Neon

A "girly bar" by the Manila Port.

Makeshift Muscles, Part IV

More improvised weight sightings, this time around Northern Luzon.


Milk cans filled with cement, rusty boys. On an Abra farm.

Beside the sidewalk in Laoag, Ilocos Norte. A bamboo bar.

Molded cement with bolts that make the weights removable.
Makeshift muscles, Part I, II, and III.

A Somber Night At The Carinderia

The night before the execution of three Filipino drug mules in China, we were eating lemongrass-infused mongo soup and watching the news in our favorite Davao carinderia. All three were from Davao, so there was special interest among the proprietress and her regulars.









And we walked home quietly, pondering the notion of execution.

Upside Down Bird

Jeepney mudguards in the form of Tweety Bird, upside down.


The wide part of the skull where the mud splash would be more copious.

The Lost Vegetable Siding

Diced cucumber beside deep-fried eggs.

One thing that amazed us about Thailand was the constant small "salads" that accompanied oily, cheap, fried street meat. In the Philippines, we still experience this sporadically: the achara relish or vinegared radish alongside grilled chicken, the raw mustasa leaves with deep-fried fish, and so on. We've seen it more in the province and in mid-sized Filipino chains than on the street, where costs are kept low.


Seaweed, cucumber, egg.

In Davao, where the wet markets are vibrant, huge, and relatively cheap (with a bulk of Manila's vegetables coming from Mindanao), there are vegetable sidings served with those balls of deep-fried eggs in orange batter. Cucumber, either alone or with guso, an edible seaweed, can be placed on your paper plate, and the available vinegar may be poured over to make a flavor we are all familliar with.

Idle Matmaking

A cigarette and snack food vendor outside a clothes shop in Davao's Chinatown creates a handmade mat out of scrap cloth.


The eye-catching mat was (unfortunately) not for sale, and for personal use only.


The lady used old clothes from her home, varying the colors as unique scraps ran out. The result is random but beautiful.


The technique, she said, is similar to crochet. Care must be taken to cut the strips uniformly.


The whole process seemed therapeutic and a worthy use of time.