I think the Philippines was a first for me. Since moving out to Asia and diving into the ultimate scene, I have met many, many Filipinos. Thanks to the miracle of WhatsApp, one of my Manila acquaintances has become one of my closer friends over here. The Filipino travelers I have met have been universally very fun-loving and nice and I'd very much enjoyed my exposure to Filipino culture abroad. Thus seeing Manila Spirits on our tournament schedule brought me much excitement and I wondered if I would be entering a metropolis full of awesome fun people. I can't recall ever having gone into a country for an initial visit having previously met so many of its citizens.
Over two full teams of Hong Kong players went to this tournament and over a dozen were on my Cebu Pacific flight. Manila is just two hours southeast of Hong Kong and the flights in between are even cheaper than the flight time would indicate. A trip of similar length to Shanghai would cost about $2000 but I knew people who found deals for around $800 HKD to Manila. The explanations for these price differences could be explained in an economics paper about supply and demand and international economics and suffice to say are outside the scope of this blog.
Passing immigration, we went through a No "Wang Wang" Zone, which no one has as yet properly explained to me. Since we weren't stopped, I guess none of us Wang Wanged. Stepping outside of the airport was a reminder that though the flight was so short, the climate change was quite severe. I had heard that the traffic in Manila was bad, but I wasn't prepared for our cab ride from airport to hotel to take over an hour, at 10pm on a Friday. I had googlemapped the address at work and it showed a driving time of 15 minutes. Immediately I was depressed - how could people live in a city of such poor traffic? Manila does have a rapid transit, as well as jeepneys (more on this later), but I got the impression from talking to residents that getting around was a huge pain that people do need to plan around. It all made me more thankful to be living in Hong Kong.
When we reached our hotel off of Makati Avenue, we discovered a large festival going on immediately in front of our hotel. It turns out that every Friday night a delicious bazaar of food and music takes place right there. We checked into our rooms, Catherine Gainey, Juho and I, and dropped our bags off, briefly debated attending the tournament registration party but as it was already we late, we headed downstairs to check out the bazaar. Beers at 7eleven were inhumanely cheap to the extent where I exclaimed my amazement that "beer is free in the Philippines." The bazaar had delicious pork belly cut while I bought a kebob and enjoyed a small live band covering American pop songs. American music is evidently very popular in the Philippines and I noted that the first 15 songs I heard were all pop songs that I knew and liked. When we had sat down and started the beer and pork, I laid back and listened to the Filipino singer performing Taylor Swift, I suddenly felt truly happy. The vibes emanating from that square in Manila were so pure and positive and joyous that I couldn't help but get really sappy wonder when I last felt like that. There's something simple and great about live music, travel, the excitement of a frisbee tournament the next day and the company of great friends.
A combination of bad traffic, long distance from the fields and early start times meant that we needed to meet at our rented vans at 6:30am. Just pass 6:30am, Gainey came screaming into our room asking what time it was. I looked at my phone, which had somehow not charged properly and died overnight. Ah crap. Somehow our teammates hadn't really remembered us either and the vans had left without us. We ran out the hotel and somehow bumped into Michael Hsu, who was staying at another hotel, and we fetched a cab who didn't know where the country club we were going was. Nonetheless we figured that he'd find the directions from his handlers, and after talking in Tagalog and asking "Alabang country club" at least 15 times, we felt pretty good. Half an hour later we pulled off the highway and our cab drove near a gate, then shouted at the security guard to ask where Alabang Country Club was. Uh oh. It seemed this guard didn't know. He proceeded to ask another 5 people, some of whom pointed him closer and closer to our eventual destination. Apparently the Country Club is a huge gated area and we needed to indicate that we were playing in a tournament there to enter. Michael Hsu shouted "Derek Ramsey" during these interactions, after the Filipino movie star who is well known to the population for playing ultimate.
We reached the fields with about ten minutes to gametime against the feared Boracay Dragons, a super beach team from the Philippine island of Boracay. The Dragons play with unbelievable flow and a bit of flair but their game is designed for the beach. We got some lucky breaks when they moved too fast for the own good and created some silly turnovers. Though they were the #1 seed in our pool, we beat them 9-7 in one of the biggest upsets of the tournament. We still ended up finishing last in our pool, getting drubbed by a great Taiwan team and a typically solid Singaporean DiscKnights squad. We won our crossover game over a young local Manila team but had already fallen out of our goal of a top 8 finish.
The vans were a great hire because catching a cab back from the fields were next to impossible. It was also a particularly exhausting tournament, with brutal sun that cut through my sunscreen, heat we weren't used to expecting in November and stiff competition. In most overseas the tournament, the consensus would be to have a huge dinner enjoying the local cuisine. In Manila, there was very little clamor of this nature. Though I enjoyed the chicken adobo they served at lunch, there's a reason there are very few Filipino restaurants worldwide. Even in Manila, the locals didn't seem to eat much Filipino food as there were chain restaurants everywhere. We ended up getting burritos at a Mexican restaurant. Most of the weekend was spent with my Junk teammates and while we would typically head to a tournament party early because we're so exhausted, this was Manila, home of the party happy Filipino ultimate players, and so we arrived late and left late. The theme was Mayan Apocalypse and there were some great costumes including Haz Mat suits and inferno demons, but the party may be remembered for the extravagant dragsters that performed. I had just arrived at the dance floor and just noticed the ladyboy lip synching when s/he left the stage and entered the crowd looking for some helpless soul to "drag." Of course s/he picked me. All I will say is that, well, sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. The night ended sometime after 3 and the next day started sometime before 6.
Ok so I wanted mainly to write about how similar the Philippines felt to America, but it seems I have digressed quite a bit. From the first taxi ride through the city, I was stunned by how the roads seemed of exactly the same construction as the roads back home. I could have been on I-95, Route 2, Route 66, stuck in traffic anywhere in the lower 48. The palm trees made me think California especially. It was the road signs (nearly all solely in English), the types of cars, the fast food chains (with a few unfamiliar faces hello Jollybee's) and the whole feel. It's interesting to think that our entire country could be transported across the ocean with the use of the same factories. Before this trip, I had seen very little in Asia that reminded me of America. It's fascinating to me how the Philippines could be an American colony for 40 years and absorb so much, whereas Hong Kong could be a British colony for 150 years (and up to very recently) and still not be very British. The fluency of English spoken by Manila residents was astounding (I didn't meet a single person I couldn't communicate in English with), way surpassing the level in Hong Kong. I'm at a loss to explain this linguistically, perhaps the previous exposure to Spanish helped, except to say that cultural diffusion is clearly not linear. I spoke with an American who had been living in Manila for 15 years and she explained that while Filipinos did love American music and culture, their own culture was still very Asian. Perhaps many of the similarities with America are superficial, but there's certainly something there.
The games on Sunday were difficult to say the least. Lincoln was so hungover he couldn't even warm up for our first game, much less play. Still, we had a memorable win by crushing a somewhat injured Beijing Big Brother team, the first time we'd beaten them in recent memory, and finished by beating a different solid Singaporean team. When I got the chance after play to look around, I realized that these fields were really quite beautiful. The large trees outlining the complex were like nothing I'd seen before, a cross between Banyan and Bonsai trees. When our play was done the place provided a joyful haven to relax in. Two pickup teams played in the tournament final and the team with a large contingent of states-based players won.
This Manila trip was far too short. It was only really in the ride to the airport that I saw the real poverty that I know exists there. Large shanty towns decked stretches of the shore beside the highway, the likes of which I had only briefly seen in India. Clearly there is much of the Philippines that isn't like the US that I haven't seen, and I hope I get the chance to in the near future. Until then, I'd like to write off into the sunset.
Over two full teams of Hong Kong players went to this tournament and over a dozen were on my Cebu Pacific flight. Manila is just two hours southeast of Hong Kong and the flights in between are even cheaper than the flight time would indicate. A trip of similar length to Shanghai would cost about $2000 but I knew people who found deals for around $800 HKD to Manila. The explanations for these price differences could be explained in an economics paper about supply and demand and international economics and suffice to say are outside the scope of this blog.
Passing immigration, we went through a No "Wang Wang" Zone, which no one has as yet properly explained to me. Since we weren't stopped, I guess none of us Wang Wanged. Stepping outside of the airport was a reminder that though the flight was so short, the climate change was quite severe. I had heard that the traffic in Manila was bad, but I wasn't prepared for our cab ride from airport to hotel to take over an hour, at 10pm on a Friday. I had googlemapped the address at work and it showed a driving time of 15 minutes. Immediately I was depressed - how could people live in a city of such poor traffic? Manila does have a rapid transit, as well as jeepneys (more on this later), but I got the impression from talking to residents that getting around was a huge pain that people do need to plan around. It all made me more thankful to be living in Hong Kong.
When we reached our hotel off of Makati Avenue, we discovered a large festival going on immediately in front of our hotel. It turns out that every Friday night a delicious bazaar of food and music takes place right there. We checked into our rooms, Catherine Gainey, Juho and I, and dropped our bags off, briefly debated attending the tournament registration party but as it was already we late, we headed downstairs to check out the bazaar. Beers at 7eleven were inhumanely cheap to the extent where I exclaimed my amazement that "beer is free in the Philippines." The bazaar had delicious pork belly cut while I bought a kebob and enjoyed a small live band covering American pop songs. American music is evidently very popular in the Philippines and I noted that the first 15 songs I heard were all pop songs that I knew and liked. When we had sat down and started the beer and pork, I laid back and listened to the Filipino singer performing Taylor Swift, I suddenly felt truly happy. The vibes emanating from that square in Manila were so pure and positive and joyous that I couldn't help but get really sappy wonder when I last felt like that. There's something simple and great about live music, travel, the excitement of a frisbee tournament the next day and the company of great friends.A combination of bad traffic, long distance from the fields and early start times meant that we needed to meet at our rented vans at 6:30am. Just pass 6:30am, Gainey came screaming into our room asking what time it was. I looked at my phone, which had somehow not charged properly and died overnight. Ah crap. Somehow our teammates hadn't really remembered us either and the vans had left without us. We ran out the hotel and somehow bumped into Michael Hsu, who was staying at another hotel, and we fetched a cab who didn't know where the country club we were going was. Nonetheless we figured that he'd find the directions from his handlers, and after talking in Tagalog and asking "Alabang country club" at least 15 times, we felt pretty good. Half an hour later we pulled off the highway and our cab drove near a gate, then shouted at the security guard to ask where Alabang Country Club was. Uh oh. It seemed this guard didn't know. He proceeded to ask another 5 people, some of whom pointed him closer and closer to our eventual destination. Apparently the Country Club is a huge gated area and we needed to indicate that we were playing in a tournament there to enter. Michael Hsu shouted "Derek Ramsey" during these interactions, after the Filipino movie star who is well known to the population for playing ultimate.
We reached the fields with about ten minutes to gametime against the feared Boracay Dragons, a super beach team from the Philippine island of Boracay. The Dragons play with unbelievable flow and a bit of flair but their game is designed for the beach. We got some lucky breaks when they moved too fast for the own good and created some silly turnovers. Though they were the #1 seed in our pool, we beat them 9-7 in one of the biggest upsets of the tournament. We still ended up finishing last in our pool, getting drubbed by a great Taiwan team and a typically solid Singaporean DiscKnights squad. We won our crossover game over a young local Manila team but had already fallen out of our goal of a top 8 finish.
The vans were a great hire because catching a cab back from the fields were next to impossible. It was also a particularly exhausting tournament, with brutal sun that cut through my sunscreen, heat we weren't used to expecting in November and stiff competition. In most overseas the tournament, the consensus would be to have a huge dinner enjoying the local cuisine. In Manila, there was very little clamor of this nature. Though I enjoyed the chicken adobo they served at lunch, there's a reason there are very few Filipino restaurants worldwide. Even in Manila, the locals didn't seem to eat much Filipino food as there were chain restaurants everywhere. We ended up getting burritos at a Mexican restaurant. Most of the weekend was spent with my Junk teammates and while we would typically head to a tournament party early because we're so exhausted, this was Manila, home of the party happy Filipino ultimate players, and so we arrived late and left late. The theme was Mayan Apocalypse and there were some great costumes including Haz Mat suits and inferno demons, but the party may be remembered for the extravagant dragsters that performed. I had just arrived at the dance floor and just noticed the ladyboy lip synching when s/he left the stage and entered the crowd looking for some helpless soul to "drag." Of course s/he picked me. All I will say is that, well, sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. The night ended sometime after 3 and the next day started sometime before 6.
Ok so I wanted mainly to write about how similar the Philippines felt to America, but it seems I have digressed quite a bit. From the first taxi ride through the city, I was stunned by how the roads seemed of exactly the same construction as the roads back home. I could have been on I-95, Route 2, Route 66, stuck in traffic anywhere in the lower 48. The palm trees made me think California especially. It was the road signs (nearly all solely in English), the types of cars, the fast food chains (with a few unfamiliar faces hello Jollybee's) and the whole feel. It's interesting to think that our entire country could be transported across the ocean with the use of the same factories. Before this trip, I had seen very little in Asia that reminded me of America. It's fascinating to me how the Philippines could be an American colony for 40 years and absorb so much, whereas Hong Kong could be a British colony for 150 years (and up to very recently) and still not be very British. The fluency of English spoken by Manila residents was astounding (I didn't meet a single person I couldn't communicate in English with), way surpassing the level in Hong Kong. I'm at a loss to explain this linguistically, perhaps the previous exposure to Spanish helped, except to say that cultural diffusion is clearly not linear. I spoke with an American who had been living in Manila for 15 years and she explained that while Filipinos did love American music and culture, their own culture was still very Asian. Perhaps many of the similarities with America are superficial, but there's certainly something there.
The games on Sunday were difficult to say the least. Lincoln was so hungover he couldn't even warm up for our first game, much less play. Still, we had a memorable win by crushing a somewhat injured Beijing Big Brother team, the first time we'd beaten them in recent memory, and finished by beating a different solid Singaporean team. When I got the chance after play to look around, I realized that these fields were really quite beautiful. The large trees outlining the complex were like nothing I'd seen before, a cross between Banyan and Bonsai trees. When our play was done the place provided a joyful haven to relax in. Two pickup teams played in the tournament final and the team with a large contingent of states-based players won.
This Manila trip was far too short. It was only really in the ride to the airport that I saw the real poverty that I know exists there. Large shanty towns decked stretches of the shore beside the highway, the likes of which I had only briefly seen in India. Clearly there is much of the Philippines that isn't like the US that I haven't seen, and I hope I get the chance to in the near future. Until then, I'd like to write off into the sunset.
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