Bahala na: The Lowe Family Goes to China

April has come and gone and has been probably the fastest month to date. Even missed my blog post for the first time! I left in the end of March to meet my mom on a SCUBA diving trip to Tubbataha Reef. The diving in Tubbataha is, without a doubt, the best in the Philippines. 100 miles away from the shore and only accessibly by live-aboard dive boats during three months of the year, this coral reef is in incredible condition and is very well-managed and protected. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave the Philippines without a trip to Tubbataha, and I’m very fortunate that the open season coincided with the time my mom could join me on a SCUBA diving adventure.

The 12-hour ride out to Tubbataha from Puerta Princessa was like a rollercoaster, and with the garbage can and misc. items rolling all around the room, neither my mom nor I got any sleep the first night. When we got downstairs for breakfast, it was apparent we weren't the only ones. Thankfully after the first morning, it was all smooth sailing. I quickly stopped wondering why in the world we were doing this trip and instead had an amazing time.

Tubbataha is a 98,000 hectare marine protected area (MPA). The community-based MPA we’re establishing in Nueva Valenia is 10 hectares, just to put it in perspective. Every dive was a drift dive, meaning after back rolling in off the small dinkies used to take out the divers, you just follow the current along the reef and let the boat pick you up wherever you end up. Because the area is so massive, there is no fear about running out of reef to see. In 5 days, I went on 20 days (a huge amount). On every dive, the coral was in amazing condition, and there were tons and tons of fish. We saw schools of thousands of jacks and, for the first time in my life, schools of thousands of barracuda. We saw an eagle ray, a manta ray, and plenty of sea turtles. On 18 of the 20 dives, we saw sharks, including on two night dives. I can confirm that they are attracted to the light! On one special dive, we swam away from the reef into the open blue, and that’s where we saw the hammerhead sharks. Part of the “unholy trinity” (hammerhead, tiger, and bull shark), these are one of the more dangerous sharks to see in the water. Thankfully they kept their distance.

The boat was really nice. While I did have a bunk bed, the warm water and room with aircon were a far cry from my nipa hut back on Guimaras. The food was good, and the staff was extremely helpful. On the boat of 20 divers, there was actually a 20-man crew! And the final night of the trip, we got to tagay (drink) Filipino-style with the crew. It was fun getting to experience that with my mom, and the crew got a kick out of my Ilonggo.

After our dive trip, we rested up in Manila for a couple days before flying to Hong Kong, where we met up with my dad and Logan. It was so great to all be together, and the week flew by. The family vacation ended up being a huge success, and while we all had slightly different preferences, we were able to find very good common ground. There was shopping for Mom, some gambling in Macau for Logan, some sightseeing for Dad, and some wandering around for me. Hong Kong was like a huge Madison Avenue. Never in my life have I seen so many luxury stores in one place. My biggest surprise though was that English was not spoken by everyone. It seemed like the only people who spoke English (outside of the hotels) were the Filipinos! There are many in Hong Kong, and they famously congregate on weekends. We happen to see a massive group of them, and it wasn’t hard for me to pick them out, mostly thanks to overhearing their conversations in Tagolog.

On the first day of our trip, after a really fun and hectic dim sum breakfast, while walking around a mall, out of nowhere we ran into my friend, fellow PCV John Shectman, with his girlfriend, Golda. We had all hung out together on New Years, so I know them both well, and they came out with Logan and me on both nights, including my birthday. For my birthday, we had tea at the Peninsula Hotel, and Logan, John, Golda and I partied at night.

After a couple days in Hong Kong and one short day in Macau, we flew to Beijing. Beijing was much more like Hong Kong and much less like North Korea than I had expected it to be. Although Facebook and Twitter don’t work, Nytimes.com, Gmail and most blogs are accessible. Plus the English-language newspaper printed in China covered events like the North Korea rocket launching (and failure), albeit from a different perspective. While I know these are English-language newspapers and most of the country can't understand them, it was still far more free than I had expected.

In Beijing, we had a guide who gave us an interesting take on modern China. While he’s clearly aware of his government’s restricting of access, he also seemed to justify it. In our first car ride, he was saying that yes, his government is "getting better," but that in a country with a billion people, the government needs to be able to shut down websites like Facebook and Twitter because false rumors and stories could spread and cause much mayhem. Those were his opinions, but he was clearly a well-educated and open minded guy. Rarely do you here Americans praising limitations of free speech by the government. I was also surprised to see many well persevered temples, such as the Lama temple and statues of the Buddha in many places. My impression was that religion was completely forbidden in China, but it was apparent that at least individual spiritual prayer was common and fair game.

The city itself was much cleaner and nice than I had imagined. We did go by the Olympic Village, and I’m sure that the city, pre and post Olympics, would be like two completely different places. One part I found particularly interesting was the National History Museum. There is no mention of the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward but does mention that the implementation of Socialism came "at a high price." Of course, Mao is still completely revered, and they described the Chinese Civil War as a battle of something the greed and elitism of Chiang Kai-shek vs. Mao battling for peace and democracy (yes, they used the word democracy).

The family tended to stay away from the crazy foods, but I did get to try goose, abalone (a oyster-like seafood harvest in the Philippines) and also the famous delicacy bird’s nest soup. It didn’t have much flavor but definitely had a strange texture to it. Even Mom, Dad and Logan gave it a try!

So here are just a few pictures from the trip, all of which I took from Logan’s facebook albums. Check out his album for the rest of the pics. Thanks bro!!