A great escape, the Villa Escudero

Villa Escudero is on the grounds of a working farm, but you wouldn’t know that without reading a bit or wandering off the carefully groomed grounds. An engaging hostess met us at the well appointed reception area, arranged (nonalcoholic) welcoming drinks for us, provided a bit of background, and collected our entry fee. I think spending a few days would be the best way to enjoy the resort, but our friends’ travel schedule didn’t allow for an overnight stay. We opted for a “day use” package at 1200 PhP (about $25) per person. That’s expensive by Filipino standards, but we thought the price was well worth it. Admission included use of the facilities, carabao cart rides between points of interest, and a wonderful nine-course lunch. That’s right, 9 courses! My wife did the counting, I was too busy eating.

Lunch was served in an outdoor restaurant at the base of a dam. Water pouring over the 30 foot wide spillway falls around 20 feet into a shallow pool with a concrete floor. Adventurous diners can eat at tables in the pool with water rushing around their feet, but my wife (remember her? She counts courses) was wearing good shoes so we ate in a shaded alcove overlooking the pond.

After lunch, we wandered along the lake formed by the dam. Many guests stay in rustic appearing cabins along the lake’s edge. Shaded verandas at each cabin extend over the water and I would have been happy curling up with a good book, or two. More conventional lodgings are set back from the water and tastefully screened by luxuriant plants. Recreational opportunities include bamboo rafting and an appealing three pool swimming area with water slides and a Jacuzzi. We also found our way to a small chapel, a couple well disguised meeting areas, and another restaurant or two. I hedge on the numbers because activity areas are separated by well tended plant walls and I’m not certain that we saw all, or even most.

We finished our visit with a stop at the family museum. I found it to be a disappointing hodge podge of collectibles without unifying themes or interpretation. However, none of my companions shared my reaction and I’m probably over thinking things. Forgive me, at one point in my career, I oversaw a graduate program in museology and critical thinking is an endemic fault among retired professors.
For more about Villa Escudero, visit their web site at http://www.villaescudero.com/
Now, the horror story. We finished our visit around 4 PM and planned to stop for a relaxing dinner on the way home. Instead, we found ourselves in a driving nightmare. The brilliant blue skies of the morning had been replaced by ominous clouds, streaks of lightening, and heavy thunderstorms. Open roads that we followed in the morning were now endless miles of bumper to bumper traffic. Busses and trucks tried to bully everyone while tricycles and jeepneys filled every open spot. In developed areas, even pedestrians were moving faster than we were.
The stress filled drive home took more than four hours and our relaxing dinner was replaced by take out pizza from a roadside stand. By the end of the day, I was grateful for the bottle of bourbon waiting for me at home and my “cool down” time gave me a chance to reflect. Not even the nightmare drive dimmed my fondness for Villa Escudero and I think I have discovered the secret of an enjoyable visit. Drive there in the morning, spend a night or two in one of the lakeside cabins, drive home … IN THE MORNING, and pray for good weather.

In a bad mood, thanks to "WeRoam"

Today has been a rather annoying day, mostly because I’ve been fighting with an unreliable Internet connection.
As I explained in an earlier post, telecommunications lines have not yet been laid in our subdivision. PLDT, the Philippine phone company with rights to the subdivision, doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to wire the area. Only about 100 homes are occupied so far and the remaining 700 or so will remain vacant for a few months yet while the “finishing touches” are added. Besides, Filipinos make extensive use of cellular phones anyway.
Unfortunately, this situation is hellish for those of us who live and die on the Internet. In the interim, we’re relying on a 4G wireless service called “WeRoam.” My guess is that the name comes from their technical service people who always seem to be somewhere else when needed.
We’ve had a week without Internet service and I’ve worn a groove in the roadway between our home and the nearest Internet Café. In my spare moments, I’ve called all of the customer service/support numbers provided by PLDT and have gotten nothing but recorded messages saying the “number can’t be completed as dialed.” I’ve also emailed customer service from the Internet Café but they haven’t responded.
Today, in desperation, I stopped by the local PLDT office. The pleasant woman at the desk said she couldn’t do anything and suggested I call the customer service number. I looked pathetic and convinced her to make the call for me. She was able to get through on an inside line, but the technician hung up as soon as I said “Hi, I’m having trouble with WeRoam.”
I must have snarled louder than I realized because the receptionist smiled, said “get the technician’s name first,” and redialed for me. Good strategy, this time Arcelee took notes before hanging up on me. Now I’m sitting waiting for a call back. It’s been 7 hours; maybe I should stop holding my breadth.
My wife—a patient and forgiving woman—recommends that I “think positive thoughts” so here goes:
• It’s nice to have time to chat with my family, walk the dog, and watch television.
• I’m glad to have a chance to catch up on some pleasure reading, four novels this week and counting.
• This situation gives balance to my otherwise glowing accounts of life in the Philippines.
• This is the least reliable Internet service I’ve ever experienced—woops, better make the statement positive—the most unreliable Internet service I’ve ever experienced.
• I’m positive customer service will improve—how could it get any worse?
Ahhhh, life in the Philippines.

How I cope . . .

As you know by now, I love living in the Philippines. But, like every foreign environment, there are things I miss. I’ve rambled about several of them in an earlier blog that concluded that most of the losses are manageable.
Of course, finding solutions has taken a bit of time, but my life is almost whole now. I say “almost” because I’m still finding “work arounds” for some things.
I’m a heavy reader and a bit of an information junky. Creating or finding new information sources has been a bit of a challenge but many things are now falling in place.
Larger metropolitan areas like Manila have pretty good cable television networks. Unfortunately, we live in a new subdivision that hasn’t been wired yet and we’re getting by with satellite television. Our provider, Dream Networks, has a pretty good lineup and many familiar channels are available. We get the History Channel (Asia) and Discovery as well as Star Network which carries many of my favorite shows and a movie channel. Movies are a year or two out of date and I’ve seen many of the “first run” movies before. But watching them again is a mindless past time when I’m too tired to do anything else.
Dream Networks also has a good selection of news channels. I watch the NBC nightly news whenever I can tear my wife away from Filipino soap operas and both CNN and BBC News are available around the clock. We get neither Fox News nor the CBS evening news, but I’d largely weaned myself off them before moving. Don’t be offended Katie, but I prefer more substantial reporting.
DSL is a popular Internet solution in the Philippines and a few folks are coming to think of Internet access as a fundamental human right—at least I do . Sadly, our subdivision is yet to be wired. After promoting an “integrated wireless community,” our developer has reneged on the promise and says we’ll have to wait for broadband to the home. Effectively, that means waiting until PLDT lays lines and the developer says they will be in place by the end of November, 2009. Curiously, the local PLDT folks apparently know nothing about the promise so we’re temporizing.
In this case, “temporizing” means relying on a 4G wireless service called WeRoam. It sort of works, sometimes! Typical connection speeds are on the order of 10 kbps. Know how long it takes to load a typical web page at 10 kbps? I hope you never have to find out. And, there are a couple other kickers; the phone number we were given for customer service is out of service, they don’t respond to emails, and even in the best of times the service cuts off every few minutes requiring a reboot to reestablish a connection. Of course, the clock doesn’t stop clicking when the service disconnects so we’re paying for connection time while playing solitaire.
Sorry if I sound a little grumpy! I’m offline now because the modem cannot connect and I don’t know when I’ll be online again.
Ah well, there’s one good thing about WeRoam. I’m spending more time walking my dog than usual.
Seriously, we do have an Internet connection occasionally. In addition to checking my emails, updating my website, and posting an occasional blog entry, I catch a lot of news when I can. WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com, and LATimes.com fill my need for news and left-leaning commentary but I balance things with Fox.com and Yahoo news.
In moments of connectedness, I also download a variety of podcasts. From PBS, I get Bill Moyer’s Journal and I’m also fond of NPR’s Science Friday along with NBC’s Meet the Press, This Week in Tech, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
I’ve also grown fond of my e-book. It’s an older, RCA model nearing the end of its life, but continues to serve me well. The only real deficit is that it uses RB formatted texts and only a handful of publishers that still support the format. I’ve just about exhausted the selection on the Baen Free Library, but I’ve recently purchased a handy program, ABC Amber PDF Converter. ABC Amber converts PDF documents to the RB format and I read now a lot of classic literature digitized by the Gutenberg Project as well as archaeological literature from the Internet Archive.
Oh well, that’s life in the Philippines. I see the contractor next door has decided to dispose of refuse on my lot and its time to go vent my frustrations on him.

He’s just an American … they all do it!

Today began with all the earmarks of a pretty boring day. I had a good workout yesterday so my aging body needs rest. My dog, Jericho, vetoed a long walk—too hot and humid, he said. Thunder and lightening in the afternoon confirmed his judgment. My current book manuscript needs a good edit, the least enjoyable part of writing, and a business plan with which I’m helping a friend is already a day or two ahead of schedule.
As if that wasn’t enough to send me back to bed, my wife decided we should hang curtains today. Not an arduous project, but she likes to be very precise. While I balance precariously on a kitchen chair, she and our helper argue about which corner needs to go up and whether or not we should get a different color.
With that agenda, I was easy prey for any other proposal and decided to tag along while my wife and our helper went to the local market. Buying meat and produce topped their list of to-dos, but I took my camera in search of local color. They went straight to their preferred butcher while I worked from the outside in. Our paths crossed eventually, but I was glued to the viewfinder and didn’t notice. After an hour, our helped tracked me down and I was surprised to see that I had shot over 280 pictures—thank God for large memory cards!

What held my interest for so long? Mostly the people. Filipinos are very friendly and almost all enjoy having their pictures taken. Some flagged me down from 20 yards away and struck interesting poses. Others stopped what they were doing, straightened their hair, adjusted their shirts, and stared directly into the camera. A few tugged at my sleeves to point me toward their friends. Not exactly the “local color” I was looking for, but I could hardly disappoint them and with my digital camera (a Canon 450D) I could show them their pictures on the spot.

The novelty of the market is second on the list. Antiseptically clean, the market is still very unlike the supermarkets to which most westerners are accustomed. Lighting is minimal, isles are cramped, stalls are packed to the ceilings, shoppers bob and weave around one another, and vendors continuously clean, carve, load, pack, and chatter with one another. Inside, I shot at 1600 ISO and still had difficulty getting adequate shutter speeds and depths of field.
Finally, the market was a good place to photograph components of the local transportation system. Brightly colored jeepneys disgorge shoppers at every corner, motorized tricycles line up to haul shoppers home, large buses wait along the street, and private cars sneak through every available opening.
All told, a wonderful morning and I have several hours of image processing ahead of me. If you read my earlier blog, you know that shopping at the local market is one of the secrets to controlling the cost of living. Meat and produce cost about half what they would in a western-style supermarket. Of course, you need to shop with care. Occasionally, vendors are caught selling old or “double dead” meat from animals that died of other causes before slaughter. Some incautious shoppers may get home to find one fresh leak atop of pile of leftovers. Fortunately, these problems are rarities. Most of the vendors have been in their spots for years and all are anxious to protect their reputations. And, our helper is very good at spotting things best left where they are.
Coincidentally, on the way home, my wife reported that she overheard a conversation between vendors after I had passed. One wondered why I was taking pictures and the other responded, “He’s just an American … they all do it!” And here I thought I was the first westerner to visit the market .

Cost of living

Just so there’s no doubt, I’ll say it again. I love living in the Philippines almost as much as I love my wife. I’m here because of her and am grateful to her for bringing me here.
That said, there are some real economic advantages to retiring here. Cigarettes are less than a dollar a pack, but that may not be the best example. For a more balanced appraisal, here’s a peak at our basic monthly budget:
Domestic helper $ 50
Food & Recreation $ 300
Automotive expenses $ 100
Utilities $ 55
That’s right, just about $500 a month for a family of 4 with three healthy, growing pets. Before I challenge you to beat that in the United States, there are couple things I should note. My stepson is a college student and he generally eats with us only on weekends. Also, we don’t pay any rent—we own our home outright, a new 3 bedroom, 3 bath home with maid’s quarters in an upscale subdivision that cost slightly less that $70,000. Finally, notice that we aren’t budgeting anything for travel and entertainment. That’s deliberate; we’ve set this year aside for settling in and doing some remodeling, but that’s not too much of a strain either. Here, a skilled carpenter is available for just over $10 a day and laborers charge about $7 a day.
A small annuity from an early teaching assignment covers most of the bills and I receive modest royalties from a couple books. Occasional withdrawals from my IRA pay for renovations and unexpected expenses, so our life is comfortable; not lavish, but comfortable. And, I haven’t even begun drawing Social Security yet … I’ll let it sit for a while and hope the system doesn’t go bankrupt in the meantime. And the good news is that my stepson graduates in less than a year and the savings in tuition, books, and other expenses will just about make up for what I don’t take in Social Security.
Now, the big question is could you live as cheaply? There are lots of “ifs” in any answer to the question and a lot depends on your lifestyle. Mine is pretty simple and I’m generally happy in worn shorts and shirts with a few rough spots. My wife insists that I keep at least three changes of “good clothes” in the closet and that’s generally where they stay. A big if concerns your skill in managing money. The exchange rate is generally pretty stable around 48 pesos to the dollar, but we’ve seen it range from 39 to 57. To moderate the effects of fluctuations, we keep two accounts—one in dollars and the other in pesos. Generally, we move money into the dollar account and convert to pesos only when the exchange rate is 50 or higher.
Another if involves housing. I’d suggest you rent for a year while you learn your way around and decide which real estate developer or agent you want to deal with. We rented a comfortable, 2 bedroom, 3 bath townhouse in a gated community for just over a year. Our rent was less than $300 a month and we didn’t do much driving because a major shopping center was an easy walk. We’re both comfortable riding motorized tricycles when we have bigger loads, but riding a tricycle in traffic is an adventure in itself and you might not be as foolhardy as we are.
Two more ifs; we eat well because my wife enjoys shopping at the local community market—kind of an expanded farmers market with everything from fresh meat and produce to plastic furniture, cleaning supplies, and anything else a family could need. Plan on spending about twice what we’ve budgeted if you are more contented shopping in western-style supermarkets and aren’t fond of rice. Rice is the Filipino staple food and generally costs about 40 pesos (80 cents) per kilo, a little more for good brown rice, a little less for standard grade white rice. By the way, a kilo or kilogram is 2.2 pounds but it goes quickly if you have Filipino relatives. We buy 5 kilos whenever my stepson is going to be with us for a week and occasionally have to stock up midweek. Medical care is the final if. In an earlier blog I noted that care here is very good and substantially less expensive than in the United States. However, you may want to check your insurance first; I’ve heard that there are some companies that make overseas claims difficult.
So there you have it. I love my wife and wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her, but there are some economic advantages as well.

Clothes shopping

At 6’1” and 220 pounds I’m not particularly big by US standards. From time to time, doctors point to the little bulge around my middle and say I should lose some weight, but there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of urgency in their suggestion.
In general, I compare pretty well to my cohort group. I walk 5 or 6 miles a day, lift weights three times a week, wear the same size pants I did in college, and can still wear my high school letterman sweater. The last indicator of health may be a little deceptive.After 45 years on a hanger the sweater has deformed in the same way as my body; both now form roughly inverted Vs.
All that is a long way of saying that I’m neither infirm nor grossly obese. Nevertheless, clothes shopping is a bit of a challenge here. The typical Filipino man is about 2/3 my size and few shops cater to us big guys. When I walk into most clothes stores, I’m inclined to ask where the adult section is. Fortunately, my wife has a quick elbow aimed at my ribs most of the time.
Custom tailoring is an option and there are shops in Manila that cater to western visitors. Both seem excessively costly for casual clothes and I’ve found a couple alternatives.
• SM Malls are common here and their department stores typically have a handful of 3X shirts, no pants—just shirts. But I’m halfway to being respectable.
• Robinsons Malls are less common that SM and appear to be losing the battle for market share. Curiously, they generally have pants and shorts in my size. No shirts, just the pants and shorts. That’s the other 50% of being respectable.
• With size 12+ feet, shoes are also a problem. Fortunately, I brought an adequate supply with me and they will probably last me the rest of my life. Given the climate here, I typically wear sandals and Toby’s Sporting goods found in most SM malls typically have an adequate selection in my size. No exercise clothes that big, but sandals aplenty. Go figure!
• Windbreakers, sweatshirts, and exercise outfits in my size don’t seem to exist in the Philippines. A few store clerks have thought they had some “oversized” goods in the storeroom, but all have returned empty handed after disappearing for 15 or 20 minutes. I’ve thought of buying two of everything I need and having my wife stitch them together, but she’s nixed the idea—smart lady. Instead, I buy my rough wear on eBay.com and have it shipped to my son in San Diego. He holds them until he runs out of closet space and then ships them to me. He’s a good kid and constantly amused by the variety of things I buy on eBay.
As I’ve said before, I love living in the Philippines. Clothes shopping is just one of the foibles and I’ve learned to get by.

No, its just a dog!

Dogs are popular pets in the Philippines and there are usually a number of semi-feral dogs feeding on scraps in most villages. The most common local dog is an Askal, a bundle of fluff that may weigh as much as 20 pounds. Toy breeds are popular companion animals and I’ve seen a scattering of slightly larger dogs, usually retrievers that may weigh as much as 45 pounds.
I suppose the prevalence of small dogs can be attributed to the colonization of the Philippines. Many of the Askals are probably descendents of 15th and 16th century ship dogs. I’ll do a bit of research on the subject when I have some time.
Whatever the case, few residents are prepared for the sight of a real DOG, like my 100 pound Staffordshire Terrier (aka, “pit bull”). Jericho and I walk a few miles every day and peoples’ reactions are pretty predictable. “Oh, my GOD!” is the most common reaction and my favorite response is “no, he’s just a dog.” Said with a big smile, I usually get a laugh or a grin in reply and that’s enough to break the ice.
The locals often have an unspoken question as well; “will he hurt the children?” If you are familiar with the breed, you know that pit bulls were originally bred to protect children, but that bit of arcane knowledge is beyond most of the local residents—and many Americans as well. I’m quick to point out that he loves children … because they taste good. Said with a big grin, that also gets a good chuckle.
Jericho is fond of people and generally well behaved. I’ve trained him to sit beside me whenever we meet someone and that helps to reduce anxiety as well. We’ve now gotten to the point that most people say hello to him when we walk, but it’s been a long process. I’ve worked hard to make sure that people are not afraid of him because I’d like to avoid problems caused by his size and the reputation of pit bulls in general.
Coincidentally, children seem to understand most readily. We lived in a rented townhouse while our home was being built and initially most people just watched us from behind locked gates. One day, a 2 year old girl broke free from her nanny, ran out, and threw her arms around Jericho’s neck. He responded with a big, sloppy kiss and all of the tension in our neighborhood vanished. And, he was the hit of last year’s Halloween party. A red satin cape was a perfect compliment to his pointed ears. Children and adults alike lined up to be photographed with him.
If you’ve read my earlier posts, you probably guessed that there is a point to this rambling. Living in a foreign country, we notice lots of things that are strange to us. Occasionally, we forget that we are strange to the locals as well. Life is much better when your neighbors are comfortable with you, and you can do a lot to help break the ice. Having Jericho sit when he meets someone is just the tip of the iceberg. I go out of my way to be friendly, greet everyone with a big smile, and do what I can to help them understand me. In the townhouse community, I even conducted free and informal Conversational English lessons for young people preparing to work overseas and my time was well repaid. We were invited to every neighborhood party or local fiesta and our neighbors brought as an endless supply of local dishes “just to try.”
Yes, life in the Philippines is wonderful, and you can do a lot to make the experience rewarding for yourself and your neighbors.