Sunday, October 31, 2004

balik maynila

am back!

after a 3 hour flight from thailand, it felt good to be around people who spoke tagalog. grabe. dinugo ako sa ibang bansa. ang hirap magpaintindi pag hindi marunong uminggles ang mga tao sa paligid.

the funny thing was, in all the countries we went to, we were mistaken for locals. so they all spoke in their native tongues when talking to us. at siyempre ang sagot namin, english please!

it was my first time out of the country. my sister gave the trip to me as a birthday gift which i claimed only after the bar. am glad i got the chance. it was an experience that i will remember for a long time.

there were a lot of opportunities for mishaps, like almost being left on an island by the last train because we couldn't understand the announcement, finding out that the cab driver had no idea where the place we were going to is located, having no map to go around, getting caught in little india with enough money left only for the train, which we couldn't find... the list is long. but at the end of the day we just found ourselves laughing and congratulating each other for winning the day's leg -- ala amazing race, and for getting to the hotel safe and sound.

several times during the trip i found myself feeling sad for the philippines. kasi parang ang progressive nung mga ibang bansa. disiplinado ang mga tao. of course there were exceptions but on the whole, people were pretty much disciplined enough to not litter, not push, not run red lights, and generally follow the law.

nakakalungkot. but i realized that we can do it if we tried. perhaps we lack pride. not in ourselves as individuals but we seem to not take pride in being filipinos. collective pride kumbaga. kaya natin eh.

ewan.

other than those moments, though, the whole trip was fun. rina and i enjoyed ourselves immensely. and the fact that we were working with a limited budget added spice, not to mention hysteria, to the whole experience.

will put in a more detailed account when i get hold of a computer i can hog.

it's good to be back. :) am home.

No comments:

Post a Comment