El Viejo Viajero in Angeles City, PH...

Hi, y’all, welcome to the 4th episode of the ‘Viejo Viajero’ segment of my Hardie Karges YouTube channel, in which we’re visiting some local places in the Philippines. Today we’ll go to Angeles City. If Baguio is the city that America once built, then Angeles City is the city that Amerika built twice. Because this city is also known as Clark, from the previous Air Force base, as much as it is Angeles, from the previous Spanish. No, this ain’t LA, but I have heard it pronounced that way, the Spanish way, i.e. AN-hay-lays. So, the two are something of a twin city, the Clark Freeport Zone, and the city proper. And even then, that ‘city proper’ is a smattering and scattering of a healthy handful of independent towns and even more barangays thinly glued into a single metropolitan area, all independent of Clark. Or are they? Even though Angeles was once the nation’s capital, in 1899, the first year post-Spanish, I’d assume that was heavily influenced by the nearby military presence. And, if you take the bus from Baguio, you’ll get off the bus at the ‘old terminal’ at Dau, a barangay in Malabacat, which is closer to the famed Fields Avenue than Angeles itself. Yes, that’s the famous Fields Avenue, technically part of the Balibago Barangay, that stands for entertainment here in the Phils in the same way that Las Vegas stands for it in the good ‘ol USA. Or should I say “lies down for it?” because it’s no secret that this is Ground Zero for prostitution here in the same way that Pattaya does the dirty deed for Thailand. Almost everybody is in on the action. Still, that does make for some interesting bedfellows, pun intended, so, that means that Korea has carved out a little piece of the pie for itself here, and I suspect Japan the same, even if less obvious. The Chinese are ubiquitous all over Asia, of course, but they deserve their own consideration, given their historical prominence and dominance, not to mention their massive population. That means that their presence in the business community is larger than their actual population numbers would indicate, and that includes the modern-day scam centers which they specialize in these days and which they have exported to almost every country in SE Asia. They’re summarily executed for those activities in the mother country, but only deported here, and Myanmar, and Cambodia, and... you know. But for the average westerner, particularly American, Angeles—and Clark Airport—are a convenient alternative to Manila’s Aquino Airport, if your final destination is north of the Big City. Because Manila Airport is shambolic, where Angeles’ Clark Airport is more like Shangrila. That means that Manila’s airport is spread out over three disconnected smaller airports, while Clark is all to be found in only one. But, I know what you’re thinking; and the prices are the same. Cebu Pacific flies here for the same prices that they fly to Manila, and that includes international as well as domestic flight, to the best of my knowledge. So, if you’re coming down from Baguio, you can disembark at the airport and save any futher taxi fare, which would be about the same from any point in Angeles Metro area and only a few hours difference. Most of the worst traffic is in the Manila area, of course, with its 10M+ population, compared to Angeles’s cool half mil. Or you can take the bus all the way to Dau barangay from Baguio, for easiest access to the Fields Street entertainment district, also now known as ‘Red Street’; I wonder why, haha. If it’s any consolation, the Fields Street district is much calmer than Thailand’s Pattaya or almost any serious red-light district in Thailand. This ain’t Soi Cowboy or Nana, either, maybe more like Chiang Mai, with a mix of food and flesh on offer. But I prefer vegetarian. With Epstein in the news, the age of some of these girls is up to serious question. The claim could be made, of course, that the Philippines is trying to escape poverty the same way that Thailand once escaped poverty. And if that means blurring the lines of morality, then so be it. But I’m not sure about that. There are other ways to get kids off the street and into nice homes, and I don’t think prostitution is the way to do it. I prefer education, birth control and family planning. So, I spend more time walking to Koreatown and Clark Air Force Cemetery than lurking around Fields Street. They have some good malls, too, if that’s your thing, almost as Filipino as jeepneys now. They’ll keep you cool. But the real chill deal is to use Clark Airport as the jumping-off point to head north into the hills at Banaue and Sagada, where traditional culture lives on, or even Vigan, where colonial culture is king. It’s pretty nice, too, I’ll have to say. The guidebook disses and dismisses the town of Banaue itself as short on “ooh…aah” moments, but for my money I’d probably prefer it over Sagada. For one thing, it’s not so bad. For another, Sagada’s not so great. The rusty tin roofs that invite such scorn are present in both. Sagada I guess is groovier—with its reggae bars and yoghurt parlors and such—but that’s not why I’m here. Sagada also is a little pricier. Of course there’s no yogurt there in Banaue and the coffee sucks, too, so it’s a trade-off. Only the hotels gouge. How do you spell “authentic?” More importantly, though, the people in Banaue seem friendlier, downright effusive I’d say, though the people in Sagada are hardly sullen or surly. Sometimes these things are just cultural inheritances, Ingorot vs. Ifugao in this case I believe. The landscape is the big attraction after the caves, and it is nice. There are karst rock formations in addition to the wet rice paddies that are surrealistically beautiful, whether terraced or not, especially in sunlight. So the hippies and backpackers once again find a diamond in the rough and then put the word out that there’s a cool new place, and next thing you know, the leisure tourists are “discovering” it, after the backpackers have helped hone some of the rough edges and shown the locals what we white folk like. I’ve seen it over and over again. Quite a bit of the old Spanish architecture is still there in Vigan, but there’s more than that, because the old colonial culture is somehow embedded into the collective consciousness, too. They even have empanadas, albeit something of their own style. Other than that the cuisine follows themes present elsewhere in the Philippines. Maybe this is where there remain some Spanish speakers left over from the old days. Except for the “pero…pero…pero (but…but)” that punctuate modern spoken Pilipino/Tagalog, you might not know just how full of Spanish the language actually is. But like mitochondrial DNA, it’s there, floating without a nucleus down through history through the female lineage. That’s a metaphor. Spanish mostly occupies that middle level of the language that is not necessarily essential, but highly useful, the artifacts of culture, especially cuisine, but also including names dates and the hours of the day. It’s immediately obvious in the written language, albeit with some spelling changes. With cuisine, though, the original spellings tend to remain intact, more or less. So I had arrozcaldo for supper last night, good as any rice soup I’ve had anywhere in Asia or my own kitchen, and pandesal is a staple for continental-style breakfasts. Adobo is the national dish, but I’m not sure who copied whom. But that has nothing to do with the presyo dyaryo of rice. Everyone has Spanish surnamesm, though, with the possible exception of the Chinese. I guess you could get some interesting combinations there, maybe Wong-Garcia, or even Fong-Torres ... use your imagination. At one time Spanish must’ve played a role similar to that of English in the present. In fact I suspect even within my lifetime you could once have honestly said that “everyone in the Philippines knows Spanish.” But you can’t say that any more. I’ve heard tell of a group of speakers hanging on precariously somewhere in the archipelago, but I’m not sure if that’s current info. Will English eventually suffer the same fate? It probably depends on the evolution of their own national language. The more it develops as an educational medium, the less the need for English. Is edukasyon the solusyon, or would it kill the Philippines greatest asset? The Chinese are equally present in the Filipino cuisine, with such staples as sio pao and sio mai on every corner, and chau fan and lumpia in almost every restaurant. In general, though, the native culinary approach doesn’t differ much from that of up-country Thai, if not Thai restaurants abroad, meat and veggies in creative combinations over rice. They’ve even got sticky rice in very similar forms to that of the Thai. Too bad they don’t have brown rice in the restaurants. They have it in stores. Noodles play less of a role, though, as alternatives to rice. Here they always eat rice with noodles. Then there’s quail eggs, fried pork skins, coconut-based concoctions, even fried chicken skins! It all seems so familiar… everything but the temples. So, is Angeles worth it? If you have time to go to the hills, then it certainly is. Locally Koreatown isn’t much, and Clark is just a dead museum, but the tribal people are always worth checking on. Other than that, it’s mostly just an airport, with benefits.