(Don’t) Miss Saigon *

*official entry to the Cheesiest Blog Title Award

It was a hastily-planned vacation. Rachel, my blockmate from law school, had some in-between time after resigning from her job at the Supreme Court and starting her new job at the Senate. I managed to free myself for a few days too, just to take a quick break before starting work at an agrarian reform NGO. Jordan, my high school friend, had been bugging me for months on end to visit her in Saigon. So it wasn’t all that difficult a decision. We booked a flight, packed our bags, bought Jordan her Lucky Me Pancit Canton and Yes! magazine, and hied off to Vietnam.

Jordan and I at her condo

My first impression of Vietnam was… chaotic. Motorcycles whizzed passed seemingly faster than the speed of light, with nary a care for personal safety or road rules. And there were a lot of them! The guy we sat beside in the plane, a Filipino OFW working in Cambodia, told us that the best way to tour the city would be to rent one of those bikes and zigzag through the alleys and thoroughfares of Saigon and the city’s outskirts. One look at those road monsters told us that this was not a suggestion for the faint of heart.

The first day in Vietnam was spent shopping. Jordan took us to Saigon Square, where the cheap North Face and Samsonite overruns could be had. Not being a fan of bulky shapeless backpacks that do not come in the color pink, I just bought a few pieces for my brother and sister and father. Warning: them Vietnamese tinderas — NOT FRIENDLY! They scowl at you if you make halukay but won’t buy, and they’re not above shouting at you for an imagined transgression. I found myself hankering for our Greenhills or 168 tyanggeras who call everyone “darling” and who flirt with the gwapo bagets customers. However, the deals are really good (North Face/Samsonite for P600-800, Mango and Zara overruns for as low as P100) so you just have to put up with it. I also bought silk Vietnamese gowns (ao dai) for me and my Mom.

If in Vietnam for only a few days, the best way is to book cheap tours at a local travel agency. In Saigon, such travel agencies may be found in Pham Ngu Lao, a backpackers’ alley with a host of services and shops for the tourist on a shoestring budget. We booked three tours in all: the Cuchi Tunnel Tour, the City Tour and the Mekong Delta Tour.

The Cuchi Tunnel Tour is a half-day trip to the outskirts of Saigon, where one gets to view and enter an elaborate network of tunnels constructed during the Vietnam War by the VietCongs. We had to watch a video documentary for the first fifteen minutes, where in a scary booming voice, someone thunders on about how “the atrocities of the cruel American imperialist killers could not defeat spirit and tenacity of the Cuchi people”.

In the afternoon, we took the city tour, where the only interesting part was the War Remnants Museum. I suggest that you skip the city tour and just go directly to the Museum. It stands as a heartbreaking reminder of the atrocities of war. One sees deformed fetuses in bottles, grotesquely shaped as a result of Agent Orange. Replicas of the tiger cages and the guillotine may also be seen. Painful pictures of torture and death line the walls. All of these eloquently tell us that the capacity for human cruelty is infinite, even in a post-Geneva Convention age.

The next day, despite Jordan’s noisy protestations, we went to take the Mekong Delta tour. It’s a pretty good bargain, because the whole day trip costs only $8 and includes the bus ride to the pier, the boat ride with various stopovers, a free lunch and a light snack of tropical fruits.

The Mekong is one of the world’s major rivers, and runs through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China. It is a source of livelihood for millions who live by the banks and who rely on the water for irrigation for their crops.

The stopovers include a visit to a coconut-making factory, a honey bee farm and a quaint house where performers do traditional Vietnamese song and dance numbers while you enjoy a serving of fresh fruit. Of course, at every stop, they attempt to sell you stuff (honey at the bee farm, coconut candy at the factory, kitschy souvenirs at the performance house) but being young and shameless and kuripot, we didn’t buy anything and just enjoyed what came with the package tour.

We also met a snake-charmer (?) who broought with him a real live python. And because I am brave in the areas of my life that DO NOT matter, I volunteered to be the first person to touch the snake and put it on my shoulders. It was cold and slimy and heavy, but the bragging rights were worth every second of it.

After the Mekong tour, Jordan brought us to this bar where Filipino entertainers performed. Bars in Vietnam close at exactly twelve midnight, except for this one bar “Lush” catering to foreigners and spoiled young things who get into violent fights (we actually witnessed one – Borgy Manotoc is apparently a universal archetype). It’s cool, I suppose, this bar we went to. That is, if you don’t mind having fruits and vegetables as pulutan with beer. Or listening as the bar crowd goes crazy-frenetic-wild over the very-hip, very-now Vietnam playlist favorite “Hotel California”. Or having a group of drunk Vietnamese males from the next table offer you a drink because “You are wonderful.” Yes, that’s exactly what he said. In heavily-accented English. “You are wonderful.” Could that be the moment when I swore, ‘I’m going back to Saigon’? Haha.

So yes, Saigon, I am going back. Not because *I am wonderful*, but because YOU are wonderful. You with your crazy motorcycle drivers zooming past tree-lined avenues with beautiful art-deco buildings. You where the lychees are sweetest, rambutans the plumpest, the longkans the most abundant. You with the steaming hot noodles, the conical hats, the pretty women with ao dais flying in the wind. You whose children have suffered so much from the ravages of war, but are still filled with hope as rich, as life-giving and as flowing as the mighty Mekong. I am coming back to visit again soon. And perhaps the next time around, I’d have mustered enough courage to get on one of your road monsters.

In Awe

I wrote about him in a previous post entitled “Cry the Beloved Countryside”. He was one of my farmer-clients from Bondoc Peninsula , the victims of harassment by landlords bent on making life hard for those who dare struggle for agrarian reform. They threatened him at gunpoint, they made him execute an affidavit against us. On our scheduled hearing next week, they were supposed to make him the next witness to take the stand.

“Supposed to”. It’s not going to happen anymore.

For Edong is back. In tears, shaking in fear, worried like hell about his wife and children in Bondoc Pen. But back, nonetheless. I spoke to him a few hours ago.

I pressed him for answers, struggling to make my mind understand. “Hindi ko kayang tanggapin mga kasinungalingan nila,” was all he could say. He who has a four-month old infant that could well be used to justify pragmatism, struggles in his mind with larger-than-life notions of good and evil, right and wrong. And more than that, he puts his money where his mouth is.

Mabuhay ka, Edong. You are the reason we continue doing what we are doing.

Channeling the Happiness Notebook

In high school, sometime during third year, a small group of bright sunshine-y girls started the Happiness Notebook. It started as something to keep us from falling asleep during Trigo, and then morphed into something that I suppose really captured what it was to be a fumbling wide-eyed adolescent in the mid-90s, wearing both starch-white ruffles and your heart on your sleeve, discovering for the first time that infinite possibilities of the world (and the body ), getting silly and giddy and giggly the way fifteen-year-olds are supposed to be. We called it the “Happiness Notebook” because we wrote there stuff that made us happy. They weren’t big things, certainly. It was happiness according to how we defined it — and we defined it according to the standards of the simpler, gentler world we belonged to. Like getting our crushes to take us to the prom. Or defeating Assumption in an inter-school debate. Or sneaking alcohol inside our Coleman jugs and making like sophisticated blase college students despite the dorky blue jumper and the ruffled blouse. Or getting into long giggling fits any given time of the day, for the flimsiest of reasons.

I recount this because this week I feel the need to channel the happiness notebook, and how it seemed to have made everything possible and everyone freer and braver and more invincible. I’m about to leave a job I truly love and plunge into a new endeavor. I feel excited about it, but like all life-changes, it scares me. Had a fight with someone I had grown to be truly fond of, characterized by angry and heated exchanges of text messages and disorienting me in a way that I could not have expected. Still sad about election results. Lost my pink swiss knife (super cool, because it has a mirror, a small vial of lip and cheek tint, a nail file, needle and thread, and a tiny pink flashlight among other stuff). Was manipulated into getting a hair detox and paying an obscene amount of money only to have my hair up even more sunog and brittle than it already was. Had a hearing yesterday and forgot to wear shoes (so naka tsinelas ako sa Quezon City Hall of Justice).

Hence to counter that string of “bad tidings”, here are ten happy things that happened in my universe this week, small and big, not in order of importance:

1. Went ukayukay shopping and with P800, I was able to buy three dresses, four skirts, four blouses, and the hottest slinkiest skankiest come-hither cocktail dress EVER.

2. Had free pancit with Ning last Wednesday. Free food is good. Always.

3. Iona is in love.Yippee. Love is good. Always. Well, not always. But in this case it is. Hehe.

4. Watched Ocean’s Thirteen. Two words: George Clooney. That’s why I can never completely give up older men. *grin*

5. They didn’t cheat Trillanes. Congratulations, Mr. Senator.

6. I’m going to go to Vietnam next week with Rachel and see Jordan. Too bad we don’t have time to got to Cambodia anymore.

7. Reports have it that Edong (“Cry the Beloved Country(side)”) wants to come back. If this were really true– as I have yet to speak to him in person — it would be enough good news to make up for one month’s worth of bad tidings.

8 . Jeremy’s coming home to Manila for a vacation. Yay.

9. Someone texted me asking if she could order my chicken liver pate and do I do goose liver? Naks. Kitchen goddess.

10. I’m moving on. Slowly and surely, I am.

So I read the list once more, and realize, it’s not such a bad list. It’s true what they say, after all. Count your blessings. Say thank you. And realize that maybe, you’re not getting as bad a deal as you thought.

Friends with wit

On who she is looking for:

“Someone who would go with me, and not with the odds. Naks.” Charmaine Posa (2007).

Come back already, Charms. I miss you.

Yummy Cebu

The very first time I went to Cebu City, I think it was May of last year for an anti-charter change conference, I didn’t really have a positive impression of the city. The taxi driver whose services we contracted tried to pull a fast one on us and while the food at the sutokil was great, I was put off by the tinderas behaving like money-grubbing vultures. Unfortunately, just because of those two isolated encounters, narrow-minded (and fanatically Ilongga) me announced that I’d never, ever go back. (Exag, di ba?)

A year later, I found myself eating my words…. and platefuls of yummy Lechon Cebu.

Went to Cebu last Friday with my friend Bobby. It was a work trip, actually, for the NGO we both belong to, PATH, dealing with the killing fields wrought by the Communist Party on fellow comrades. (Was there late last year too — also with him, also for PATH — but that was kind of a blur already since I think we only stayed for a night.)

It was my first time to ride a habal habal, which is an elongated motorcycle that is the transportation of choice in the provinces. We had to go to Bonbon, already part of the Cebu mountainside, to interview some witnesses. Though quished in between Bobby with his laptop and the metal back support of the motorcycle that was poking painfully into my ass (and having to put up with Bobby’s lewd comments about that particular “issue”), I was able to have a memorable experience nonetheless because the view was breathtaking and the driver was competent enough to give us a smooth, tagtag-free ride.

But the best thing about Cebu is the super yummy food. Despite my annoyance with the sutokil vendors the first time around, I must say that a sutokil experience is not to be missed. When I was there last year with AKBAYAN people, we had platefuls upon platefuls of humongous prawns cooked in garlic butter, steamed lapu lapu with swirls of ginger, baked scallops with a glistening blanket of melted cheese, and the fattest freshest oysters dipped in a potent cocktail of calamansi and vinegar and sili.

For this trip, I told — no, demanded from — Bobby that we shouldn’t leave without eating scallops. The other person who was with us (I don’t think I should name him, for security purposes) insisted that we eat in this place that supposedly served excellent pork barbecue. I had to restrain myself from throwing a hissy fit and screaming, “kung gusto ko ng barbecue, pupunta ako sa krus na ligas!” We eventually had dinner at this native seafood place in Orchid street. There was a row of restaurants in the area. The preparation of the baked scallops was a tad too sweet for me, but the scallops did not disappoint. They were fresh and plump and big, just as they should be.

The next day, I was in for a bigger treat. My friend from law school, Yenyen, brought me to CnT lechon to have a taste of the famous Cebu Lechon. I’ve never tasted it before, used as I am to Lechon Tagalog with the crisp fatty skin and the chunky if somewhat bland meat that one has to dip in liver sauce. Was I in for a treat! Lechon Cebu is as good as its reputation. The meat is fragrant with spices — one sniffs a hint of lemongrass, pepper and sea salt — and goes well with the rice that they serve wrapped in banana leaves. I bought one kilo to take home to my family. Yen told me that what CnT Lechon has over its competitors is that it has upped the standard of packaging. The smart people behind it have thus repositioned their brand to be the brand of lechon that one brings as pasalubong, as it is airport-friendly. No need to worry about spoilages with their airtight seal. No need to contend with messy drippings.

Yen also gave me some sausages from her family’s business to bring home (thanks, yen, for that and for being such a great host despite your busy schedule) so with a box of that, a kilo of lechon, danggit and pusit and bottled oysters and mango chips, I was one happy little camper.

* Photo of scallops is from www.projectfoodie.com

** Photo of lechon is from flickr.

Of Blind Dates and Blind Corners

Hazel from high school pops up in my computer via yahoo messenger.

Hazel: Are you dating anyone right now?

Jae: Uuum, I just got out of something.

Hazel: Can I set you up on a blind date?

Jae: Huh? Sino?

Hazel: He’s a photographer.

Jae: (thinks for a while, considers. had been meaning to get all vamped-up and have some artsy semi-nude studio shots taken for years now. maybe she could wangle a discount from his studio or whatever. but then again a blind date sounded like too much work.) I’ll think about it.

Hazel: Hay naku. Bahala ka.

* * *

And that’s when I realized, I’ve never really been out in the dating market in years. By going out on a date, I mean putting on a dress strategically-designed to highlight your best assets but stopping short of making you look like a whore, carrying a bag that fits only your cellphone and a small lip gloss and P500, and then dining in a fancy-schmancy restaurant where you ask each other questions like “what is the book that changed your life?” and you try not to choke on your baked oysters when you get answers like “Tuesdays with Morrie” or even worse “Da Vinci Code”. I haven’t done that in years, preferring instead the comfort of familiar terrain, with people you work with and drink with and forge a better lipunan with (hehe) day in and day out.

I tell people all the time that I need to be with someone who views the world in the way I respect, as a way to explain why the men I’ve been dating for the past few years have all been part of one big expanded network of left-leaning activists. That’s true of course, I once dated someone who told me after three or so dates that he was a rabid Marcos loyalist, and after that big revelation I went home and took a bath for a one full hour. I need to be with someone who believes in the things I do — agrarian reform, due process, and all that jazzy jazz — and will understand why I chose that path I’ve chosen.

But then, sometimes, I wonder if there could be other reasons. Dianne thinks I’m judgmental and narrow-minded. “E pano kung young entrepreneur pero nagvovolunteer sa Habitat for Humanity?” Because we are great friends and love each other to bits, she reminds me often that I’m going to grow old and miserable and lonely and surrounded by cats if I don’t get my act together and fix up my love life.

Joan on other hand thinks Im too protective of my personal space with strangers. Meaning, wala akong landi vibe. “Kung may karinderyang bukas sa lahat, ikaw karinderyang nakapadlock na, nilagyan pa ng bulldog”, she told me, right after watching me converse with two guys striking up a conversation with me at a bar.

But maybe the bottomline is: I’m just scared. It’s both tiring and terrifying, the whole dating exercise. From wondering what to wear, to being charming and witty and smart (but in a non-threatening way), to wondering whether or not he’s going to call (even if you don’t like him, he still HAS to call, for the sake of your ego, hehe).

A friend and I were having some beers a few nights ago away from UP Village (a happy inuman serving as yet another reminder that nothing beats long and rich conversations over beer) and we were wondering how come other people have it so easy. He had no answers and neither did I. We talked about our friends — a married couple na “nagkita lang sa EDSA 2, may isang anak, may laundromat, may pag-ibig na walang hanggan”, a gay couple who met in Philcoa and nested in Krus na Ligas in a house of pink and canary-yellow walls and an aging couple with a love story dating back to their underground years. We talked about the jagged and uneven corners of our lives, and how it looks like they’re going to stay jagged and uneven for quite some time.

In Shrek 3, there’s this dingy hole-in-the-wall bar where all the fairy tale villains converge. The evil stepmother in Snow White was in one corner crooning “I’ve been to Georgia and California..” like some washed-out has-been. Cut to the next scene: Princess Fiona in a pink, sun-filled room with twittering fairy tale heroines throwing her a baby shower.

So I think to myself: where do I fit in? I’m no one’s bruha-kontrabida, and I’m nice by general social standards. I’m not ready to be called a witch or an evil step-sister. But that hole in the wall bar with bad singers and drunk misfits is, at this point in my life, closer to home than pink bridal showers and giggly princesses. So pano yun? Tinkerbell chugging San Mig Light?

Haaay. Shrek-fan-on-Valium. I really do need to get out and get some air.

That blind date with Hazel’s photographer-friend? Right now, I just might.