Here's a quick summary of my trip to the Philippines a couple weeks ago! I'm keeping it short because I should be studying.
So Drew and I flew into the Clark airport two hours north of Manila. From there we took a bus and 5 hours later we arrived in downtown Malate, part of greater Manila. We found a decent room on the main street and headed to a tour agency to figure out our plans for the rest of the weekend. Our goal was to fly down to the main tourist destination in the Philippines, Boracay. The cheapest flight that we could find was over $250 each round trip, plus we knew it was going to be relatively expensive on the island so we were a little hesitant. The plan was to wait until the following morning to make up our minds. That night we grabbed some dinner, bought a bottle of Rhum for under 2 dollars with some coke (cost more than the alcohol) and two plastic cups. We hailed a cab and asked him to drive us to a cockfight. We drove over to Pasay City while sipping on our drinks in the back. Unfortunately, the cockfights were finished at the Pasay City cockpit by the time that we got there so we drove over to another cockpit. This new cockpit was in the same boat and it looked like we were out of hope for the night. The same driver dropped us back close to our hotel and we grabbed dinner and a bunch of $0.80 San Miguels. From there we walked down the street that had, by that time, turned into the Red Light District of Manila haha. Grabbed beers at a few more bars on the side of the road and talked to a bunch of hookers who seemed to be very enamored with us. Who woulda thought? Later that night we checked out the Bedrock nightclub and eventually made it back home where we both crashed in our grossly hot room.
In the morning we grabbed breaky at Starbucks and made our way to book our tickets to Boracay (we didn't really know what else to do). LITERALLY a block away from the agency, we ran into Hossein and Martin, two other exchange students from Singapore. They convinced us to head up north to La Union with them for some surfing. Done and done. We had the whole day to use up in Manila though so we took advantage of some streetside advertising and headed to a back alley firing range. There we each got to try out a revolver with about 20 rounds each. I've never fired a gun before and it was friggen intense. Not a bad shot though, I'll have to show you my chart. From there we did a tour around some historical spots including the Philippine wall and a monument to their hero, Jose Rizal. Then we hit the mall of Asia and eventually made our way back to the Pasay City cockpit. Lucky for us there was a cockfight DERBY going on! Instead of paying the usual 100peso entrance fee we had to pay 700 but there were fights going constantly all day. We stayed for a good 10-15 fights.
K here's a description of the fights. I had NO idea what to expect going into that building. Turns out, its very much like any stadium back home with a set ring in the middle and stands surrounding it. There were also vendors walking around and snacks and refreshments downstairs haha. Okay so the fight... Two chickens/roosters/cocks/whatever were brought out by their owners. Two other birds were brought in with the sole purpose of enraging the contenders. For a good 5 minutes they would piss these birds off. Meanwhile, an announcer would count down from 10 for some reason and bidding would start around the ring. Now I'm sure that whatever you are picturing in your head can't compare to what actually happens. A few people stand up and begin shouting around the building with no real target as to who they are shouting at. They raise their arms and shake their hands at each other and continue to change the number of fingers they hold up. Eventually the majority of the building would be up on their feet and would be shouting and pointing and waving at each other which somehow corresponds to bets being placed on the cocks. I have no idea who was taking the bets and who was actually doing the betting but I know that something was definitely happening because after the fight you would see small wads of bills being thrown around the ring to the winners. Not to mention that the people throwing those bills were dead-on accurate every time.
Okay to the fight. The birds are left alone in the ring after being pissed off. One usually would stand still while the other would slowly walk around the ring and pretend that the other wasn't even there. It would maybe stare at the crowd, flap its wings or make some rooster like crows. Oh I should mention that each of the birds had a sharp razor attached to its left foot, to help inflict maximum damage haha. Eventually the one bird would get just a hair too close to the other and without warning, they would both launch into the air towards each other. What you could see was just a flurry of wings, feathers, claws, beaks and whatever else smashing into each other. They would continue to hit the ground and fly back up at each other. Sometimes one would duck the other. This kept on until one was injured to the point that it couldn't do much anymore, and the referee (yup) would step in and pick up both the birds. He would then hold them up against each other face to face. If both birds tried to peck at each other then he would set them down to continue fighting. If one bird could no longer stand or if it didn't peck at the other, signifying that it didn't want to fight anymore, it would be declared the loser. I should mention that there were never any cheers from the crowd which was kind of weird since there was a lot of money being moved. Cool first cockfight experience.
So that night we took a bus north to La Union and luckily found a room when we arrived at 6am. The next few days I spent laying around on the beach, surfing in the ocean and drinking cheap alcohol. Oh yeah and it just so happened that we landed at the beach on the same weekend that they had huge Oktoberfest celebrations, a surfing competition and a stage show. It seemed like everything worked out in our favor this trip!
Allright, I pretty much only described our first two days but they were the most action packed. The rest of the time was relaxing and ridiculous beach time that I won't go into too much detail on. I will mention that we met some wicked locals who were fantastic at Frisbee and actually had their own Ultimate team which was amazing!! Definitely fun to party with too. Oh and I managed to make it back to Singapore, get a few hours of sleep and then go to my final presentation in Environmental. Alllllright!
So I'm in the middle of finals right now. First two went well and my last two are next Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday night I go to KL then fly to Hanoi the next morning. Then its a week in Vietnam before flying back to Singapore on the 28th to meet my parents! We'll spend 4 days in Singapore, then 3 days in Cambodia, then 9 days in Bangkok/Chang Mai, then 7 days in Phuket / Krabi before coming back to Singapore to fly home home!! Yup, so I'll see you boys and girls sooner than we both think.
LOL (lots of love according to my mom).
Matty
Today's Spin: Divine Intervention - Autopilot Off
