The Wind Began To Switch! The House, To Pitch! - Surviving Typhoon Parma

SK - Hurricane Ninja all up in your bidness.

Growing up in severe-storm free Vancouver it was with a dull horror that I would watch news reports of hurricanes and tornadoes ripping across the American trailer-belt, uprooting trees and slackjawed locals alike. Sure, Vancouverites live with the abstract threat of the "Big One", a catastrophic earthquake that has threatened to plunge us right into the chasm of the Juan de Fuca faultline since before my birth but at least, I reasoned, that would be a quick one time thing rather than this endless yearly cycle of catastrophe.

"Why don't they move?" I would ask any adult nearby, but I no matter who I asked I never got a satisfactory answer.

"Well, it takes money to move, and a lot of people can't afford that."
"But doesn't the annual "Act of God" cost these people even more money, year after year?"
"Well, they have roots there – families, friends...."
"But wouldn't their families and friends all like to all remain alive with their posessions unscathed?"
It has never made much sense to me.

Which is why it is sheer irony that I now find myself in a Category 5 Typhoon (which, I discovered, is pretty much just a hurricane) trapped indoors with no power and no real hope of leaving for a few days.

It all started in the crazy days after the first major typhoon, Ketsana, finished wreaking its ugly havoc on Manila. We tried to continue our plan of trekking in the North – but the major bus stations were all under a few feet of water – our only choice was to fly. We thought briefly about heading South but the flights were booked solid for days – we chose to fly North to Laoag, 2 hours from Vigan.

This was originally a good plan – we would spend a few nights in Vigan and then continue on to Baguio, Sagada and Banaue – after about a week we would then fly back down to the South and enjoy the beaches, Chocolate Hills and tarsiers of Bohol. The first few days in Vigan were great – we wandered the cobblestone streets, took a kalesa (horse'n'buggy) ride and visited the UNESCO site of Santa Maria church one hour away. Our hotel, the famed Villa Angela (yes, Tom Cruise and Willem Dafoe stayed here filming Born on The Fourth of July, we know. Stop telling us) was a lovely splurge - and it was there that we heard about Typhoon Parma.

Another one. Another effing typhoon just days after the devastating Ketsana. It was tracking to head North on the other side of the Philippines – the opposite coast. We knew that no matter where we were we would still feel the rain – we thought about trying to head South immediately but were worried about getting caught on a night bus if the storm reared its head. We decided to stay put, unsure of how bad it would get.

But then boredom set in, and nothing kept happening. Sunny skies, a few light rain drops here and there – we decided to head 3 hours North to the beautiful "Boracay of the North" – Pagudpud. We reasoned that being near the coast could have its advantages, as there was no way we could get trapped in a flood this way. Besides, there were no warnings for this area in specific – we reckoned that we might just get a lot of rain but otherwise be able to relax and enjoy.

Anderson's just out of the frame...

Do you ever wish more than anything that you could go back to yourself of three days ago and shake your head sternly and just say "No" really firmly? I do.

We really should have done whatever it took to get to Manila, and then onto the South, because now we are trapped in this "resort" (some concrete buildings set in a yard scattered with trash and some yes – slackjawed locals – looking at us strangely when we ask for candles) with no power. Our windows are spackled with plant bits and debris keeps flying by. The restaurant and hallways are all open air so we cannot leave our room, and we have to shove towels under the door to prevent the stream of water outside from getting in.

Outside the rain is blowing sideways – I keep expecting to see Anderson Cooper in a yellow slicker row by the window in a boat. The sound is unlike any I have ever heard – catterwauling, holwing wind and stacatto snare drum rain mixed with moaning creaking metal. The palm trees outside have been stripped bare of their coconuts and threaten to topple. The wind is pushing the waves back – and I didn't even know that that was possible. Everything is just howling scary weather and though we are safe I do find myself on the edge of getting terrified at times. I keep thinking about the people who live in small huts who must be losing everything they own right now.

This is a very real reminder of the ugly reality of global warming – easy to ignore until you are trapped like a mouse by a big scary cat-storm. The moment that it is safe to do so – the very second – we are hiring a driver to take us to Laoag where we will stay in hotel with indoor hallways and plan on how to get South to the sun and beach as soon as we can. I wish with my whole heart that we had done so days ago.

And I guess it really has given me a whole new respect for all of those people in the States who live in the "hurricane zone" and ""tornado alley" because.......oh who am I kidding: MOVE! Get the hell out of there! This is awful! Why would you choose this? Skedaddle!

Once is enough for me, thanks.

(*2 days later we were able to leave Pagudpud and finally watch the news - the storm had veered and yes, hit us directly.

We left on a bus back to Laoag (2 hours South) and halfway through the trip had to alight and walk for an hour in knee deep water across a washed out bridge. The rush of the floodwater was fierce and I would have lost my footing and been swept away had it not been for the amazing group of guys that literally held my hands and escorted me across - even running to fetch my flip-flop when it was sucked off of my foot. The made sure that S and I - completely soaked to the bone, bags included - made it to the waiting jeepney on the other side. That night our flight back to Manila was cancelled - we barely made it out of there. Nature scares me. We were so lucky - many others weren't. Donate here.)

Filipino Typhoon Fashion Statement (Note - the poncho photos were actually taken in Vietnam - there was no time for that in the typhoon!)

Endtimes, and Am I Causing Them?

The Burmese fortune teller said nothing of my disaster causing abilities....

This continent that I love – the countries that I have visited and loved and still dream about are getting pummeled and beaten and battered in a rapid succession usually only seen in disaster movies. A catastrophic typhoon floods Philippines with a month's rain in one day, and then moves on to Vietnam and Cambodia to kill hundreds more – landslides now threaten entire cities. Sumatra is rocked by two massive earthquakes in as many days, leaving thousands buried in rubble in a country with scant resources to pull them out. Samoa and Tonga, tiny Polynesian nations also in the so-called "Ring of Fire" of seismic activity, have been ravaged by tsunamis, killing more than one hundred.

I am in Northern Luzon - you know, that top part of the Philippines that is smack dab in the projected eye of the new "super" typhoon scheduled to slam into land tomorrow. We are heading to a coastal beach resort in the North tomorrow, but neither of us are thrilled at the prospect of getting doused with the inevitable buckets of rain sure to come with the storm. The coast seems better than Manila, however – at least there won't be floods. A romantic beach end to our time together? Not exactly.

I can't help but wonder - what is next? After S heads to LA for work I am heading to Sydney next month – home of the recent red skies and dust storms. After that I head to Fiji – near the epicentre of the South Pacific quakes that caused the tsunamis. I'll end in LA and who knows what will happen to the Angelenos when Violet Dear gets nearby?

Maybe I have been reading too much Stephen King, watching too much Hitchcock – but I can't help but feel that I am cursing these places. In October I was in Bangkok during the coup, in November in Mumbai during the attacks, in Jakarta days after the Marriott bombings and in Yangon during Aung San Su Kyi's arrest. I was even in the Taipei airport the day that the deadly typhoon there started. What next? Is the world coming to an end?

It may come as a shock to you, but I was raised an atheist – with a few twinges of half-assed Christianity from my Grandma (She said a mean 'Grace') but that doesn't mean that I don't know my scripture. In fact, during my morbid semi-goth teenhood I read the bible cover to cover (I skipped the begats – doesn't everyone?) and I feel like I know the signs of the Rapture pretty well (yeah I do, Debbie Harry rapping and referencing Fab 5 Freddie....oh, not that Rapture? Not the Siouxsie Sioux album either? Sorry....)

Blood red skies at the bottom of the earth? Plagues and disasters? Massive earthquakes within hours of eachother? S made the comment that we are "riding the wave of disaster wherever we go." Good god, if I see any type of horsemen..... Usually I give the wackadoo street preachers downtown Vancouver a wide berth, but I think I may just stop and see what they have to say...or, er, yell. It doesn't hurt to be prepared. Especially when I seem to be cursing all of the places I visit.

All I know is that it really sucks that this seems to happen to Asia more often than anywhere else. These people have so little, so few possessions compared to what we have and it seems like a dick move on Nature's part to keep destroying their homes and killing their families. Maybe those street preachers and I do have something to talk about...

Click to donate to UNICEF Philippines, to Red Cross Indonesia (via the US) or Oxfam Samoa (via NZ.) Please help - a lot of folks could use a hand.

Please help the flood victims in Manila

They need our help, just like you might one day. Lend a hand?

Hi guys - I have never done this on the 'site before, but I am stranded in Manila and powerless to help the quarter of a MILLION folks who have lost their homes and all of their belongings.

Tropical Storm Ketsana has dumped a month's worth of rain on Manila in ONE DAY - I was here and it was crazy. Over one hundred people have drowned, and the rains are not over.

Please donate to your local Red Cross (specify Manila Ketsana victims) as the Philippines branch does not accept credit card payments online. Any little bit helps - people really could use a hand.

xoxo
Violet Dear

Update - as of Sep 30, the death toll is at over 250 with two million people having lost their homes. As we speak Ketsana is wreaking havoc on Vietnam and Cambodia, where the combined death toll is over 50. Please help.

A Typhoon in Manila - Let's Go to the Mall?

From Reuters - taken yesterday in Quezon city.

Just when I was about to get out and enjoy Manila, to shake off the violating theft feeling that we had incurred on our first day here, to eat breakfast and lunch at the weekly Makati Farmer's market and to tour the city with renowned (and flamboyantly gay) comedian Carlos Cedran – that is the day that the typhoon hit. Our plans of catching a night bus to the ancient rice terraces of Banaue were dashed.

We woke to an ominous sound – a loud drumming coming from the roof. "What is that?" I asked S, causing him to fling open the window and look down four stories. "That, dear, is the rain."

Now, I am a Vancouver girl and a rain lover through and through. Thunderclouds are actually comforting to me, homey and nostalgic – 'grey skies are NOT going to clear up, so put on an cope-y face.' Vancouverites don't use umbrellas unless it is like, pouring – the people in rain coats with brollies are inevitably tourists or Toronto expats unused to the constant eight month barrage of moody grey droplets - we native-born Lotus Landers can sort of dodge the drops.

I bring up the almanac of West coast Canada to illustrate that I, unlike most people, am well equipped to cope with precipitation – like a duck, or a mushroom. I will go out in the most thunderous monsoon weather without the bat of a MAC mascara-ed eyelash – but this? This is a typhoon. An actual one.

I have seen waterfalls on the Trans Canada highway (you know, out there in the wasteland past Hope on the way to the Coquihalla) that have less water pressure than the rain in Manila today. The sky has opened up and I think we made it mad – sheets of rain are pounding the street and causing floods. The lobby of our hotel is swamped by a foot of water that is mixed with shredded newspaper bits and swirling mud – the doomen gave up bailing it out hours ago.

Our hunger and sheer boredom forced us to don body condom-like plastic rain ponchos to head to that infamous of all Manila institutions – the mega mall. After slogging through the lobby we emerged on the street wet and slimy and hailed a tricycle, a pedal taxi. He was draped in a vinyl sim card ad in lieu of a rain coat and was charging 4 times the normal rate to take us down the comicly flooded street – we agreed.

Careening through the near empty streets in our human powered tuk-tuk we had to lift our feet to avoid being soaked by the lakes of rain beneath us. Our driver pedalled his heart out and we arrived at the mall.

In Vancouver a really rainy day can only mean one thing – the malls will all be crowded, groaning with bored humans waving plastic and shuffling around zombie-like. In Manila the opposite was true – there were only a few shoppers ambling around and half of the stores were closed. However, this being the Philippines, land of the monolithic shopping centre, that still left a multitude of options.

After a few hours spent killing time (and money at Topshop, as they have them here but not in Canada – go figure) we headed back to our guesthouse, where the weekly wine and cheese night just happened to be occuring.

Drinking glass after glass of a decent Bordeaux (can you believe when I was there 10 years ago I didn't like wine? Shame – deep shame) we heard fellow traveler's stories of the day. One dude who had traveled to a far flung corner of the city actually saw people swimming in the road. S himself saw a parade of drowned rats and cockroaches floating by in the gutter when he went to the ATM.

Now it is 8pm, the rain is falling even harder and S and I have nothing to do but watch Men in Black II, drink this wine and wait for the rain to abate. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to start our Northward journey to the Cordillera – but if not, well I hope the mall is open. It may be our only choice...

(We woke up to the news today that 60 people were killed and the rain was the heaviest since 1967. Truly horrible.)

*Note - as of Sep 28 the deathtoll has risen to over 90 and 250,000 people are now homeless - from our relatively dry point in the city we had no idea until we tuned into CNN. Please PLEASE make a donation to the Philippine Red Cross here for all of the victims of Tropical Storm Ketsana.

A Stolen Camera (and Soul, For All You Melodramatics)

It is fitting that this post has no accompanying photos, as Manila has a way of doing that – making it difficult to take them. Why, you ask? Well, I can't really answer but I sure know who can – the person (I think it was a lady) who snatched our camera from the case strapped across S's chest and ran down the street. She knows.

There is that horrible moment when you realize that something irreversible and bad has happened – the sinking cold feeling in your tum, the instant denial and panic, the desperate moment when you just have to accept that this is now your life and incorporate this new reality – the shitty one – into it.

When we were first dating S and I went to see a friend perform burlesque at a local hall. We arrived late and the bar had run out of everything except gin – a spirit that I simply cannot stomach. It tastes like hairspray and poison to me, and until that point I had never had more than a sip. Let's stress until that point. S and I got giggly from gin and juice, making me exclaim “hey – this isn't so bad!”

When on the short walk home my stiletto heels began cutting up my feet S valiantly began to piggy bag me – until he slipped on the ice. I went over his shoulders, stunned and without putting my hands in front of my face. As a result it was my two front teeth that broke my fall, and well – just broke. The sinking “this is irreversible” feeling happened as I spat bloody fragments of teeth into my hand and witnessed S's face register a look of absolute horror.

It was a moment in time that a) made me upset and b) cost a lot of money and hassle.

The accident shocked me – I realized that in one tiny little moment everything can change – you could be walking down the street and be bowled down by an errant bus. Or you could spill over your boyfriend's shoulders and break your grill. Or a little thief could run off with your beloved favourite camera – a moment that a) made me upset and b) will cost a lot of money and hassle.

Today, moments after the theft, it was my turn to look at S with that same expression of horror and disbelief. While I will gladly replace a camera over my teeth (two root canals, two crowns, many many needles poked into my gums) it was still a punch in the stomach. While S frantically paced around the overpass near the Quiapo Church (which houses the famous Manila quirk, the Black Nazarene, of which I have no photos) looking for the person responsible, I stood and almost dreamily thought to myself “We now have no camera.” While S was in shaking, angry denial I had floated into shocked acceptance.

I suppose because we have been traveling for so long and never had so much as a dime stolen we thought we were invincible. We got careless. A piece of advice for Manila – make sure your camera bag has a zipper and not velcro, otherwise a biatch will reach right in and disappear into the masses (they're Catholic, so sometimes the masses are literal.)

All I know is that now, kind of like the ill-fated piggy back incident, I almost feel gun shy about wandering around this city. The difference is then I was in a state of caution just when walking over patches of ice or riding my bike - now I am scared to take my laptop or wallet anywhere. I feel...vulnerable.

Are you more likely to get robbed in Manila than in other Southeast cities? Are gin-drinking, icy sidewalks and shoulder rides a bad combo? Well, not always.

But usually? Yes.

(I'm sorry to have my first post of the Philippines be a tad....negative, but I gotta be an honest writer. I promise that there will be many more posts that are in a happier vein – most people have been amazingly smiley and friendly and the food and sights have been great. I can't wait for the Cordillera, Vigan and Bohol!)