The ultimate Balinese experience

She was a small lady, weighing maybe a little over 90 lbs and I looked her over, lingering on her hands while wondering if she can handle the job she was hired for.
I was inside one of the “Whisper Zone” rooms of the Mandara Spa at the Palau Pacific Resort (PPR) to have a taste of the free Balinese massage offered by the spa director, and was greeted by this small Indonesian whom I mistook for a Filipina.

I wondered how she would have fared if a 300-pound Palauan customer comes in for a massage, and it’s not unusual to find one because most of the Palauans are huge.

“Welcome to Elilei Mandara Spa ma’am. I’m Marge, your masseuse for the evening. If you will kindly step this way and take off your clothes….” she recited in a halting English.
I stepped over to the next room where I took off all my clothes and was given a a disposable underwear and piece of printed “kukur” cloth (kukurtinahin) to wrap around my body.

Marge led me to an immaculate elevated bed and instructed to me lie face down where a pleasant aroma of herbs and incense wafted straight to my face. It smelled of warm woods, lush tropical foliage and aromatic oil permeating the air that I felt as if I were in a private garden.

Marge rubbed some sort of ointment all over my body and pressed my ankle. I was startled at the strength she possessed. The pressure of her hand was firm as she started to apply the Balinese massage, making stretching, long strokes from my feet up to my hands and to my back, kneading and rolling my skin, applying thumb pressure techniques that I felt I were a dough readied for baking but it felt heavenly.

One thing Marge didn’t know was that I had a very hard time trying not to jump up and run from the bed at the beginning. I didn’t tell her I was ticklish in almost all parts of my body. I tried to think of other things like deadlines and the elusive business man I have to interview for my business profile and the huge pile of laundry in my hamper in order not to divert my attention.

I won the battle and before long, I was already feeling relaxed as I gave in to the professional ministrations of Marge’s skilled hands, feeling my tension evaporate as I breathed in the tropical aromas.

I got the invitation to sample one of Mandara’s services from the Mandara Spa director at the PPR, Dharsana Matratanaya and I did not refuse the invitation because I have always been curious about it going to one before although I classified the word “spa” as an expensive luxury that is way beyond my budget.
“It’s not just about having a treatment, it’s a total experience that involves all of the senses,” says Matratanaya, who turned me over to Marge after our brief chat.

Maybe next time I will go for the the ultimate in massage treatments, the Mandara Massage which is a unique blend of five different massage styles – Japanese Shiatsu, Thai, Hawaiian Lomi Lomi, Swedish and Balinese to be done by two therapists working together in rhythmic harmony perform the spa’s signature treatment.
Yeah, maybe soon, and soon is I have no idea when unless I win the jackpot prize in the sweepstakes. But first I need to start buying tickets.

Gunfire!

In an island where guns are strictly prohibited and policemen are not seen carrying them, hearing a gunshot is a remote possibility and a remarkable event. The law is very strict about it, and anyone caught under possession of even just a bullet or an empty shell could mean 15 years imprisonment.

Before coming to this island of Palau, I had visions of joining regular shooting practices and tournaments so that by the time I would come back to Davao I could compete with the other journalists here who are sharp shooters. I envisioned long stretches of empty spaces with world-class shooting ranges but one year of staying here I was yet to see a real gun. That was remedied when I bravely asked a policeman if they ever carry guns around, and if I may see one. He looked at me long and hard before finally saying yes. He went to the police car and fished out a shining .38 caliber from the compartment, then took it back as if he was afraid I would snatch it from him.

The nearest sound to a gunshot one hears here would be the explosion of a car tire but that too, is not common. Palauans tend to change tires without waiting for them to “retire”. It’s funny but if you hear a car tire explode, that car for sure belongs to a Filipino because if it’s possible to put scotch tape or glue, they’ll do it to save dollars (including me). Palauans also do not buy second hand tires and service station attendants are finding a lucrative business reselling tires to Filipinos at $15-20 each.

But back to guns, our target.
A couple of weeks ago, the Senate president of Palau who happened to be the brother of my boss died in a fishing accident. At the funeral, the late senator was honored by a 21-gun salute. Seven policemen carried M-16 and garand rifles, and that was the first time I saw long guns here. They looked shiny as though they are framed inside cabinets with no intention of using. It was a big event for the locals!
Growing up in a “gun-infested” area in North Cotabato, the sight of guns and the sound of gunshots is nothing new. As early as grade four I have learned to distinguish a shot that missed its target, or a shot at close range. (This would be followed by piercing screams from the family of the victim).

The seven police officers took their posts and prepared to fire. At the command, each police officer pulled the trigger. At the first batch of gun burst, people near the shooting area were visibly shocked. Glasses and other objects fell to the ground as the people clapped their hands to their ears and braced themselves for the second and the third batch of gunfire. I couldn’t help but wonder if these people knew how fortunate they are that their place is relatively peaceful. The kids here are fortunate because they never knew what it is to live in nervous anticipation when or where the next round of gunfire will come from, or master the art of automatically dropping to the ground during an explosion. Lucky islanders.

Uniquely Palau

A few days ago I chanced upon an old file in a compact disk where I listed things that makes Davao unique from any other city...and the idea came up to make a list of things that will give you a glimpse of things unique in this island. This is not to offend the Palauans or the islanders but here are a few observations I had for the past year:

*Kids’ necks and faces sticking outside of car windows without the fear of any danger is a very common sight. In fact, it looks as natural as if it’s a car accessory.

*Drivers stop their cars in the middle of the road when they see an acquaintance on the street (or another driver from an oncoming vehicle) and chat with each other while other motorists wait patiently behind.

*Stray dogs in the villages (hamlets) come in hordes. I walked in a neighboring street one morning not too long ago. One dog barked at me. In two minutes flat, there seemed to be a hundred dogs of all sizes and colors barking a few inches from me. I walked on air in pure terror. Had one of them took a chance to bite me, nothing but scraps would have been left of me.

*Overtaking is looked upon as a “crime”. Try speeding up more than the recommended speed (considered slower than those in the slowest lane in the Philippines) and expect the wailing siren from a police car to tag you down.

*The weather is so unpredictable. You wake up to a very hot morning and wear light clothes. Five minutes later it is raining sleets. After a few minutes, then the sun comes out and you would never guess it ever rained.

*You can meet the president, senators, congressmen or governors alone on the street without bodyguards.

*Electoral candidates go out by themselves and stand in the street waving placards to vote for them to passing cars.

*The sight of a pair of shoes tied with together dangling from electric wires in the middle of the streets is common. I still wonder at the time and skill used by the pranksters to throw it there.

*You can’t see guns anywhere, even the policemen rarely carry one.

*Food servings are so huge that for me, a serving is enough for three meals.

*It’s common to see groups of men sitting in waiting sheds, coffee shops and other hangouts swapping fishing tales while women tend the taro patch (gabi plantation). The men fish for living, but it’s the women’s job to tend the farm. Women who can’t grow up their own taro patch are looked down.

*Leave your cars on the street for sometime and better bid goodbye to it forever. (Last week, a Pinoy’s car broke down in the bridge and he went to get help. When he came back a few minutes later, help was no longer necessary. His car was already burned. When you leave your car unattended on a street, here’s the scenario: First day- all four tires stabbed flat. 2nd day- all windshields and mirrors smashed. 3rd day- burned to a crisp.

*Obesity in a woman is a status symbol. The fatter the women are, the higher the prestige her husband will have in the community as a good provider, and “bilbil” is not considered as flabs. It called “love handles”.

*It’s hard to hide in Palau. Somebody is always bound to see you wherever you go. Everybody knows everybody, and they know where you are based on your car or slippers!

*The locals are made of sterner stuff. They don’t seem to get sick from common cold, cough and other seasonal epidemic. They are not afraid of the scorching sun (and the sun here IS very painfully hot compared to the Philippines) or of sudden rains. You can’t see them running for shelter when rains come.

Palauans hold countless custom parties like first bath, house parties and others where even the “seniorist citizens” join in till the sun rises. They chew betel nuts regularly. They eat a lot and dance gracefully, even the oldest and the fattest women’s bodies sway gracefully and when they feel the urge to dance, they don’t care where they are. One final observation- Palauans are cheerful, happy people.

Oh-one more observation. There’s no need for you to get numbers at the baggage section in stores. Just leave your packages and it will still be there when you come back. If you left wallets and valuables, it will remain safe ---unless a Filipino passes by! (sad thought!)

Moving out

I’ve been used to the peaceful second floor office our newspaper occupied for the past nine months, comfortable in having my own key so that I could come in anytime I feel like it, even in the middle of the night.

I shared the office with four other officemates but all of us has complete freedom with whatever we want to do without thinking somebody will walk in anytime and peek at what windows we are opening in our laptops. (including playing Zuma and other computer games when I get bored). Then one day our boss announced that we will be moving to a bigger office right in the center of Koror, and with it my spirits fell.

Before we knew it, here we were in our new office, a couple of miles from our from the former one. Its a huge cream-colored, two-storey building that can be classified as one of the most modern buildings in the island.
The office is huge, with a spacious parking ground (nah, I miss the old parking). The building spells “prestige”, with the boss’ office boasting of a huge bathroom complete with glass-covered shower room, huge wall to wall glass windows overlooking the parking area (meaning we’ve lost the freedom to come and go at our own convenient time).

Expecting a newsroom with sofa (place to stretch for a nap when you get mental block), table, a television, and a conference room where we could entertain visitors (and complainants, too), I was disappointed to find that we were assigned individual cubicles but with gaping doors anybody can just poke his head in.
My cubicle is at the second floor by the window but the sad thing is we were sandwiched between the computer technicians and the marketing staff.

Moving meant many things for me: the end to our privacy to work, the end of comfortable telephone interviews, the end to chats between the five of us, the beginning of headache as each one tries to outdo each other in the raising the volume of music (which is more like noise).
Worse yet, we have to pass by the main door, giving the boss a good full view of us passing by his office. One option is to pass by the company’s computer store to go up right by the table of our boss’ wife (our editor in chief), and before reaching my cubicle, I have to pass by the manager’s table.
Add the noise of hammers and all noise the carpenters are making with the finishing touches inside the office.

It’s irritating to know that when I stagger drowsily at the office at 11 a.m., eyebrows are raised (guess we still have to educate them that reporters are not 8 to 5 employees but we operate on our own time schedule).

When I stare out the window all I can see is the long stretch of cars below, rooftops with steel bars jutting out menacingly or electric posts with crisscrossing wires. I miss the sea view from all our windows back at the old office.
Oh sure, it feels nice to be going to a nice office but there are hitches to the changes which we have to adjust to. Life has to move on but I still miss our old office.

Missing the movies

IN a progressive city like Davao where movie houses are regular features in malls and shopping centers, going to the movies are as regular as eating in restaurants or going window shopping. I know I can always go anytime I have the chance or the required 50 bucks (balcony seat plus sitsirya and softdrinks) but more often, I get a chance to go to the movies on free tickets.

Looking back at it now, I realized that for the most times I go to the movies, I spent at least 25 percent of the time eating, 20 percent on the movie (unless the movie is a cartoon or a story that would captivate me in the first ten crucial minutes) and the remaining 55 percent is used for sleeping. I can’t recall how many times I had to clap my hands over my ears every time buddy Rex of Super-Balita gives me the “if-you-only-wanted-to-sleep-why-don’t-you-go-home-and-sleep-comfortably” sermon. The hardest and most challenging thing for me in a movie house is to keep my butt glued to my seat in one position for even 10 minutes so by the time I leave the movie house, they don’t need to clean the seat.

Alas, even a tiny-winy 20-seater movie house don’t exist in Palau. It seems that every single house, no matter how small, owns a computer, television or a home video set. To make up for this lack, video rental shops are everywhere and for the first time, I found myself renting CDs and DVDs from $1 to $1.75 each to keep myself occupied (and sane—hehe!) after office hours.
Back at our old office, I could work to my heart’s content or surf the internet till my vision gets blurry, hence I didn’t find the need to resort to locking myself in my room with four or five CDs a night. We’ve just moved into a new office and unlike the old one where we each had a personal key, this is a huge building where only the bosses hold the two keys available so when they go home, we need to go out or be locked in.

In fairness, the video shops (95 percent of which are managed by either Filipinos or Chinese) are up to date with the latest movies though so what we usually did is to surf the net for the latest ones and rent them.
In exchange for the sitsirya and the softdrinks I often have to buy with the movie tickets back home, I invested in big huggable body pillows so I could recline in complete comfort on my bed and view the movies from my laptop. An officemate donated a pair of Dell sound boxes, and with the thick walls of my room which makes them almost-soundproof (my means of communication with my other housemates is through texting), I can raise the volume and turn off the lights to make it feel like I were inside a real movie house.
I still miss the movie houses where we get to see plenty of other people. A high school students before, we used to throw peanuts at couples kissing below us. Somehow, the movies are much more funnier or scarier (depends on the film) when you view it with hundreds of others inside a darkened movie house.
When I get to go home (maybe next year) I will find a chance to visit the movie houses at SM or Gaisano Mall which we usually go to. And this time I promise I won’t sleep anymore.

November 13, 2005 Sunstar Davao

Meeting Mr. President

After a hiatus of more than two months from being a reporter, I seemed to have lost my footing and it felt strange when we covered a press conference with the president of this island dubbed as the Rainbow’s End a couple of weeks ago.

There were already two reporters from the other two existing papers in Palau ahead of us. The President’s chief of staff asked for our business cards (that, and an email address are part of one’s existence in Palau) and briefed us on the agenda of the conference.

Training my ears to listen and focus and jotting down notes seemed to require too much effort but I sat poised with my pad and pen when the president came into the room. He got our business cards and welcomed us (Aurea and I being the latest addition to the small media family) and I said, Oh great, this is the president of the republic calling us by name! Then he murdered my surname. I should have gotten immune to it because in two straight weeks my surname has been murdered so many times from the medical certificates, plane ticket reservations, to the actual print on the plane ticket and other documents.

The desk clerk at the Continental ticketing office back in Makati was helpful enough to print out something to prove that the ticket was really purchased for me because it did not agree with my passport. I’m sure my grandfather would have turned over in his grave) and now here is the country’s leader pronouncing it minus the letter N (uh-oh talk about coconut shell)!

When a Philippine president visits Davao City, a media practitioner has to pre-register with the Philippine Information Agency who will issue an identification card to certify that you are a legitimate media. Even with the ID card, you can only enter the room where the press conference will be held after undergoing through a barrage of briefings and a series of security checks, body check and get through hordes of burly presidential security guards. Once past all these barriers, you can’t ask questions if you have not pre-registered and indicated what you will ask the president about.
In a span of two years, my tape recorder looked like it came from the hospital from the number of stickers stuck to it by the presidential security group every time President Gloria Arroyo came to Davao City.

What a difference from the Philippines. In this country of barely 20,000 people, everybody seems to know everybody and you get to meet the senators, congressmen (delegates) and the president and they will tap you on the shoulders like an old friend.

The rest of the senators sat down but alas, the session was in Palauan. It felt awkward to sit there and listen to a conference going on in a strange language. The president cracked jokes (maybe those were jokes because everybody who understands Palauan kept on laughing). I whispered to Au that we were helpless if they were talking about selling us as slaves (just kidding). What I did was to keep on looking at the different colorful flags of the 16 states of Palau, wondering who the designers were for such intricate work. I couldn’t memorize the names of the states. I couldn’t even read them but I was trying to kill the time.

When the session was finally over, the chief of staff asked us to come back at 2 pm for the interview with the president. We were to learn later that the president usually hold interviews with the media after the Palauan session but had a previous engagement hence the change in schedule.

So much for meeting Mr. President, better luck next Wednesday. We went back to the office with our notebooks still clean and without a story to write.

Island hopping

Even before the Continental Airlines flight we boarded from Manila landed in Palau last October. I resolved to go around the islands I saw from the plane window on a boat trip.

After almost a year’s stay, I finally got the chance to visit some of the islands, braving a few hours boat ride and leaning on my daring, adventurous spirit for luck because until this time, I still don’t know how to swim. (I have started some lessons though- progressing only as far as staying for 10 seconds and blowing bubbles from under water).

Kayangel, the island number one in my wish list is at the northernmost tip of Palau. I always had this feeling that if I went to the place, I’m just a few day’s hours trip away Davao (or maybe a few days). I grabbed the chance to cover a ground breaking ceremony there last week, not minding the back and forth four-hour trip by speed boat.
Before we left the dock, I asked the operator for a life jacket and for the thousandth time, I received that too familiar “I-can’t-believe-you’re-serious-don’t- you-know-it’s-a-crime-not-to-swim-in-Palau” look I’ve been getting when I told him I want to feel safe and I don’t know how to swim.

Just before boarding the boat, a Palauan friend told me, “I hope you don’t vomit because the waves are real big out there and you have to cross three outer reefs,”
Some encouragement, huh.

The program pushed without hitches but while having lunch, the president, vice president and top officials of the island who were there, (and each being a fisherman at some time in their life) started to cast anxious glances at the darkening skies.

“Looks like we may have to spend the night here,” a congressman (they call it Delegate in Palau) commented, which worried me because I just parked my car under the shade of a tree near the dock and it’s not safe.
We declined the invitation to ride with the president in his boat, remembering how our spirits flew up and down and in and out of our bodies on our way to Peleliu State a few months back. (He drives his boat real fast and to think he said he slowed down because we were there!)

After lunch we hurried left before the torrent fell, but it caught us just the same when we were at mid-sea.
Rain was falling like a thousand needles pricking on my face and arms, and every time the boat creaked and groaned as it rides on an especially big wave, it took agonizing seconds before it goes down and for my heart to beat normally again.

I kept my head bowed, not in prayer or resignation but to protect my face with my baseball cap from the painful raindrops that threatened to erase my face.

By the time our boat reached the T-dock in Koror, my face and hands were already too numb to feel anything. I was wet from the head down to my toes and was longing for a hot drink to calm the shivering of my pale lips.

Jumping into my car, I turned on the heater and drove home as if the police were chasing me. I couldn’t stop the chills that rocked my body. I crawled into bed as soon as I peeled off my wet clothes and wrapped myself in a woolen blanket. With a normal body temperature and with Palau’s humidity, one could not sleep comfortably in a closed room without an aircon unit or an electric fan but I did.

I woke up an hour later, drenched in sweat and very thirsty. I went to the refrigerator and popped three ice cubes into my mouth, gasped at the cold impact and spat the cubes out at the sink. I made hot chocolate instead.
So much for island hopping, but you think I’m giving up? You’re wrong. I have another schedule sometime this month. This time to Angaur, the other end of Palau.