Thresher Sharks

Monad Shoal, the top of an undersea mountain off the coast of Malapascua, is probably the only place in the world where you can reliably see thresher sharks, bizarre creatures, whose bodies are almost half tail. At around three metres long, they’re phenomenally graceful as they power through the water in a ritual dance with cleaner fish: the sharks can’t stop swimming, so the cleaner fish have to play a game of trust.

You won’t see the sharks using their tail for hunting, here, though we did see a couple breaching the surface, which is very rare. With their vaguely gormless faces, small mouths and generally zen attitude, these curious, intelligent animals are some of the nicest sharks to dive with: there’s none of the sense that you need to watch your back that you get with hammerheads, or even the larger reef sharks. On three dives here, I saw multiple threshers, every time.

Mating Mandarinfish

The thresher sharks are a sunrise dive, but at sunset it’s all about the mandarinfish, who come out to mate as the sun descends. These tiny, brightly coloured fish love coral rubble, and Lighthouse, close to the island, is a shallow, unattractive site with plenty of staghorn coral. It’s lovely to watch the fish chasing each other, flirting, through the coral, until they rise above the staghorns and mate like pairing hummingbirds. I saw eight seahorses on this dive, too, including a mating pair.

Macro, Macro, Macro…

Frogfishes, pipefishes, seahorses, pygmy seahorses, nudibranches, blue-ringed octopus, harlequin shrimp, mantis shrimp…. When you dive Malapascua, you get a rare combination of excellent macro with big pelagics that means there really is something for everyone. Gato Island, North Point, Ubang Bato and Chocolate Island are all great macro sites, with good visibility by muck diving standards.

Did I Mention the Sharks?!

Malapascua isn’t a destination for hammerheads – but in season (January to April), they do come to Kemod Shoal, another seamount, and I saw a couple as we finned around in the blue (schools are seen occasionally, but you’d need to be lucky). Gato Island has a lovely, fairly shallow swimthrough where you’ll often see reef sharks hanging out, framed cinematically against the mouth of the cave, while baby white-tips sleep in smaller caves and overhangs.

Island-hopping

Calanggaman Island is one of the prettiest islands I’ve been on for ages – a pristine strip of white sand and palm trees, surrounded by waters that shade from turquoise through to violet with Leyte in the background. Bangka outriggers are perfect for island-hopping, and Calanggaman is the ideal place to play castaway with a barbeque and a handful of beers – although, thanks to the impact of Typhoon Haiyan, there’s not much to see on the wall offshore (at least, not at recreational depths).

How to Get to Malapascua

To get to Malapascua, you’ll need to fly to Cebu City: this is the Philippines’ second city, so there are directs from Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and South Korea. If you’re lazy, arrange a resort pickup from the airport by car and private boat. Alternatively, take a taxi (80-100 pesos) to the North Bus Terminal, pick up a bus (80 pesos or so) to the port of Maya, get there before the public boat (50 pesos) stops running around 4pm, then fend off all the touts who tell you it’s stopped already and you need a private one. If you need to spend the night in Cebu City, consider staying in Mactan Island.

Zac and I were guests of Exotic, the folk who discovered the thresher sharks, for a story on diving Malapascua with kids – it’s a hard life being a travel writer, right?

Image credits: Thresher Shark at Monad Shoal by Maxime Guilbot,
Fish – mandarinfish by Jim Trodel and pygmy seahorse by Yusma Yahaya, all on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

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It seems, at first blush, like an absolutely horrible concept: a Hobbit-themed bar staffed almost entirely by little people. But it isn’t. These are the staff.

They’re also the owners, now that Jim, the Peace Corps dude who set up Hobbit House in 1973, is old enough to be contemplating what happens when he’s gone. This is him:

And this is Ali, the front of house, who’s raising five kids on his earnings here.

Pidoy, the oldest of the team, is both consultant and director at Hobbit House. “When I was young, with my disability I was never expected to work,” he told me. “Now I have a wife, and two children, both of them through college.”

And sometimes, in the developing world, it really is that simple.

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Yep. My son has definitely watched Dr. No one too many times.

And, it appears, Jaws too.

As he put it, “I’m not sure I’m quite equipped for midnight swims. You see, when you’re underwater, breathing with a snorkel, and it’s dark, you don’t have many senses left to remind you there’s no sharks about.”

We spent a lovely couple of days, our farewell to Manila, with Agnes and Billy, in their house in Quezon City, Manila. The hide-and-seekers were grandchildren of a friend of theirs, Carlo, who plays piano in Siem Reap.

And it was, as ever, lovely to see how children put linguistic differences aside to simply play.

And scold, of course.

Because you don’t get much more disapproving than a nine-year-old girl when a nine-year-old boy has immersed himself in a darkened swimming pool, simultaneously breaking the unwritten rules of the game and doing something terribly, terribly dangerous.

But it’s truly lovely watching three Tagalog-speaking kids who have known each other since year dot make the linguistic effort to include the English-speaking incomer. And really wonderful to see (and hear!) all four of them scampering together.

Agnes is a sculptor. Or, rather, she’s an artist who works in three dimensions (she tends to cast, not sculpt). Billy was in a band and now makes rituals. They inhabit a sprawling green compound, studded with sculptures, prayer flags and Asian art, in a part of Manila so stunningly quiet you can hear the frogs and geckos at night.

We’ve done very little. Swum a little. Worked with clay. Thanks to Agnes, Z now understands the beginnings of working with clay – kneading, dampening, firing – has made his own piece and has watched a master at work transforming plaster to a marbled sheen.

We’ve talked, we’ve read, we’ve eaten natural, healthy food. And we’ve seen tranquility, something hard to attain in any city, and super-hard in Manila. They’ll be moving soon, to a plot on the beach, or in the mountains, to build traditionally and eco-friendlily, live simply, maybe run a retreat.

Whatever it is, it will be another amazing space. And there’s plenty of bases to build that on in the Philippines.

Thanks to Vanessa David from Makati, Philippines, for creating the featured image and sharing it via via Wikimedia Commons

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12 million? 15 million? Honestly, who’s counting?

Manila long ago outgrew its natural ties to earth: the river and the Bay. Before its roadways are completed, they are already too narrow for its needs.

High-rise condos with names like Knightsbridge and Gramercy spring up cheek-by-jowl with squatter camps where families fresh from the countryside learn that, unless you’re educated, connected, local and (most often) lucky, the streets of the big city are paved with shit, not gold. Volunteer fire brigades wail down canyons of mouldering concrete to fires that can burn for days.

It’s a maze. A consumerist maze. From the delis to the junkfood to the sari sari store.

Emo ergo sum.

But if the city has a soul – and I’m not sure my own city does — I guess it flits and murmurs through the mirrored shadows of the Rizal Museum, in Fort Santiago, the old colonial core.

It took us a while to get to this. Our third visit to the city. With only a couple of days to spare before departure. But I’m glad we did.

Doctor Jose Rizal is the national hero of the Philippines. There’s a road or ten named after him in every city. His works are prescribed reading in every Filipino school. And his name’s come up throughout our time here, in conversations with gangsters and academics, with tricycle drivers and artists.

His status, I guess, is not dissimilar to Simon Bolivar in Venezuela. Although, this being the Philippines, the cult is even more extreme.

And, when I say cult, I do mean cult. Rizal died at 33. The same age, they say, as Jesus. And one of the archipelago’s more novel sects, the Rizalists, worship him alongside the original Christ.

Rizal spoke seven European languages, plus Tagalog, the dominant language of his native islands, plus two or three other Philippine dialects. He was a sculptor. Ophthalmologist. Poet. Novelist. Philosopher. Political thinker.

One of the founding fathers of Filipino independence. A member of geographical societies and archaeological societies. And, in the mélange that makes up the islands, he was a Spanish speaker of Chinese descent.

And to see the cell in which he spent his final hours, composing the farewell poem that many consider his masterwork, is genuinely moving.

Rizal was shot by firing squad in the grounds of Fort Santiago, the great colonial slab which the Spaniards set up on the curve of the Pasig River, on the remnants of an older Malay fort. As occupations turned, Spanish torture gave way to Japanese, and now the place is a shrine. Not just to Rizal. But to the Filipinos and Americans who died in the drowning cells that flooded at high tide during the Second World War.

The museum is small, but elegant. Some of his little sculptures sit, gallerised behind glass with lines from his many writings. There are reminiscences of his final days. Extracts from his biographies. Etchings, sculptures, portraits of the man.

I guess the most moving element of the story is that the revolution he died for was a revolution he never wanted. He felt it premature. Events showed it was.

But he refused to run. And, for that refusal, died. So much like a character in his novel, the Noli, that some, not just the Rizalists, believed he prefigured his own fate.

If you’re in Manila, go see it. It’s one of the most worthwhile things to see.

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What is it?

You may well ask. For this, my friend, is an inflatable waterpark.

Occupying 5000 square metres of apple-green Astroturf in the middle of nowheresville, Luzon, EK Biki comes complete with dangling sharks, inflatable dragon slides, slightly forlorn clownfish and, weirdly, an Olympic-sized paddling pool.

All, like the giant hamster’s wheel and spinning top on which Z spent many happy minutes scrambling, entirely blow-up.

To add a further note of the bizarre, it caters entirely for non-swimmers.

How on earth did we discover this hidden treasure?

Well, there’s a sorry tale…

Saturday morning didn’t get off to the best of starts. Z’s go-karting date with a friend, tentatively arranged via email, did not materialize.

So, to make up for it, I suggested we visit the Enchanted Kingdom, a theme park 30km outside of Manila with a triple loop rollercoaster, an ATV track, karting track, log flume, a Spaceport, plus sundry other delights.

This being Manila, of course, 30 kilometres translates as three hours. Yet, after a taxi to the bus station, a bus to Santa Rosa, a walk, and a tricycle ride, we arrived at the hallowed gates of the Kingdom.

Only to find it shut.

On a Saturday.

Enchanted?

I am amazed Z didn’t cry.

I certainly felt like it.

And I’m supposed to be the adult here.

“Yes,” said the chap on the door. “It is closed for a private event. Smart communications,” he added, with a note of quiet pride that a corporation that size should have picked the Enchanted Kingdom for its annual jolly.

“Ah,” I say, looking warily at Z, now facing his second big disappointment before lunch on a Saturday. “Is there anything else to do in Santa Rosa?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate.

I guess the closest equivalent to Santa Rosa in England would be Slough (where The Office was set). Only smaller. And with more junk food and mechanics. But, of course, with much better weather and mountains in the distance.

“Yes!” says the chap, beaming. “We have a waterpark next door.”

My relief knows no bounds. I nearly hug him.

We wander off. Walk past the entrance to the waterpark (we were looking, as one does, for high towers of slides spiraling through the air). He – and he really is a lovely guy — chases after us, redirects us, escorts us to the door and explains the procedures.

I recognize the surreal vista instantly, from a photo in a listings magazine I had looked at and dismissed as clearly rubbish. Z, on the other hand, seems positively enthused.

We enter. We have no swimwear.

I purchase:

One bikini. Polka dotted.

Z’s verdict? “I think it’s nice. You look a lot less fat in that than you do in your swimsuit. I think the swimsuit does something funny to your tummy.”

One pair of swimshorts. Age 9. (My verdict? Very cute.)

Two black lurex swimming caps. (Compliant with regulations. But make us look like members of a sect on the CIA hitlist.)

One sachet of runny sunblock. $1.50, since you asked.

Two tickets.

I contemplate buying some floral shorts to wear over my swimwear, to comply with local standards of modesty. But we’ve just spent almost a whole day’s budget. Plus Z thinks I’ll regret it.

Now, to be fair to the waterpark, had it been, say 20 minutes, or 40 minutes, even, away from where we were staying, it would have been a really pleasant afternoon out. And with a staff-guest ratio of more than 1:1, queuing was certainly not an issue.

Within seconds, Z was well away. Racing down the bouncy slides. Entering the water with a vigorous splash. Rolling in the giant hamster wheels and cackling.

OK! I think. I’ll get into the spirit of this.

I join Z in the dragon pool and attempt a swim. The water is no higher, at any point, than his waist. That’s my lower thighs.

Now, I know that many working class Filipinas (and probably their menfolk too) can’t swim. But, all the same, one would think that a waterpark might contain a place where one could indulge should one wish.

Not this one…

Z invites me onto the Octopus slide and scrambles up. I note that none of the Pinay moms are sliding with their kids. Even the dads, in fact, are just hoiking them up and letting them go.

Due to the gap between the slide and the water, I require a leg-up from one of the attendants.

This is, both literally and metaphorically, bruising for both sides.

I weigh over 60 kilos. My assistant weighs, I would say, about 50 kilos. I am 5’7”. He is maybe 5’3”.

He genuflects. Offers me his knee. Not wishing to appear rude, but having a good idea of the likely outcome, I stand on it, gingerly, one of my legs on one of his.

The poor guy’s leg gives way under the unexpected weight.

I fall into the water, with a polite “ooh, silly, silly, fat, fat me” giggle, not to impute his masculinity. It being knee high, I hit the bottom. Not pleasant.

I notice Z gesturing from the top of the slide.

Assistant and I try again, and, with some really heinous wriggling, I achieve the inflatable steps. They are designed for kids. I have to force my way between the inflatable sides.

Even before I whiz off the slide at impressive speed and hit the bottom of the paddling pool with an equally impressive crunch, I am realizing that this park is not for me.

Exiting my second slide, I hit the floor feet first. Now, that hurts.

On the third, I catch a finger. That really hurts.

On inspection, all joints are working, but I take this as my final warning that sliding at velocity into knee-high water is NOT A GOOD IDEA.

We have some fun with the inflatables. Although, again, when scaling a giant wobbly model of Uranus the knowledge that the water on which it is floating won’t worry the metre measure does not induce confidence.

Z, as any child would do, swings off the side, yodeling, raised six or seven feet above the surface of the water. I yell at him to put his feet down, and explain that falling from that height into shallow water is NOT A GOOD IDEA.

Nobody else is yelling at their children. Although, to be fair, nobody else’s child has asked the attendants to bring in the most lethal inflatables the park has to offer, then swung off them at heights way above the surface.

I give up. Retreat to our personal marquee. Explain to Z why I am giving up.

“Well, I hit the bottom, too, Mum,” he says.

“I know you hit the bottom, sweetheart,” I say. “But I weigh more than twice what you do and when I hit the bottom it hurt.”

Knowing full well how pathetic it sounds, I continue, “I hurt my finger on the last one, and I’m worried I could break an ankle.”

The boy is not impressed. I don’t blame him.

I haz cheezburger. I figure I deserve it.

I push Z around the Olympic pool in the hamster’s wheel.

Eventually, we agree that we have juiced the place, and head for home. Well, Manila. Thirty kilometres and three hours away.

In the way of days that start badly, Saturday continues badly. At the bus station, we pick up a jeep for Remedios. Are dropped on Remedios Street, not Remedios Circle. Get lost (I have left our map behind). Pass cross-streets which I can’t orient on an East-West axis but to understand that they are THE WRONG WAY.

At an especially unappealing petrol station, we are picked up by a “good Samaritan” cab driver who takes us on a pricey magical mystery tour, which even I can tell is TOTALLY the wrong way.

Though, without a map, all I can do is squeak, “Quirino?! No, no, no. Why are we going from Ocampo to Quirino?! We go to Adriatico near Remedios Circle. That way!!!! You know Adriatico?! You know Remedios Circle?!” while the guy pretends not to speak English.

Note for tourists. If you don’t look Filipino, are not hailing a cab, and a driver stops for you just because you’re looking lost, he is going to screw you into next week. Just like they do in London. If you’re forrun…

We go for dinner at Zamboanga, where I have been meaning to go for a while. It specializes in seafood. I knew it for Mindanao cuisine. Z chooses to hate seafood.

It’s expensive. We are both in a vile mood. The floor show does not significantly improve it. Although Z decides he likes mussels.

At one point he utters the baleful line, “It’s a good thing neither of us is telepathic. Otherwise, you’d know what I’m thinking.”

To cut to the chase, as a single parent, single child family travelling longterm one really does have to communicate. We talk about why we are in a vile mood, and with whom.

We agree the only people we have to be cross with about our crappy day is each other, which isn’t fair on either of us. We further agree to improve matters with Toblerone and a film.

We go to the Seven-Eleven. Buy Toblerone. One large bar each: white for me, fruit and nut for him. Retreat to our hotel and watch X-Men on the laptop, with Toby the Toblerone soft toy on standby. It’s, actually, a very nice end to a rather disappointing day.

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She’s seventeen, now, she says, almost eighteen, and works in, or more often, outside of, a tourist bar in downtown Manila.

Nothing slick. But nothing especially seedy. It’s sort of a tent, with some wall hangings, a few tables, a bar at the back, Poker Face on repeat on the stereo, and MJ bouncing and jiggling on the pavement in shorts, vest and hightops, with a big smile and a big, big laugh.

Your drinks cost the standard. Forty pesos for a beer, or thereabouts, twenty-odd for fizzy pop. Her Red Horse super-strongs, when she joins you at the table, cost two hundred pesos. One hundred goes to MJ, one hundred to the bar.

And on that steady stream of Red Horse, a hundred pesos a pop, MJ is keeping three adults and eight children. Four full siblings. Four half-siblings. Her dad, her stepmom and, lest we forget, herself.

And hormones don’t come cheap.

“I’m a ladyboy from the Philippines!” she’ll exclaim proudly, showing off her new breasts with their surgically perky nipples. “You didn’t know?!”

MJ’s gender is a secret she shares, as a professional intimacy, with most of the people she meets. Sometimes, like tonight, she forgets who she has leveled with already. It is no news to the tall, skinny guy from Vermont she’s been eyeing for a while…

MJ has been on my case for days – weeks, if you count our last visit to Manila – to come into her bar. And I thought it would be interesting for Z to sit and talk with someone like her.

“I’ve known who I am since I was eight years old,” MJ says. “I always wanted to play with Barbies, liked pink, liked to play with girls.”

“You never thought you were gay?” I ask. She hands Z her phone and sets him up on a game.

“No,” she says. “I’ve never thought I was gay. I’ve always been a girl.”

Her stepmother didn’t take the news too well, though her dad was one hundred per cent understanding. Of course, now that MJ’s bringing home the bacon and her dad’s too sick to pedal his pedicab, her stepmom is magically more tolerant.

“She wasn’t so kind to any of us when we were little,” MJ recalls. “She was very young. Kind of harsh. But things are better now.”

I ask about her real mother.

“My mom?” says MJ. “I haven’t seen her since I was five years old. But I’m ready to find her now. She has a lot of problems. Drugs, and alcohol. Alcohol, and drugs. But I want to go and find her now. I want to talk to her. I want to know my mom…”

It appears no one knows whether her mother is alive or dead. She disappeared into the ether, leaving five young kids behind her, over a decade ago.

MJ herself seems not averse to the odd bump of speed or possibly coke. To keep her energy levels high during those twelve hour shifts, to counteract the steady stream of Red Horse which passes her lips on a good night, to keep the flag flying high. I don’t know how many of her guests get specialized services, but I’d imagine she needs a little something to help her through that too.

“Yeah,” she says, eyes a little spacy under layers of mascara, even though it’s early. “It’s hard, you know. I work until 6am, every night, I sleep all day, in the evenings I need…” She loses her thread.

But MJ is a good Catholic girl at heart. Still lives at home. Loves the family. Helps out with the younger kids, right down to the baby: she’d like Z to spend the day with her nine-year-old sister one day.

She does tour guiding as a sideline, when she can. Would like to move into tourism or business management.

But, of course, she hasn’t finished school. She’s not even close. And here in the Philippines, you need a college degree, ideally in management, to even get an interview for a job behind the counter at McDonalds or Starbucks.

Would she like a boyfriend? To get married one day? She has the answer pat. “I’m too young right now for a boyfriend. I don’t want anything serious. I just want to have fun. And I have no sex drive now, because of the hormones.”

Gay or transgender marriage is not possible in the Philippines, she explains. Plus, she doesn’t want to complete the change. “Why not?” I ask.

“God gave me this,” she says, pointing to her crotch. “I’ll take the hormones, I’ve grown my breasts, but I won’t get rid of this.”

Gender really is something different in this Catholic country. Go figure.

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Now, I’ve been considering training as a scuba instructor over the next year or so. It seems like a nice lifestyle, a good string to one’s bow, relatively stress-free, combines easily with other occupations, and the like.

Sure, I’m not the best diver in the world. But compared to earning the money required to spend a lot of time underwater, acquiring a profession which gives you free diving and free time in which to do other things makes a lot of sense from where I’m at now. (Z considers it a “cool job”.)

Then I met Matt…

Matt is from Hawaii by way of Minnesota and a few other places. He’s an amiable, laidback mid-Westerner with a Celtic colouring, somewhere in his mid-20s, teaching scuba by day and bartending by night.

We are in Coron Bay, the Philippines, hanging out after diving some of the monster wrecks out there, and he is running through advanced diver’s sign language (inventively obscene but still highly intuitive).

Then he says, “Of course, as an instructor, you sometimes have to punch your students.”

“Punch your students?” I say. Matt seems so sweet and laid-back, I can’t imagine him punching anyone, though he does have that bartender evil streak.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Who have you punched?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, and gestures to the German couple he taught Rescue Diving a year or so ago, with whom he is holidaying this year. “There was STEVEN.”

They nod, in shared recollection.

“Who was Steven?” Z asks. “What did he do?”

“OK,” he says. “Steven is this big, fat, gay — not that that’s a problem — Irish guy. He was on the rescue diving course where I met these guys. He had a job offer from the resort on the basis of this course. So I thought he’d pay attention.”

“OK,” I say.

“Well,” he says. “We’re doing this exercise where I’m a drowning diver, he has to get out of all his gear, get me all out of my gear, and do a swap. Like I say, he’s not been paying attention. So when he leaves me face down in the water, I’m not overly concerned. I lie there for a while, thinking, come on, I’m face down, he’s got to figure this out, he’s going to figure this out. Then, ‘Nope,’ I think, ‘He’s not,’ so I look up. Just in time to see the top of his head going below the surface.”

“Christ!” I say. “What happened?”

“Well,” says Matt. “He stripped off all my gear. Then he took off all his. Apart from his weights.”

Faces round the table begin to fall in astonishment. “Yep. He’s a big guy, too,” says Matt. “So he’s got around 18 kilos of weights on him. And he’s in panic. So he’s sinking. Flailing.”

“Can’t he take them off?” I ask.

“No,” says Matt. “He’s panicking. Blind panic. He can’t think. He’s going down. No fins. No mask, no snorkel, no regulator. Nothing. And lashing out. So I go down — and I have nothing, no fins, no snorkel, no mask, no air, no BCD — and try and get the weights off him. I can’t see, because I have no mask. And he’s flailing around, going down, down, down, pushing me off him, and I have no fins to keep him up.”

“Jesus!” I say. “How deep was the water?”

Matt turns to the German guys. “How deep was it?” They don’t know. “Let me think. It was a dropoff in Utila, Honduras. Maybe 50 metres, 60 metres, straight down.”

I try and envisage this guy sinking — like the proverbial stone. To certain death. “So I get the weights off him,” he says. “Somehow. I don’t know how I did it, still. When he surfaces, I punch him, right in the face. And, let’s put it this way, he didn’t get the job, but he listened REAL hard after that.”

There are more, as well. The guy who, twelve metres below the surface, decided he’d had enough, spat out his regulator, inhaled a big lungful of air and headed for the surface.

“There,” says Matt, reflectively, “You have to hit someone in the stomach. Basically, they surface with some water in their lungs, they’re gonna cough a bit but they’re gonna be OK. They surface with a big lungful of air expanded to double its size, and they’re toast.”

Or Matt’s buddy’s anti-star pupil. The guy who — and it’s always guys, for some reason — ran out of air at 30m down. “Using too much air and not checking his SPG,” says Matt. So he solved it in the only way he thought he could. Snatching the regulator out of his instructor’s mouth (knocking off his mask and blinding him in the process), then trying to head for the surface.

“Jesus!” I say. “What do you do in those circumstances?”

“You grab them. Fin downwards to slow their ascent, breathe from your alternate air source once you’ve found it,” says Matt. “Oh yeah. And when you get to surface, you punch them in the face.”

Full-contact management at its finest. Doc McGhee would be proud…

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When it comes to bargaining, Z has a number of disadvantages to overcome. His age. His size. His voice, which is still rather piping, with a slight, cute lisp. And his hair, which he is growing. Not for the first time. But certainly for the longest: he’s at curly-headed moppet status at the moment. (I give the look five minutes once his dad arrives in Hanoi with the clippers, but that’s by the by.)

But here in the Philippines folk tend to take it in good heart. Back in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, he halved the price of a tricycle ride to the proper fare instantly, and got a nod of respect and recognition from the amiable driver, by saying loudly and clearly, “That seems VERY expensive to me.”

So too, yesterday in Manila. Show me a city in the world where a metered taxi won’t take the piss when they think they can get away with it, and I’ll show you a police state.

While we’ve had the odd run-in with guys who won’t switch the metre on and quote fares so high as to be literally risible, I’m surprised that it took as long as our third visit to this fine city to encounter the old Euston to Kings Cross via Paddington routine.

It was one of those paradoxical cabs you get only in Manila. A filthy white, with aircon advertised on the sides but not evident in practice, red leather seats, dodgy doors — so far, so normal. A black and white card, featuring Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, in saintly black and white (cilice and other SM equipment not shown), dangled from the mirror where more secular drivers boast lucky horses.

Yet the driver — and maybe, just maybe, it was his dad’s cab? — was a young guy with an advanced case of amphetamine jaw, chewing like an absolute bastard to a diet of pumping techno-lite. It made for quite an entertaining ride. At least to begin with.

We were travelling from the sparkling canyons of the business/yuppie/bank district, Makati City, to the Vietnamese Embassy on Pablo Ocampo street, a thoroughfare of more than respectable size, if an utterly disreputable street population, which sits between Makati and the central sprawl of Ermita-Malate-Remedios. It should be, traffic depending, about a dollar’s ride.

I am buried in the last chapter of a trashy thriller when I realise the meter is racking up. Look around. Consult my map. Realise the piss is being thoroughly taken. Say to Z, “Oh god. We’re in Malate! What are we doing in Malate? We’re going to Pablo Ocampo Street!”

Z says, “Give me the map!” I point out where we are, where we started and where we were going. “That’s ridiculous!” he says. “Stop the car and let’s get out now.”

“No, no,” I say. “Wait!”

I turn to the driver. “Look!” I say. “Why are we in Malate?”

“Robinsons Mall,” he says. “There is Robinsons Mall.”

I like Robinsons Mall. We have spent many happy hours in Robinsons Mall. But it is a long way past our destination.

“I can SEE that’s Robinsons Mall,” I say. “But what are we doing in Malate when I asked you for Pablo Ocampo street? And you said we were going to Ocampo!”

“Traffic,” he says. We have, indeed, spent a long time sitting in traffic. Most of it not en route to our destination. Meter still ticking, techno still pounding, he turns around into yet more traffic.

“This is ridiculous!” I say. Then, exaggerating slightly, “We could have got to Quezon City for that money! Why are we in Malate?”

At this point, the driver’s English strategically deserts him. We head back in the direction of Pablo Ocampo street, meter ticking up.

Z starts to wave the map in his face. “We are going HERE,” he says. “We started HERE. Why are we HERE?!” The driver blenches.

I take over the map. “Look,” I say. “We were in Makati. Ocampo is near Makati. We go down Taft, we turn off, and then we are on Ocampo Street. Malate is past Ocampo Street. Why are we in Malate? We’re nearly in Ermita! How can we go from Makati to Ocampo via Malate?”

“Traffic,” he says, hopefully.

“We’re getting out,” says Z. “Let’s just get out now.”

He exits the vehicle. I haul him back while I try and work out what notes I can bung the driver to avoid a) an ugly scene and b) paying three times the going rate as per the meter.

The driver chews. The traffic clogs like a pig farmer’s arteries.

Z continues to iterate the key points, “Taft. Makati. Ocampo. Malate,” and jab at the map. The driver is beginning to look a little careworn, in fact, rather like someone on a bad comedown. And, let’s face it, there’s nothing like a child taking issue with your navigation to induce a bad comedown…

“OK,” I say. “Please can we pull over?”

We pull over. Z exits the taxi. I hand over 60 pesos, which is less than half what’s on the meter but, I reckon, slightly more than the journey would have cost us had he gone to our destination straight away in the first place.

“We are going now,” I say with vigorous hand gestures. “But I am giving you this, not THAT, because Makati is near Pablo Ocampo, very near, and you take us to Malate, which is too far, and the WRONG WAY. Makati to Pablo Ocampo is down Taft then one turn. Now we have to go back to Pablo Ocampo again. You take us THAT WAY. We need to go THIS WAY.”

Our driver takes it, to give him credit, in good spirits. Even the ironic salute which my spawn decides to deliver from the pavement, as we go in search of a jeepney, is water off this meth-duck’s back.

The weird thing is, I really like this city. And my spawn does, too. It’s cosmopolitan, slightly savage, slightly cynical, slightly scuzzy with more than the odd bad smell, but Manila has a real heart and soul that opens up when you spend time in it. It’s a city, I guess, as cities should be.

The post Assertiveness Training? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

The battle of Coron Bay might have faded into history. Just another skirmish in the closing throes of the Second World War in Asia, where US Helldiver pilots annihilated a Japanese supply convoy hiding in the Calamian Islands.

After the raid, in September 1944, it took weeks for some of these monsters to sink. They drifted, crippled, on the currents for many miles. Others went down almost instantly, taking many of their crew with them. Some have never been found.

Z and I visited three of the ones that have.

Approaching a wreck in deeper water is very much reminiscent of the discovery scene at the opening of Titanic. You descend through water that shades from crystalline turquoise to a deep blue flecked with sediment, nothing visible below you but the abyss.

A greyish hulk emerges, edges blurred by the blue as if a charcoal sketch.

You descend further. Details become clearer. Dense steel decks ripped upwards as if by a child opening the wrapping paper on a present. Gun turrets reduced to giant studs. And all, like Ariel’s mariner, absorbed back into nature, coral and plants obscuring hatchways, sea creatures living, dying, hunting through them, iridescent indigo sea slugs winding their way across skeletal decks which dead men walked, their bones now locked below.

Most of the colours are muted by the depth: water slurps up colours, one by one, as light travels to depth. But you can hear surprising things. The ethereal whistling of shoals of small fish. The grunts of larger ones…

Z, who is, after all, only nine, is far too young to dive the first two wrecks: the Akitsushima, a warship which carried seaplanes, sat in 36 metres of water, and the Taiei Maru, an oil tanker. The third, the 40m gunship Lusong, lies at such an angle that the bow is shallow enough to snorkel, so I’d hoped that an instructor would be free to take him around.

There was no instructor free. So snorkelling it was.

Actually, I’m not sure I was technically experienced enough to dive the first two wrecks, either…

I’m a new diver. Fresh out of my Open Water course. During which I did multiple choice exams with questions such as: what is the maximum recommended depth for open water divers? 18m, 30m or 40m. (The answer is 18.) And read entire pages on the danger of what divers term “overhead environments” — caves, wrecks, and other places in which you can get stuck and die.

So. We are on the boat. Well, since it has stopped, Z is already off it, monkeying along the outriggers, adjusting the steps, and constructing elaborate diving schemes.

Everyone on the boat has more experience than me (obviously). We have several divemasters and qualified instructors here on vacation, because the wrecks are amazing. I have told everyone several million times over that it is my first proper dive and I don’t want to do anything too challenging.

I’d understood that I could just cruise along the desk of the Akitsushima, at a relatively balmy 22-24m, which seemed a nice balance of view and drama, rather than “penetrating” (as the revealingly macho jargon has it) anywhere seriously inside the ship.

Lo and behold, the Filipino divemaster doing the briefing, with whom I’m on nodding and grinning acquaintance due to Z and I spending half our lives in the dive shop, brings out a plan of the ship. “So,” he says. “First of all we descend along the reference line here to 31 metres…”

31 metres?! I think.

That wasn’t in the manual!

In fact, I think, the manual, it say no.

At 30 metres, water pressure is four times atmosphere, meaning that you use air four times as fast as you would floating face down on the surface. Newbies, of course, use more air than experienced folk. There is also, at 30 metres and below, the possibility of nitrogen narcosis, a sort of light-headed high which can make you act stupidly. I am not familiar with nitrogen narcosis, but would prefer to experience it for the first time in a space which does not involve tight turns.

“Then we penetrate the wreck through here,” he continues, pointing to a jagged rip on the plan, “Swim 120m or so through the ship, exit here, explore the crane, then reenter here and swim back through the ship, exiting here.”

“Erm,” I say, feeling like a twat. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable going into an overhead environment at 30 metres as a new diver. Is it going to be tight tunnels or is it just going to be a swim around some open cargo holds? It’s my first dive and I’m honestly not sure I’ve got the skills.”

“Not that tight,” says the chap. “Half a metre, a metre tall. You won’t have to take off your gear and tow it behind you, or pass it through to someone else. But, no, it’s not open. There are some tight turns.”

“But I thought we could just swim across the top of the ship and look at the corals, without penetrating the wreck,” I say.

“No,” he says.

“I’m just not sure I should be doing this,” I say. “I only got my Open Water two days ago, this is my first dive, and the deepest I’ve been is twenty four metres. How many exit points are there once you’re in the ship?”

From his expression it is clear that it’s pretty much back the way you came.

He starts handing out diver’s torches. Clearly, it will be dark in there. I ask how they work.

I had identified two other newish divers – folk with a mere twenty or so dives behind them since qualification – and we’d assumed we’d be together.

In fact, I am going down with a divemaster-cum-diveguide (good) and Tim, who is also a divemaster, but not a professional, is on his holidays and probably doesn’t want to be stuck behind someone who could transform into a flailing panicking muppet at any time (good from a safety perspective but rather inhibiting).

“Tim,” I say. “I’m not sure I feel comfortable with this.”

“I’ll look out for you,” he says.

“I know you will,” I say. “But that’s not the point.”

Patrick, who runs the dive shop and looks like he played running back in college, is having absolutely none of this weedy British crap. “We-ell,” he says. “You can always sit out the dive.”

“I don’t want to sit out the dive,” I say. “I want to dive the Akutsishima but I’m not sure I’m in the right group.”

“If I were you,” says Tim, “I wouldn’t do it. Not if you don’t feel comfortable. It’s really dangerous.”

He is, of course, correct. “You don’t look like a panicker to me,” says Michael, an Australian known universally as the Doctor, rather nicely.

I conclude that it would be nigh-on impossible to die or incur serious injury while one-on-one with a divemaster who has dived the wreck a hundred or so times. I trust myself to stick close to the nice man, focus on breathing slowly, keep an eye on my air supply and not panic at any point.

Anywise. The dive proves challenging in a good way, rather than a terrifying way. There is something very, very extreme about descending through a coral-encrusted shellhole into the bowels of a ship. There are a morass of companionways, chambers, holds and hatches, all warped by bomb damage, time, the angle at which the ship lies and whatever happens to something of that mass when it hits bottom, into a sort of crazy 3D maze with wildly varying amounts of light.

And there is nothing more calculated to help induce a state of Zen-like calm than finding oneself in pitch blackness, 25 metres below the sea, in what was probably once a dogleg passage but is now, as the ship lies on its side, a sort of upwards S-bend, with your tanks caught on something behind you, and not sure whether the divemaster exited above you, in front of you, or below you.

I’m not joking. It’s Zen or panic. As in childbirth, with diving the deal is to focus on your breathing.

To be rewarded, after that, by emerging from total darkness into an abyss of holds, the struts of the ship dropping away below you as if to infinity, three pennantfish lined up at a neat 45 degree angle, dorsals waving like welcome flags in the royal blue water, huge shoals of golden reef fish suspended in space, florid seaweeds flourishing on the steel ribs of the ship, is something incredible. It’s awe-inspiring.

And the wreck that Z and I snorkelled, set amid a lovely shallow coral garden in hues of purple, ochre and beige, was pretty cool too. He’s acquired the art of snaffling folks’ spare regulators and using those to descend below the surface. Tim took him down a little way, so he even got a dive in.

It’s odd to think that a couple of months ago Z could barely even swim. I lost sight of him while island-hopping, then realised he’d just swum 30 metres from the boat to the beach. Without even thinking about it…

Travel truly is a wonderful thing.

The post Full Fathom Five… appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

There are many amazing things about scuba. There is the feeling of weightlessness — neutral buoyancy — whereby you move through the water in whichever direction you like, slow and lazy as an astronaut.

Then there’s the closeness to nature. You will, and do, see more of nature on a coral reef in a 30-minute dive than anywhere on land bar, say, the Serengeti or the Arctic during one of their great migration.

And, in coral, you are right among the life. Fish (and sea snakes) swim up to you, past you, around you, without the slightest fear, amid coral gardens picked out in technicolour.

It’s extraordinary. Not just coral reef. But lakes, rivers, quarries, kelp forests too. And a world that you have to experience. And I’m so, so glad that Z loves it too. We just need to get him qualified…

Now, Z did the PADI entry-level course for kids, the , back in Puerto Galera. I’ve dived ten or twelve times in different places, but always as “fun dives” (shallower, simpler dives for untrained divers) and been wanting to learn properly for years.

He’s had one very fun dive with the lovely Fred, who’s really fond of him. He picked up sea urchins and jellyfish to show to him, prodded an anemone to make it shrink to almost nothing, and put blue and black cleaner wrasses on his hands. Which, as cleaner fish do, nibbled at dead skin. (It would be fair to say that Z found this less pleasant five metres below the sea than on a street in Siem Reap.)

But he has missed out on a lot. From 40C volcanic thermals which you enter through a shimmering underwater heat haze, barracuda, snapping shrimp and great cathedral spires of limestone in the clear waters of Barracuda Lake to rays, polka-dotted jellyfish, lettuce corals, humbugs, angelfish and quite comically territorial clownfish on the reef around CYC island, to pivoting on your fin tips using only your breath.

I am diving two wrecks tomorrow. I am hoping he will be able to join me to explore the third, which is shallow. If not, we will snorkel together, and move towards a point when he can do his course…

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