Travel Tips

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Philippine Star Article, 5/5/00

Save only for Christmas, summer is the Court's favorite season of the year, never mind the fact that us working stiffs no longer have the benefit of those three-month long school breaks to do everything and nothing. While this particular summer (a term used only in these parts for convenience's sake, considering that such term denotes a four-season climate) has been unusually oppressive, what with the steaming heat and occasional sleet, the season's revelers' spirits have remained undampened (judging from the hordes who flocked out of town for the Easter weekend).

While Honey's days of writing those sappy post-vacation essays for English class are long past, she still remembers what she did last summer (summer loving, kaya?). The sum of all her summer experiences has, to some extent, enabled her to make the most of those precious-and-few days that come but once a year. Argee, on the other hand, workaholic that he professes to be (tienes), doesn't seem to know what the words "summer" or "vacation" mean (Honey found him in the office on Easter Sunday, talking on the phone and cellphone at the same time while answering his e-mail). Thus, for this particular article, Honey will give Argee and his bimbo-inspired submissions a much-needed respite, and throw in her two cents' worth on how to enjoy the perfect summer vacation (Well, she's the only one enjoying the summer in our law firm. -- Argee).

The demands of work and the shortage of vacation funds (subsistence on a jologs budget is an art Honey is quickly learning to master) effectively shot down her plans to spend summer break traipsing all over Europe or diving in the Caribbean (Asa pa!). In the naivete of her youth, she used to pooh-pooh what the local landscape had to offer, but she immediately became a die-hard convert of Philippine tourism during her law school breaks when she was finally allowed to explore the beauty of the islands on her own.

Freed from the usual family summer outings to Pansol (Honey can never, for the life of her, understand why people go to "hot springs" to "cool off"), Lido Beach (before it became a toxic dump), Matabungkay, La Union (home of the killer jellyfish) and Baguio City (How many boat rides and horse rides can a kid take?), she and her friends began to appreciate why foreign tourists insist on traveling halfway around the world to our neck of the woods. White Beach in Puerto Galera (as opposed to the tourist traps and Eurotrash abounding in Sabang) was a favorite destination (the "poor man's Boracay" is how some people refer to it), followed by the majestic pre-lahar stretch of white sand beaches in Zambales. Baguio City sans parents and whining siblings is likewise a completely different experience (although Honey must admit that she couldn't resist doing the horseback-riding thing during one of her last visits). Then of course, as our wages began to permit, we ventured off further to more scenic destinations: Sagada, Palawan, Mindanao, Boracay, Cebu. As the DOT ad declares: "Huwag maging dayuhan sa sariling bayan;" or, in other words, as Honey's globe-trotting grandfather only recently discovered, "Ang ganda pala ng Pilipinas!" So save your dollars and spare yourself the hassle of lining up for your passport/visas and do the local scene instead.

This year, Honey's "summer vacation" officially began on the last weekend of January, when she joined three friends who braved the 12-hour road trip to Bicolandia to swim with the whale sharks in Donsol, Sorsogon (more on that in the near future) leaving Argee to rot in the office. This was followed by an all-girl pre-despedida in Baguio City (see the last article for more info), as well as the usual Thursday Club dive weekends in Anilao, Batangas. But, for most Filipinos, summer vacation is synonymous to the four-day weekend of Lent, when everything shuts down and the city becomes a virtual ghost town, abandoned by the holiday crowds. For Honey's part, she took off with seven friends and did an eating tour of the North (an outing otherwise known as "How To Gain Ten Pounds In Five Days" or "Abstinence and Fasting Forgotten"), taking in the sights and flavors of Pangasinan, Abra (my home province), Vigan, Laoag and Baguio. Although the experience left her allergic to solid food (and constrained her to be subjected to a daily regimen of Dance Dance Revolution just to fit into her clothes again), it was a remarkably enjoyable expedition all in all. So, while she sits in her artificially cooled office, hypnotized by the scorching heat afflicting Shaw Boulevard and counting the hours till the next long weekend (which is just two days away, yippee!), she has summoned up all her powers of deduction to come up with some scientific basis on what makes the perfect summer vacation (It's not too late, there are still a few more weeks of sunshine left). Here's what Honey has figured out so far -- and what Argee sorely missed out on:

Honey's Summer Tips
1. Time is of the essence. If you insist on joining the mass exodus from the city to cooler climes, you'd better get a head start, baby, or face the evil consequences of getting stuck in a four-hour traffic jam on the expressway. My friends and I fled Manila at 2 a.m. on Wednesday; as it was unthinkable to wake up at such an unholy hour, we congregated in one house and kept ourselves up doing the Dance Dance Revolution thing until it was time to go. Similarly, we left the summer capital on Easter Sunday at 3 a.m., getting to Manila unmolested by the returning troops. Dr. Neil, one of the designated drivers for the first leg of the trip, was unfazed by lack of sleep; after all, they train you to be functional zombies in med school rotation.

2. Stock up on supplies. Basic necessities should be hoarded prior to the estimated time of departure. And no, I don't mean the hard boiled eggs and tuna sandwiches that mom used to pack for every road trip (Try to clean out egg shells and bread crumbs from your upholstery and you'll know the true meaning of penitensya). Toilet paper (and lots of it!), hard candies (preferably loaded with caffeine), flasks of coffee (should the driver need a quick hit), alco-gel, aspirin and motion sickness pills, cigarettes, tequila (the last two are optional).

3. BLOW BAG. When my dad handed me the keys to my first car, he delivered a lecture on the essentials of car maintenance, summed up as BLOW BAG. Before venturing off into the nether regions, and to avoid getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with nary a tow truck in sight, always check:

B - brakes

L- lights

O- oil

W- water

B- battery

A- air (in tires)

G- gas

Pretty nifty acronym to remember, considering that the only thing I used to check before ignition was the state of my lipstick.

4. Music to drive by. Those long hours on the road can be lonely, especially if the three other people sharing the vehicle erupt into a symphony of cacophonous snoring. To drown out the racket and entertain yourself at the same time, keep a stack of tapes/CDs within reach. Then again, you may want to ignore this suggestion should you be unfortunate enough to be stuck with vocally challenged companions who insist on singing along at the top of their lungs. Recommended listening: Santana's Supernatural (Latin sounds always go well with beach trips), the soundtracks from My Best Friend's Wedding and Sleepless in Seattle, MTV's Fantastic Females, The Best of Referendum R & B (pirated, yet unbelievably well-selected collection), and generally anything everyone can sing along to: The Best of the Carpenters (my personal travel favorite is If I Were A Carpenter), Broadway hits (Dr. Neil likes to assign singing parts of Les Miserables), Barry Manilow, James Ingram and the immortal ABBA.

5. Pack a good book. Useful if you're stuck in expressway traffic, or during quiet moments in between mahjong sessions. You're on vacation, for heaven's sake, so a few days away from the evil clutches of cable TV will do you a world of good, especially when it comes to catching up with your literary backlog. But, at the same time, don't burden yourself with heavy reading -- I made the mistake of taking Dosteovsky's Crime and Punishment (required reading in Prof. Tony La Viņa's Criminal Law 1 class; I bought the book but never bothered to finish it) with me one Holy Week in Puerto Galera and I felt like flagellating myself by the beach halfway through it. Recommended reading: The Beach by Alex Garland (although the book received mixed reviews, it's infinitely better than Leo d. C's movie; besides, it contains a lot of amusing cultural snippets about the Philippines), The Tesseract, by the same author (set in Manila, it contains a lot of not-so-amusing cultural snippets about the Philippines), Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones' Diary and The Edge of Reason (trust my friend Miles to recommend great female reading), Come Together by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho, Sophie's World and The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder, and generally most anything by Stephen King, Anne Rice, David Morrell, Sidney Sheldon or (forgive me) Mills & Boon (no literary giants, but entertaining nonetheless). For really light reading, re-read your favorite childhood books -- I just finished Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott (I first read them in the Bangued town library one summer), and they still made me as kilig as when I first read them 20 years ago. Other summer books remembered from my distant youth: my grandfather's Reader's Digest Condensed Books and his Perry Mason collection (hmmm).

6. Twenty questions. What do you talk about when you run out of things to say? There's nothing quite as aggravating as dead air in the middle of a road trip, when everyone is awake yet has nothing to say. One of the Court's friends, Jackie L., entertained us a few week-ends ago by doing a Jullie Yap-Daza and asking questions that no one really thinks about until asked. For the sake of conversation, try to come up with some soul-searching questions of your own, like: "If you had P100,000,000, what would you spend it on?" or "Name 10 qualities you're looking for in a guy/girl." Believe me, it's not as trite as it sounds. Even the standard "What ten things would you take with you on a desert island?" can really set those wheels in your head turning. For a real hoot, try the following questions Larry M. posed during the 12-hour Bicol trip: "What was the first LP/single/cassette tape/CD you bought?" "What was the first movie you saw? On betamax?" Or, better yet, "What's your favorite Air Supply/Carpenters/Barry Manilow song?" The list of questions is as endless as your imagination.

7. Financial management. No matter how jologs the outing or how much cash you have to throw around, it's always good to set a budget so you don't go overboard with your expenses. A neat suggestion is to pool your money, say P1,000 each for a three-day week-end, from which common expenses such as gas, food, toll fees, and whatnot can be drawn. Saves you the hassle and headache of accounting and figuring out who owes whom how much at the end of the trip. This method worked so well for us in Donsol, that we had enough money left over to buy pasalubong.

8. Don't be afraid to act like a tourist. Like duh. The reason you go on trips is to see the sights. You may never pass this way again, so make the most of it. Take pictures, taste the native specialties, immerse yourself in the local culture...even if it means making a stop-over in Batac to view the mortified remains of an ex-President.

9. Pack light and pack wisely. For either an overnight outing or a five-day trip, I carry a single backpack to hold all my clothes and toiletries, and a small handbag for my wallet, lipstick and hand phone. I've managed to amaze a few people with the efficiency of my travel-light philosophy, or by my talent for cramming the most number of items into a tiny carry-all (something I picked up from my Mom, who on shopping trips abroad can manage to fit the contents of a container van into an overnight case). Once I managed to wean myself from the maleta-mindset and to resist taking half the contents of my wardrobe with me, packing came easy. A rule of thumb picked up from one of those ladies' magazines: put all the things you intend to take with you in one pile, and pack only half of the things in the pile (but don't forget to take the half that contains your underwear!). And don't take bulky items with you, such as (more than one pair of) jeans, heavy overcoats/jackets, hair dryers, flat irons, the kitchen sink...

10. The Four-Day Curse. Finally, and I can't emphasize this last point enough: Choose your travel companions well. Spending 24 hours with people who are not members of your family and therefore unaccustomed to your idiosyncrasies is stressful enough -- multiplied by four and the four-day curse descends. Based on experience, it is my personal hypothesis that four days is the maximum time you can spend with a group of people previously considered your friends before you start driving each other up the wall. But then again, it all depends on whether your companions are potential irritants or not (a person's annoying habit of constantly poking you with a finger to get your attention, while generally tolerable at the outset, is magnified tenfold on the fourth day, driving you into a murderous rage that results in the offensive digit being bitten off and spat into the China Sea). In recent years, having learned to choose whom to spend my long vacations with, I've managed to avoid the four-day curse, even spending several harmonious days with complete strangers newly introduced to me and who eventually became good friends (King, Kirby and Nancy in Sagada; and Pia, Robbie, and Joy in Puerto Galera). It also helps a great deal if the people you're with are as jologs as you are, such as the group I spent my last Holy Week with. So, in honor of my seven jologs companions -- Dr. Neil, Rhia, Ethel, Betchay, Jules, Jerry and Stelle -- here's a little jologs quiz to entertain yourself with on your next road trip:

(Definition of "jologs" and Jologs quiz available upon request).