Friday, August 14th: Looking for Kurtz

Today's goal: Explore Subic Bay's pristine virgin forests. I'll give you a minute or two to make your sexual innuendos....................that should just about do it. Yep, because the US military occupied the surrounding area for 50 or so years and protected them from any logging whatsoever, the forests are almost completely untouched.

Anyways, I set out straightaway in the morning for the forest. I quickly found the transportation hub and was on my way, via taxi. Sounds easy, no? It wasn't. Now, I assumed, given the amount of time dedicated to the forests in my travel book and the official sounding name to the park, that this forest would be easy to find and some fancy official National Park or something.....not so. My first indication was when I told the cabbie where to go, and he had no idea where the fuck it was. Ouch. He knew the general area in which it should be located, so off we went in that direction. As we got closer, we stopped to ask directions from various army/security guards assigned to regulate people entering and exiting the forest area. They had no idea where the trails were either. Yikes. Eventually, many stops for directions later, we made it to the "park" entrance. Now, I say park quite hesitantly, as it wasn't quite what I was expecting. Sure, the forest was there in all its splendor, but that was about it. The entrance consisted of a crappy, nearly falling down sign announcing its presence, and the park ranger station or whatever you wanna it wasn't much to look at it. I suggest browsing through the pics to see what I mean, but basically it was a ramshackle iron shed. Two ladies working there came out, took my entrance fee money (like 2 bucks), and then called for my guide. I knew I was in for a treat when my guide showed up with a rusty machete. Fuck yes.

As for the forest itself, again it would probably be better to just leave descriptions to the pictures. I can say that it was pretty damn cool to actually see a real bamboo forest. I wanted to play out all my Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/House of the Flying Daggers fantasies, but I assumed that was probably illegal and my guide had a machete so I was very much inclined to go wherever he wanted to go. Because I'm a book nerd, I felt like I was Marlow from "Heart of Darkness" searching for Kurtz. Cept I didn't smell any rotting hippo meat, though. Like I said, nerd. Anyways, the trail opened up into a small little bay. Took some pics and relaxed for a bit, but the guide looked really bored and he was the one with the large, sharp object, so I didn't really feel like upsetting him and we quickly moved back toward base camp.

Before heading out of town, I decided to try my hand at the Philippines version of McDonalds, called Jollibees. It was really no different than any other fast food restaurant, cept for the armed security guard just hanging around inside the entryway. Definitely gave the restaurant a different atmosphere, that's for sure.

Once back in Manila, I wandered, lost and aimless, for quite some time. The return bus had plunked me down in an area I didn't know and just so happened to be several hours walk away from my intended hotel area. I had intended to just walk it, but when I found out it was too far away for even the motorcycle bike guys to transport me, I realized I'd have to catch a taxi. Cept, since this wasn't what you would call an affluent area, there were never any empty taxis that appeared. After about 2 hours of walking about and trying to hail a taxi, I finally snagged on and made it back to my apartment. Time to go to bed and prep for the EPIC golf showdown with Mr. Jamie Jackson the next day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTyrsqLVukg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AWg1XNdIV8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvJAIJJ5UFA

Pictures: Album 1, Pics 191-200
Album 2, Pics 1-23