we finally made it to tacloban! our
flights were delayed for a day due to a tropical storm that was bad enough to
cut the pope’s time here short, and then delayed further as a plane carrying
prominent filipino government officials had crashed and remained on the runway
at the tacloban airport. it is far warmer and more humid here than it was in
manila. tacloban is an endearing little dirty city of about 200 000 that only
really became famous after it was decimated by typhoon hayain last year. most
of the downtown has been entirely rebuilt, and the place really seems to be booming.
it has apparently become a lot more cosmopolitan since the typhoon, as lots of
businesses (western-style coffee shops, fine dining establishments, and even used book stores) have opened up to cater to all the aid workers and to take advantage
of the influx of aid money. seemingly the first things rebuilt after the
typhoon were shopping malls and fast food restaurants. there is a dunkin donuts
franchise quite literally every block, but none of them have coffee. its on the
menu, they just don’t have it. despite the fact that one can live a luxurious
life here with money, obviously most people don’t have those kinds of means, and life
remains very tough economically, not to mention all the terrible loss of life
from the typhoon.
tacloban is on the island of leyte, on the eastern edge of the philippines about half way down the archipelago. the vernacular of the area is called waray-waray, although the national language tagalog is
spoken by everyone as well, and educated people speak english quite
impressively. after much searching we found a place to stay.
with all the aid workers who came after the typhoon the prices for rent
increased exponentially. an average room with air conditioning, hot water and
wifi rents for about us$1000/month. we weren’t prepared to spend that kind of
money for rent in the philippines, so we found a couple rooms with none of the above amenities at a hostel
called ron and fire’s place on the outskirts
near the bus station. ron is an australian and fire is a filipina, and there
are occasional travelers sifting through which is cool! something (we can only speculate that it is a
trapped bat) flaps around in the rafters when the fan gets turned on, and the
neighborhood rooster ensures we wake at the crack of dawn.
