After eating so well in Kuala Lumpur, we headed north for Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia. Zach and I arrived on a rainy evening, and the next day was rainy as well, but we tried to do some touristy things and walk around the city anyway.
We gave up after an hour. We were hungry. In the spirit of the Adventures in Food and Drink series, we knew we certainly weren’t going to eat wimpy western food.
There have been many adventures in food and drink recently. Zach showed up to the Philippines and ate his first balut.
In Abra province, we ate smoked wild boar, little shark fishes, and pinikpikan.
We went to Chinatown in Binondo, Manila, Philippines, and gorged ourselves on different dimsum options. Shark fin, hakaw, chicken feet — things we can’t even name.
Later that same day, we flew to Kuala Lumpur and arrived at 2 a.m. to the city center. We had put off dinner, then got stuck at the airport with no reasonably priced options, on a flight with no food, and then at the airport with only McDonald’s open. Luckily, we arrived near Sri Paandi.
My boss told us a story about the old gritty New York of the early 1980s. He was having a drink with a friend in his apartment, watching a sparrow perched on the fire escape. This was a time when people could barely go below 14th street after dark; a time when people were forced to be so vigilant in their daily lives that they were practically putting locks on the straws in their soda cans. So a mild-mannered singing sparrow probably seemed out of place even before a giant crow swooped down from the sky and pinned the sparrow down on the iron grates. (more…)
As part of the routine death-scramble to keep my head above water in New York City, I have taken a series of restaurant jobs. The latest is in an iconic French bistro in SoHo, where a bottle of budweiser costs $8. I find it so strange to find myself in an environment like this–one which I habitually avoid as a necessary evil of living in this city–that I have decided to write about the experience, to try to understand it as much as possible.
My journal entry from yesterday:
“Working in a busy restaurant usually feels like being attacked from all sides. (more…)
Day five of the hike was an early morning scramble from Pingew to Sagada. We walked back into Sagada triumphantly.
On day three, we went from Taleb to Baclingayan, which is a short five-hour journey up and down mountains (just like every other day!). We stopped at Kasiniyan River so that Moros could catch a spear full of fish for lunch.
We arrived in Sagada, Mountain Province, Philippines looking for Dan Sibayan, who had guided me and some friends when we last viisted Sagada during Holy Week. Through careful interrogation of townsfolk, we discovered Dan is working in Japan.
So we showed up at the municipal hall to register as tourists and see if they could recommend a guide for us. We looked over the menu of options. A trip to the big falls (four hours round trip), a visit to the caves (six hours at most), a one-night trek, a few day hikes — this isn’t what we came for. Can we have a guide for a week-long hike into the remote parts of Kalinga and Abra Provinces, where there’s no electricity, little contact with the outside world, and where traditional ways of life persist? We’ll have to think about it, they told us. Come back the next morning.
Zach and I were so full of ganas that we set out on a little hike that I had done a few months ago with Dan as guide. We took a wrong turn and our little walk turned into a full blown seven-hour journey to Besao through jungle as the sun set on us.
At the time of this video, we didn’t know that we still had another two hours of walking back to Sagada.
Signals
When a magician dies
they break his wand.
Many guitar-songs close
with a strum.
While you wait for an old chord or seal
you attend the gospel of sitcoms,
unscramble the wallpaper’s
green curling leaves.
Light torn from a glass
waltzes and strays from the room.
Thank you, you say alone,
so many signals to choose from. (more…)
On June 12, 2008, we left Manila. But before, we celebrated the only way we know how. With some late-night Burger Machine.
Goodbye, Manila.
Update: The voyage begins in Sagada, Philippines.
