15 days in the Philippines, or, how to blow 10k in 2 weeks

[Major Robert Dump]

Day 9

I got up at 7am. When I went to search the web for directions to this agency, I realized I did not have my laptop cord. My battery sucks. A few minutes on the laptop and it is already low on juice. I need another battery of a new cord, so I write down the specs and hope to find something somewhere.

The place was about a mile away, and I was in the mood to walk.



Without coming off as too much of a fool, as I already had more lady friends than a guy could handle, over the several months leading up to my trip, I spent a good deal of money on this matchmaking service. Considering the economy of Cebu and the small staff of the agency, the guys who owned this place were making a huge profit. Not granted, they did throw elaborate parties where all the girls were invited to attend, basically a meet and greet, and the employees told me they gto paid exceptionally well, but I have to admit that deep down inside I wanted to punch the little bald man who ran the joint.
Upon arrival, the office was filled with girls there to set up profiles. In terms of hotness-per-square-foot, this office had everywhere else in the PI beat at this particular moment. There were girls everywhere, on the couches, waiting in lines, on the computers, and when I walked in they all talked in Cebuano and giggled. I felt like such a piece of meat. It was wonderful.



I fill out the background check form and tell them which ladies I want to meet. I actually only had 3 lined up, and he encouraged me to meet more, but I already felt like I was pushing the envelope of both emotional taxation and time limits. There was a meet and greet over the weekend I was also invited to, and I considered it, but again, I just felt it might be odd to attend one of these as I would feel like it was a casting call, not much better than going to a bar and having to pick a dancer out of the lineup.

While I was there, a couple other western guys came in. One was a decrepit old Englishman, who I was introduced to, and he told me he was a retired government employer whose wife of 30 years had died, and that he was lonely. The other was an American from Colorado who looked like he was better suited to be at an Occupy protest, he told me he was into graphic design, probably about 30 years old.

I headed to the docks. The taxi ride was a few minutes, closer than I expected. Something is going on here. There is some sort of police/military presence with checkpoints. They ask me why I am here and I tell them. They won’t let me in. They tell me not to take photos. From what I can tell, they are loading a bunch of military stuff onto boats, probably things headed down to Mindanao. I call Ian, who is expecting me, and he drives up and gets them to let me in. I pay the taxi and head into the mix.

The reason I am here is sort of convoluted. I met Ian at Gardez, where his NGO was doing a fine job rebuilding Afghanistan. They were, in my opinion, one of the best at what they did, hugely successful and with little over head. Their local workers always got paid, and on time, unlike lots of other contracts. They skirted the standard security contractor rules by using organic security, so their engineers and project managers were all packing heat. They dressed like locals and acted like locals. They rolled in regular vehicles. No one noticed them.

I had been courting them for a job, hopefully back in Paktya. I was not a school trained engineer or farmer, but I had a familiarity with the region and its farming, and I could handle a firearm. According to Ian, those two assets fared me better than all the degrees in the world.

Well, that was until the NGO pulled out of Afghanistan. Karzais rules caught up with them. Previously, armed contractors would need either a US permit or an Afghan. Now they needed both, and the Afghans were not budging. They would have to hire Afghan security contractors. These companies, like ASG the largest, are made up of people who could not make it into the federal ranks, which says a lot. Considering that insider attacks have always been a problem, this simply was not an option.

The NGO did not take this decision lightly, and were in fact going to continue with high dollar, handpicked security contractors. The idea was they would fund an Afghan security start up under the condition that they worked only with the NGO. But the massacre of the team of doctors for the International Assistance Mission, almost 5 years to the day of a massacre of a Doctors Without Border Team (which prompted DWB to pull out after losing 32 total over 3 years), pretty much sealed the deal.

Basically, if the NGO continued to work in Afghanistan, they were going to have to find new employees because their project managers refused to put their fate in the hands of people who could be bought for $20 or turned due to religion. They were gone, along with one of the finest NGO track records in Afghanistan.

I suppose I might still be able to bring military experience to the table for their operations in Africa and SE Asia, but these places were less dangerous than Afghanistan, the locals were more trustworthy and I did not have any expertise in the regional economy in those places. But I still wanted to hang out with these guys because they were involved in the shipping of massive amounts of humanitarian aid and materials from Europe and the states.

I was mostly interested in shipping operations, costs, times, and general import/export issues. The original plan was for me to sneak off with the team on a flight to New Zealand, but the weather was getting ugly, so instead we opted for a little US Territory 2000km east of the Philippines, as they had a small shipping relay operation there. Obviously, in most cases of agricultural products, shipping from the US to poor countries is not the cheapest way to go unless the US is providing something others cannot provide (which it doesn’t) or they can score some sort of cut rate price on bulk items or donations. In this case, there was apparently going to be Twenty 40 foot containers of baby formula coming in.

Incidentally, for all my union fans, I also discovered that the freight was shipped from the Midwest USA, through Mexico, through drug war territory, and to a western Mexican dock to be shipped out over the pacific. Apparently the extra distance, insane insurance costs and extra risk was far, far cheaper than dealing with the Longshoreman Unions on the west coast. Funny.

I won’t bore you with the finer details of Pacific rim shipping. And in my rush to conserve battery power I forgot to transfer all my pics off of my camera, so I was running out of space on both cameras I had on me. I will say the company jet was very nice, as was Guam, but in the end I was not supposed to travel to Guam, or the Mariana Islands, so I don’t have any idea what you are talking about. Carry on.


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Day 10 Friday

I returned to Cebu in the late morning. Today I was on track to meet a chap named David, who owned a little bar and restaurant, and he was looking for a partner. From the ads and emails, he was not making much money, if any, and he was looking for a partial buy in so he could become an absentee owner and pursue some other leads. Well, that’s what he said. I rushed to get my free breakfast before the hotel diner closed, forgetting to take care of my camera, and called him on the way there.

He knew I was in town, and that I planned to come by, but for things like this a drop in is always better, so he doesn’t have time to pull any magic tricks. As it turns out, he definitely needed some tricks. Either this guy is an astute business man who operates on a level I do not understand, or he is the worst business man on the planet.

After breakfast I headed to the agency to meet my first new friend.



Her name was Doris, and she was actually pretty close to my age. She was not hip on having her photo taken, so I took a picture of the waitress and my food instead.





It was really hot today. I’m not going to go into the finer details of who and why, but Doris and I were not really compatible. We both knew this. I also think she might have already had a man. I gave her a wad of money for the cab ride home, and got her address so I could send her and her kid some gifts. She didn’t want to do this, but I insisted, and when I got back to the Stan I used a delivery service to send them a roasted Lechon, some groceries and a mini-fridge, since they didn’t have cold storage but did have electricity.

For dinner I was meeting Jessica. Jessica was a very attractive, dark skinned girl who spent a lot of time in the gym. She had a nursing degree but worked in a call center (more money, nurses have federal salary caps), and her English was better about half of Americans. This girl was very impressive. We went to a little restaurant called Our Place, which I had found on the internet and been wanting to visit.
She was in her mid-20s, and despite her outward maturity, she struck me as very immature. She was also from a fairly well-to-do family and seemed a bit spoiled. The restaurant was not in the greatest neighborhood, and she seemed terrified to be out on the street. Either that or she did not want to be seen with me. She was very anxious from the cab to the diner, and afterwards when we could not immediately find a cab, she became visibly shaken and upset. Not sure what the deal was.



http://www.ourplacecebu.com/

The aussie version of chicken fried steak was delicious. I think it copst like $4. She ate a filipino dish. That and some drinks cost us less than $10/

Anyway, the immaturity part: She basically admitted over dinner to having lots of profiles on lots of dating sites, and that for all of the sites except mine, she uses her moms photo. Her mom looked just like her, but older. I asked her why, was she trying to set her mom up with a man? She explained that she was doing it so see if guys would like her for who she was, not what she looked like, and after she got to know a guy enough she would show him her real photo. It would be like a reward. I found this incredibly retarded. I found it somewhat egotistical. It also sounded like she was just hunting for an older guy. Whatever the reason, as she was doing this, a giant flashing neon sign was going off in my head: Little Girl Games.

These are the types of silly games I despise when American girls do them, the same ones my ex wife liked to play. Like me for who I am, so I put up a fake photo? PFfffft. Or, she was lying altogether and was trying to set her mom up. I don’t know. Whatever.

We took a cab back to the agency and parted ways. I still stay in contact with her. Girls with her education and language skills are hard to find there, but the story above along with some other things just gave me pause.

In the evening I was meeting Maddie. Maddie was actually at the Agency the first day I met, but we did not talk much. Maddie and I met at the mall that evening, and would meet again the following evening at the meet and greet. She was not in the best of moods tonight because she had been having a hard time as an English teacher for rich Korean kids, and apparently the teenagers treat their teachers like dirt, imagine that. Nice girl, mid 20s, partial college education, no father, 3 brothers and 1 sister, all older than her.




She did not want to stay out late because she was tired from work. I took this as a good time to drop in on Dave’s bar.

First, the location of this place is completely out of the way of everything, except a single hotel that caters mostly to japanese. Second, he has a cowboy name and cowboy theme with karaoke, but no cowboy designs or memoriabilia, and no country songs on the karaoke. Most of the cash he spent was on the karaoke machine, but its only one big machine, not many smaller ones in private rooms like the Japanese tourists prefer. This wasn’t somewhere locals would come to drink, as it wasn’t hip enough for youngsters and it was too expensive for old drunks. Did mention terrible location? Oh, and it was leasehold, and not a very good price.

There were no customers when I arrived in the late night on a Friday. He tried to give me free drinks but I was not going to have it. There was him, a barkeep and a waitress. We go for a walk and he basically admits that he bought a failing business from a douchebag and tried to turn it around. He did not make a profit. He lost about $100 USD a month after expenses, which he thought was okay and he considered it his country rent to be able to live in the PI and employ a few people. He was looking at maybe a smaller venue down the street, cheaper rent but even more off the grid. He made it sound like he was going to turn his business into one of those shanty bars on the street, where the seats are on the sidewalk and you get the same old drunks every night. He was originally trying to sell the entire place for $20,000. By the end of the evening, he was trying to get 5k out of me for a partnership.

I simply was not interested. And this place had no kitchen, which he had led me to believe, unless a bathroom sized room with a sink and table counts as a kitchen these days. I felt kind of bad. And for some reason, the dude I guess thinks I am some super-hooked-up soldier from Afghanistan, and he is always sending me emails trying to see if I want to partner with him on some contracts so we can make money in the war zone, with his zero military experience and subtle suicidal comments (seriously). I still talk to him, and would like to keep in contact, but have let him know with no uncertainly that I am likely done with Afghanistan forever unless its a nonprofit. The main reason I would like to keep contact is that, besides being a nice little German chap, he had lots of knowledge of Cebu as he has lived there for 10 years.

Anyway, we went out drinking. It was better than drinking alone. He had a girlfriend, but told me he would take me on a quick tour of the go go bars, and then we would end up at a legit disco. We didn’t actually go into any go go bars, he just showed me where they all were and told me who owned what and why not to go here or there, etc. We go to the disco.

I realize that not only are my batteries almost dead, but my cameras are full of photos to Guam and the Mariana Islands, which is odd, because I did not travel there so please stop asking.

The disco was about 25% tourists. It was enormous, and with a full menu and lots of drinks. It was packed. The foreigners weren’t loser dudes hanging out in corners, they seemed to be guys the locals knew, and they would get on stage and dance and sing along to the songs with everyone else. Most of them were guys in pretty good shape, not a lot of fat fogeys here.

It was a really good vibe. There were also lady boys every six feet, who would not admit to being lady boys, but if you did not spot the adams apple or deep voice, you could usually figure it out when he/she would lean in and offer to let you put it in her butt. I mean, girls just don’t say that.

An order of 20 chicken fingers was $2.00, a bucket of 6 Sam Miguel beers was $2.00, a shot of whiskey was .75 cents. I don’t know if these things were on special or not. The bass in this place was killing my head, as loud noises and I don’t get along too well any more. I asked if we could move upstairs and away from the stage where we can actually talk and Dave was all for it.

Upstairs we talked some more, and he told me about his other business plans. It was here that I realized how desperate he was to get out from under that bar he owned. His girlfriend, Kali, showed up and explained that they liked to come here to watch drunk westerners try to dance on stage, and get so drunk they leave with lady boys. Sure enough, it was going on all around me.

At the table next to us, a young couple was arguing. The female was getting a little fiery, and stood up quickly and aggressively, and the guy pushed he back down onto the loveseat and out of his face.

In case I haven’t mentioned it, Filipinos take the whole saving face thing pretty seriously, and getting involved in disputes with locals is a good way to get shanked or shot. It’s always best to let your local friends handle the locals, unless there is simply no other ways. The idea of not intervening with someone getting robbed or beaten is hard to swallow, but it is what it is when you are an outsider, and I learned this well in Afghanistan, watching kids getting beat up by grown men and almost creating a full scale international disaster when the ANP soldier i scolded cocked his weapon in response to my yelling, which prompted us to draw down on him, and a mexican standoff ensued but was quickly diffused by the subgovernor and my commander. I'll stay out of this fight.

Anyway, Kali went crazy on the boyfriend and was jabbering and wagging her finger, and then the girlfriend got involved in the jabbering and finger waving, too. The guy pushed them both aside and walked past, and told the girl to come with him and she wouldn’t. He walked towards her like he was going to grab her and take her, but Kali jumped between them and started acting like a black girl from the hood. The guy leaves and Kali comes back over and sits down. The girlfriend stays at her table.

We ask Kali what the fight was over and she said it was over money, and that the girl asked why he was taking her out if he would not let her buy anything. I suggested it was like walking the dog, that sometimes you just need to take the lady out for a walk, but the joke went over poorly with Kali and I thought she was going to rip my nuts off until Dave explained that I was joking. I made a comment that I would buy her as many drinks and foods as she wanted, and Kali relayed this message, and 5 seconds later I had a hungry disco girl sitting next to me. Her name was “Nikky”

I danced with this girl a few times, but let her know early on that I could not stay out too incredibly late due to morning appointments. I didn’t bother telling her I was meeting girls from a dating service, and I felt kind of bad for basically feeding her crap about looking at real estate and shipping operations, but whatever. I think it was probably around 1 am when we called it. I gave Nikky “cab fare” which was probably about 50x what she actually needed, she didn’t say anything I didn’t say anything. She told me if I saw her at this bar again she would probably be with her boyfriend, and he is very jealous and would try to kill me. I let her know that I was not a fan of being killed and would not talk to her if I saw her here again.

I was not in the mood to convince the girl to leave him, it’s not like I was going to be her boyfriend, and in case I didn’t mention I was drunk, well I was pretty drunk. She asked for my cell phone number and I didn’t know it, so she called her phone from my phone and we parted ways. Dave, Kali and I split a cab as they lived close to my hotel apparently.

This was an exhausting day. A plane trip, met 3 girls through the agency, met a guy trying to sell me his bar, and danced with a girl far too cute for me (well, as far as I can remember, I was drunk)