2016/06 Costar - Cebu 2016
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2016/06 Costar - Cebu 2016
| By Costar on Monday, June 06, 2016 - 05:21 am: Edit |
"Hi, sir!"
Fair warning: I didn't score in Cebu. This is just some general information that I picked up, and lessons learned. (Yawn.)
The Philippines is a place for guys who have the time to spend here. It takes a while to find the right groove. To get a young, good-looking, tattoo-free girl like I want (a Christine Gambito type), it's not a strictly transaction-oriented P4P scene like Thailand. (This site has copious information on such venues in the PI, so I won't mention them here except to warn you that gonorrhea is rampant in those places.)
For the uninitiated: you know you're in a different place as soon as you step off the plane because the girls make eye contact and smile. If you say "hi" they say "hi" back. Hmm. This place has potential.
(By the way, the Filipino guys look tough and grumpy (unfriendly), but if you say hi or ask a question they are happy to converse, and they usually crack a sincere smile. They are friendly. This is excellent detox for an LA-dweller accustomed to Latinos trying to pick fights all the time. Filipinos and Latinos look very similar, but their cultures are worlds apart, of course.)
ON-LINE RESOURCES:
The information on this guy's undated pages seems pretty current: http://www.nightlife-cebu.com There's more out there; just web-search for Cebu. Also see Popcorn's reports to get the general feel of the PI. ("General feel" <--LOL That's a good one. 
)
MEETING ON-LINE: You can start this weeks in advance of your trip.
DateInAsia.com was disappointing. When I got to Cebu I updated my profile and got: "Your profile is pending approval and is not yet visible to other members. This may take some time. Please make sure that everything in your profile is OK, as this will speed up the approval process." I had just added some Cebuano words and supposed that one of them might have tripped their profanity filter. I backed out all the changes, but I was still "under review" for days during a critical time when I was in Cebu: I had been about to throw in the towel on Cebu when I started closing in on some of the nicer girls I had met on DIA --we were going to meet the day that this occurred, so this was like the last straw. The site should be named WildGooseChase.com. Or maybe CarrotOnaStick.com.
Facebook: You don't have to use your name. You can sign up with your PI phone number. The girls all use Facebook.
BAR-HOPPING:
Freelancers at Mango Square: all skanks and lady-boys. In contrast to Thailand, the lady-boys here universally lie about being lady-boys, i.e., they insist that they're girls. So watch out.
Bikini bars: all skanks.
THE FOOD IS GROSS.
That kind of surprised me because I had heard that the food is good in Cebu.
Sidebar: Once upon a time I worked in downtown Oakland (California). There was a Filipino grandma running a little hole-in-the-wall lunch buffet with delicious Filipino food. Pancit, etc. It was a mess; if you saw it sober, you'd never eat it, but it was wonderfully delicious. It was several blocks away but I made the hike whenever I could. So I was hoping for similar grub in Cebu.
Not much to elaborate on. I starved. A couple of times I saw a hot black lumpy substance that I thought was black beans --Mexican fare. Oh, boy! Food! The first time it turned out to be "squid ink." The other time it was "pig's blood." The food courts (at Robinson's etc.) have flies crawling on the food. I just had fresh fruit for breakfast (good local mangos) and subsisted on chicken and rice from Tik-til-aok otherwise. That's Tagalog for "cock-a-doodle-do," and the food seemed sanitary enough.
CLOSE ONE?
I've never felt that I was in danger of being robbed or assaulted in the Philippines. But there have been times in Cebu and Makati that the Filipinos that I was with cautioned me to get my camera out of sight. So I did.
Heading home one night about 11 p.m., I strolled by the Mango Square bars just to hear some live music. I then moseyed on, brushing off lady-boys as I went. A taxi slowed and stopped with the front passenger-side window rolled down. The driver leaned over and the conversation ensued:
HIM: You want young girl?
ME: How young?
HIM: Eighteen.
ME: You sure?
[I don't know whether this is just in Cebu or all over the PI, but there is a serious crack-down --with teeth in it-- going after those who seek sex with minors. There are sting operations (traps), round-ups, a free hot-line etc. Your Fourth Amendment rights don't mean anything here. If you tangle with the cops for any reason, they will look through all the pictures in your camera. (Don't worry about the kind of photos that appear on this site.) Any confrontations with Filipino police will result in them making many photos of your passport and driver's license with their cell phones --to do God-knows-what with in the future.]
HIM: Yes, sure.
It was my journalistic duty as a CH reporter to investigate. 
So I got in the front seat.
The further we went, the less populated and more dimly lit it got. Finally he slowed down and stopped in the creepiest neighborhood that I've seen in the PI. Whoa. There were two- and three-story buildings lining the street, but they were dark and shuttered. It looked like an abandoned movie set, the kind of place where they would film a post-apocalyptic episode of The Twilight Zone.
There was enough light from the distant amber street lamps that I could begin to appreciate the creepiness of the driver's countenance. He had a thin, pale face, like a corpse with weasel-teeth protruding over his lower lip. Reminded me of Christopher Lee doing Dracula.
It was kind of like the early scene in Scarface where Tony Montana (Al Pacino) and his compadres enter that cheesy hotel room to buy the two kilos of coke. That cockeyed guy answers the door and then you see that hag with painted-on lips lying on the bed (who later turned out to be hiding a submachine gun under the pillow). You just know something's wrong.
Then I noticed that he hadn't turned the meter on --the first time that that's happened in Cebu. Great.
HIM: Give me a thousand dollars.
ME: What? I don't have a thousand dollars.
HIM: A thousand pesos.
ME: I don't have a thousand pesos. [<--Lie. I had about ten thousand on me.]
I fished a 100-peso note out of my wallet to pay him for the ride before I realized that it might have been a mistake to display the wallet. I gave him the 100 pesos (which was easily more than what would have been on the meter). Then I tried to open the door and discovered that it had been made to not open from the inside. Great. The inside part of my door was in total darkness --pitch black. I fumbled to find the window control. Some of the cars here still have the old fashioned manual crank, but my fingers found an electric window switch and it worked. I rolled the window down just enough to get my arms out and open the door from the outside, but couldn't because the door was locked. (This was a Toyota and it might have locked the doors automatically when the car started moving. But this car seemed way too old to have that feature.)
I also realized it was a gamble to reach out the window with both arms and expose my back to him. I was wearing a Judo T-shirt with a picture of a gi on the back. Plus I had a good thirty pounds on this guy. Those factors may have given him pause, but I doubt they would have if he'd really had a weapon as I feared. I fumbled for the door lock and got it unlocked, reached out again, and let myself out.
Now I was in the middle of butt-fuck Egypt, quickly back-tracking on foot across the abandoned movie set in near darkness. The sidewalks had hard-to-see steps and holes, and I tripped a few times. A few times I passed another darkened figure (or two), sometimes a reclining one, hopefully still alive.
I sought lighted, populated areas. I had memorized the license plate of the taxi. He made a U-turn to pursue (perhaps after finding his "popper"?) and he stopped just in front of me, so I crossed the street behind him. It was kind of a fun little game of cat-and-mouse now, all downhill at this point.
I stopped and placed a bet at a crowded gambling game where they tossed a volley ball into a net, and the ball would eventually settle on one of the numbered squares at the center of the net. Then I caught a jeepney ride home for seven pesos. Once again, I made it back with both kidneys.
HERE'S TO THE PAL GRUNTS AT MNL:
When I packed it in to go home, neither Cebu Pacific nor Philippine Airlines had a direct flight to Bangkok. I had to connect in Manila (MNL). Naturally I scheduled to minimize my layover in MNL. On departure day, my CEB-MNL flight was delayed over an hour. Worse, they moved the MNL-BKK flight a half-hour earlier! 8-[] Looked like I might have to spend a night in Manila and the luggage I checked in at CEB would be who-knows-where.
We finally got airborne. When we landed at MNL and I walked through the oppressive heat of the jet bridge, I was greeted by a lady holding a sign with my name and "BANGKOK" and the flight number. Could I still make it home today? Or would I stop over in Makati and catch something?
She led me on a very brisk walk out of the terminal and into another. With her uniform and credentials we skipped lines and passed through checkpoints. I walked right onto the plane without even sitting down in MNL. (Too bad it can't always be that way!) I resigned to my checked bags not making it; that was a laugh at this point. But I kept telling myself they would, just to try on a positive mental attitude. But I also resigned heading directly to Pattaya to spend a few days there. I would wait for my bags in Bangkok first.
After going through immigration in BKK, I went to the luggage carousel just as a formality. I stood there for about one minute and, with jaw dropped, saw both my bags pop out! Unbelievable! 
| By Redbus on Tuesday, June 07, 2016 - 11:53 am: Edit |
Nice report on how to avoid scams, shame you didn't score I'll check out the website link.
| By Costar on Monday, June 27, 2016 - 08:08 pm: Edit |
P.S. This addendum is for anyone who flies into the PI from Thailand.
Recently I also flew Cebu Pacific to Cebu (connecting in Manila). Their incompetent Thai employee (in BKK) assured me that my luggage was checked all the way through to Cebu. The tags that he put on them said CEB.
When I got to CEB, no luggage. They told me I was supposed to have gotten my bags at MNL (Manila) to go through customs. And that it would now take three or four days to get them to me in Cebu. 
Incompetence is common everywhere, but in Thailand you live with it every day, and you just have to get used to it.
Not surprised in what you've shared CS. Not all Filipino's are cool, that's for certain and some area's are totally off limits. Cebu has for sometime now been aggressively targeting anyone they believe is there on a P2P visit. My gf and I have been harnessed in Cebu on more than one occasion. If she didn't have a Postal ID reflecting he residence in Mindanao I'm not sure how far things would have gone. Nice beaches but the mongering action is very limited. Wouldn't recommend traveling there unless you had a stunner lined up and she was open for whatever!
Costar;
Glad you had no problems on this trip but i have to say that getting in a taxi with no notion where is going and just with the illusion of finding a "young girl" at the end of such yellow brick road was dumb to put it that way.
It pays to think with the head; which is on your shoulders; and not with your pecker. life is damn cheap in Asia and in the Philippines is a sick reality.
Hope you learn something out of it and didn't loose your "kidneys" !!!!!
| By Costar on Sunday, June 11, 2017 - 08:57 am: Edit |
Yep. At the time I was feeling adventuresome but "dumb" is the proper term. I felt more dumb than adventuresome upon discovering that the door had been rigged to not open from the inside, lemme tell ya! 