BUSted (but not like that).

I haven't talked about Security here but I probably should. Whatever you think about security theater in the US, it has nothing on the Philippines.

At every major mall and LRT station, there is a table at the entrance, every person entering the building is required to show the contents of their bag to the security officer, who will poke a stick in it.

This isn't like, an electronic bomb sniffer, or a flashlight or anything, it's just a stick. I suppose at most it tells the guard that the bomb you're bringing into the mall/station/whatever is smallish.

Some of the guards will also run their hands along your lower back as you pass to check for concealed weapons.

There is massive variation, of course, from guard to guard. One will barely glance at your bag, the next will open it carefully and peer to the bottom as if he expects to find a vein of gold ore there. One will wave you past without a single touch, the next will carefully run his hand from one side of your body to the other, the next will only check your right hip, or your left (oddly, they checked people's left hips for weapons more often than their right, I don't know why).

For this reason, when I woke up the next morning at 6AM, I took a taxi.

See, I was supposed to go to Tagaytay, a town near Taal, a volcano in the center of a lake formed by the detonation of the previous, much larger, volcano.

A group of Couchsurfers were getting together there and going trekking, and despite my trepidation about riding a horse which was required for part of the trip, I was excited--I'd been invited spur of the moment, and as a rule these have been some of the best experiences during my travels so far.

I was supposed to stay with a CSer who hosted in Tagaytay, so I needed to get there before the rest of them so I could drop my big backpack at her house and then go to meet the group with her. This meant taking a bus to Tagaytay before 0730.

No one had provided me with really good instructions on where to find the bus. The best that I could do was to look up the information online, where everyone basically said "go to the Pasay bus area (below the Taft LRT station) and get a bus there."

Due to the crazy security at the stations, and not wanting my entire big backpack taken apart by a zealous guard I caught a taxi instead of riding the LRT.

I didn't bother trying for a meter now that I knew how fucked up my ride was likely to be as a result, and instead just bartered a rate up front.

When I got there, I discovered that the Pasay Bus Area is not meant to be used by anyone but locals.

There are no signs, the buses have no central mustering area--each major bus line has it's own parking area that is independently scattered around the major intersection, and none of the buses are known for going directly to Tagaytay. The rest of the buses simply drive through and people try to wave them down. They typically have signboards in the windows showing a list of destinations. During an hour of searching, not a single signboard listed Tagaytay. Apparently the kind of people who go there go in cars, not buses.

For more than the next hour, I wandered from bus to bus, asking people how to get to Tagaytay. I asked bus drivers, transport callers (guys that wave down buses for you) and bus station security guards.

Of course, each one had a different suggestion--one would say to walk further down this street, the next would say to walk back up it. One said I could take the bus going to Buendia, but the driver of that bus said he didn't go through Tagaytay, and I would need to walk further down. Further down I met a man who swore I would have to take a Jeepney to the major bus, but couldn't tell me where I would need to get off to make the switch.

The entire thing was a clusterfuck of people only going places they had already been. It was the least welcome I have ever felt in any city I have traveled--basically all for the lack of a handful of signs--and this stands in stark contrast to the fact that the Philipino people are some of the nicest I've met.

Around 7:40 I declared myself out of time, now even if I found the bus I would have been late arriving to Tagaytay, meaning I would either have missed the group's departure or delayed it on my account. Even though I'd originally planned on going to Tagaytay alone before I heard about the group trip, by the time I reached 0730 I was so angry, frustrated, and sick of it (and of feeling guilty for letting down the group by claiming I'd be there and failing) that I gave up and walked the two miles back to my hostel and checked back in.

I spent the rest of the day hiding from the world, writing and reading and trying to decide how to spend my afternoon.

It probably doesn't seem like much to syou readers at home. So what, I missed a bus? Big deal.

It's hard to explain. I've managed the chaos of Thai Trains, Spanish Alleyways and Greek Ferries. Yes, there are sometimes hang ups, sometimes a sign is missing or a strike happens or you just miss your boat and have to wait until tomorrow to get the next one. That kind of thing is normal.

This felt nothing like that. This felt like a concerted effort on the part of an entire culture, not just to confuse visitors, but in fact to build a bus system that keeps people in their place--so that only those who are going somewhere simple, that everyone is going, can find out what to do. It was a fuedal bus system, if that makes any sense, and just thinking about it now makes my stomach turn over and my mouth run dry.

I would refer to it by the English translation T.R. Reid gives a distinctly Japanese idea: it was "a social embarrassment."

I wound up throwing away my entire afternoon in my room, and didn't leave again until almost nightfall. I didn't want to be reminded how perfect the weather was for hiking, or that I had no other plans and didn't even know where else I wanted to go in Manila.

Clinical depression runs in my family, and while I wouldn't say I have a serious case of it, I was raised around the symptoms and I know I've got a vein of my own that runs pretty deep, if not particularly rich. In my case, it creates a feedback loop--one of the easiest ways for me to get depressed is if I fail at something that should be easy--especially if I perceive the failure as being the result of poor planning on my part. I'm not an overachiever, but if I think something should be simple but fail at the attempt, it shames me and generally lowers my spirits.

Problem is, when I get depressed it makes me introverted and makes me want to hibernate. I want to close myself up in a small room and read and sulk and nap. Of course, this makes me more likely to continue failing to complete whatever it is I was trying to do, and depression, like all powerful diseases, wins by creating a feedback loop--now I'm getting less and less accomplished and this means I'm more and more hibernatory.

Thankfully after a while stuck in any small room my word-whore gene kicks in and I start reading whatever is handy, and it is difficult for me to remain in a blue funk for long if I am reading consistently, so this generally doesn't last more than a day, even a day like this one, where the thing that I wound up reading was "The Courtship of Dinah Shadd"--one of Rudyard Kipling's darkest and most depressing short stories.

Still, when you're on the road and your time is limited, it is frustrating to lose a day in this fashion.

I really wanted to visit Corregidor island the following day, but it would put me over budget, and I really wanted to avoid that, so I decided against it, instead putting off my plans for the Ayala museum until the next day and doing that instead.

Funny, isn't it, that I'd avoid doing something I may never get another shot at, just to save $40? Ah well. I suppose it will force me to return here some day. . .

In any case, the Ayala museum turned out to be pretty darn cool, so that helped save my conflicted opinion of the Philippines overall.