Dear Phil - lunch in the Philippines

Our trip to the Philippines way back in May involved lunch at a tropical island.

Being the Philippines, lunch involved meat, with more meat and meat on the side.  And being an island, most of the meat came from animals that live in the sea.  (What do you mean chicken isn't a sea bird?)

Here's a shot of our conveyance:

The two little huts in the background behind me were our restaurant.  This restaurant is extra special for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, when you step off your boat you are ushered towards another hut opposite which features a live seafood market.

Don't you just love the way the gentleman in this picture is fondling his cods while talking to me?

The idea is that you go to the market and pick out the things you like, and they will barbecue them there on the spot.  We were a large group, and our organisers had arranged a set menu, so this part of the experience was really more for show so far as we were concerned. The big ticket item at the market is clearly the sea mantis.  

It looks kind of like a lobster, and probably tastes like it too - but we didn't buy one.  The sea mantises are only put out on the market table when a boat pulls in. As soon as the potential customers have moved they are put back in the water at the shore.  They're not released, though.  The fishermen use 600ml plastic soft-drink bottles to store their catch. They put a split down the length of the bottle, shove the animal in, and let the slit close around it.  Then they put the bottles in a net in the shore.  The fish can't escape, and stay alive until the next boat comes in.

A bag of bottled sea mantises under the water at the shore.

One guy at the market also had a bowl with three or four stone fish in it, which was surprising.  There are quite a lot of different varieties of stone fish, and some of them are very poisonous. I'm not sure whether these ones were poisonous or not - but I think that they are probably not what you would call a sustainable catch.  They were pretty amazing to look at up close - their skin had a mossy green texture and really resembled seaweed.   The stone fish are stored in the same manner as the sea mantises.

I was pretty glad that our set menu didn't contain any of these more exotic creatures. I'm an adventurous eater but don't really like to eat (or buy!) endangered species. Our food was really delicious.  Definitely one of the freshest most delicious barbecues of my life.

As memorable as the food was - probably the most fun part of this restaurant was the fact that it doesn't have a floor. Instead, the tables and chairs are just plonked directly into the sand - and in the high tide, that means in the water.

The waterlogged beach was like quicksand, so for the first few minutes you gradually sink until a kind of equilibrium is reached. After our meal, we just walked out into the water for a postprandial snoozy kind of swim.

Don't forget to tip your waitresses. They have families and bug problems of their own.

I used to think that I was the kind of person who was not bothered by bugs and crawly things. I'm not the kind of squealy girl that goes all stupid just because there's a moth around the lightbulb. And really, apart from slugs, I LIKE bugs (and stuff. Technically – slugs are not bugs. But you know…).

I even bit the abdomen off a fried wing'ed thing once. On purpose. You hold the wings and then just nip its belly off with your teeth. It was Thailand, 15 years ago and I was under duress but still...  that gets me points, right? (Tasted kind of like a salted peanut. Maybe a bit squishier.)

Except praying mantises. I thought I liked them.  They are kind of fascinating. They do exist in the south of New Zealand but not like in the numbers in a wet Auckland summer. And one time, I was on the bus in Auckland and I noticed a praying mantis - a big one - clinging to the back of the seat in front of me.  I tried to ignore it. Because - you know - I'm COOL with bugs. (Did you know praying mantises are carnivorous? Don't click that link if there are small children nearby. You were warned.)

It was a really FULL bus.

I had a window seat near the back of the bus and there was a young Asian student sitting in the seat next to me and his girlfriend was in the seat in front of him and the aisle was crammed with people and backpacks and that unfortunate tight feeling you get when you're in a crowd and there just can't possibly be enough air for everyone.

And then the mantis locked eyes with me. Have you ever really studied a mantis's face?  They have the steeliest gaze of any creature alive.  I tried to look away but it had me like Medusa and there was no escape. I moved  my face towards the window - my face moved but my eyes stayed locked with those evil green ovals and that is when it chose to leap.

I emitted an involuntary, visceral kind of groan - like the sounds that people make when they are having nightmares. A REALLY  LOUD involuntary, visceral groan. And the poor boy next to me proved that he was truly a hero by slapping me right on the tit and squishing the bug between his fingers. His girlfriend turned around - everybody on that bus turned around - to see what the commotion was and he held up his hand to show the green smear like some kind of awkward open-handed, snot-covered  victory fist.
I'm not an idiot. I like bugs, but I don't like bugs that might bite me. That includes mosquitos and sandflies and anything with an obvious stinger.

Oh and millipedes? I get that you're a marvel of nature, and have successfully tiptoed across the surface of the earth for a gazillion years but really - I prefer you on TV and not in my garden. I mean - have you ever picked a pebble out of the soil and then recoiled in horror as it unwound itself, all of its hundreds of little legs waving in the air? At once?

And can we please also exclude caterpillars and pretty much all creatures in their larval form? Especially those weevils that made a mass exodus that time from my pantry to my ceiling when Mr Martin was away on tour and it was night and the only defense I had was the vacuum cleaner and sometimes when you try to vaccum a crawling weevil off the ceiling it drops down  and lands in your cleavage? (And of the same era - Barney - I'm really sorry still about that time I invited you over for dinner and watched in horror as you spooned a live wriggling weevil out of the ground chilli.)

Just what is it with you insects and my cleavage anyway? Remember that time there was a shootout on the motorway and the armed offenders squad were surrounding our house and the woman was standing on her garage roof shrieking and while I was looking up at the helicopters circling overhead thinking "I should probably go inside," and that wasp came out of nowhere and stung me on the boob! I mean really.  As if there wasn't enough drama going on that day.

The other day my husband invited to come and look at the really interesting beetle that had blown up onto our balcony in one of these storms we keep on getting and was now stranded on its back and it was a FUCKING COCKROACH.

All of my memories of the Philippines are prefaced by this sentence: There was a LEECH on the bathroom floor. “What if there are leeches somewhere else? Are they in the bed? Strip the bed! I said STRIP THE FUCKING BED! Why are you laughing at me?!”

And now I am engaged in a kind of war where I am the only one fighting, and the only way I can win is if I clean up my shit because the ANTS. Who sent the goddam ants? Martha Stewart?

 
The ants don't care if they lose large numbers of troops. It doesn't bother them at all.  No matter what you clean if you leave a crumb out they will find another way to get there because as far as they are concerned that is their crumb.

I should really be celebrating the fact that the first 4 months in our apartment were almost entirely ant-free, but instead I woke up the other day having a nightmare where there was a thick trail - several ants wide - on the wall, and that when I spray’n’wiped it they scattered and pretty soon there were ants covering every surface. The walls and the bed and the cushions and there are so many of them that you can kill a million and it won’t make a dent.

(Hi Nana. There aren’t actually a million ants in my apartment. I promise they won't crawl in your ears while you're sleeping. Can't wait to see you next week!)

Does this mean that I have turned into that kind of shriek woman I am so contemptuous of? Probably. Butterflies moths and beetles are still mostly OK. The non-disease-bearing ones in their adult forms, at least. For now, though, I am cleaning as I go and my kitchen positively glistens.

Probably my mother-in-law would be proud.

Snorks

The best part of the Philippines trip for me was the snorkeling.  On the second day, we all went out in boat for an island hopping tour. There is a common kind of tour boat you see in that region. It is not a catamaran exactly, but it has large supports on each side of the hull.  My guess is that they are designed to keep the boat as close to the surface as possible - because the waters from time to time get very shallow as the coral reefs rise beneath.

You can see the coral just beneath the surface in this photo, taken from the side of the boat. 

I am from New Zealand.  Famous for its marine wildlife.  And I am a dyed in the wool rock-pooler.  But I'm from the SOUTH ISLAND of New Zealand, which is also famous for its frigid waters and proximity to Antarctica. And when you combine that with a personality that is distinctly averse to extreme physical exploits ... I've never snorkelled before. And I was DEAD KEEN.

I was so excited that I was gearing myself up to be all disappointed . Because, you know, maybe the sea will be all murky, and all I will see is a submerged coke can and a grimy sea slug.

This is funny: a bunch of people who have never worn them before, trying to put on flippers and then climb down a ladder into the water below - wearing them. Everybody was standing on each others 'toes' and tripping one another up. We looked like a boatload of demented naked penguins.

It was great.  I saw many many fish, and jellyfish and coral. Not one coke can. I am a complete convert/devotee.  Our next long weekend away in Vietnam is going to have to include swimming with the fishes.

So we went to the Philippines...

I know.  I haven't even begun writing about Mekong Delta, and now I'm all full of Philippines stories, and I've left you all hanging there thinking about my maids and how I probably need to get a life for three whole weeks.

Oh well.  Suffer in your jocks, I guess.

Anyway - I thought I better write some kind of update before the blog starts growing cobwebs, even though today I have quite a bit of stuff to do, actually.


My projects for today include:

• Taking a bolt of fabric to a dress maker.  It's project runway time!
• Writing some marketing material for Helping Hands Saigon. We have set up a really neat project which is all about providing scholarships for disadvantaged children so they can continue to attend school. Now, we just need to make sure we can continue to get funding for them, so that we can give the same scholarships next year, then the next and hopefully all the way until they go to university. 
• Prepare some material for a course I'm giving in June about writing. It's called "Saying What You Mean" and I will be leading some workshops with a bunch of bright young people about organising ideas to write effective documents for any kind of audience. 
• Cooking!  On the menu tonight is Merguez sausages and mashed potatoes.  The very first potatoes I have cooked in Vietnam - despite the best efforts of the sellers at the market who try to get me to buy potatoes every time.  Actually, I don't have a masher - so it's going to be lumpy!  Maybe I should just call it hash and mix some fried onions with it.

But back to the Philippines - or as we are now calling it - the land of meat.  It seems that meat was all that was on the menu in the Philippines and though it was delicious, we were dying for fresh vegetables when we got home. We went for 3 nights as part of a company trip - Mr Martin's whole office gets taken on holiday once a year for free. And the prospect of holiday made me slightly more forgiving of the long hours and never a weekend totally free ...  for about five minutes.

I will write more about it later, but to keep you happy - here's a photo (click on it to see a bigger version):