26 – Smoke on the Water

The PNVSCA is the organisation that oversees all volunteers in the Philippines. Each year they organise a gathering of volunteers as an opportunity to network and share experiences. The Volunteer sharing session for the Visayas was held in Cebu last week. Due to the Global Financial Crisis, the AYAD budget wouldn’t stretch to fly us all there so we were asked to get there by bus and ferry. We were actually quite excited by the prospect of a road trip and seeing a bit more of the landscape …. but we didn’t expect we would end up seeing so much!

We got a bus 3 hours over the mountains to San Carlos where the bus drives onto the ferry for the trip across the water to the island of Cebu. We were all aboard the ferry and had made our way to the upper deck when all of a sudden a crewman came running across the deck shouting something in Cebuano (the language is different on the other side of the island). Then he saw us and repeated it in English: “Fire!” … and then almost as an afterthought “But don’t panic!”. We were just thankful that the ferry had not yet left the port and everyone swiftly evacuated the burning ferry. The irony was … it was a liferaft that had been positioned close to the exhaust that had caught alight. We looked on from the wharf as the fire brigade extinguished the flames and cleaned up. The crew thought it would still be fine to make the trip but the coast guard wouldn’t give the clearance. There were no more ferrys that day.

The three of us looked at one another wondering what we were going to do. Then a friendly middle aged tyre salesman, who had translated for us what was going on, said we could go with him. He was planning on driving to the next port (4 hours south), getting a “Roro” (a car ferry) and then driving a further 4 hours to Cebu city. We quickly assessed the situation: 3 of us one of him and we’d just learned that our new flatmate Rachael is quite adept at castrating bulls from her days as a Jillaroo on a cattle station in the Northern Territory! We’d be fine! By this time however, the sun was already setting. We wouldn’t get to Cebu until 1am. So on second thoughts our new friend decided we’d be better off staying overnight in San Carlos and getting the first ferry the following morning. We thought this was a good idea. Until … we went to get the ferry the following morning and the ferry was still not cleared to do the trip. So it was back to plan A. We were much more comfortable getting a lift with “Boy” after getting to know him a bit over dinner and a few beers the night before. He was on his way home to Cebu after a business trip around the islands of Negros and Panay.

Yet again we experienced the incredible hospitality of the Filipino. When we said we wanted to offer him something for helping us he said “when you’re back in your country, one day you might come across a Filipino who needs your help”.

But luck was just not on our side. Part way into the journey we got stuck behind a cane truck that had broken down in the middle of a 1 lane bridge! Long story short, we eventually reached Cebu just as the volunteer sharing session was coming to a close!

At least we made it in time for the social part of the program which was, of course, an evening of Karaoke! The “Tim Tam Trio” from Bacolod (The Downunder Duo has morphed into the Tim Tam Trio with the addition of new flatmate Rachael!) made their debut with a rendition of “Smoke on the Water”.

We were quite amused when we later discovered this month is National Fire Prevention month! And a further irony is that when we received our travel allowance, it would have been enough to fly us there and back after all! But we had an adventure and a story to tell!

The majority of volunteers in the Philippines are U.S. Peace Corp which is similar in some ways to the AYAD program. They are usually here for longer and have an intensive language training at the beginning, but the down side is they don’t have much choice in the type of work they do. There are a fair number of Korean and Japanese volunteers, the odd European and a handful of internal Filipino volunteers. It was nice to discover that there are actually 3 U.S. Peace Corp volunteers based in Bacolod that we didn’t know about.

So basically, we found ourselves at the beginning of the weekend, no need to be back in Bacolod until Sunday night and on an island we hadn’t explored yet … we headed for the beach at Malapascua. Funnily enough, we never seem to tire of palm fringed white sand beaches, clear blue water full of fish and delicious fresh mango shakes! The highlight this time was snorkelling over a wrecked Japanese warship and seeing a 2m long black and white stripped sea snake.