Philippines Day 4: Christmas

Day 4: December 25, 2014 - Maligayang Pasko (Merry Christmas)

Christmas Eve with my cousins

If I was back in the States for Christmas, we would likely have had some extended family over for a big Christmas lunch or dinner, we’d have a tree, gifts, Christmas decorations and I’d bake a lot. In the Philippines, Christmas is a bit different. Many people had artificial trees but since we were there for a short while and we don’t live there year round, we didn’t have one nor did we decorate the house. Nor did we have a big present opening. We had given out most of our “presents” when we had arrived and unpacked our suitcases. Those presents being canned goods, dry packaged foods, clothes, some shoes, school supplies for the kids, make up for my female relatives, sponges, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other necessities. In a Third World country, you focus mostly on needs rather than wants although it’s always nice to toss in a few indulgences like makeup and nail polish.

My paternal grandmother: 1910 - 2004

It’s a Filipino tradition that kids go “na-ma-masko” meaning they go to adult relatives and friends to pay their respects and wish them a Merry Christmas and in return, they get money. Think of it like trick or treating but at Christmas instead of Halloween and you get money instead of candy. When I was growing up, only the kids did it but I’ve noticed in recent years that more and more adults have been doing it as well. Typically, they’re poorer and while most have jobs or make a living in some fashion, they still benefit a lot from the extra money given out at Christmas by those who can afford to do so. This might seem like a weird custom by Western standards but it’s a time-honored one in the Philippines and, similar to the giveaway done by Final Touch, is a way of “sharing blessings”. If you’re fortunate enough to be the one giving money away on Christmas, you’re considered very blessed. The amounts given out vary, depending on the person’s age (children get less than adults) and their relation or relationship to you (godchildren get more than non-godchildren, the local street sweeper and garbage pickup guy may get a little less than the guy you occasionally or regularly call on to drive you places), a poorer relative gets more than a less-poor relative, a close relation may get more than a more distant relation. It’s a judgment call every time.

Giving out candy bars to the pihit boys

Another Filipino tradition at Christmas is lechon. Lechon is whole roast pig and is my family’s main business for some of my relatives. My grandmother started the business when she was young and she built it into local fame that lives on today even though she passed away more than 10 years ago. Thanks to her hard work and entrepreneurial nature in running the lechon business, she raised, fed, clothed and educated 9 children even though she was widowed young, and having been orphaned at age 8, she only had a second grade education. Yes, she was amazing and a smart businesswoman even without a formal education. My cousins have kept up the business and during non-holiday season, they do about 35-40 lechons a week. On Christmas Day alone, they did 102. They also did more than their weekly average every day in the week leading up to Christmas and New Years. Just as in retail, they do more than 85-90% of their annual business over the holidays. People order it for large family gatherings, office parties, weddings, holiday lunches and dinners, baptisms and christening, reunions and other special occasions.

Some people might find it strange or off-putting to see a whole pig roasting over a pit but if you’re a meat-eater, it’s no different than buying a pristinely-wrapped package of pork chops at the supermarket. Actually, I would argue the pigs used for lechon are likely more humanely treated than those that end up as mass-produced pork products. In the Philippines, there aren’t massive pig farms run by giant corporations. Instead, there are small “piggeries” supplying pigs for lechon and every pig counts for poor farmers. If a pig is sickly or dies en route, my cousins won’t accept it or pay for it so they send it back, always bad news to a farmer relying on the sale of the pig for income. It’s in their best financial, if not humane, interests to treat the pigs well. When I make loans on Kiva, I like to extend loans to pig farmers, knowing they’re who supply pigs for lechon.

If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, I can understand not liking the whole scenario, regardless. But still, I can’t use my Western standards to judge. In a poor Third World country, most of its residents don’t have the luxury to forego eating meat or animal products when they’re eating for survival as to what’s cheapest and available to them.

Selling lechon by the kilo

In the Philippines, lechon is a cultural tradition and marks celebrations and special occasions. It’s a luxury food for most people as a whole lechon can be quite expensive. The price depends on the size of the lechon ordered. My relatives also offer lechon by the kilo for those who can’t afford a whole pig and they sell by the kilo on Sundays and special occasions. Any lechon that doesn’t sell is then made into “paksiw” or lechon stewed in a sauce. Nothing ever gets wasted as they cannot afford the luxury of waste.

Bags of rice to give away

As part of our own Christmas giveaway, my dad gave out bags of rice and some money to the "pihit boys" who staff the family lechon business. They're mostly grown men rather than boys but some of them have been with our family a long time, and a few were even raised by my grandmother back when they were little more than boys, orphaned or very, very poor and taken in by her, helping in the business to earn their keep. Some she even sent to school in the hopes that they would aspire to being more than a pihit boy. "Pihit" refers to the act of turning the roasting pig over the coals until they were cooked, usually for at least 2-3 hours, depending on the size of the pig. Pihit boys do more than that, as you need them to kill the pig, clean it inside and out, stuff it with banana leaves, spear it with the pole, keep the coal fire going, roast it, take it off the fire when it was done, wrap in banana leaves and cardboard, deliver it and chop it up for serving.  They have families to feed and for those with kids, we also gave them candy and crayons.

All in all, a different Christmas than how I usually spend the holiday but in many ways, much closer to the real meaning of Christmas as it was more focused on giving to others less fortunate and being conscious of my own blessings.

Philippines Day 3: A "Giveaway" Filipino-Style and Brazilian blowout on Christmas Eve

Day 3: December 24, 2014 - Final Touch Salon Giveaway and Brazilian blowout on Christmas Eve

Weeks before I arrived in the Philippines, I had arranged with one of my cousins to make an appointment to get my hair straightened. One of the awesome aspects of going to the Philippines is a lot of personal care services are so much cheaper than in the States. So of course I had to take advantage of it.

The giveaway bags full of groceries

My uncle's assistant, Lhita, made the appointment for me at a hair salon just a couple of blocks away from our house. My appointment was for 9 am when the shop opened so, being used to punctuality, Lhita, my sister and my niece who were going to get their hair cut, and I arrived a few minutes before 9. My stylist hadn't arrived yet and a call placed to him assured us he was "on his way". On his way translated into being almost an hour late. That is one aspect of Filipino habits I don't embrace. Tardiness has become one of my pet peeves as it shows such a lack of respect for one's time while the tardy person goes on their own schedule. But if there's anything I've learned in all my travels is that it's often best to leave your home-country preferences at home and to "go with the flow" on certain things. Punctuality being one of them when dealing with a more laidback culture.

Employees of Final Touch salon

Waiting actually worked out because it turns out that when we were there on Christmas Eve day, the salon, Final Touch, was doing a "giveaway". Giveaway doesn't have the American meaning of some kind of freebie of "buy one get one free" or sample sizes of a product promotion happening in a store. This giveaway was more akin to churches giving out bags of groceries to the needy except this was a local business doing the giving. My cousin Albert, who is a town councilor and often does charitable works for the poor, identified those in the area with the most need and each family was given a ticket. Final Touch Salon's owners (who turned out to be distant relations on my dad's side) spent their own personal money to buy rice, groceries and vitamins enough to fill 200 bags. Each family with a ticket could come to Final Touch on Christmas Eve and receive a bag of groceries. Final Touch's employees helped portion out all of the groceries into the bags the day before then they helped with passing out the bags on Christmas Eve when the salon opened.

The experience touched me on several different levels. For one, it was heartbreaking to see such need. People lined up long before the salon opened, clutching their tickets, despite the pouring rain at the time. Some brought extra family members in hopes of getting an extra bag and the salon owners had to politely but firmly explain it was only 1 ticket per family and 1 ticket per bag. Others had heard about the giveaway and shown up hopefully, young children in tow, and had to be regretfully turned away because they didn't have a ticket as the salon had to make sure they had enough bags for all of the tickets given out. Part of me almost felt despair at the overwhelming need, wondering how long a sack of groceries could sustain a large family. One day? Two? And that was for the lucky ones who were able to get a bag in the first place.

But as one of my aunts always tells me, "It may just be a drop in the bucket, but that's still better than an empty bucket." And that's something I always have to remember. Perfection is the enemy of progress. Just because you can't feed them all every day doesn't mean you shouldn't try to feed some for at least a day. Many of the people lined up had jobs but they still struggle to make ends meet and feed their families. A helping hand (or a full grocery bag) matters a lot in their struggles.

What struck me the most was the attitude of generosity. In the US, there's been a sentiment of considering many helping hand outreaches as "socialism" or villefying the poor as being "too lazy to work" and of "sponging off of the government". I've heard people talk about how hard they've worked for what they have and why shouldn't others do the same, how they themselves were never given any breaks so why should other people expect things to be just handed to them? In the Philippines, the sentiment is a little different. Because much of the country is so poor, there's more a sense of community and of helping each other during hard times. The salon's "giveaway" was regarded as not so much giving food but as giving "blessing". Meaning the owners and those fortunate to work there have much more than those lining up with their tickets and they were sharing those blessings with them. The sentiment has both cultural and religious roots, Biblical in giving to the poor and having it be returned unto you tenfold and cultural in that Filipinos don't believe in being stingy with food else food be stingy with you. Meaning you always should be generous with food and it's believed your generosity will manifest back to you as you will always have food in abundance.

It's an experience I won't forget anytime soon and I was actually glad Rey, my stylist, was late as the waiting time gave me a chance to watch Filipino generosity and sharing of blessings in action. And when Rey arrived, my hair straightening went underway. In the US, the procedure would be considered similar to a Brazilian blowout. In the Philippines, they call it "re-bonding". The process is similar - apply a cement solution to the hair, let set for a time, wash, blow dry and straighten every strand of hair with a flatiron (that part took the longest time as he was very meticulous about getting every strand), apply another solution and let it set, wash again, this time with a hot oil treatment, then a final blow dry. Result is my hair went from strongly wavy and freaking frizzy in tropical humidity to stick straight Asian hair I wasn't lucky enough to be born with but could at least buy for a time from the salon. Best part? At home, a Brazilian would cost me $250-$300 or more. In the Philippines - $50 plus tips for Rey and Jamie, the shampoo girl. Totally worth the trip.

Before and after pics of my Brazilian blowout

Despite the late start,  I was done in time to join my family to a trip to my aunt's house in Fort Bonifacio where she hosted us for Christmas Eve dinner. There were 14 of us but she made enough for 50 so it didn't look like we made much of a dent. It was a far cry from the scenes from that morning and forcibly reminded me just how blessed I am.

Leslie's Restaurant and Filipino dishes in Tagaytay

Leslie's Restaurant - lunch on December 23, 2014

Just a little rainy that day

Since I'm all about the food, taking pictures of it, eating it, documenting it, here's the pictorial of what we had at Leslie's Restaurant when we went to Tagaytay. Overall, the food was pretty good albeit the service was a little slow.

Entry way into Leslie's

Large dining room with an open area towards the back

Kalamansi Juice

Kalamansi juice is what I consider a cross between limeade and lemonade and some refer to it as Filipino lemonade. The kalamansi fruit looks like a thin-skinned little round meyer lemon that starts off green and ripens to a sunny orange-yellow color. In hot weather, it's drunk ice cold like frosty lemonade and in cold weather, hot kalamansi tea is popular and, I'm told, soothing for the throat. My mom has a kalamansi tree that produces multitudes of fruit. Good thing you can use kalamansi in many things, not just for making juice. It's also often squeezed over pancit, used as a garnish and can be used in marinades.

I had to take a picture of Diet Coke or "Coke Light" as they commonly refer to it in Asia as it turned out to be a rare sighting on our 10-day visit. Most establishments and grocery stores only carried Coke or Coke Zero. I'm still an adherent of Diet Coke and I hadn't realized how rare it was starting to get in the Philippines. There were days during the trip where I told my nieces I might need to trade one of them for a can of Coke Light; they just rolled their eyes.

Hot broth

Fried Bangus (fish)

Bangus is a milk fish and is considered the national fish of the Philippines. I didn't even know there was a national fish for the country. Huh.

Shrimp and Vegetables

Kare-Kare (oxtail stew)

Kare-kare is a Filipino stew typically made with oxtail and other parts of cows and pigs I don't normally eat (feet and sometimes offal and tripe). I'm what you'd think of as a Filipino-food-lite eater. Meaning I don't eat the hardcore Filipino food like kare-kare or dinuguan (blood stew) or bagoong (fermented shrimp paste). My taste buds are Americanized Filipino so I'll chow down on pancit (noodles), tocino (really yummy, more on that in a future post - hopefully) and bistek (below).

Chicken Barbecue

Filipinos make the BEST barbecue. Seriously. The marinade always has incredible flavor and the barbecue is done to perfection. No additional sauce needed as there's plenty of flavor in the chicken itself.

Bistek Tagalog

Bistek Tagalog is sliced beef in a sauce of onions, soy sauce and lemon. It's one of my favorite Filipino dishes although in Leslie's version, the beef was a bit chewy. My mom makes it very tender and flavorful.

Garlic Fried Rice

Rice. 'Nuff said.

Philippines Day 2 - Tagaytay

Day 2: December 23, 2014 - Tagaytay

For our first all-day excursion, my dad rented a van and hired a driver to take us to Tagaytay (pronounced Tah-guy-tie) where Taal Volcano, the 2nd most active volcano in the Philippines, is located. If you've never driven in the Philippines, don't. Unless you're a highly skilled New York City cab driver who can get in and out of tight spots without killing or grazing anyone for long periods of time, you can't. It's best to hire someone who can.

Taal Crater Lake

From our house in Metro Manila, it took about an hour and a half to go to Tagaytay and that's without bad traffic. And everything's relative. Bad traffic in the Bay Area means it takes me up to an hour to commute 15 miles. Bad traffic in the Philippines means you sit in place for an hour without inching forward. Fortunately, we made good time via express ways/highways and one- and two-lane roads that weren't too badly congested.

View from Leslie's Restaurant at Taal

Our driver took us to Leslie's Restaurant which had large, open area seating and from where we overlooked Taal Crater Lake and Taal Volcano. Or at least as much of it as we could see when we arrived as it was pretty foggy. We thought we'd order and wait for it to clear up so we could take better pictures after lunch but it got worse as we ate and actually started to rain. I even almost felt cold when it got windy (I never get cold in the Philippines). The food was good although we had to wait a bit as it seemed like there wasn't enough wait staff to serve the crowd. Which is somewhat unusual in the Philippines as usually there's plenty of people. But perhaps they were shorthanded because of the holidays.

In any case, after lunch, my nieces opted to get coffee from the coffee stand just outside Leslie's called Filibeans. Which I thought was a hilarious name (get it? Filibeans? Philippines?). By then it was pretty windy and started to rain so we set off, making a couple of stops though to shop at the fruit stands along the road. The fruit made such colorful displays and my mom bought some pineapples, mangoes, chicos and other assorted local fruits. My nieces wandered off and we found one sampling espasol - the vendors are free with the samples with the expectation you would buy whatever you sampled. Fortunately my niece was aware of the cultural expectation and did although she couldn't really bargain either. My other niece tried when she purchased some peanut brittle but yup, speaking English with an American accent was a dead giveaway, better than stamping "tourist" on your forehead and those vendors are no fools.

Once we had purchased fresh fruit, we made another stop at Nuvali in Santa Rosa, Laguna. I'm not quite sure what Nuvali is meant to be but all I know is we got out to look at the koi in the small lake there. And when I say koi, I mean lots of koi. Outside of Hawaii, I don't think I've seen so many and in such concentration. You could buy fish food for them and they clustered (or traffic-jammed) at the spots where the tourists were feeding them. They were literally on top of each other, trying to get to the food.

After we left Tagaytay, we made a final stop in Binan, Laguna, which is where my mom grew up and where she still had some relatives. We only stayed briefly to drop off some things we had brought from the US for them and to pick up some "puto Binan", a local steamed cake the town is known for. When I was a kid and we lived in the Philippines or whenever we went back, we would visit my mom's family and always get puto Binan. I always loved it and remember it being large, flat sheets of steamed cake, in nondescript flimsy cardboard boxes lined with banana leaves and sprinkled with coconut on top. This time around, they were much more professionally packaged but I have to say, it wasn't as good as I remembered. The fluffy texture was still there but the taste wasn't. They also had topped it with cheese instead of coconut and I don't like cheese on my baked goods. Wah. Think I'll try making puto again myself.

Philippines Day 1: Arrival in Manila

Day 1: December 22, 2014

Every January, I suspend baking for as long as I can hold out. Partly because I'm still recovering from all the holiday baking I did in December and partly because January is when most people make a resolution to diet and eat healthier; I really try not to crater their good intentions by putting out sugar and fat-laden baked goods. I've usually recovered by February and even have people start commenting on "how long" it's been since I've baked for them and was I sick? I've even had people helpfully tell me they're not on a diet so I wouldn't be cratering them if I were to bake in January. But, regardless, I hold out for as long as I can. This year I'm going to go a different direction with my blog for the next few weeks and take you with me on my trip over the holidays to the Philippines. There, never let it be said I didn't support your healthier eating habits. At least for the first 31 days of the new year.

My niece and I before our flight

My other niece and my sister before their flight

My nieces are graduating later this year and it seemed like the optimal time to go before they started working full-time after graduation. My niece Shyla and I flew out of SFO while my sister and my other niece Lauren flew out of LAX and we all landed in Manila within an hour of each other. There's a 16-hour time difference between the West Coast and Manila and it was a 14-hour direct flight so we left on Saturday night and landed in the wee hours on Monday, Manila time.

Noise-canceling headphones = lifesaver

Although I love to travel, I'm a notoriously bad traveler because I rarely sleep on airplanes because of the noise and the inability to lie flat (ah, to be able to travel business class or first class without mortgaging an internal organ to pay for the upgrade) and have difficulty adjusting to the local time zone because by the time I get off the plane, I'm ready to fall horizontal and catch some zz's, regardless of the local time. But this time, I splurged and bought myself a pair of noise-canceling headphones. I was a bit skeptical on how good they would be. I had done my homework online on what to buy, which ones were rated well, what to look for, etc, but the one thing I hadn't had time to do before I left was go to a brick and mortar store to try them on for myself. So the first time I really put them on to test them other than when they arrived in my quiet house in my quiet neighborhood, was when I got on the plane. As soon as I flipped the switch to turn on the noise-canceling function, my life changed. Seriously. Wow, these things really work. No longer could I hear the loud roar of the plane engines or the ambient noise around me. Proof was that I slept a whole 4 hours straight on the plane. For me, that's pretty amazing.When I finally took the headphones off, I felt like I was being deafened by the plane noises. My travel life has taken a whole new turn.

Arrival at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila

Touchdown in Manila - my sister and Lauren met Shyla and me in baggage claim. It took awhile for our suitcases to come out but passing through Customs was a breeze and we were picked up by my cousin Albert and my dad who had arrived a few days earlier with my mom. We have a house in Metro Manila that's set in a "compound" with 4 other houses that also contain family members. It's affectionately known as "Villa Mahinahon" which literally translates to a villa of calm and relaxation, untroubled. Filipino humor often names things that are the exact opposite, haha. Calm and relaxed, my family is not.

Lechon (roast pig) in the making

I have a number of relatives in the Philippines and although it's been 7 years since my last visit, the nice thing about family is it doesn't matter how long we've been gone or how out of touch we might have been, we're still family and there's still unconditional acceptance. My nieces haven't been back for 12 years and much was made of how much they've grown since they were 9.

Since it was our arrival day, we didn't have any outings planned as my parents (wisely) knew we were unlikely to be up for much activity and wanted an adjustment period to the local time, local temps and local humidity. But, not wanting to waste a day of our 10-day visit, my mom arranged for my sister, my nieces and me to have mani-pedis done at home. One of the nice things about the Philippines is you can get a lot of in-home services come to you for a fraction of what they would cost in the US. Case in point, the wife of a neighbor from a family we'd grown up with back when we lived in the Philippines, came over to give us all manicures and pedicures. She did a very thorough job and it took just over an hour for each of us to get a thorough nail treatment. All for the equivalent of $5 USD per person and that's with us paying her more than her going rate. Nice, huh?

By the time my nails were buffed, polished and looking more spiffy than usual, I was seriously lagging in energy and wakefulness. But it wasn't night time yet and we were all trying to stay awake so we could adjust to the local time more quickly. So off we went with my cousin Abby for a walk around our little town and to buy "tsinelas" or slippers. Tsinelas can refer to indoor or outdoor slippers. Slippers can be flipflops or the more traditional Filipino-style slippers. I already had a pair of the latter and needed flipflops more sturdy and longer lasting than the cheap ones I can find at home so I bought myself a pair at the local store, relying on Abby to do the bargaining for me. Almost anywhere in Asia, it's customary to haggle. I'm horrible at it and don't expect to get any good deals with my American accent and my tendency to keep translating the Philippine peso into dollars and thinking "hey, that's much cheaper than back home." Fortunately, Abby is good at it and we let her do our bargaining.

A pair of tsinelas

I won't post a picture Abby took of us in the tsinelas store because you can clearly see I'd only gotten 4 hours of sleep in two days. Believe me when I say I slept well that night. On our walk, we also saw Puto Bungbong being made - more on that in a future post as I also hope to showcase some Filipino recipes as part of this month's blogging.