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Just can't get enough cockSep 2, 2009
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Place yout bets
Fight!
| Me, Dom and Mark catch a tricycle to the Dumaguete Cockpit and Recreation Center (what else they do here is never revealed), which after Malapascua is like going from the sawdust arena in Gladiator to the Colliseum. Rows of wooden seats stagger up from the metal-bound square glass walls of the cockpit, half of the hall divided from the other by a chain link fence, lending the place the air of a cage fight. The proceedings commence with the MC talking about the money bet so far on each bird, which are going through the same pre-match rituals as in Malapascua. The serious ones right by the pit make bets with those inside first, after which, pandemonium breaks out as half the crowd stand up and frantically try and make side bets. It’s like a trading floor as they shout out ‘Biya biya biya!!’ or ‘Inilog inilog inilog!!’, indicating with the outstretched fingers of their hand how much they’re trying to put on, the back of their other hand covering their mouths. As the cocks are put down (on the ground, not to sleep), a hush quickly descends as all sit down again, broken by cheers and even sometimes applause if one cock executes an especially effective manoeuvre. I’ve put 500 pesos down, and soon I’m sweating, though whether from the humidity or putting that much money down, I don’t know. I lose, and the sweat-drenched air is soon filled with scrunched up notes as money is thrown around and over the pit from losers to winners, as the feathers are swept up and the whole thing starts over again. We spend about three hours there, Dom and Mark about 2,500 pesos down between them, with me leaving 700 pesos up. The next day, it’s back to Cebu City the same way we got here, the ferry journey livened up when I spot a kid trying to spit out of the open window, his gob only making it as far as the ledge, and after a guilty look around to see if his mum’s spotted it, tries to blow away the evidence, though to no avail. The taxi drops me back off at the medical center, and it feels like I’ve never left it. Me Bean is still on, which at least answers the question of what is less funny than Mr Bean, and it’s a Mr Bean you’ve just seen, as it’s the exact same one that was on the last time I was here. After another interminable wait, I get called in and the declares that I’m much better but thinks I’m congested, so asks if he can take a look ‘up there’. ‘Fine’ I think, presuming he’s going to shine a light up my nose, and have to suppress a small shrill of horror when he pulls forth a foot long narrow metal rod. He gently inserts it up my left nostril but obviously it can’t bend, so I have to move around it as it penetrates further and further in until I can feel it in the back of my mouth – it’s like I’m being examined by the bad guy in Terminator II. He finishes, finally, and after I’ve pulled my fingers from the grooves I’ve made in the chair rests, we sit down and he tells me that the bottom of the Eustachian tube is swollen, and prescribes me with a steroid spray to squirt up my nose twice a day. Cool, so now I’m snorting steroids, but at least I’m off the pills now. I jeepney it to roughly where I think Kokok’s Nest is, and start walking. And walking, and walking, past innumerable fast food stalls selling skewers of pork and goat, until the road turns into a highway and I’m drenched in sweat like I have a gland problem and I reason that I must have passed it. So I retrace my steps until I find the place, right by where the jeepney dropped me off 40 minutes earlier. Fool. We get some food from a local food place in what feels like a slum, all conversations ceasing as we enter, which at least tells us we’re off the tourist trail. Good feed, and naturally cheap too. After breakfast, I say goodbye to Dom and Mark who are flying to Manila that night and make my way to the by now very familiar Northern Bus Terminal. In any foreign country, there are some strange but commonplace sights that one has to get used to; in India, it was cows in the street, here, it’s men with guns. Outside any establishment of value, there’ll be guards in quasi-police uniform, some with pistols, some with shotguns, some even with M16s. A few of them seem to glory in it, standing with their thumbs in their belts and Aviator shades, chewing gum as they lean against a post as if they’re gunslingers in Dodge City, but most carry their guns in the same casual way a European would carry an umbrella, and in it’s own way, that’s even more disturbing. On the bus, I’m soon forced to put my iPod on to drown out the drone of a Biblebasher who stands in the aisle and recites passages in Cebuano in a monotone voice before asking for donations, whilst I amuse myself by relaxing my mouth and letting the strong headwind blowing in through the windows to inflate my cheeks like a puffer fish. A Pink Panther Slinky hanging from the rear view mirror bounces up and down and twists with every jolt, a trip which bizarrely feels like it has the exact same scenery of the time Paul and I took this trip a year and a half ago. So marked is the difference in feeling, that for a while I’m convinced that the bus has taken another route, and it’s only by seeing familiar markers, like the Japanese Surrender Area, that I know that it’s not route that has changed, but my perception of it. I also can’t help but notice that I’m being checked out by quite a few of the young women who board and leave the bus, whispering to each other as they look my way and giggle behind their hands. I have to confess, it’s nice being the focus of female attention compared to the grey anonymity of home. Most men, if given the chance to become twice as attractive to women, and ten times richer and a foot taller than everyone else, would leap at the chance, yet all they have to do to achieve this is catch a flight to the Philippines. |
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