Christmas in the Philippines is different but enjoy it anyway

Oh no, I have just remembered the December dawn.

You see, each morning from December 15th to 24th, I will be woken by the sound of car horns at 5.45 a.m. Friends of our neighbours in the village come to collect them to attend 'miso de gallo', or ‘simbang gabi’, the Mass at cockcrow. If Romeo lived in the Philippines he would have declaimed “Soft, what light from yonder window breaks. It is the east and Juliet is the sun” near to that ghastly time. I cringe under the bed sheets to counter the sound of 100,00 birds in our village wakening as one and squawking the avian equivalent of Romeo’s tender lines, and that’s before their first worm of the day! At 6.15 a.m the faithful need to be kneeling at prayer. I am just relieved that we do not live near one of the many beautiful 16 or 17th century Spanish churches built here, tolling the deep, sonorous timbre of their bells, forged in Toledo perhaps.

Juliet (played by my wife, Gina) grumpily gets up and showers and dresses in silence, a warning to me to say nothing, collects her niece from the adjoining bedroom and heads off to pray. We live close enough to the church for them to walk there and back in safety. Vendors with wheeled carts hover at the church for the service to end. They sell warm ‘bibingka’ and ‘puto’, the traditional rice cakes, and hot coffee and “tsokolate”, aimed at strengthening the bodies and minds of the early churchgoers, the mass hopefully having fortified their souls. I look forward to Gina coming home with some warm rice cakes for my breakfast and strong black ‘kapeng barako’. Yes, the Philippines is a coffee producer, in the province of Batangas and elsewhere. So far Nescafé is the biggest buyer but watch out for it soon in your favourite Starbucks! The barako bean makes a strong dark and full flavoured coffee, ideal in the morning either straight or au lait or latte

Christmas began in our house as soon as Halloween was over. Gina and the domestic staff climbed into the attic, burrowing for decorations. By the first week in November garlands and baubles were sparkling inside and outside the house, day by day. Two weeks later, their work finished, lights were twinkling all over the house. Our seven year old daughter, Hannah, was overjoyed, ‘Wow, daddy’. My annual protestations about waiting until December had been brushed aside-again! I must give my wife credit though. She decorates the house delightfully. I reflect that poorer people in the rural areas, using local materials, make many of the decorations, with usually enchanting results and so it is one way for us to help them

For me there are two signs that Christmas is coming. The first, in August, is carols and Disney snowy music on the PA system at the malls, at the airport, in hotel lobbies, even in hospitals. The second, and more dramatic, is the appearance, in September, of rows and rows of multi coloured lights under the expressway entry and exit ramps. These are not a revolutionary traffic control system but the beautiful night time lights of hundreds of ‘parols’ for sale. The 'parol' is a traditional Christmas lantern made of ‘capiz’, formed from carefully selected transparent seashells, supported by wire and filled with light bulbs. They are usually round or star shaped and are intended to be hung high on the front of the house. After living here for a few years it becomes clear that the squatters never actually left, they merely went to the province to collect parols to sell from home, so to speak.

Christmas actually takes place on Christmas Eve. After nearly 400 years of Spanish rule, the main event is the feast of La Noche Buena, the ‘good night’ when Christ was born, celebrated by most of the family coming together for dinner at midnight and exchanging gifts. The main dish is often a piece of baked ham, as large as the family can afford. It is traditional that the table be groaning under the weight of dishes of food on it, even if not all eaten that night. Steaming bowls of various local foods such as, ‘menudo’, ‘embutido’ and ‘caldereta’ (note the Spanish ancestry) will be served along with sweet cakes often made with tropical coconut and sugar cane. For the affluent there may be ‘lechon’, a whole pig roasted over charcoal on a spit. Piles of beautiful tropical fruit will also be on the table. One essential, and too me, mystifying dish, is ‘queso de bola’ or a cheese shaped as a ball. It literally is a complete imported red-waxed Dutch Edam cheese. Now how did that become part of the Filipino-Spanish Christmas tradition?

I have tried to have a traditional English Christmas lunch and present giving the next day. All the ingredients are available if you look around thoroughly, but my Filipino family’s attitude to it defeated me finally. I least I can cook a turkey or goose for dinner, which they like, and then be left to eat the Christmas pudding myself for nearly a week. I usually get homesick for my English family, holly and a roaring log fire at some point on Christmas day, but I suppress it with another bibingka and some queso de bola. Ay naku!

Maligayang pasko (Happy Christmas)

Sunset over Manila Bay

The sunset over Manila Bay is rightly famous, matched only in my experience by the setting sun on. the Nile at Luxor. There the orange orb slides slowly below the horizon, making you remember that the ancient Egyptians held the sun to be a God and you realize why the Valley of the Kings is on the Nile’s west bank. In Manila Bay it is the effect of the light on the clouds and the sky that is most memorable.

I have sometimes watched this beautiful sunset from a simple floating restaurant near the Manila Hotel. I have an ice-cold glass in which to pour my chilled San Miguel beer and the thoughts of what Filipino dish to order to eat with the icy quenching ale. Maybe I will have Crispy Pata, a deep fried pork shank but then I think of the cholesterol and decide on fish. As the Philippine Islands form an archipelago the fishing industry is one of the country’s biggest. As the fish is always very fresh and not too expensive it is a delicious meal prepared in a variety of ways. I could have Inihaw na Pusit, (grilled squid) or Sinigang na Sugpo, (a tamarind soured broth with prawns and vegetables). I choose alimango (a crab) steamed and eaten with the fingers, great! There is often great debate here about whether the best crabs are male, female or bacla (gay), generally the opinion comes out in favour of bacla, but this is no reflection on the sexual preferences of the Filipino. It appears that the orange lumps of fat inside the shell are superior and this is highly prized. My crab is served with rice of course; there is always rice in the Philippines.

A little later I walk along Roxas Boulevard on the bay side. This area has been substantially renovated and now has many small casual restaurants and bars, which together with the strollers makes it a busy and fashionable hangout after dark.

Behind me are the remains of the walls erected by the Spanish, IntraMuros, used as the center of government in colonial days. It is now an interesting tourist area.

Living in the Philippines is challenging. The country is geologically, climatically and politically unstable.

Geologically, the country forms part of the Pacific Rim of Fire that extends from
Japan and arcs through the Philippines and Indonesia, around Australia to New Zealand. There are many dormant volcanoes it is believed but also several potentially live ones, which are constantly monitored for activity. The biggest eruption of recent times was in 1991 when the apparently dormant Mount Pinatubo in Pampanga awoke from a 600 years sleep and gushed forth huge amounts of lava and ash. Local residents say the ash fell like snow as far south as Manila. The eruption was immediately followed by a tropical storm adding large quantities of water to the ash and lava, which therefore engulfed the whole area. It is called lahar and there are towns near Pinatubo where the roads and streets are still covered with now solid lahar. Earthquakes occasionally occur but there has not been a big one since 1990, meaning that maybe another big one is due soon. The country is ringed by some of the deepest ocean trenches in the world making an underwater earthquake and the ensuing tsunami a real possibility.

Drinking Coffee

The number of places to drink coffee away from home is increasing. It is as if so many people do not know how to make good coffee at home.
In the ‘60s there were coffee bars. Mainly used by older teenagers, these places usually had a juke box churning out the rock hits of the time, mainly Elvis probably. The parents were happy because at least their children were not in the bars drinking alcohol. They were smoking though, sometimes heavily, and the occasional marijuana “reefer” was not unknown. The customers wore jeans and duffle coats and sported CND badges.
In the UK there was a chain of High Street places called Cadena Café. This chain used a brilliant marketing ploy to bring in the customers. A coffee bean roasting drum was placed in the shop front with some windows open. The heady aroma of roasting coffee was too much too resist for many people.
Now we go to Starbucks, Costa, Figaro, Javaman and many other coffee shops.
Meanwhile, in France, Spain and Italy the same old bars continue to serve café crėme, espresso and cafe solo as they always have for many years. Those countries have a long coffee tradition whereas Britain was mainly a nation of tea drinkers, partly through the availability of the leaves from various countries in the Empire.

Feudalism-Life at home in Paradise Philippines

“Breakfast is ready, sir” said Grace. I sat at the table and considered with pleasure the plate of luscious, ripe, juicy tropical fruit that awaited me and which comprises my almost daily breakfast. There was yellow, seedless water-melon fresh from the fridge, a regular favourite; papaya, pineapple, a piece of mango, all accompanied by a calamansi, the local lime fruit which enhances the taste after squeezing over the fresh fruit. Sometimes for a change I have some smoked local fish fillet (bangus) that with a little rice and a fried egg on top, seems very close to smoked haddock. On Sundays I normally succumb to fried eggs and bacon, toast and tea.

The Philippines is awash with beautiful fruit varieties. Locally grown are bananas, pineapples, watermelon, mangoes, young buko (coconuts) star fruit, papaya, cantaloupe, and these are just the ones recognizable to the British consumer. We also have many others: mangosteen, rambutan, chico, santol, lanzones,guava to mention just a few. As well as in the supermarkets you can frequently haggle for these fruits at roadside stalls.

A favourite place to buy fresh fruit is on the road to Tagaytay. This is a small town on the rim of a double crater volcano (no, not totally extinct). The crater forms a beautiful lake, Taal, full of fresh water fish and often covered with sailboats. On my first visit I stood looking out at the lake at the small volcano that is one crater. I wondered where the other one was. Then I realized that I was standing on the rim of the larger and second crater, as does the town of Tagaytay. The slopes of the volcano enable prolific farming, growing bananas, pineapples, buko and mangoes, nourished by the rich volcanic soil.

Grace is a maid. Readers in the UK are probably muttering about feudalism and how can I afford one. Actually we have four. Three do all the housework and are at our disposal for whatever we want. The fourth is a yaya (nanny) to help look after our 3 year old daughter. We also have a driver.

Most middle and upper income families here have maids and drivers. These arrangements are similar to what French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, described as “Le Contrat Social”. It works like this. They (mainly female) are born of poor families in the remoter parts of the country (known as the “province”). There parents want them, when they are 18 and above, to earn money to keep the family. So they travel to the larger towns to find work as a maid. They then remit the majority of their earnings back to their families. The social contract goes like this; they want to earn money, we want help in the house. They work long hours, we provide accommodation in their own separate quarters and food (which they buy and cook themselves) and a salary. We would also provide medical care for minor illnesses. They have one day off a week. It works well and when you have found good reliable ones as we have it works smoothly and they almost become part of the family. Our four, plus driver cost £80 a week, but I have not washed up in years nor mowed the lawn or cleaned the car! The trick is when you have found good ones, keep them! Another bright side is that employing these young girls in this way prevents from becoming sex workers!
Having two cars and a driver then, of course, the family travels everywhere where by car. My wife sometimes get nervous about me driving alone and my standard response goes something like this; “ If I can drive around Hyde Park Corner in London or L’Etoile in Paris in the rush hour, and if I can drive from Amman to Aqaba, in Jordan, down the King’s Highway when trucks filled with weaponry to fuel the Iran-Iraq war are coming in the opposite direction then I can bloody well drive in the Philippines” It usually works!

For those who must or wish to take public transport these are the options. For very short trips take a tricycle, a small canvas covered seat attached to a motorbike or pedal bike. For a few miles take a Jeepney. The origin of the Jeepney is allegedly the American Army jeep, of which large numbers were left behind after the end of the war. They were then stretched to produce a small bus. Jeepneys are often brightly painted and decorated, often with religious messages as well to assuage the Filipino Catholic soul. For urban trips an LRT network is gradually expanding around Metro Manila. No underground railway can be built because Manila rests on marshlands. For longer journeys, say to the province you can take a bus, with air-con or not. We would recognize these vehicles as coaches. You can forget high-speed trains for a few years, but there is a good inter-island shipping service that some people even take as tourists.

The social life is mainly good. Expats often get together for BBQs, with their Filipino friends included, and dinner parties; there are many restaurants of every different cuisine available and small bars that we call our local pubs. A far seedier form of night-life is also available but no longer recommended because they will take a great deal of money from you in addition to the health risks.

Remember the resorts, the islands, the blue sea and sky, the fruit, the fish and people. It is still worth being here.

Please come to paradise.