The Plan: Japan

Having returned to Osaka (a.k.a. "The Big O") from the Philippines, Jenn and I were now ready to begin the Plan proper.  We agreed that, though Japan is one of the more expensive countries on our quaint little planet, it becomes much cheaper when a traveler is sleeping in a tent and traveling by bicycle.  Besides, after three years of Japanese study, we felt Japan would be a good starter country for our Asian tour.

So, having paid lots of paper rectangles to have our various possessions shipped to us here in Osaka or back to the States, we were set to give everything a test ride.  After strenuous preparation and route-planning, of course.

Here, we confer with some locals about what is or is not shakin'.

We were blessed by the immigration officials with a standard 90-day tourist visa, which gives us enough time to see a good chunk of the country before having to make a border run to Korea.  Then, assuming our limbs haven't gotten so muscular that we can no longer get out of bed, we intend to come back to Japan just in time for the rainy season to bike a bit more.  Hopefully, we will be working in Seoul again come July, so we'll be filling as much time as we can until then with biking, camping, and assorted shenanigans.

First, like all good adventurers, we thought it would be wisest to take our long-mothballed equipment on a test ride, just a short four-day ramble from Osaka to Nara, then to Kyoto, then back to Osaka.  See illustration.  SEE IT.


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As of writing this post, we've already completed this leg of the trip, so it has made the transition from "Tentative" to "Good Job!"  What is still tentative, however, is the rest of our trip in Japan, which is approximated below:



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Apart from biking, which does tend to get tiresome after a little bit, we've made plans to WWOOF, and have already joined WWOOF Japan.  Essentially, WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) allows us to volunteer at various organic farms (and possibly cafes, artists' communes, hotels, who knows what else) in exchange for food and lodging.  We've been told that it's an excellent way to meet interesting people, learn new skills, see a side of the country that would otherwise be hidden to us, and get free food and lodging.  In addition, we may be stopping at a couple of Zen monasteries to participate in meditation retreats.

So, that about brings us up to speed.  If you'd just gotten used to hi-larious jokes about exotic fruits and dangerous animals, well...too bad.  Hopefully you'll be just as thrilled to hear of such exciting tales of flat tires, rain, and rice farming.  They do have monkeys here, too, so watch out for that.

The Philippines: In Summation

As you may be able to gather from our last several posts, we've become something of experts on the Philippines: we've ridden atop a Jeepney, we've eaten balut...well, that's pretty much it, but that should count for something, surely.

This was our second experience traveling in a developing nation (though I do so hate using terms like that), and I have to say, it went much more smoothly than our time in Bali.  We still grapple with the guilt of being so much more privileged than everyone around us, of course; to put it most succinctly, this means that we would feel outraged and ripped off when we were being charged double or triple the local rate for a meal or transportation, then feel dumb when we realized that it was only a matter of about $4, then feel guilty when we realized that that much money could well be a day's wages for the merchant in question.  After our time in the Philippines, we are better at dealing with haggling (barely), with beggars (somewhat), and with exotic toilets (if necessary).  We did go a bit overboard with spending, sadly...with everything so very cheap, it's easy to spend much more than you mean to.  BRIGHT SIDE: WE ARE CLOSE TO NO LONGER HAVING MORE MONEY THAN GOOD SENSE.

The Philippines are clearly a very special place, and I don't think we've seen the last of them.  I mean, we still have about 695 more islands to visit.

In summation:

People -- Awesome!
Food -- Meh
Sights -- Beautiful if poorly located
Transportation -- Thrill-a-minute
Beaches -- Please!
Poverty -- High
Urchins -- Yes
Would Visit Again? -- Hell yeah

Siquijor: As Fun to Visit As It Is to Try to Pronounce

Having had our fill of landbound fun (and having played enough games of chess to wear the board into pieces) (for real!) (also I finally exhausted my supply of parentheses), we decided to spend our final day in the Philippines visiting the nearby island of Siquijor, renowned for being the home of mystical healers and witch doctors.  Jenn and I thought we'd rent some bicycles and see if we couldn't spend a day at the beach, then maybe bother a few witch doctors on the way back to the port.

Unsuitable vacation plans.
Source: http://www.smashbros.com/

Siquijor is a gorgeous, clear-watered tropical paradise, though admittedly we'd been getting a bit inured to tropical paradises after a month in the Philippines.  As is the custom of this country, we were accosted by several touts as soon as we set foot off the boat, most of whom were offering accommodation or motorcycle rental; when we put it to them that we wanted a couple of mountain bikes, a weird, awkward silence descended on the men.  Eventually, after some dispute, consensus was established that the only place that would rent bicycles were some of the island's resorts, and they would only rent them to guests staying the night.  We again got many hearty recommendations of places to rent motorcycles, but we turned the men down politely; my driver's licence is still in the mail, and my only experience with motorcycles was Excitebike, and even then I kept falling over.

Sadly, with no bikes available and only five hours until the last ferry back to land, we just had to rent a tricycle to drive us to the beach like a couple of tourists, ugh.  Our brains soft from the warm sun and coconut water oversaturation, we agreed to the driver's exorbitant price; he claimed that there would be some tariffs that needed to be paid on the 10-minute trip.  Now seems as good a time as any to explain Harry's Patented Haggling System, Patent Pending:

1. Merchant: "That costs 300 pesos."
2. Harry: "Hmm...I'll give you 275."
3. Merchant: "Deal."
4. Harry's Brain: "Yessss, I got a bargain!"

The driver took us to Palitan Beach, Lonely Planet's pick of the island for stunning white sand and excellent swimming.  Neither Jenn nor I had been to the beach many times in our lives -- not too many of those in Kansas or Missouri -- but we were hoping to spend our time in the Philippines hanging out in places that looked exactly like this.   We walked across the sugary sand, donned our bathing suits, and hopped into the water.  Three hours later, when the driver returned for us, Jenn had stepped on a sea urchin, at least a dozen seaweed-green jellyfish had appeared to terrorize us, and we were burned bright pink.  Truly, this "beach" is a dangerous business.

The most horrifying beach in the world (except for that DiCaprio movie) (oh, I found some more parentheses).

Another island visited!  Let's put it up on the big board and see how we fared in our thorough, month-long exploration of the Philippines:

...Aww, nerts.  Image may appear more impressive if you
haven't cleaned your computer screen lately.

Dumaguete 2: SCUBA Boogaloo

Our first day of SCUBA certification was fine, if somewhat less thrilling and more pun-filled than we had expected.  The day was taken up with rigorous study of the ins and outs of diving, by which I mean we watched videos and took quizzes on the videos.  Among the PADI Open Water Certification video features:

• Stunningly well-preserved early '90s visual effects recreated with computers in 2002.
• Continual references to equipment we would not be using and test dives that we had not paid for and would not be experiencing.
• A comic relief mime who made us all extremely nervous -- presumably, after falling over in swim fins, failing to plan his dive, improperly disassembling his equipment, and eating a peanut he found in his toolkit, this mime died a horrible death of the bends.  Educational!
• Amazing facts given as bumpers between segments, including "Fact: divers are 'under' achievers" and "Fact: divers are always happy."  BONUS FACT: this "always happy" business is an effect of nitrogen narcosis.  Laffs ahoy!

Another fascinating point of this class, which was taken at a location I will not disclose here: our teacher's name was "Snoopy."  Snoopy was a very nice guy, though a bit hard to refer to in conversation with a straight face.

Day two of diving involved some actual diving, and it was just as magical as the video made it out to be.  Most of the equipment didn't fit, but Snoopy reassured us with helpful information such as, "But it's OK."  We soldiered on through our first dive, descending to just a few meters, but having a grand old time.  Education without speaking presented a unique challenge, but Prof. Snoopy was pretty good with gestures; the impetus of "pay very close attention to what I'm telling you or you might die" is a pretty neat pedagogical trick that I may have to parlay into the English classroom someday.

On our second dive, Jenn was unable to breathe correctly out of her regulator, and Snoopy offered to mend the problem by "taking a break."  When the equipment had not magically fixed itself in  a few minutes, Snoopy took charge of the situation, announcing that we were finished for the day.  Jenn and I protested gently, saying that we would still like to dive, but the mask and regulator had to be fixed first.  He would have none of it, though; something we had learned about the culture of the Philippines at this point was that things could either be "Okay" or "Not Okay."  Riding on top of a Jeepney up a mountain, barreling through town on a tricycle without seatbelts, all of this was "Okay" unless something bad happened.  Snoopy evidently took our protestations that Jenn couldn't, y'know, breathe as a protest that things were "Not Okay," and so everything was off.  He led us out of the water and we took off all of our gear that we had just struggled into 10 minutes before.

Now we were presented with a difficult dilemma.  We still had to complete our third day of dive training to earn our certification, and now we would have to make up half of Day Two in addition to our other required dives.  And now that we had determined that Snoopy was perhaps not the best teacher in the world and used some somewhat suspect equipment, it would be a feat to get ourselves to trust him enough to even get ourselves into the water.  On the other hand, we had already invested some money and time into diving, and the first half of the day had been so much fun!  What were we to do?

Fortunately, I solved this problem in my characteristically dynamic manner: by smacking my head into a TV.

Thus hastening my transformation into Harry Potter.

This, coupled with the fact that we decided to attend our guest house's Free Oysters Night (incidentally, "free" is one of the words words to precede "oysters"), the decision got pretty much made for us.  We remain uncertified.  The next time we have the opportunity, we'll take the course again, but this time we'll 1. confirm that the instructor's equipment is in good working order, and 2. not study with someone named for a comic strip character.

In the meantime, we'll just have to find something else to do in spots like this.  Ho-hum.

Since this post is a little short on photos, I'll include this gem found on the pet shop in front of our guest house that apparently specialized in birds:

Quite an endorsement!

Dumaguete: More Fun Than Falling On Slippery Rocks

Dumaguete, our next destination in the Philippines, is just a short taxi ride from Bontoc.  This taxi ride is followed by an extremely long bus ride, which is then followed by another taxi ride, an hour-long flight, and a final taxi ride.  It's not as small a country as one might think, the Philippines.  Dumaguete is a charming city that possesses a quiet, relaxed, coconut-heavy dignity not easily captured on film.

Having spent the past week or so resting and recovering from our subterranean adventure, we were all set to embark on another exciting, action-packed excursion, after only a brief period of mental and physical preparation.

We'd learned our lesson from Sumaguing Cave; from here on out we would stick to physical activities of a level of intensity somewhere between "pinball" and "Facebooking."  It was important not only for our level of fun, but for our readiness for the next day's scuba lessons, that we pick an excursion that wouldn't leave us too terribly tired out.  Luckily, our guesthouse in Dumaguete offered a trip to Casaroro Falls that was graded as "Easy to Medium."  Man, it's like they knew us!  Y'know, and then decided that we really, really like stairs for some reason.

The guide had warned us at the top of the stairs (which was a Jeepney ride up the mountains in the first place) that, due to the recent typhoon, the path to the waterfall was somewhat damaged, and consequently, we would need a guide to show us the way.  Did I mention that the Casaroro Falls Tour was supposed to take "about two hours"?

"Damaged" didn't begin to cover it.  It was like frolicking through the postapocalypic ruins of a jungle that was already plentiful with ruins.  There were remnants of a nice concrete path crushed into rubble with twisted strands of rebar splayed everywhere.  We scrambled up creaky bamboo ladders and squeezed between jagged rocks and rotting tree trunks.  A wide creek ran beside us.  "Maybe this is the waterfall," we both thought hopefully.

After the rocks grew more slick and the acrobatics required of us more dramatic, Jenn had decided to stop and have a rest.  I soldiered on, reassuring myself that this was only somewhat like the time we almost plummeted to our deaths in a cave.  Then, of course, the guide instructed us to take off our shoes and begin vaulting across the river.

This is usually where one's life flashes before their eyes, but since most of my life has been spent playing video games, I just couldn't stop thinking about how many oxen I killed while fording rivers in "Oregon Trail."

In the end, we came to many excellent, insightful conclusions about the Philippines, but the only one we can remember now is that they should fire whoever's been grading the difficulty levels of their tours, or at least stop grading it on the Batman scale.

Interstitial

To interrupt the flow of things with a bit of uncharacteristic timeliness: right now we Gaijin Patrol are true gaijin once more.  As of this morning, we are back in Osaka, where we will be spending the next five days or so preparing for our triumphant return to bike touring!  Over the next few days, there will be a few wrap-up posts about our last few days in the Philippines, as well as a little more info about our plans in Japan, our route, our equipment, and our new tattoos*.

*Just kidding, Mom.