Philippines Stories

I have some reluctance to tell the following story because it not only involves premeditated murder but clearly pushes the far edge of credulity. For reasons that will be obvious, I have not named the city or the hotel where the events occurred.

Last week I wrote about my meeting with a cherry girl called Jenelyn. I also wrote this poem about her based on Keats’ Ode on Grecian Urn – a Cherry Girl and a Grecian Urn are about as different as you can get – yet somehow my poem ends up with the same message.

'Cherry Girl' is AC-speak for virgin. Generally speaking, they are not up for it unless you are their Mr Right, or prepared to pay large sums of pesos - neither of which apply to me - so why bother paying the barfine?

Needs be to remembered that in the Philippines there is no morality. At all. No sense of right or wrong. At all. No sense of property. At all.

Resident in the Philippines for two years, I relished it’s magnificent Islands, treasured it’s warm friendly playmates. Miss it still, if the truth is told.

I sit in red silk shorts dreaming of another land, kingdom of the bums and rogues who ride the filthy sea dropping dynamite bombs on luckless fishes, riding the national highway in perverted US Army jeeps, killing and consuming shitty dogs.

“Actually the locals call me the Fucking Fox!” Victor adds visibly proud. That title stems from the time before I got married and used to live and share my bed with all my five female employees. Ah, memories…”

“Why don’t you do as Tahira and chat to five fat dudes from Scandinavia simultaneously while at the same time playing solitaire on the second screen and clipping your toe nails with your free hand?”, I ask her tongue-in-cheek while glancing over at Tahira who now suddenly looks extra cute with her face blushing slightly in reaction to my comment.

Meandering through the darkness in direction to Divisoria, the city's centrally located main drag, I witness how a man of about 25 years of age gets hit by a passing minivan not far behind me as I cross the street. There's lying in the gutter now, moaning, while the minivan has already sped off around the next corner as if nothing significant had happened.

I keep telling myself. 'Must stop going to AC!'...

Shall I retire to the UK or the Philippines...?

26.02.2008. 05:21. Maria Bacolod: Oh. . My sweetheart is still sleeping I guess.. I will go to church my Prince, i will text u again during my free time. A blessed morning to u my beloved !

And so they text away. If you see a Filipino holding a cell phone and trembling intensely, he is not trembling – he writes a text with unseen speed. They text with two hands and without looking at the display. They text while happily talking to each other and while watching TV and computer screens.

When I get stressed out with the pressures of life in the west, I yearn for the simple life of a Philippine paradise. But is it, in the words of Omar Khayyam, 'paradise enow?'

...well, sort of.