Hey, Joe: An American in a Filipino barangay

Like many Filipino families last Christmas, our family played host to some of our relatives during the holidays. One of our guests was Chris, an American who married into my wife’s family and who works in the tech industry in San Francisco.

We were staying at the house in Batangas and one day, Chris went missing. Now before everyone starts to think that this is a crime story, it is not. It is quite the opposite. It turns out Chris had borrowed the gardener’s scooter and decided to go off on an adventure to see the sights in the barrios of Batangas.

He went northward and reached as far as Cavite on the borrowed scooter. Of course, we were all worried. He left at 4 p.m. and it was already getting dark and he still hadn’t returned. We found out that he made a turn somewhere and entered a small barangay. In the four hours that he went on this daytrip, he made “tambay” at a small carinderia, snacked on some grilled skewered meat, was offered to place a bet on jueteng (a small-town numbers game), sat down for a little videoke and even became an unexpected guest at a wedding.

We sent out a search party for him, and quite frankly it wasn’t that hard to look for a bulky white man seen riding a scooter on some small barangay road. He stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and everybody just knew “Joe” (the name all Pinoys seem to bestow on foreigners) passed through the barangay and was last seen partying somewhere near the sari-sari store of Aling this-or-that.

All he had on him was P1,000 and a phone which he used to take random shots of the places he’d been, the people he met and the things he saw. I took a look at his pictures; they were snapshots of everyday life in any small Filipino town: a fruit and vegetable stand, the back of a carinderia, a one-eyed cat lounging on a dirt floor, a fighting cock tethered in front of someone’s house, a tarpaulin announcing P50 haircuts at a barbershop, even a wall with glass shards on top to serve as a deterrent to trespassers. From his pictures, I also learned he sat down to have some Red Horse beer and pulutan with some locals. He seemed to have had a really good time.

The next day, he was still raring to see more of the local color, so he was taken to see a cockfight. No word on whether he placed a bet, but he, once again, returned home in one piece.

Mind you, this is only his second time to visit the Philippines. I am told he also wandered off when he first visited; he was in Palawan then and seemed to have enjoyed that adventure as well. On both occasions, he was pleasantly surprised at how warmly people welcomed him. Old people and children would gamely photobomb his selfies, he would be invited to sit down and enjoy a meal and everywhere, locals would just swarm around this big, strange American who chose to spend the day exploring their town.

To his credit, he had that one trait that makes for an excellent traveler: he had curiosity. He didn’t judge the people he met, even if he was told he was served dog meat at some point. He didn’t wrinkle his nose at the humble houses he was welcomed into, or view with distrust the people who offered him a seat at their inuman. He came and visited bearing only what he needed: a genuine desire to get to know the place and the people who lived there.

Too often, as tourists we tend to expect the comforts of home even as we are obviously not in our own houses (or even country!). It’s just too bad because there is so much lost when we travel and yet fail to see or experience new things. Why leave home if you’re just going to recreate home in another location?

Tourists would also tread much lighter in the places they visit if only they arrived with an openness to new experiences. They would also help the local economy if they stepped out of their comfort zones and ate local, stayed local and shopped local.

We’ve heard so many times how Filipinos are such a warm people. We welcome strangers into our communities and offer them a meal. I think this is still true. Even in the bigger cities, one would be hard-pressed to encounter a Filipino who is unwilling to help a stranger. This is such a big draw for our tourism industry.

The beaches, the food and the year-round tropical weather are a bonus; the real gem is Filipino hospitality. Foreign visitors’ feedback always says the same thing: locals welcomed them wherever they went. That is why it is so disappointing to see how some of our kababayans would be the first to disparage the Filipino’s capacity as a people to be kind to strangers or repost on their social media pages how unsafe the country is for travelers. It just doesn’t help.

Nobody took advantage of Chris, not during his Palawan jaunt or this most recent one in Batangas. I seriously doubt he had our house address in Batangas written down somewhere, but that didn’t seem to have fazed him. I suppose he trusted that people would have accompanied him back home or offered him a place to stay the night. And I have no doubt the people he met that day would have done just that. It’s just how we Filipinos are.