My last airplane ride was pretty absurd. We were in one of Cebu Pacific’s DC-10, riding the turbulent skies to Cebu at the rear end of the plane where the only two engines roared too hard. I was wondering why we got to sit near the butt of the plane. I was also wondering if we were going to die deaf in the event that something really bad happens.
I didn’t find my airplane rides interesting. I couldn’t see the fun in looking outside the windows to see endless white streams of cotton candy. Plus there aren’t any stopovers, there’s an enforced obligation to stay seated in the silence of your own personal space, and under any circumstance, you just can’t fart even if you had to. The only beautiful happens in early flight, when people look like ants from above. Such picture reminds me of how people crave for sweet things in their little anthills with metal roofs.
I’m more used to land travel. Every summer, we take on a yearly trip where the whole family travels to the queen city of the south, and on almost every occasion, over land and sea. Traveling with your family isn’t much of a great challenge because you get to recognize the presence of your parents who are there to tend to your safety, personal needs and mischief while on the road.
The opposite happened 2 years and 358 days ago when I was left in Davao alone. I was still complying with school stuff then when every close relative here in Davao hurried to Cebu seeking the thrill of alienation as a tourist. Mom left me a ship ticket, and 500 pesos to fund my journey in pursuit of them. It was pretty interesting to think that I had only myself to worry and tend to me on a one day trip miles and miles away from home.
I got up too early, around 3 am to catch the first trip to Cagayan de Oro City where I would take my ship ride to Cebu. It wasn’t necessary for me to take the first trip though. Maybe I was just too excited to travel alone. Anyhow, the first trips are the best rides since there’s no too much crowding in the morning and the coldness matched with the color of the early morning skies make the whole thing look more dramatic.
I was the last one to board the bus, being almost late for the first trip. There were only a few seats left and most of them where at the back where the air-conditioning was at its best. I sat beside a beautiful girl who was just about my age. That was the best seat I could find, and I had no other choice remember? Innocence is a wonderful excuse.
The trip was generally smooth. We were scheduled to take four stops, five if you count the breakfast stop we did at around 7 a.m. in the outskirts of Davao City minutes away from the gates of Bukidnon. The food wasn’t great and I wished I ate with the beautiful lady but she wasn’t there anyway. Either she’s on diet or she just wanted sleep over food.
There’s a thin line that draws the boundary between Davao and Bukidnon and that area is called BUDA. The place reminded me more of Buddhism, which in turn reminded me to be less desirous and ignorant as I went back inside the bus after my morning feast.
Eating on a bus trip requires people to eat more in a shorter amount of time. It’s the only time we can do that without having to worry about feeling the guilt of gluttony.
BUDA is definitely a nice place—cold weather, bitter strawberries (I swear I tasted bitterness alongside the typical strawberry sweetness) and beautiful flowers. I was watching everything outside the bus window with the lady in the middle of my view. What can I do? She got to the window-seat first and I was left with no choice but to sit on the aisle-seat next to her. Oh I so love my innocence. But it didn’t matter anyway. I love watching beautiful things and the depth of field from which I see them doesn’t really matter.
There’s just little difference between the look of appreciation and the look of young adulterous desire, so I had to stop staring out of the window after a little while before I got a slap from the girl right next to me. After that I just spent my time looking down the aisle and observing people in the silence of our connection. Maybe she wouldn’t care to talk to me because she thought so that I had hormonal issues. I didn’t talk to her thinking that she was snobbish. Maybe we both thought of these things simultaneously, and we ended up not talking. Eventually, I killed the idea of us having a casual chit-chat. It did not really matter as we were beautiful strangers and it seems to fit best that way. We didn’t have to talk in order to connect.
The last time that I saw her was on the first scheduled stop of the trip. Maybe she left while I was sleeping, in the second or the third stop in the heart of Bukidnon. I woke up on the last stop, having two adjacent seats all to myself. I found the series of events romantic that way—her leaving me in my sleep and dropping something around like a piece of paper or something with her name and number on it. I fixed myself, while carefully looking for anything that she might have left there. Only to find out that there was nothing worth checking out. I guess I brought too much dreaming to the real world.
It’s amazing how people change during the travel. When I was in BUDA, I was reminded more of Buddhism and in my inspired attempt, I almost was “the awakened one”. Hours and miles after, I was asleep.
I couldn’t think of a reason that drove me to sleep earlier in the trip when. I wasn’t use to doing that. Perhaps it was because of the coldness in the bus. Or maybe I just got too used of the Bukidnon countryside image that it didn’t seem too interesting to me already. Up to now I strongly believe that the whole happiness in the trip lies in the stretch of the mountains in Calinan, to the mountains of BUDA, ending in the valleys just before the first stop in the town of Quezon. After that, you can sleep for as long as you want without having to feel sorry for not greeting the world outside the window with a kiddy-smile.
The very soul of that trip’s memory lies in the conflict that came up just when everything was too good to be bland. I encountered one major-life-threatening-conflict when after the fourth and the last stop, and just before an hour to go before I finally arrived in Cagayan, I felt the great urge of one major wee-wee.
So I was there, inside the bus just beside the window, struggling to find a way to stop my bladder from giving up. Well there’s a concept we call mind over matter and that was plan A. Soon, plan A turned futile when I guessed that they used ten refrigerators inside the bus to substitute for the whole air-conditioning system. For a while, I thought I found the best way to counter global warming. Now the piddle appeared be unstoppable due to the coldness and for a moment, I found out how tsunamis start. Now in the worst case scenario where the concept of mind over matter failed, I had the phallus in a plastic bottle idea (it doesn’t sound right, does it? lol).
The plan was simple. I had to cover myself with my huge parka, and in my seat, take a piss. That’s just it; would be effective (I think) but at the same time messy. Two or three tries failed and that was enough to foil what could have been a first in my own history of travel.
Sometimes I think that I was a blessed creature that day in that big red machine. A miracle took place as my bladder just had enough strength to hold the waves of excretory fluid beginning to explode. Divine intervention, mind over matter, and phallus in a bottle, whatever. What mattered most was that I was able to hold the tsunami back for at least an hour. I even had the enough bladder power for a five minute extension when in terminal, took some time searching for the nearest comfort room. It was only then that I realized why they called it the comfort room.
I fulfilled the end of my first part of the whole journey to Cebu at 12 noon. Cagayan was a good place to learn a lot. I was stranded there for seven hours before boarding the ship that would take me over the waters of Visayas to Cebu. The pilgrimage was just half done, and I was going to meet more people along the way who would enthusiastically talk to me about things I didn’t know about. The sea-travel was the other meaningful half of my solitary quest to meet up with my family who was fairly having a good time without me. It would have been a lot interesting to tell that part too but it’s a story of its own. Anyway, I spent most of the time in the sea to sleep and nobody really is interesting to know the things running in my head during my dream session.
There’s more to our being ant-like from the eyes of somebody who’s up there looking down with benevolent eyes. There’s more to the outside world than the beauty it reveals. There’s more to spirituality than recognizing it by name. There’s more to my look of appreciation than hormonal desires.
The world is beautiful from inside the Rural Tours bus number 2366-something. You all look like ants to me.
Beautiful ants.
- The name of the girl in the bus is Carla.
- I just made that up in memory of my first, long-lost crush in kindergarten.
- The total population of China is approximately 1.4 billion.
- If they were to piss all together, they’d probably create tsunamis.
- When it’s cold, we don’t sweat. So there’s more excess water in our bodies.
- That explains it.
- Life’s like strawberry in Bukidnon. Bittersweet.
