Malasimbo Music Festival

The following schedule of events shall be retold from vaguely recollected images.

Friday March 2^nd

11:00am                    Board bus in Manila

1:00pm                      Arrival in Batangas

1:30pm                      Board boat for Puerto Galera after astounding number of ticketing inefficiencies.

2:30pm                      Arrival in Puerto Galera

2:45pm                      Check in at hotel

3:00pm                      Asked the hotel where I could find some good chicken.  Directed to a restaurant where they serve grilled chickens for roughly $6.  Proceed to consume an entire chicken.  No messing around with body parts down here, just chop that thing up and gimme it all. Perfect wrap up to the week on my four hour body diet.

4:00pm                      Meet friends at Big Apple bar on beach. Drinking commences.

5:30pm                      Hop on Jeepney to Malasimbo festival. Really Drunk german with gangrenous wound on foot joins us.

6:30pm                      Arrival at Malasimbo music festival – Venue is a giant tiered grass amphitheater on top of a mountain.  Seriously.

6:35pm                      Drunk German Guy with Gangrenous Wound on foot realizes that festival is not free.  Follows us in without paying.

6:45pm                      Purchase 10 drink tickets for $12.

7:00pm-9:00pm     Band called De Oro plays a set.  Band is built around grammy nominated American Cellist from Juliard, playing everything from bluegrass to rock to hip hop.  Excessive Drinking.

11:00pm                    Buy drink for drunk German guy with gangrenous wound on foot. Realize I am out of drink tickets and begin borrowing from friends. 

12:00am                    Crowd moves to second Stage for hip hop show.  Introspective socially conscious selection of songs from African American with afro and fluorescent tie dye shirt and shorts.  Barefoot. 

1:30am                       Bar runs out of beers and switches to very strong rum and cokes, which cost 2 drink tickets.  Total ripoff.

2:30am                       Drunken conversation with aforementioned hip hop artist, in which I ask him who he likes to listen to and if I can get a CD.  He turns out to be an 18 year old jazz guitarist and likes MF Doom.

4:00am                       Jeep ride back to Big Apple bar.  Sit at same table on the beach.  Bar has turned into a hotspot for hookers and johns.  Order and consume many dishes involving cheese.

5:00am                       Pass out.

Saturday March 3^rd

8:00am                       Wake up to sound of puking in bathroom

10:00am                    My alarm goes off.  Decision not to go scuba diving made instantaneously.  Alarm turned off.

10:30am                    Asshole frat guys at my hotel screaming and jumping in the pool directly outside my room.  Excessive noise.  So tired that it hardly matters.

1:00pm                      Roll out of bed and order 2 full breakfasts at my hotel. 

2:00pm                      Meet friends at Apple Bar on beach.  Same bar, same table.  Drinks refused.

2:30pm                      Swim out to floating bar with water slide.  Try to one-up little Filipino kids playing tag and doing tricks off the slide.

3:00pm                      Jeep to white beach.

4:00pm                      Fruit shakes, swimming and football on the beach.  Drinks refused.

5:30pm                      Chicken curry served by transvestite.

6:00pm                      Sun goes down.  Bracelets and devil horns purchased from kids on the beach.

6:15pm                      Pitcher of rum and coke ordered.

7:00pm                      Trike to festival

8:30-10:00pm         Joe Bataan, Jazz/reggae artist from new york takes the stage.  Awesome set, Excessive drinking.

10:00pm-1:00am   Run into Spanish friends by the bar and hang out up there for most of the night.  Many great musical artists missed.

12:30am                    Bar runs out of beers, again.  Forced to switch to Rum and cokes.  Having run out of my own, I am once again borrowing drink tickets.

2:00am                       Jeep back to town ahead of the group

3:00am                       End up in the wrong town – hail motorcycle taxi

3:30am                       Arrival in correct town.

5:00am                       Pass out

Sunday March 4^th

10:00am                    Alarm goes off again, but no way I’m going scuba diving. Alarm turned off.

12:00pm                    Breakfast at Big Apple bar on beach, same bar, same table.

2:00pm                      Catch last boat back to the mainland.

3:00pm                      Board bus for Manila

3:15pm                      Food vendors board bus to sell. Purchase and consume 3 hardboiled eggs and a bottle of water. 

5:30pm                      Arrival in Manila

7:00pm                      Pass out

Hike for Light - Mt. Apo

The Final Hike for Light, Mt. Apo, took place on the weekend of February 12^th-13^th.  Mt. Apo is the tallest peak in the Philippines, so fitting for our last hike.  It is located near Davao City, on Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines.   The first thing to keep in mind for the rest of this blog, is that Mindanao is a travel ban zone designated by the US State Department.  There are anti-government groups active in the area (Communist and Muslim), that were the reason this hike was cancelled back in November.  There are 3 ways I can be fired from my Princeton in Asia Fellowship – 1. Ride a motorcycle without a helmet 2. Ask for a raise from my employer 3. Travel to Mindanao.  The only reason I was able to make this trip is that we assured the powers that be in PIA that I would be with a large group and well protected at all times.  Kidnappings for ransom, while not exactly common, certainly happen.

We flew down on Thursday night, stayed in a hotel, and met up with the group on Friday morning.  A number of the climbers had also joined us for the first hike, Mt. Kitaanglad, so it was a bit of a reunion when all got together for the first time.  Our Friday itinerary started out with a visit to the Mayor’s office, and a turnover ceremony with a number of local residents.  

Afterwards, we all packed into the back of a pickup truck, as is the customary transport on the Hike for Light.  However, this one was a bit of a stretch.  We piled our group of roughly 60 climbers into the back of two pickup trucks and headed up the mountain to the trailhead.  However, as the road got bumpier and bumpier, I began to get sick of holding on to the rope for dear life and being thrown around constantly.  I decided the truck just wasn’t worth it, and got out to walk.  As I strolled up the road by myself, all alone in the middle of  rural Mindanao, I realized that if I got kidnapped at this point it would totally be my own fault.  However, I encountered nothing but cute Filipino kids and farmers minding their own business. 

The first town we stayed in was about a 2 hour hike from where the truck dropped everyone off.  It consisted of about 20 houses, no electricity and…a basketball court.  Immediately upon showing up I went over to check the guys playing ball, and found that they were basically playing HORSE for money.  Oh you know I was all over that.  I thought to myself hey, this’ll be fun, and I can give all my change to these folks.  If I am winning, I’ll just start missing shots and give all the money back.  Oh, Danny.  Turned out that wasn’t a problem and, much to everyone’s enjoyment, I had lost all 30 pesos in my pocket within a half hour.  It was the rims!  The wind!  Is that hoop regulation size or what?!!  How does this 10 year old keep draining jumpers??  Home court advantage.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Afterwards, our trusty climb leader for all of the hikes, 60 year old team Everest veteran Fred Jamili, led a training session with the lanterns we had carried up to the village.  This particular village had been using tree sap for nighttime light whenever available.  We also witnessed a lady walk out of her house in the pitch black with a cloth lit on fire sticking out of a bottle of rum.  This was her source of light to go use the bathroom at night.  A Molotov cocktail! I feel confident that the solar lanterns donated that night will provide a much safer alternative.

We spent the night in this village, then hiked back down and climbed, once again, onto the truck of despair.  I decided to ride all the way down this time, remembering my feeling from the day before.

That afternoon we began our hike up to “The Nursery” where we would camp before making our summit push the next day.  The Campsite had a huge wooden building in the middle of it that had fallen into disrepair, but did provide some much needed shelter (it rained that afternoon and evening) for drying clothes and cooking.  We would camp at this site for the next two nights, and make the hike up to the summit and back with day packs only.

The hike up Mt. Apo was quite different from the rest of the hikes.  We started at basically the foot of the mountain, and did the whole thing in one day.  The trail was quite steep, but with no heavy pack to carry it was manageable.  We were above the tree line and out in the open for pretty much the entire ascent, which afforded and breathtaking views whenever the clouds parted.  

Unfortunately, the first thing we noticed upon arriving at the summit was a giant pile of trash.   There is a camping area at the summit, and previous visitors had thrown trash everywhere.  Fortunately, some of our solar ambassadors, the local climbing group from General Santos, were totally prepared.  They immediately got out large plastic bags they had carried up the mountain and began cleaning up the trash.  They lugged about 5 bags of trash all the way down to our campsite, and off the mountain the next day.  

Apo has two summits, and a crater valley in the middle. Down the side of the mountain opposite where we had summited was another grassy crater that reeked of sulfur.  We had lunch and spent a couple hours at the summit, then headed back down to the nursery.

Link to 360 degree panoramic photo of the Apo Summit:

http://www.virtualphilippines.net/Panoramas/H4L/Apo/Apo_Summit_Crater.html 

Soon after arriving back at camp we realized that some of us had gotten terribly sunburned.  I applied sunscreen twice throughout the day, and was still pretty pink.  Those who went without, including one who decided to do some sunbathing at the summit, were really red.  In general, the sun in the Philippines is not to be toyed with.  But out in the open all day at high altitude is another story.  Many of the lighter skinned Filipinos were even sunburned, spawning a slew of jokes about the “Hike for Sunburn.”  Wearing sunglasses indoors to cover her peeling skin at our company retreat the next weekend my coworker, Chinie, began with “Hi I’m Chinie, and, I’m not blind…”

That evening a number of hikers showed up and shared the nursery campsite with us.  They seemed like a pretty normal group of hikers, other than the fact that about 5 of them were carrying M16s.  You know, just out for a hike with my M16.  No big deal.

On the way back down the next morning, I was hiking leisurely with my new buddy, Rhonson, learning how to say silly and inappropriate things in the local dialect.  As we neared the base of the trail, a loud explosion in the distance shattered the calm forest atmosphere. It sounded almost like a gunshot, but seemed too loud.  We all stopped and looked at each other, not knowing what to do.  We didn’t really have much choice, and continued walking down the trail.  It was just one shot, and didn’t sound like a struggle or anything more serious.  As we proceeded down the trail, we heard about 3 more solitary BOOMS of increasing volume.  Clearly we were heading towards the noise, and I had forgotten to bring my M16.  This was all a bit unsettling, but the Filipinos in our group seemed not to think it was a big deal.

When we finally reached the trail head we found that the source of the commotion was a military gathering (government troops) saluting one of their generals by firing off blank cannon rounds.  The soldiers turned out to be very cool guys who were about to set off on a hiking/tree planting expedition.  They were even interested in purchasing some of our solar lanterns for nightly patrols.

We spent that night back at the same hotel in Davao, and caught our return flight to Manila the next day.

 

Here ends the Hike for Light series of the DannyPIAPhilippines blog.  For those of you that tuned in just for this stint, thanks for reading.  For those that were more interested in Boracay weddings and posts of that sort, stay tuned for the next blog:

http://www.malasimbofestival.com/

Yes, that weekend was another win.