Chicken Or Fucking?

We set off at six in the morning. By then I’ve already spent three hours trying in vain to use my mobile phone as a laptop modem. Globe blocks the mobile phone as soon as it is connected to the laptop. Nothing frustrates web designers more than not having a connection. The omen of a daily motto knocks at the door.

We drive to the Marcos’ old summer house nearby. It’s still closed – and really completely covered in clouds. We roll back down into the volcanic crater of Lake Taal. No road in the whole of Talisay leads to the shore for a nice breakfast. We eat in the car. Stop at a shopping centre. Half an hour later it opens and two nice employees waste an hour and a half in vain trying to connect my mobile phone with a new Smart Simcard to the internet.

On to Pagsanjan. Hundreds of posters on the roadside warn of pushers. As soon as we arrive, they pounce on us. You have to stop at every junction – or kill four or five pushers in one go. Two follow us on a motorbike a few kilometres out of the city, knock on the window, are almost rammed by an oncoming truck and then race back into the city after us.

According to the guide, you should only book rafting tours to the waterfall at the tourist office. Miraculously, that’s exactly where the pushers drag me now, as soon as I’ve left the car. Two years ago, the price for rafting was already steep – now it’s a good 50% higher. Another pusher comes along on the way back. I shout at him “I DONT NEED NO HELP!”. That doesn’t help either. He knocks spastically on the car window for 15 minutes while we use the sat nav to plan the quickest way out of here. I’m the Discovery, and my gaskets are about to burst.

The sat nav first sends us south, then north, then onto non-existent roads and finally gives up the ghost 20 km before the “city limits” of Manila. We have already been travelling for 50 km in an endless juggernaut of mercilessly overcrowded roads. There seems to be no change in the whole of Luzon. Everything is an endless barren desert of shitty suburbs and street villages. Everyone takes the right of way and gives up the space they don’t have.

Yesterday it took me 1.5 hours to drive five kilometres through Manila with the sat nav. Calculation question: How long does Frank need today without sat nav for the full 40 kilometres from south to north after six hours of frustrating driving? Frank doesn’t want to know. We take the Southern Expressway. If you compare the average income in the Philippines with that in Germany, every kilometre costs them 50 cents in tolls. For us it’s 10 cents – and we’re more than happy to pay that today, we just want to get north as quickly as possible.

The Southern Expressway is a giant on two sticks in six lanes. And just before the centre, it suddenly dissolves into chaos. We don’t have a sat nav, just a bad little map. Three lanes on the left, four and a half on the right. A policeman waves drivers through the traffic lights on red. Other junctions have neither traffic lights nor policemen, just four directions and three lanes. In the opposite lane, a ghostly fire engine with men waving on the roof races towards a large fire visible on the horizon. The streets of Manila are capable of atomising relationships within seconds. Uli guides me cleanly through hell, we only argue briefly once.

I was often warned, even by people who had already been here: “Don’t drive in the Philippines yourself!”. Experience is faith. In terms of driving, the Philippines is the third cruellest country in the world – after the Vietnamese, who insist on their own immortality right up to the lorry radiator, and the Dominicans, who race through the black Saturday night without a light.

The last two hours towards the 100 Islands National Park today are also through the blackest night. Unlit trikes, a dog from the right, an attempted pile-driver from the left, pedestrians in the centre, a 50 cm pothole. One-way streets backwards through a city centre filled to bursting point. Proceed, turn round, ask, continue. At eight o’clock in the evening, we’re still not at our destination. We need ten hours to cover 300 kilometres. 100 km of that was motorway. I drove like hell.

The next best dirty hotel will have to do. There’s a porn mirror next to the bed. In, shower, out. Look for food. In the first shed on the other side of the road, the only option is a three-day-old fish that has flown over. The second restaurant is closed. The third is a brothel. I just about manage to come up with a creative slogan: “Chicken or fuck?” – Then the madam arrives and announces: “Chicken is out!”.