ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Improvements in the speed, comfort, and choices in travel have given more Filipinos greater opportunities to visit other places. Vigorous efforts by the tourism and travel industries enhanced these opportunities with packages at bargain prices or with extra amenities.
In most cases what prevents most people from grabbing their traveling bag is lack of money. That and traveling companions. Many Filipinos hate to travel alone and would think twice about going some place where they don't know a soul. There's something about feeling like a fish out of water that intimidates us.
Traveling to Metro Manila, for example, is not something that my colleagues and I relish even though this has become part of our jobs. The traffic, the crime, and pollution that plague this metropolis jungle daunt us. Stories of friends being mugged in a street corner, stiffed by taxi drivers, and robbed in crowded shopping malls haunt us. There is an added hazard for young women who travel alone. I was roused by a male caller who wanted to be my phone pal -- at three o' clock in the morning! A cardboard sign in the dresser warned hotel guests of the high incidence of strangers calling to solicit or arrange appointments. Still, I was pissed with the front desk for not screening phone calls at such ungodly hours.
Of course, Cebu has its share of traffic, dishonest taxi drivers, pickpockets, con men, pimps, and whathaveyou's. But we are treading on familiar ground here so we are more or less secure with our surroundings. Not so when we are traveling, and venturing alone amplifies the feeling of helplessness.
Even without these hazards, wandering into unfamiliar territory is very disorienting. The outcome is usually a series of comedy of errors. Had a lot of close calls in Malaysia where they drive on the left side of the road, British style, because I was brought up to look left, right and left before crossing a street, American style. On another trip, taking the Manila LRT was a memorable experience for our mixed group of Cebuanos and Ilonggos who were not briefed on the procedure of buying tokens at a booth and then inserting these into the slot to get through the turnstile. Situations like these could be avoided if we ask first or observe the people around us.
At times our way of coping is to do our darnest not to look like the babes in the woods we are, with mixed results. At the subway in Washington D.C. my friend and I had a heated argument over which train to take to the Smithsonian Institution -- the green, blue, yellow or orange track. I insisted she ask somebody since she has lived in New York for a year, but she insisted that I can communicate in English better. None of us would admit we were too proud to ask a stranger for directions. In the meantime trains were coming and going every five minutes. The impasse was broken by an African-American lady who overheard us hurling insults at each other in Bisaya and Tagalog, figured we were lost and directed us to the right track.
There are many gadgets and contraptions in big cities that turn us into klutzes. Like pay phones and card phones, hand dryers, vending machines, self-opening doors, and card keys not only to open a hotel room but also to activate its lights and TV. There's this guy at the phone booth outside National in Mango Avenue who kept shouting over the phone not knowing that he must press the "Talk" button first so he can be heard over the line. I couldn't help clapping my hands when a friend showed me the special escalator for shopping carts in a grocery in Hong Kong. And when my host in California shoved a glass in the hollow space of his ref and ice cubes came out. Wow!
Nothing beats plumbing, or to be exact, toilet and bathroom fixtures. Artists and engineers constantly try to outdo themselves over form and function with odd results: faucet handles that look like doorknobs if they have handles at all. The first time I came across a bathroom stall in a hotel that had only one silver knob for hot and cold water, shower and faucet, I thought "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." In Disneyworld panic gripped me when after I did my little business I couldn't find the flush handle. Lasers are the latest thing in toilets. When I got up the toilet flushed automatically. Amazed, I did this a few more times, sitting down then standing up, to observe this wonder. And people wondered why I wore a silly grin on my face when I came out. A colleague faced the same dilemma when she visited our state-of-the-art head office in Mandaluyong. She also couldn't locate the flush, an unobtrusive button on the floor. Seeing the stainless metal box for tampons and sanitary napkins she whispered to it "I'm finished."
By the way, when traveling abroad, don't ask for the CR or comfort room. That term is used only in the Philippines.
September 11, 1998