Sleeping Around (38 page)

CouchSurfing.com

Well, that had me sold. Even if Jude's references were really bad and said that he was a homicidal maniac, I couldn't possibly pass up a ‘free sumptuous banquet feast at a popular Manila restaurant'.

Actually, Jude's references were all ‘Extremely Positive' and most looked something like this:

Sign this man up for a cruise director or travel agent. Jude is ‘Mr Hospitality Plus'. He even treated me to a magnificent Filipino feast.

Jude, who listed his occupation as ‘writer, student, musician', lived in Malate, ‘Manila's bohemian heart'. I caught a taxi there from Ninoy Aquino airport and Manila was just as I imagined it: dusty, humid, hectic and noisy.

‘Is the traffic usually this bad in the middle of the day?' I asked the driver.

‘No, this is no traffic at all! Today is big holiday. It is All Saint's Day and most people are at the cemetery.'

‘The cemetery?'

‘Yes, families go to cemetery all day and night to eat and drink with dead relatives.'

‘Do you go?'

‘No,' he said shaking his head. ‘It's not like we can bring them back to life.'

By the time we got away from the airport traffic, the streets were almost dead—so to speak—and when we turned onto the palm-fringed waterfront promenade overlooking Manila Bay we just about had the road to ourselves. Manila looked spotless and decidedly empty after Delhi. Even the battered, rusted, smoke-belching, brightly painted jeepneys looked brand-spanking new compared to Delhi's down-at-heel-buses.

Malate didn't look very bohemian. It was all a little bit rundown and full of mostly seedy bars and clubs. Jude didn't look that bohemian, either. He met me at the door of his 1970s sixth-floor apartment wearing nice slacks and a neat collared shirt. The interior of Jude's apartment was the décor equivalent of nice slacks and a neat collared shirt. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place.

I think Jude perhaps could have added ‘being neat' to the extensive list of ‘interests' on his profile, which already included: travel, architecture, art, music, food, writing, photography, languages, anthropology, playing the cello, French authors, Siamese cats, dancing like nobody's looking, procrastinating and group texting.

Jude was the editor of
What's On & Expat
magazine where he wrote articles about travel, architecture, art, music—about all of his interests, really (although I'm not entirely sure if he'd get many articles up about procrastinating . . . but then again . . . ).

Still thinking of his profile, I asked Jude why he'd described himself as ‘embarrassingly overeducated'.

‘I studied medicine and worked as an intern for three years, but gave it away,' Jude shrugged.

‘Why's that?'

‘I worked in a cancer hospital and it was too depressing. Medicine just wasn't for me. My sister is a doctor, though, so my Mum is happy that she got at least one doctor in the family.' Jude also studied the cello and Spanish and had recently been offered the chance to take a Masters degree in Spanish at Barcelona University. ‘I still might do that one day,' he said.

We began our walking tour of Manila with a prayer. When we waltzed into the Our Lady of Remedies church, Jude whispered: ‘Sit down and pretend to pray.' We parked ourselves on one of the pews and Jude said, ‘It's nice and cool in here and this way we've got an excuse to stay a little longer.'

Jude, like most Filipinos, was Catholic and he came to Our Lady of Remedies every Sunday for mass. ‘I really don't want to go,' he murmured. ‘But mass is only forty-five minutes. It's either that or spend three hours a week arguing with my mum about why I shouldn't go.'

I was feeling a little peckish after our prayers, so we stopped at a traditional Filipino Mini-Stop 24-hour Convenience Store. ‘It's our very own Filipino Seven-Eleven,' Jude said, as I squinted under the prerequisite ultra-blinding fluoro lights. We sat outside on bright blue plastic chairs and while I ate my
siopao,
a huge steamed dumpling thing that was stuffed with minced pork, Jude madly texted away on his phone. ‘Filipinos are obsessed with mobile phones,' Jude said as he fingered fervently. ‘They are very good for us because we are reserved and very shy, so you can text things that you can't say face-to-face.'

Our next stop was, as my dear dad would say, the ‘dead centre of Manila'. Paco Cemetery was surprisingly very dead, though. There weren't that many people visiting relatives' graves because most of the departed had departed more than a hundred years ago. ‘Most people don't bother about visiting their very old relatives,' Jude said, as we passed an old lady lighting candles next to a faded gravestone.

‘The Manila North cemetery will be
full
of people drinking and partying,' Jude continued. ‘Except this year they have banned karaoke machines. Sometimes they have a little trouble.'

The next day the
Manila Bulletin
had the headline ‘All Saint's Day peaceful and orderly', and the first line of copy read ‘At Manila North Cemetery police confiscated 150 knives, flammable materials and some guns.'

We spent most of the afternoon wandering around Intramuros, the walled city built in 1571 for the Spanish ruling classes as their very own little Spain-away-from-Spain with homes, shops, churches, monasteries, schools and hospitals. To get inside we had to walk across an old drawbridge above a moat that the Americans had filled in and turned into an 18-hole golf course. As we ambled lazily up and down worn cobblestone streets full of weeds and past either rundown or knocked-down Spanish colonial buildings, Jude told me that the city survived virtually untouched until the last days of the Second World War. ‘During the Battle of Manila the Japanese and the Americans bombed the hell out of it,' Jude said as we strolled past a large pile of ruins. ‘Only the city walls and some of the buildings survived. And did you know that more civilians were killed during the battle than in Hiroshima?'

Although most of the city was neglected and falling apart, I loved it. If it had been in Europe they would have rebuilt a sanitised Disneyesque version of the city. There was still plenty to admire, although when I commented on the exquisite street lamps Jude said, ‘Oh, they're not the originals. Imelda Marcos took those for her house. These are just copies.'

As we hiked along the top of the crumbling ramparts Jude told me a little about his family's life under Marcos. ‘We were better off under Marcos, because Dad was a colonel in the air force,' he said. ‘We had a huge house on the base overlooking a golf course, but we lost it all during the People Power Revolution to oust Marcos. When it happened we were trapped in the air force base and couldn't get out to get food, so we ate at the golf clubhouse every night. One night we were walking home, taking a shortcut through the golf course, when helicopter gun-ships began shooting at us. We were only fifty metres from home, so we dashed across the open space. Dad was trailing behind because he was carrying me and bullets rained all around us. Amazingly, not a single one hit us.'

‘That is amazing,' I agreed.

‘Do you want a coffee?' Jude suddenly asked, pointing down to the base of the wall. Built into the ancient stonework was a Starbucks. Next door, and also built into the wall, was a McDonalds.

‘Oh, we absolutely love American food chains,' Jude said when I huffed in disgust. ‘You name it, we got it.'

Thankfully we weren't dining at Burger King or T.G.I. Friday for dinner. Jude took me to Kamayan Restaurant, which was owned by his second cousin. His fourth cousins twice removed were the waiting staff. Although it was early, the modern restaurant was full of locals. ‘Expats don't come here,' Jude said. ‘Most of them eat near their gated communities that look like
The Truman Show
.'

Jude ordered me a local concoction of coconut milk and herbs to start. It tasted absolutely terrible.

‘How's your drink?' Jude asked.

‘Hmm, nice,' I enthused.

The restaurant served traditional Filipino food, so I was quite disappointed when Jude told me that they didn't have
bopis,
which is pig's lungs chopped and then stir-fried. But Jude was right when he promised a sumptuous banquet. We had large plates of
kilawin sugba
(pork marinated in vinegar),
rellenong sugpo
(stuffed prawns) and a very squirmy but tasty
kuhol sa gata
(golden sea snails in coconut milk).

‘I'd like to buy you dinner,' I said to Jude when we'd finished.

‘No, you are my guest. Dinner is on me. You can buy the first beer at the karaoke bar.'

As any of my loyal readers know, I'm a bit of a karaoke addict. I therefore have to admit that, perhaps a bit sadly, I was looking forward to coming to the Philippines because I figured it was the perfect country to feed my insatiable love of a soppy ballad. Like Japan, though, most of the karaoke in the Philippines takes place in private rooms for hire. I told Jude that I preferred to go to a public one so I could showcase my crooning. The karaoke bar that we went to may as well have been a private room, though. There were only four other patrons—a bunch of merry Koreans with ruddy cheeks sitting around a table full of empty San Miguel beer bottles.

‘I'll start with my usual opening number,' I said as I perused the song list. ‘Everybody's favourite . . .
My Way
.'

‘Oh, you can't sing that,' Jude gasped. ‘You'll get killed!'

‘Killed?'

‘Yes, last week a man was shot dead in a karaoke bar singing
My Way
. He was halfway through the song when the bar's security guard yelled at him for singing out of tune. He ignored him and kept singing, so the guard pulled out a thirty-eight-calibre pistol and shot him dead. His defence was that it was his favourite song and he didn't like the way he was singing it.'

It makes ‘and now the end is near' rather prophetic, doesn't it?

Apparently, violence is common in Filipino karaoke bars and
My Way
is the most frequent cause of fights and deaths. A few months before another man had been killed and his friend seriously wounded when they sarcastically applauded a student who was singing
My Way
off-key. The student felt insulted, so when they left the karaoke parlour, he ambushed and shot them.

‘There have been maybe fifty or more shootings because of
My Way
in the past ten years,' Jude said. ‘And after the recent murder many karaoke bars in Manila have taken
My Way
off the song list.'

‘So what song did you pick?' Jude asked as I handed my song request to the waitress.

‘
My Way
.'

I thought I'd give it a go. I actually won a karaoke competition once singing the song—okay, most of the other contestants were drunk, but that's not the point. Besides, the Korean guys looked friendly enough. There was only one tiny thing that worried me. The security guard at the door was brandishing a rather large shotgun and was wearing a fully loaded ammo belt.

‘That was very good,' Jude said with a somewhat relieved smile when I'd finished singing. ‘You won't get shot for that version.'

‘Let's do a karaoke bar crawl,' I said excitedly. ‘Then I can do
My Way
in every one to see if I can get shot.'

There was no one in the second karaoke bar to shoot me. Unless Jude suddenly decided he didn't like my singing. We were the only patrons. I did also sing
You are so beautiful
to the cute barmaid who was the only other person in the bar. ‘This is for you,' I said to her as I handed her my song request.

‘Be careful,' Jude warned. ‘Sometimes they are a man.'

Not that she took any notice anyway. I sang it quite well I thought, but she (or a very beautiful he) ignored me and did the accounts.

On the way to our next karaoke bar, Jude told me that it wasn't just bad singing that got you murdered in Manila. Only the day before a Malate man had stabbed his brother-in-law to death over whose turn it was to wash the dishes.

‘Are Filipinos a bit aggressive?' I asked.

‘Oh no, we are
very
happy people,' Jude said cheerfully. ‘In fact, a survey was done two years ago and the Filipinos were number six in the top ten happiest people in the world.'

I looked it up when I got home and Jude was right.

Incidentally, take a stab at who you think came in at number one. According to the survey the mirthful Venezuelans are the happiest little chappies on the planet. I'd done quite well in the happy stakes myself. On this trip alone I managed to visit six of the top eight happiest nations in the world: Iceland, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Australia, the United States and Turkey. Incidentally, the least ‘happiest people' were the Russians, the Latvians and, coming dead last, the poor miserable Bulgarians.

The hosts of ‘Let's Have Fun' karaoke bar were definitely full of gayness. Two transvestites—who had lovely long, shapely legs I have to say—were hosting it. Their place was one of many large outdoor karaoke bars on the waterfront promenade. Because of the holiday they were all busy, but we stopped at the largest, which would have had more than a hundred people in the crowd.

I put my name down and had only taken a sip of my beer when ‘Miss Diva' called me up onto the stage.

‘Where are you from?' Miss Diva purred.

When I told her, the two leggy transvestites hopped around the stage impersonating kangaroos.

‘So, what song would you like to do?' Miss Diva asked when she'd finished her hopping.

‘
My Way
,' I said brightly.

There was a loud ‘Ohh' from the crowd.

‘You'll get shot!' Miss Diva said gravely.

I looked out at the crowd. ‘Hands up if you have a gun?'

‘See, it's safe,' I said when no hands were raised.