31st January - Coron (Philippines) - shops - mincer

Saturday 31st January 2015

Washing day on Emerson-6 (live-aboard dive ship)

So are we in Culion, all saddened by visiting the leper colony and the old church?  (We have discovered a slightly better anchorage; 16.5m depth – will give it a go!)  Well no…we are still bobbing around on our mooring in Coron.  Waiting for fuel…

It was supposed to arrive, in big jerrycans yesterday.  But…maybe today.

I spent a productive hour or so with my veiled friend in the little shop near Seadive.  I needed internet top-up, to the tune of $30, and it took her ages to phone-a-friend and get enough to top up my demanding modem.  In the meantime she sat me down on a little plastic chair, with a nice whirling fan at my back, and I examined all the goods in the shop.  Most things here can only be bought in very small amounts.

Tiny sachets of this and that.  I watched, slightly fascinated, while people came in to buy one chup-a-chup, one very small toilet roll, and even one single razor blade, a few pesos of phone top-up.  Most of the products on offer were not really for me, much as I would have liked to buy from my friend.  The moisturisers all have whitener, deemed very desirable by the poor Philippinas with their beautiful complexions  which they so (mistakenly!) wish were lighter and whiter.   The shampoo all is heavy on oil, and is always touted as being “for black hair.”  Nobody here ever goes grey… The coffee comes in tiny little packets with much added sugar and powdered milk.  And so on…

Delivering water to one of the dive boats in a small tippy canoe

We spent a bit of time in the airy Seadive restaurant area and tried to download this and that on the free WiFi.  I listened, idly, to a very interesting conversation at the next table between an older German man and a bloke from Finland in his thirties.  They were both great travelers, and full of interesting opinions and stories.  I very much agreed with them when they said how very wealthy we must appear to all of the people who see us traveling in South East Asia.  They don’t see us working, which all of us assuredly do, or have done, at home; they see us at leisure, buying $30 worth of internet top-up and vast quantities of razor blades and toilet paper, thinking nothing of spending $10 for a meal.  Wages here are so low.  The dive instructors, for example, work long days from dawn till dusk, lugging heavy tanks and equipment, looking after people in the depths of the sea, and they earn a princely $12.50 per day, if they are from overseas.  I imagine the local lads don’t get anywhere near that much…

The meat grinder, carried all the way from Tasmanian in Pete’s already heavy luggage – has come into its own.  It is possible to buy good quality meat here, if you go to the market very early in the morning before the flies have started to party too frenetically.  But it is very tough.  Hence the need for The Mincer!

Pete excelled himself.  Not sure if this photo conveys the true deliciousness of this spaghetti bolognese (surely Australia’s national dish??) but it was memorable and wonderful and I want him to cook exactly the same thing tonight.