Changing colours, changing sounds

Soon it will be time to change colours; green to white, aquamarine to slate grey, running rivers to runny noses... Finland here I (almost) come!

I am back in Manila for a final day before Hong Kong / Helsinki. Agreeing heartily with the common opinion that a trip to the Philippines would be much nicer if only one could skip Manila totally in the itinerary, I have decided to blockade myself in the lounge of my nice guesthouse and not go out at all. Well, maybe a quick nip to the nearby mall to buy a mango or two. And maybe a spot of dinner... though then again possibly better not. For my flight today I was weighed together with my hand luggage before getting on the plane! I didn't realize how heavy my hand luggage had gotten...

Though any possible heaviness has nothing to do with culinary excellence. The food here is bland at best, bad at times, sweet always. Sugar in your bread, sugar in your hamburgers, sugar in the drinks... hardly surprising that diabetes is a big national health hazard. One sad story I heard on the road was of a young mother, who had just died from diabetes. The family could not afford either the insulin or possibly even the visit to the doctor who could have told them that insulin was needed... Striking in this country is that everyone seems to be so young - where are the middle aged people? The booming population (annual population growth rate at over 2% the highest in Asia - thanks largely to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, family planning has gone nowhere) accounts for some of this, but I don't know how long the average life expectancy here is... Diabetes, dengue, malaria and various other serious, yet treatable illnesses, are mostly left untreated here due to lack of funds and poor health care.

However, still plenty of people left. Some 90 million of them in fact. Finland will seem very very quiet after this country. Even without the blanketing effect of snow, it would lack the constant noise of motorbikes blowing their horn, the shouts of children playing on the streets, waves crashing onto shorelines, the thump thump of music from the neighbourhood disco, a slightly off tune version of some soppy 80's rock classic from the neighbourhood videoke (aka karaoke in some countries) - all mingling with the late night medley of the calls of geckos, love sick cats and dogs - and of course the ubiquitous cocks.

Did anyone really think cocks only crow at daybreak? If so, daybreak is constant between around 3am to 9pm - with admittedly a slight crescendo around 5-8am. Cocks are all over Asia, but I have never seen a country before, where cocks seem to be more abundant than hens! Cock fighting, a national passion, probably accounts for this. I have certainly seen enough men carrying their cocks around town (no pun intended), carefully stroking ruffled feathers or inspecting their fowl for signs of wear or tear of battle damage, to understand that we are talking serious business here! Even here, smack bang in the centre of Manila, this Pavarotti of the fowl world will not be silenced. I've actually gotten kind of used to it. But I doubt the cry of the rooster will turn out to be one of the things I miss.