SNAFU

June 8, 2007

Man, it's good to be back in my hometown. Though Philippine Airlines ruined everybody's day by making us wait for  hours after our scheduled flight from Manila to Davao. I mean, if they're living up to their name as Plane Always Late, they might as well ask for contact number of each passengers so they could call us or text us beforehand informing us that the plane would be late.  

Consider this, my flight schedule was for 10:30 a.m. so I woke up at around 7:00 a.m to beat the traffic from my motel in Quezon City to Centennial airport. Unfortunately for me, there was no traffic so I was already checking in by 8:00 a.m. Then they inform passengers that the plane would not be arriving until 12:00 noon and wouldn't take off until 1:00 p.m. So, all in all I waited for five hours. Fucking great.

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My one-month travel in Bangkok and Jakarta was a good learning experience for me. I learned that although I'm not averse to spicy food, Thailand stretched my tolerance level to near breaking point. After about a week of eating spicy foods, I had to find other not-so-spicy-which-means-more-expensive foods.

 The first thing to do was to learn the phrase "Mai pet" which is roughly translated to "ease up on the chili you son of a bitch!" If you like your food hot, however, you can say  "pet mak," again roughly translated to "put more chili in there you son of a bitch."

 Hey, what can I say?  They curse a lot. 

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I heard a bit of sad news though. I made some friends with Shans, an ethnic minority in Burma, who are working without papers Chiang Mai, about 10 hours by bus in the northern part of Bangkok. That transgression will earn you a time in jail or a hefty fine if you're lucky.  Most of them are deported back to Burma where they face certain persecution and reeducation. Reeducation, of course, is a euphemism for torture to milk information out of you. 

My Shan friends are not freedom fighters. They are in Chiang Mai to escape harassment and (some say) ethnic cleansing in Burma. They are all of 23 to 24 years old.

During my last night in Chiang Mai, I treated them all to dinner in a trendy restaurant to thank them for their hospitality.  One of them, Mr. Seang Yord was quite hesitant to eat there after browsing through the menu. "Maybe we should look for another restaurant, it's expensive here," he said.  

"No, it's Okay. Order what you want because maybe this is the last time we would see each other," I quipped. 

I didn't know how painfully accurate that statement was. Five days later, their headquarters was raided and they were all arrested. Now I have to live with the guilt that maybe I was followed and led the police to their lair.