceiling with a knuckle or coin.

Chapel and firearm poster

From the cab I’d noticed a wall of tombstones and an entryway–to a cemetery I assumed–so with the time to explore I suggested we try to find it.  The map led us there, flower-selling women waving as we crossed the street toward them.

Outside the cemetery. Photo by Joe

Inside, roofless rooms housed graves and their Christmas Day visitors, women and men laying on hammocks or sitting on cement steps, waiting for nothing, watching the afternoon air.  Kids played among the cemetery grounds, lighting firecrackers, aiming a basketball at a hoop with no net; was this their playground or did they live here?

Tombstones stacked in plaster and cement surrounded a field where boys played and ran…

Photo by Joe

and kids wandered, following each other through the tombstone paths.

Photo by Joe

This boy held the firecracker stick…

Photo by Joe

This girl asked me to take her picture, posing beside the star.

Another firecracker lit, time to run…

Photo by Joe

Photo by Joe

After, I bought a cold bottle of sprite from a shop on the street and we sat curbside, watching the jeepney’s drive by…

Photo by Joe

then walked some more.

A deal for the dealers?

Someone's front yard. Photo by Joe

On the map we saw a street called Alcohol Road.  Curious, we made our way there, the time creeping closer to our boat’s departure.  Perhaps it was in the area for tourists, an avenue of bars where they flock on holiday.  We turned a corner and followed the map. No sign marked it, but the street’s location matched the map’s black line.  People sat on the side steps of their homes, music playing from ghetto blasters or old televisions, kids gathered next to a yard populated with chickens and a couple grey goats.  They called out Merry Christmas as we walked along their road, no bar in sight, just people celebrating the day.

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Next up: Journey to Lobok

View from our hotel room in Cebu City

Waking up Christmas morning in the Philippines I felt more like myself than I had in months in Korea, though I suppose I’ll always feel that way waking in a new country, new flip flops on the floor, a light sweat that emerged in the night, and curtains drawn before an unknown window, the shapes and colours of its view still dark upon the midnight arrival.  I wake and remember I am somewhere I have never been.  This place that has always existed without me now exists as a part of my experience, something I can touch, and fold into my memories–one of which is a roasted pig that was laying on tinfoil on the countertop and served up the night before as part of Palazzo Pensionne’s Christmas Eve buffet, its pink head resting, half-eaten when we arrived, next to a bowl of spaghetti noodles.  A Philippino woman with dark hair to her waist watching a re-run of the American Music Awards told us to help ourselves. “It was cold,” Joe says now, when I ask him how the pork tasted. “It had been out for awhile.”

The hotel staff and a few small kids who must have belonged to the staff had called out Merry Christmas as we stepped from the taxi and into reception, past the guard dressed in uniform and looking friendly even with a gun slung across his belt.  The air-conditioner in our room was loud, rattling against the wall.  I didn’t care.  The bed was soft and I would awake in Cebu City, boarding a boat to Bohol that afternoon. We’d booked two nights in a hut next to a river and a jungle and four nights in a hut on an island called Siquijor.  My sinuses were blocked and my head pulsed with a muted but continuous ache from a cold I’d been battling the last week, but I was convinced the tropical air would cure me.

(More soon!)

I’ve got a few scrapes from a motorcycle spill, and our bank accounts took a dip after we had to buy brand new full-fare plane tickets back to Korea following a missed flight due to a cancelled boat–but the trip was wonderful.

More posts and photos coming this week

Happy New Year with love!

On a "tricycle" (motorbike with third wheel, driver and passenger seats) on Bohol, Philippines

Wishing you all very Happy Holidays!  I hope this finds you relaxing with awesome people, sweet tunes, and something warm, cozy and fireplace-ish.  This week I was really craving a hangout around a crackling fire, and also remembering past seasonal festivities such as Boxing Day shenanigans in Victoria and chill-out time with my mom and bro.  Next year I will be back in my home-hood for Christmas 2012, but this year, the season is promising something a little different.

In five hours I’ll be boarding a plane to this island-filled country…

with my guy Joe…

Joe at the top of Busan Tower

where we’ll be spending a couple nights on the island of Bohol at a place called Nipa Hut Village…

Nipa Hut Village, Bohol

and then catching a boat to Siquijor Island, where we’ve booked this rustic little number…

Hut #4: The Helen

for three days at a spot on the beach called Islander’s Paradise.

Needless to say, I’m stoked.  Aside from a 24-hour jaunt to Shanghai back in July 2010, this will be the first time I’ve left Korea since moving here almost two years ago.  This girl is ready for a change of scenery, especially one that involves two of my fav’s: jungles and beaches.

Sending love and holiday wishes to all of you, from me and my kiddies…

Reindeer ears and kindie kids

See you in 2012!

xo ~Coco

Hi Courtney;

How are you doing?

I am thinking about coming to South Korea to visit you. It would be about a 10 day trip and I would be in Busan for 8 days and 2 days travel time.

I have looked at flights and the dates Nov. 22nd to Dec. 1st are available now and those dates work for me.

Can you let me know asap if then is a good time for you.

LOV

DAD     

My dad and I write and skype regularly, so it wasn’t unusual to hear from him, but he’d never mentioned thinking seriously about taking a trip out to visit, so the news was completely out of the blue–especially after an evening of whisky and gin.  I turned to Joe in shock and said, “My dad’s coming to Korea!”

After a few date changes so his visit would span two weekends, he booked the flight and I told my kindergarten kids they’d soon be meeting Courtney Teacher’s father.  I wrote his name on the board: C-u-r-t-i-s.  They giggled; none had heard this particular foreign name before.  We all started counting down the weeks.

My dad’s been working most hours of the day most days of the year since I was born and long before.  He sold real estate and managed marketing for a Saskatoon company called Plainsman Development.  When I was six he started his own business dealing Panasonic batteries, beef jerky, and pepperoni sticks to stores across Saskatchewan out of the back of an old black van. When I was nine he bought a grocery store in Waskesiu Lake, and ran it for ten years, living with my stepmom and my sister in a tiny two-bedroom suite attached to the side. (My brother and I worked there too, every summer, pricing cans, stocking produce, and scooping ice cream cones for the evening crowd.)  During the grocery store years, he and my stepmom also expanded their clothing store, The Sandbox, eventually opening a second branch in Saskatoon.  In the winter months, for the last 20-odd years, he’s spent most evenings on the phone or in the car, meeting with clients across the province for the Canadian Scholarship Trust Plan– a nation-wide program that enables families to save for their children’s post-secondary education.  He finally retired from CST this fall, though his time now is far from free: The Sandbox’s city store just keeps getting busier, and he deals with all the back-end business; a constant surge of orders, invoices, accounting, payroll, marketing, and inventory.  When I was a kid visiting in the summer, I always wished he’d take an afternoon off from the grocery store to relax at the beach, but there were deliveries coming in, and coolers to stock, and a line-up at the til.  He worked for himself, and put the hours in to succeed.

So I was pretty happy to see him arrive in Busan on a holiday.

Though I was teaching full-time during his visit, we had two weekends and each evening to hang out.  Joe and I showed him our favourite Busan neighbourhoods.  We walked along Oncheonjang Stream and drank cocktails with a view of the Diamond Bridge in Gwangalii.  We ate Pajeon at the fish market and sang at a Norebang in Seomyeon. He met my kids and my friends.  In the last months I’ve been a little down, ready to move on from a country that I’ve never felt a deep connection to, despite the opportunities and experience it has given me.  The homogeneous mindset of Korea’s people and culture has grown stifling; I walk among my life somewhat detached from it, my mind scratching at the future.

My dad took back for me a suitcase full of books and photos and the guitar I bought last summer, in a new Fender case he found here at the Bujeon Music Market, so it would arrive in Canada safely.  In an email after his return, he tells me his is proud of me, thanks me for letting him hang out with me, for sharing my life.  He says if he has to fly across the world to spend time with me then that’s okay.

Dad–Thank you for coming, I’ll see you in six months! 

xo

(Please click on a photo below to see the collection in a full-size photo carousel–best way to view!)

Enjoy, and thanks for reading, everyone!

Hanging to dry

Amanda in the flower field

Joe and the rice farmer

The boys spotted something...

What could it be?

Well, hello there!

Looking at me, looking at them

A gate along the way

Hard at work

Trying to find the least-warped angle...

And ending up with a squished head

Last stop: Anapji Pond...

Reconstructed on former palace grounds of the Silla Dynasty, circa 674 AD

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All-day nature, a bike ride with my peeps, and a little Korean history?

Thank you, Gyeongju.  And Joe, Kent, and Amanda.  I needed that!

xo

We met somewhere back in the Doc-Martened recesses of grade 10, circa 1994, in the parking lot or the multi-purpose room or the blue-lockered hallways of Stelly’s Secondary, the exact moment and location either erased or too far embedded in my memory to recall, but the friendship, wherever its beginning bud sprouted, destined to grow full bloom the following year, in a place where a now vague but once vivid artistic dream of mine flourished: Drama Class.

Stu and I were paired up for a two-person play called “Where Have All The Lightning Bugs Gone.”  Instead of restricting the class to the use of one room to create our budding works of art progress, our teacher, Mrs. Pires, let the students spread out to other areas of the school to run lines and block scenes.  Stu drove a Toyota Corolla, a used machine he took pride in, enhancing it with incense burning on the dashboard and a mexican blanket that covered the backseat.  We’d traipse out to the parking lot, scripts in hand, hop into the Corolla, light up a Du Maurier, and practice lines for an hour, plotting our performance between puffs.  I was 16 and had been visualizing my eventual move to New York to fulfill my acting destiny since the sixth grade.  Stu had the lead in “Anything Goes” that year; I bombed my audition for the part of Bonnie and wound up singing in the chorus. I still managed to snag the “Best Actress in Grade Eleven” award–probably the result of my attempts at improv and a minor role as a french maid called Eugenie in “A Flea in Her Ear.” The award was the crowning achievement of my performing arts career, which ended as soon as high school did.  Luckily I had started squirrelling away my restaurant tips for a post-high school jaunt through Europe, and figured out I wanted be a writer anyway–an equally arduous but ultimately more fitting pursuit.

Stu's Grad, 1995. From Left: Me, Stu, and our friends Candice and Melissa

The friendship stuck.  Stu and I shared a love for road trips and nature and night life. We ventured on day-long excursions to Salt Spring Island where we’d roam the forest, admiring the moss growing on the undersides of rocks and carpeting the trunks of cedars that line the coast.  We drank pints of draft at bars called The Limit and Rumours and went to raves with names like Frost and Temple–underground parties jammed with electronic music-loving teenagers and twenty-somethings dancing and sweating until daylight.  We made a loose plan to one day live in San Francisco, an idea likely sprung from one of our long spells listening to “I Am The Walrus” or “The End” or something sung by Simon and Garfunkel.  We loved The Cranberries, too, I remember, the insistent voice of Dolores O’Riordan echoing off the windows of the Corolla as we drove to Island View Beach or Dallas Road or Chemainus, the car and the music floating through Stu’s speakers creating a vacuum from the rest of the world.  Everything seemed possible and at the same time increasingly complicated then, the days that followed high school and preceded the rest of life like a fleeting, water-colour mirage.

Now I’m in Korea teaching kids and Stu’s in Victoria, channeling his skills with seeds and bulbs and all things leafy at a sprawling maze of flower life called Butchart Gardens. Every year he travels, has lived in Uruguay, roamed markets in Ethiopia, trekked to the furthest tip of North Western Gujarat to a town called Dwarka.  He speaks Spanish and cooks grains with colourful spices and if you are invited to his home, wherever it is, you will likely see tapestries hanging on the walls and smell incense in scents you’ve never smelled and hear music from Africa or India or somewhere else he dreams of going or has already seen, a melody rich with drums and distant chants that makes you want to find a spot on a floor cushion and settle in for the evening.

Since I started Coco Busan a year and a half ago, Stu has been one of its avid followers.  He writes enthusiastic comments on my posts like “I am Delighted by this journalism!” or “LOVING the Pics with the Agricultural vibe!”  When I stay up too late writing because I want to get a post out, and I wake with one eye refusing to open and my ears already burning with the imminent cries of kindergarten children, then check the blog to see who read the post and if anyone wrote a comment, often Stu’s words will appear, written in the night from Canada, something like: “Nice work, Lovebug. Yet another tear to my eye, after reading your sweet stories.”  And the full day of teaching on five or six hours of sleep will be worth it.

A while back, I wrote about Somaemuldo, an island Joe and I visited in July.  Stu responded with this: “Loving the photography! I caught glimpses of Flora and I must put in a request to see some portraitures of the biodiversity, especially of some of the textures in the backgrounds of the epic views in Somaemuldo. BIG Hugs!

Since a trip back to Somaemuldo wasn’t in the cards, I knew I had to shoot some close-up nature pics for Stu somewhere else, and soon.  So, during our bike ride through the farmland outside Gyeongju, I played around with my Canon’s macro setting, and, with Stu in mind, stopped to peer in closely at the Korean plant life, to note, with my lens, the lines in the petals, the curve and colour of the leaves.

Stu–these are for you.

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(I miss you.)

xo

 Is getting lost in the rice paddy fields, crouching low to the peppers drying on the road, their red skins shining.

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