Philippines: The beginning

For my next research adventure, I’m in the Philippines for the next three months working with sea cucumbers!

Liesl, Jim, and I flew from Washington to Japan to Manila to Negros, the island on which we’ll be living just over a week ago. After 36 hours of travel, we landed in Bacolod and were swept off to a friend’s house for some much needed down time. Over the next two days, we unpacked, sorted, and repacked all the research gear that had been left behind from previous trips so we could move it to our final destination on the south of the island.

These days weren’t all work of course. Between the much needed naps (Hello, jetlag!), we got to see a few of the sights around Bacolod.

First, and my favorite, was a mountain sulfur springs resort. Before you wrinkle your nose, let me explain that the stinky hot springs are not what got me excited. These are:

Those are Golden Flying Foxes, if you can’t tell. Difficult to photograph, because they hang from the top off trees most of the time, these bats are about a foot tall and have a wingspan of almost a yard. Basically, we spent this part of the afternoon watching Red-tailed Hawk sized bats swoop through the trees. I was ecstatic the whole time.

After this, we drove to the Central Philippines Adventist College and too a quick tour. The campus is quite beautiful, with wide green lawns that are maintained by the local goat and sheep herd. The shepherd was quick to inform us that the herd numbered 53 in size and he knew each one by sight.

The last stop of the day was at the ruins of the Lanson Mansion. The Lansons were a powerful plantation family who basically poured their entire mansion out of concrete. When the Japanese invaded during World War II, they were forced to abandon the mansion and it was subsequently burned by the guerilla forces. It took them two tries (and quite a few barrels of gasoline) to catch the building on fire. When the fire finally burnt out three days later, all that was left standing was the concrete form you can see in the picture. The ghost-like remains of such an impressive house were interesting to explore, but the intricacies of building such a house were what struck us the most. They poured concrete continuously from beginning to end to ensure there would be no cracks in the mansion!

 

To finish off the day, the lady we were staying with bought pizza for supper. While this would not normally be such a noteworthy occurrence, this particular pizza was so big it could not fit through the door. Try as we might, we barely made a dent it. Thus, in true Filipino fashion, we had pizza for breakfast the next morning as well!