by John Muir
CHAPTER 10
DAET WELCOMING
DAET, CAMARINES NORTE
T.A. woke as the bus stopped. Through tired eyes he looked out the window and blinked at the brightness of the lights. He wondered if this was Daet. He sat forward to look over the passenger seats in front of him. The driver was looking straight back at him and nodded once pointing his lips in Filipino style toward the building outside. Yes, it was a Caltex petrol station where they were to be met. Hopefully it was Daet and there was only one Caltex station.
T.A. stirred the sleeping Malou, folded the towel and began stuffing the carry-on bag with things they had removed. Despite the fact he had consumed drinks, cakes of chocolate and other munchies from the bag; dropped the wrappings and refuse on the floor of the bus, there still seemed more than would easily fit. By the time he had organised himself and Malou to dismount from the bus, the driver had removed his cases from the baggage compartment. T.A. wondered how he knew which bags to remove as there was no obvious labelling.
The German couple that sat behind them and the two Arabs he had seen arguing were already outside the bus. He wondered if they too were going to Apuao Grande. Before he had the chance to nod to the German woman, she and her companion had picked up their backpacks and began walking back in the direction from which the bus had come. The two Arabs grabbed their backpacks and without even looking in his direction walked forward in the opposite direction to the Germans. Malou and T.A. stood watching as the driver retook his seat. As if pulling out of pit lane in a racing car, the bus roared back out onto the road, ignoring and narrowly missing an oncoming tricycle.
The service station was larger than T.A. expected. He was surprised at the number of people hanging around for that time of the morning. He checked his watch; it was only 3:00A.M., earlier than they were supposed to arrive. Or was it? Now uncertain about the time the journey was supposed to take and combined with the uncertainties about the proper departure and arrival time, T.A. did not know whether they were early or late. Also he could not understand why all the people standing around were not at home in bed?
He looked up and down this main street and noticed it was all tarsealed. Apart from the few weak street lights, the service station was the only night life he could see. Perhaps that was the reason so many locals gathered here. There seemed to be nothing else to do. Yet this city had been the scene of the big gun battle between the Philippine soldiers and the NPA.
Nobody approached them as he expected. He picked up the baggage and walked inside the front door of the station thinking their host might be inside. No-one came forward identifying themselves as being from the Apuao Grande Swagman resort.
"Darling, perhaps you'd better ask where the person from Swagman Resort is," suggested T.A.
T.A. watched as Malou asked one man, then a succession of others without obvious success in any form of common language. Each time she had to ask in both of the two Filipino languages she knew, trying in Tagalog then in Visayan. Finally she spoke to someone who seemed to understand what she was asking.
"What's wrong?" asked T.A.
"Oh nothing, it's just that most of the people here don't speak Tagalog or Visayan."
"Well, what do they speak?"
"We're in Bicol Province now, and their language is Bicolano. I don't understand it. The language is a lot different. A few words are the same but with different meanings."
"I thought your wonderful President Marcos had created a single language for all the Philippines," said T.A. grinning.
Malou was still sleepy and in no mood for frivolity. She glared back at him.
"That man hasn't seen anyone here from Swagman. He said to take a tricycle to their office which is only a couple of blocks away."
"What good will that do?" asked T.A.
"The woman who runs the place lives upstairs."
"O.K., find out how much to take us there."
Malou returned to the same man.
"We'll just wait here while he finds a tricycle we can hire."
"What's wrong with these ones here?"
"It's not the same. He has to drive a bargain to get the best deal for him to make some profit."
"Gawd, what ever happened to good old fashioned courtesy."
Again he got the glare. He would be stupid to labour the point. They were both tired and tiredness meant short tempers with both of them.
Negotiations were surprisingly swift. A young tricycle owner proudly fired up his tricycle and rode it over to where their baggage sat. He struggled as he tried to lift the first bag onto the tray on the back of his bike. Being of smaller stature and about half T.A.'s weight, to him, it was heavy-weight baggage. T.A. picked the other up one-handed, with the intention of showing his strength, and casually threw it on top of the first.
Malou motioned to the little side car.
"You'll have to get in first, and I'll sit on your knee," she said.
Their weight, or rather T.A.'s weight, combined with that of the baggage, negated the young drivers attempt to show off the power of his machine. He stalled. He started it again, revved the engine and stalled again. At the third attempt the tricycle moved forward slowly. It brought cheering, laughter and applause from the spectators.
T.A. looked at the silent back streets they passed down before arriving at a boarded over shop front. A large sign was painted above the boards advertising "Swagman Tourist Resorts - Daet Branch." T.A. felt the presentation was a little ostentatious for a one-man, or rather one-woman branch.
Though the sign was extravagant, the rest of the building was not up to the same standard. It did not look too secure either. He quickly unloaded the baggage and paid twenty pesos to the driver who was obviously very satisfied for the reward of such a short trip. The driver flicked a very casual military salute and accelerated away. His now lightened bike spun its back wheels and roared off down the street back toward the service station. It must have felt like a wonderful display of power.
'Obviously there aren't any noise pollution laws enforced here at 3.15A.M.,' thought T.A.
There was no obvious sign of presence inside the Swagman Office. A dim light shone through a narrow gap between the two large boards protecting the front window. T.A. forcibly widened a larger gap between the boards and saw the low powered lamp on the desk inside. It had been left on for security purposes. There were no other signs of life. The office did however look smart. Various large travel posters decorated the walls and it was finished off using a soft blue decor. He stretched his full height to look over the back of a sofa in case the resident was asleep on it, but could not see anything.
He tried tapping, quietly at first, on the window. Each series of taps got heavier and louder, but he soon realised if there was anyone in the office they must be dead.
"Obviously nobody sleeping there," he said. He stepped back a couple of paces and looked up to the windows above the office. No lights on there either.
"What do you think?" asked T.A..
"Maybe there's another Caltex service station," suggested Malou.
"I'll toss a few small pebbles at the window to see if I can rouse someone."
"Don't break the glass," Malou grinned.
He thought how it would read in the papers at home. "KIWI VANDALISES QUIET FILIPINO TOWNSHIP ON WINDOW SMASHING SPREE."
That would be all right if Aussies got the blame. But he was no longer living there. He was back in New Zealand.
T.A carefully chose very small pebbles in case the glass was lower quality. He had several successes hitting the window. The noise still did not raise any human life form. He knew that throwing any harder might get the result he was not seeking.
"You may be right," he said to Malou. "Perhaps there is another Caltex station. But who stays here to look after the bags? If I go back to the station I don't speak anything except English."
"I'll go back," offered Malou, "but let's just wait a while."
As if in answer to the problem of transport, the same tricycle dri
ver roared down the street and stopped when Malou signalled. An animated conversation followed with hands being pointed in different directions. It made no sense to T.A.
"It was lucky that he was passing." said T.A.
"No, he came back to see how we were getting on."
"Thank him, and ask if he will take you back the station."
"He will, give me some money."
T.A. gave her some pesos.
"Be careful," said T.A.
"I'll be O.K," she replied.
She slid into the sidecar. The young driver slowly turned his bike back in the direction of the service station then roared away with little diminution in power with Malou's light weight aboard.
T.A., now alone, looked up and down the street. No building was more than two stories high. The footpaths were barely describable as such. He wondered where the restaurant was where the gun-battle had taken place. Wooden telephone poles were irregularly placed and occasionally topped with a low powered street light. Insecure and unsafe looking electric wiring linked them together, with even flimsier looking connections into each residence. The shutters across most of the windows were for monsoon protection, but they did not look too secure either.
Although the roads were not sealed down this street the constant traffic had compacted the dirt as hard as any concrete. Despite the hardness, there were a large number of potholes.
T.A. was thankful the still night air was cool. The lack of a breeze was leaving the talcum powder fine dust covering the road undisturbed. He had been places where the breezes whipped the dust off the road to such an extent that it was impossible to see more than a few yards. Handkerchiefs had to be stretched across the mouth to permit breathing without choking. In some other places he had found difficulty in breathing as in Pasay or Ermita in Metro Manila. There, the unrestricted exhaust fumes from excessive numbers of jeepneys, taxis and buses were worse when combined with swirling dust. It caused most people to cover their mouths with some protection. People did not use the sophisticated fitting masks that the Japanese and Taiwanese used. Here it was generally a handkerchief tied across the face looking like a bad guy in the cowboy western films.
He had often seen farm workers clinging precariously to overloaded trucks, sitting on top of a harvested crop, faces covered by a bandanna style cloth. They looked like formidable gangs of Mexican bandits that had carried out a hi-jack operation on the truck on which they were riding.
He snapped back from his thoughts on hearing the approach of the tricycle. Malou and her driver drew up alongside him.
"What's the story?" he asked.
"They said all the buses stop there."
"Yes, but is there another Caltex service station?"
"Yes, it's on the other side of the town, but this one is the closest to the Swagman office."
"Do the buses also stop at the other station?"
"I don't know, I didn't ask."
"I'm sure the woman where we bought the tickets said it was the first Caltex station where the bus always stops. What are we going to do now?"
"Apparently the office opens at 8:00A.M.," said Malou.
"Damn, that's over four hours away. I guess we don't have any choice."
T.A. began to think about what he was going to say to the Swagman management when he got the chance; assuming of course that he had not made the mistake by getting out at the wrong place.
"Do you want to go to the other station and find out if there is anyone there waiting for us?" asked T.A.
T.A. could see immediately that Malou looked uncomfortable at the suggestion. Before she had the chance to reply he jumped in.
"You don't have to go if you're sure you don't mind waiting here?"
"Can we just sit on the bags and wait?" asked Malou.
The tricycle rider meanwhile sat patiently on his switched off machine to see what their decision was.
"All right," agreed T.A., "We'll wait."
Malou took her cue from this statement and spoke to the rider. The young man gave T.A. a cursory nod, kicked down on the starter and powered off yet again back in the direction of the station.
"Didn't you pay him?" asked T.A.
"Yes, at the service station, he needed to buy petrol."
T.A. sat on his soft tube bag, pleased there was nothing breakable enclosed, apart from his well protected wrapped diving mask. He did not feel as tired as he had expected, but it still felt good to sit. Malou lay down on the second tube bag and was asleep within seconds. T.A. felt as if the quiet and darkness which surrounded them had made them invisible to all other human eyes.
It was not long before their invisibility was put to the test. A group of three teenagers on three high pitched Japanese motor cycles rode past in single file, apparently without seeing them. They turned right at the next block. T.A. was not sure whether they had gone on out of earshot or had stopped just around the corner. About fifteen minutes later his question was answered. All three youngsters, with three young females, pushed their three motor cycles back into the same street. For a while they just stood around chatting and occasionally laughing. A few minutes later, the youngsters kicked their bikes into life. With the girls mounted behind them, they roared off. T.A. wondered what they had been talking about. He was quite convinced the cyclists had no awareness of them being so close. The chance at being a fly on the wall to a private conversation had been lost the second time that evening because he did not understand the language being spoken. Malou was still asleep.