Day 8: Cultural Night

12 am: I can hear “Lonely” by Akon. A reasonably good-looking Filipino woman with a strapless black halter and denim mini-skirt holds two baluts and takes a seat next to a man. She proceeds to shake his hand, introduce herself and then place her hand on his thigh. I am in Gegambak (which means spider in Tagalog). The dancers are amateurs. It is no strip club though. The women keep their clothes on. After Aron downs his last beer we walk back to the inn.

For the first time in days, I wake up at 10 am. Bliss. Today is the day that we all take a holiday from our holiday. Lunch is at Chowking Express. I was informed by the locals that Chowking is Filipino owned. The Pancit Canton tastes very much like Hokkien Mee.

Halo-Halo is the Filipino version of our ais kacang. It is shaved ice with ube (yam paste), oats, jelly pieces, beans and a host of other things. Feeza asks me, “Is that yam ah?” I thought she was trying to be Rastafarian and say “Ya Man”.

After lunch, my personal itinerary tells me it is time to resume chilling time by watching television. Some of us watched TV and some went to the black market. At 3 pm we met to rehearse our cultural performance and then we left to the CSC in UP Baguio. We look a strange bunch today (much stranger than how we usually look on the streets of Baguio) with some of us sporting sarongs around our waists.

We started with an icebreaker that Rommel and Chinee taught us. It was very similar to the dances we normally have at secondary school campfires. Dinner was satisfying. There was Filipino popiah, malakit (a sticky rice kuih), roast chicken, pancit and cream puffs. After dinner we proceeded to embarrass ourselves and we were repaid with laughter, smiles and claps from our gracious hosts.

We performed a dikir barat, a dance comedy and also presented a video entitled Kadhal Sagada (Sagada Romance). Our dikir barat singing of Rasa Sayang sounded pretty good to me and the Filipinos were quite amused with the backup singing for Feliz Navidad courtesy of Aron, Zeck, Max, Feeza and Temme. The laughter at the end of our dance comedy convinced me that we Monash students managed to put on a smashing performance. (Ed: the dance comedy was an absolutely fabulous performance that was prepared in about 10 minutes and everyone just jumbled ideas together and walah! We had a historical-dance-comedy) Look out for the link to Kadhal Sagada, its hilariously funny!

Our student guides put on a traditional song performance for us with accompanying footwork whilst Claire Daguio from Migrante and Ani Bungaoen from Ornus taught us an Igorot song. To end the night we were treated to a special video by Dr. Yeoh about our journey in the Cordilleras. It was very touching and left us feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

Gifts were presented. Contact numbers and hugs were exchanged. The solidarity goal of the trip was a success.

There was leftover food and we decided to distribute it to those in need. While holding a huge tray of pancit, Max asked two male street vendors, “Do you all want pancit?” They shake their heads. Perhaps they think he was trying to sell them pancit. Eventually we gave the food to some street vendors with children.

By Grace