Sick Day

The 17th I spent in bed. Several things contributed: the exertions of running around town the day before, fighting with the rain and wind and changes in temperature, and hauling ass through the LRT, not to mention Manila's own pleasant version of smog. So I woke on Friday to a constant, steady downpour, and a pretty bad case of a basic Asthma attack.

My Asthma flares up rarely, but the combinations of body chill and constant wetness and exertion while already fighting off some virus were enough to trigger it, so I found myself short of breath and somewhat pathetic.

Out of curiosity I looked up the symptom list for SWINE FLU and discovered that I had most of the basic ones, all of which are the same as any low-grade virus--whole body ache, sudden chills, runny nose, coughing sore throat, and fever. Out of what they consider the more serious signs, I had only 'difficulty breathing'--I wasn't running to the bathroom to vomit or empty my bowels explosively. I figured until I started throwing up, I wasn't seeking treatment.

I have a friend who asserts that during the West Nile Virus outbreak in Georgia back in the early 2000s, he caught the disease. He was spending a lot of time outside in the early evening at the time, and he came down with a sort of flu that had either all the symptoms, or all save one or two (I can't remember which). The symptoms were mild though, and he simply treated them the way you do a flu and came out fine. He was a healthy 20 something, so there was little cause for concern.

I think it is likely I'm in the same position, and if I did pick up SWINE FLU (and I've been in Asia for the past month, so the outbreak would have had to have moved here rather in force, I suspect) then my body did a fine job of fighting it off, it just took a few days.

In any case, I was exhausted, so the entirety of my day consisted of two major actions: 1) moving from my current hostel to Friendly's, and depositing my stuff there.
2) Walking back to the Laundry to pick up my clothes, and stopping at Chow King for dinner.

Before leaving the area I hit 7-11 and bought another Umbrella--I went to the next size up, which looked sturdier and turned out to be a decent choice.

Moving to Friendly's was disappointing, because I met a dishonest cab driver.

Cab drivers in developing Asia are a pain in the ass, and you have to be emotionaly cold to them by default because so few of them are good guys. As a rule, I'm a street rat that doesn't take taxis--I'll use ferry, bus and train to get within a kilometer of my destination, then walk the rest. However, I've learned in Asia that sometimes that's just not practical, and a cab is required. Bangkok, for example, makes it almost impossible, since the bus system is incomprehensible to non-natives and parts of Korea (and at certain times of day) were the same way.

The guy that picked me up at the airport in Manila was great. To avoid what I had heard were high fees from the airport taxi counter I'd just gone upstairs and picked up an independent cab that was dropping people off at the departure area. He knew exactly where I was going, and when I asked him to put on the meter (because you have to request that, every. single. time. here) he laughed and said "sure, sure, you just make sure you add a little extra, yeah?" The meter came to 102 pesos, and I gave him 140 (about $3), and gladly. I was gladder still when I found out later from Ruby that typical airport taxi fares run towards the 400 and 500 peso range.

But anyway, it was only about a kilometer from my hostel to Friendly's, but it was pouring rain and I was sick as a dog, so I decided that I wasn't going to walk it.

So I hailed a cab. I told him where I was going and he said he could get there, when I asked about the meter he said "yeah, but there's flooding, so we add a little extra to the meter, yeah?" I agreed. I have no problem committing to tip a driver, because I plan to do it anyway if he uses the meter and does a decent job.

Here's the thing. In the Philippines--the Taxi drivers are fucked. The rate is too low. In Thailand, the flag down fee is 35 baht (about $1 us) and climbs steadily after the first 500 meters or so. In Korea, it's 2200 Won for the first Kilometer (about $2) and climbs based on both time (slowly) and distance (quickly), this combination is why all Korean Cabbies drive like bats out of hell, but they don't have to be told to use the meter. In Manila, the flag down fee is 30 pesos (about 70 cents) and it starts climbing at about 500 meters. In addition, unlike Korea, it seems that here the meter don't take time into account at all. If a cabbie gets stuck in gridlock with a fare, he might spend an hour with his car occupied, but only make $1.50 for his trouble.

So obviously these guys have to be even more cunning than the Thai drivers, just to make the equivalent amount of scratch, if they have a bad day, they probably make as much as a sweatshop worker, and after cab maintenance--since most of the are independently owned aand operated--all that might be gone too.

When I climbed in, he wanted to negotiate the tip up front. I agreed and offered 40 on top of the meter total, he asked for 50 since it was only 10 pesos more, and it was raining hard and I appreciated the lift, so I said sure.

So far, no problem.

Then, as traffic is thick because of the rain, he waits until we're thoroughly stopped and then points to the meter, claiming it's broken (since of course it's not advancing, we're stopped, but he's assuming I don't know that) and that he'll go to get it fixed after he drops me off. Of course his objective is to justify his following explanation, whichh is that the meter total *would* have been 100 pesos, so I should give him 150, while I know from the distances involved that the meter fare won't break 55 pesos.

I take all this with innocence but don't agree, and wait until we're in motion again then point with surprise at the meter "Oh, look, it's working after all!"

He bobs his head with a guilty laugh "yeah yeah, sometimes working, sometimes not" and drives on without saying more. We talk about the weather and where I'm going next, he tries to convince me to hire his cab to take me the 2 hour trip out to one of the outlying cities I'm hoping to visit next week (no dice, I'm not crazy) and I ask him how he likes driving and he says he's been doing it for twenty years and he can't leave now. This makes sense of course, once you've had your car a few years there's no way to jump to another job, and I can do the math--unless these guys work 20 hour days 7 days a week, it'd be a challenge just to put food on the table, and that's if they're lucky and are constantly picking up fares.

Now traffic is heavy, which slows us down considerably, and I do appreciate that the time is not tracked by the meter, so I am happy to tip him a little more. He tries to convince me of his 150 peso con when he finally drops me off, a half a block from my location (one way streets make it hard for him to get right to it) but I shake my head and give him 120 instead, with the meter sitting at 50 exactly. I do this in part because it serves me right for not being firm and shooting him down when he made his play with the broken meter (I'm still too soft when I feel that someone else is in a position of power over me, like when I'm in someone else's cab), and in part because I understand a little better just how crazy low the regulated fares are here--unless all cabbies receive a government stipend, I don't see much profit in it.

Still, it was a frustrating experience.

I got to Friendly's, unpacked a bit, and then read and relaxed until nightfall. On the plus side, the view from Friendly's was wonderful. The band of rain passed over and slowly cleared, and the afternoon was quite pleasant. I opened the window to my little cell and the fan made it quite lovely. The temperature here isn't too bad during the typhoons, the constant water keeps it down in the mid 20s, which is nice.

At 7, I went out to try to retrieve my laundry. I brought my day bag with me, empty, and filled it with the nice clean clothes, then headed around the corner to a Chow King.

Chow King is a sort of Philipino McDonald's that serves exclusively bad fast Chinese food. It reminds me somewhat of a KFC but with lomein noodles and soup on the menu. My giant combo meal and drink (I'd skipped lunch and was starving) run me about $4.20 and the food is actually not horrendous. It's not great either, but it's an experience, and it's informative, so I choke it down, finish my Sjora (Orange juice like thing), and head for the door.

While I was inside, of course, the next wave of water had arrived, and it's vertical when I hit the streets. Literally. The rain was a thick blanket of those tiny fine droplets that seem to be almost weightless, and the wind was steady, meaning that within 20 seconds of stepping around the corner, even with an umbrella, I was soaked to the skin from the sternum down.

The wind was fierce (though not quite as calculating and variable as the day before) and the rain heavy all the way back to my hostel, and just before I reached it I ducked into a 7-11 (I had passed two already on the one kilometer walk home) and bought some orange juice, water bottles, and cookie type snacks for breakfast--not the healthiest choices, I know, but 7-11 doesn't really sell musli and yoghurt, and I didn't have a fridge besides. I also decided to see if a little medicinal alcohol would help my cough at all, and I was hard to find a good argument against testing this theory since that bottle of Brandy turned out to be 38 Pesos (about 80 cents). Good grief I hate the American alcohol taxes. Granted, the brandy wasn't exactly great--it tasted like a cross between a very mild brandy and flavoured medicine, but it wasn't actively bad, and it seemed to help a bit with the cough.

I slept for 8 hours, and was awoken the next morning by a rooster crowing.