Well, first a little business. While ashore I had a chance to see how the
blog entries looked. Not so good I guess. I apologize for that, it looks
like words are running together and the format is all messed up. I write
these in Word on my laptop then copy/paste them into the ships email which
then sends them to the bolgger. I guess things are getting formatted
several times, but right now there is little I can do about it other than to
say I hope the entries are not to irritating to deal with.
Also if anyone is interested, email communication with the union is going
well. We will all leave the ship before the company, ship and union come to
agreements, but I have a feeling every single unlicensed person aboard this
ship will be getting back pay in the mail for one reason or another. There
were that many complaints of contract violations.
Last business note – I am again working OT. I only took two days off, but
figured I punished them enough LOL…
Okay… on with it already.
So I only had about 6 hours to enjoy Subic Bay, from 8:30 am to about 10am I
spent my time trying to just get out of the container terminal. Eventually
I managed to get a taxi to take me into town. It turns out Subic Bay is
pretty much just the bay and not a city unto its self. I guess I should
have known that before hand. But the bay is surrounded by what is called
the free zone. All the docks, duty free shopping, yacht clubs and the nicer
hotels are in the free zone.
My driver Ed took me into Olongapo, the first town outside of the Free Zone.
This is a very busy place and traffic was crazy but they do drive on the
right side of the road -sometimes. My first stop was an internet café. The
internet in the Philippines leaves a lot to be desired, at least at the
street level shops in Olongapo. I was knocked off line about every 2
minutes. I eventually walked several blocks to find another internet café,
this one was run by gamers, who clearly were engaged heavily in destroying
the Minions of Alticor the Damned or something and I was quite the bother to
them, but they did get me set up after a while. Unfortunate though that
when I was done, I tried paying them during a very voracious battle. I
think I was due some change back, but I thought better of asking for it, I
just high tailed it out of there.
Having had the chance to chat with my sweetheart back home, I decided I was
hungry. So for the first time in my travels I decided to eat Kentucky Fried
Chicken. The ships food this trip has been terrible and the water worse,
so I figured I would just play it safe and go American.
I was greeted at KFC by a door man. At first I thought he was just leaving
and held the door open for me, but turns out, operating the easily hinged
swinging device was his job at KFC. I would soon learn he had another job.
I studied the menu for a while and decided I would get the 2 piece meal.
That was the largest meal other than ordering a bucket.
I took my tray to a table and began to eat, I apparently ordered the extra
spicy and crispy chicken with out even knowing it, that was just good
fortune. There was a little side of gravy on my tray and a biscuit all
wrapped up in that KFC picnic blanket pattern paper. I un-wrapped my
biscuit only to find out it was a ball of rice. Only an idiot from
Vancouver, WA would think he would get a rice free meal in the Philippines.
I was just about to take a bite of a chicken leg, when suddenly a dirty and
mostly toothless man appeared over my head.
This man was obviously mentally challenged and spoke in vowels. Well, to be
fair there were several W and M sounds as well. I am sure he was asking for
a hand out, but he surprised me just being over me all of a sudden. I
noticed a very large pool of saliva in the corner of his mouth, and it was
dangerously close to spilling out. I didn't know if I should hand him a
couple pesos real fast, or to protect my chicken from an almost certain
tidal wave of gushing saliva. Tilt his head just a little bit more and my
chicken was a goner. I decided I should take a look around real fast to see
how the locals were reacting to this situation. Judging from their looks,
or perhaps it was my selfish hunger, I decided to protect the chicken.
Just as I was about to hunch over my food, leaving the back of my shoulder
to take the sloppy bullet should it fire, the Door Man showed up and ushered
the guy out of the restaurant. So I ate and looked at the people around me.
It would appear, they too would have protected the chicken.
As I left the KFC I ran into Tidal Saliva Sam and offered him 20 pesos. The
rest of the day was very uneventful, eventually I got Ed the driver to pick
me up, I bought him a soda and I downed two beers, and then went back to the
ship. We sailed a few hours later.
It is about 26 hours now since we sailed from Subic Bay. We are about 300
miles from Viet Nam which is currently the closest land. We are headed to
Singapore where Monday we will all fly home.
I got off watch just a few minutes ago, but I saw some crazy bowl people out
there on the sea just a little while ago. Okay, you're asking "What are
bowl people?" Okay everyone but Tim is asking that question.
So I spot a vessel on the horizon crossing our bow from port to starboard.
After a while it is clear that it had slowed to a near stop in our path. I
steer 6 degrees to the left to avoid hitting what we now know is a dow (okay
I have no idea how to spell dow). Any way this was a fairly large wooden
vessel all pieced together with branches to make a rooftop. It looked like
10 people could live on it comfortably, but I suspect it was the permanent
home of at least 20 some people.
They were dropping off giant bowls, each containing one person. They
dropped off about 4 of these bowls and then just sailed away from them. The
people in the bowls just drifted on the sea with no discernable way to steer
these things as far as I could see. The Mate told me he had seen a National
Geographic on these people. These people get dropped off to fish and with
luck they are found again and picked up.
It did not take long for me to loose sight of the men in the bowls even
though they were fairly close. The bowls themselves were very hard to see.
After sundown we began to see many of them. They had sticks that appeared
to be smoldering and glowed in the dark. This has to be how they are found
and picked up. Even though they had the lit sticks, their light was very
dim. Several that we spotted could have been run over by our ship had they
been directly ahead of us. Some were way to close by they time we could see
them.
Any way I thought this was interesting. I would write a little more about
them, but it is late, time for bed and my fingers are having a hard time
typing now LOL…
Take care and good nite all.
Jesse
I was just in Olongapo. I sooooo know what you are talking about.
ReplyDeleteBe careful out there.
b