Hey Boss, Looking For Girl?/ANGELES

I fly into the Philippines budget flight hub of Angeles, with the intention of making my tired way to Boracay, knowing two things: Boracay is a beautiful island of perfect white beaches where it is impossible to not get laid, and Angeles is a disgusting sex tourist-ridden cesspit where it is also impossible to not get laid (but grosser). I'm psyched.

And reportedly no bird flu. Now I know three things.

I exchange for some pesos at the airport and get a taxi into Angeles city proper. A friend of Malcolm's back at the Singapore Flyer recommended I stay at the Marlim Mansion hotel, which at 30 bucks a night is far more than I usually spring for, but it definitely buys a nice room.

Fewer bloodstains than I've become accustomed to, definitely.

I browse the internet with junkie abandon till about 4 am, when sleep finally overcomes my hunger for webcomic updates. Around noon I check out, but with no plans for the day I hang out in the lobby for another couple hours, no idea where to go or what to do. Finally I suck it up and take my backpack to wander the streets like a fucking renegade.

Luckily, there was nearby accommodation with a wide variety of sleeping options. Here is one example with a classy and convenient menu of pricing choices.

First item on the agenda: find another room so I can immediately put my backpack back down again. I look around for one of the cleaner pay-by-the-hour motels, or at least the one with the nicest hourly-sex-pricing sign outside, and check in. You can probably imagine what depraved excuse for shelter such an establishment might offer, and I gotta say, you'd be wrong. The digs weren't too shab-a-dabs for 800 pesos. Also, 800 pesos (close to 20 bucks a night) is about the cheapest I can find, probably because sex tourists tend to have more money than dirty backpacker scum.

There's even a weird seafoam chaise lounge for your classier perverts.

These pay-as-you-go fuckbunkers definitely get a bad rap. You could absolutely describe this room as "habitable". And if that wasn't enough, there was a lightbox on the wall that clearly spelled out the laws of the land, a powerful final barrier to keep out all the riffraff:

Where's the last place you stayed that had a chambermaid? Bet it wasn't pay-by-the-hour!

Once I'm fully checked in to my rape-hovel, I stop in at a Japanese restaurant to get a fruit shake. The guy making my shake says I look like the lead guitarist of Linkin Park, which is a statement I still don't entirely know how to take. Is he ugly? I hope he isn't ugly. I literally cannot bring myself to care about Linkin Park enough to look up him up. What a heady conversation starter. I chat with the shake artist and his female coworker about the area, and ask where they like to hang out, but they seem to only judge nightlife by how beautiful the girls are. That's too narrow of a metric, guys. According to these two, the girls in Angeles are the hottest in all the Philippines, because they come here to make that money. In their words, Boracay can suck it. The girl coworker goes on to say that she'd also be out there in the clubs raking in that sweet sex worker cash, if only she was hot enough. My heart goes out.

On a different note, check out Curry Steve's for truly "authentic" Indian cuisine

Once I've had enough of reassuring a girl that she could absolutely be a hooker if she wanted to, the world is her oyster, I exit back into the dusty concrete eyesore of Angeles' Balibago district. Everything is squat gray buildings boxed up next to each other, stitched through with low power lines and on every surface boasting the usual tourist fare in Tagalog, English, and Korean. Always Korean. That's new.

There's a hum of electricity and desperation in the air, or maybe my mind's still stuck on that last conversation. Just so's I feel a little better about being in the Filipino Mos Eisley, I decide to take in a little culture. Turns out there's a cemetery where you can see a marker dedicated to...the Bataan Death March, which passed along here during World War II.

Is "passed along" a somber enough turn of phrase? It doesn't feel right.

Sorry.

Maybe that's enough culture for now. There's a park nearby, so I spend sunset there watching Filipino flair bartenders practice their bottle tricks.

This city can't be that great, because I am far from alone.

With the fall of night comes decisions. How far am I gonna take this town? I mean, I'm here, so I might as well dip a toe in, and see what pond life pokes its head out. But do I actually want to, as the French say, pay for sex? I'm not exactly the Mayor of Morals Town, but I do draw a line. Although that line has always been drawn mostly 'cause I've always been a real-life pauper without prospects. Let's just be open to destiny.

Be nice, destiny.

I find a sleazy looking bar called The Margarita Station, which is actually pretty nice, unfortunately. No go-go girls, just a lot of normal-ish people and commendable drink prices.

BOOO

Since I don't know anyone, and no one is actively making an effort to talk to me, I drink a fair share and watch TV shows on my mp3 player. Destiny's playing it a little slow tonight. There's a cocktail on the menu called a Stinger, which I order because Bukowski girls always drink it. It's god-awful dog swill. Whoever decided cognac needed creme de menthe should be drowned and then shot. It's going to come as a surprise to myself and probably my audience that I don't vomit later tonight, considering I followed that success story with a Tanduay Ice, the Filipino version of a Bacardi Breezer. Why? Destiny, and also I don't remember. Probably misread the menu. Now that I'm loaded with enough confidence-juice to make something happen, I chat up the bartender about the sitch'. Turns out, he hates all the Koreans in town. Apparently this is where they all come to vacation, and go absolutely fucking nuts. According to my barman, they're loud, unruly, and spit everywhere. Which, yeah, but I guess even more so than in Korea. Whoa.

Beyond that, no directions or advice. Just antipathy towards Koreans.

Time to plunge in: Fields Avenue, the official Walking Street. Many Southeast Asian tourist towns will have a Walking Street, but few come close to this. Here is where the bawdy neon lights of the city are, a profligate signal flare of excitement and low culture coiled into the urban sprawl. Go-go girls and their unimpressed madames line both sides of the road, offering endless variations on the same venal spiel. Eagerly salivating over them are a depressing number of older white gentlemen and what I assume are the Korean businessmen I was warned against. The Koreans seem to have the edge in numbers. There are local men too, every other one a tout asking if I want a trike ride or cheap cigarettes or knock-off sunglasses or fake viagra or stolen electronics. They all call me "boss". After Singapore, it feels like home. I walk a lap up and down the street, psyching myself up to bite the proverbial bullet and explore one of these dens of sin.

My first go-go bar of the night will turn out to be representative of many: bored, uncoordinated bikini girls sharing raised stages that zig and zag through the bar, languorously dancing repetitive "routines" that only serve to remind you that dancing is not their true profession. It's little more than a haphazardly neon-trimmed dive bar that happens to have a few poles that the girls use more for support than any kind of eroticism. The money seems to have gone entirely to the outside decor (which the competition ensures is fantastically eye-catching indeed), with little to spare for the cavernous space inside. The audience is predictably made up of overweight and middle-aged white guys or loud Korean businessmen, all swilling double-price beers. Considering I am almost none of those things, I turn out to be very popular with the ladies. I'll say it, it's a bit of a shock.

Not that they have much to talk about; in between the not so subtle hints that they're available for take-away, every girl I talk to simply rants about further crimes of the Korean people, A middle-aged Swiss man strikes up a conversation with me, perhaps out of loneliness, but it's a welcome change. I can't make out a lot of what he says over the terrible sound system, but he doesn't seem like a predator. Still, probably wouldn't except any massage lessons from him just yet. When I finish my drink, he asks if I'd like for him to show me his favorite bars along the strip. When in (the fall of) Rome!

It isn't long before some Koreans behaving poorly make themselves known. At one bar there's a real specimen videotaping the girls with this massive IMAX-sized rig and trying to feel up their legs. The girls are too...professional, I guess, to tell him off, instead just looking away, obviously uncomfortable, and occasionally brushing off his roaming hand. Finally one gal has had enough and gets right up in his face and shouts until he scurries off like the licentious rodent he is. My Swiss libertine picks up the check, as he's been doing all night, and off we go to the next one.

I'm getting trashed on all these free San Migs (side note: not a bad beer for a shitty cheap lager), on top of the 5 or 6 drinks from earlier in the night, but the Swissman is very calm and casual when he points out a girl to me he fancies, and calls her over. They negotiate for a spell, and just like that we have a new addition to our happy group. He asks if there's any girl I'd like, and I ruefully lay out how paying for it just isn't my bag. I make sure, however, that he knows what a great guy I think he is, and how cool and judgement-free I am with his whole scene, man. He leaves to party with his new gal pal, and I leave to find more bars to drink more beers. My mind disappears with my friends, and all I remember is stumbling somnambulant through door after garishly decorated door, dressed up like temples and jungles and saloons and vintage nightclubs, finding each one the same inside and stumbling out again. In my hypnagogic state the bars and the girls all blend into one another in a horrible panorama of beer and butts and bad Koreans, yet despite my best efforts to override my programming with drink I manage to stay single to the end. Oh well.

Amazingly, I make it back without difficulty to my love hotel room that will remain absent of love. It almost feels like I'm being selfish, just using it for boring old sleep. I noticed that even the premium hotels in the area offer hourly pricing as well. They know their demographic. I wanted to see Angeles, and I feel sated.

After waking in worse shape than usual, I go through the alcoholic's morning ritual of making sure all my stuff is still with me, and check out.

Other than some mystery thigh bruises, all good in Jamiesburg.

After a trike ride to the bus terminal, I'm having trouble finding the bus to the Manila airport. A local is kind enough to show me, and then wang enough to ask for a tip. I stiff him, because Never Back...nope, doesn't really work here. The bus shows Con Air during the ride, which is terrible for a hangover, modern classic though it may be.

After the bus another taxi, where I'm charged another fare that I'm sure is unreasonable but haven't been in-country long enough to be sure. I am so tired of learning new price standards and currency exchange rates, and trying to remember to not let everyone take advantage of my rotating buffet of inebriation, apathy, white guilt, comparative wealth, and attempted cultural sensitivity (which can reliably be interchanged with flat-out ignorance). I'm also tired of saying I'm tired of things. Pick up your balls and get on with it, dude.

At the airport gate I grab a Cinnabon, which unlike Con Air is amazing for my hangover, and is always a good life decision. Unfortunately, we're not in America, so it's not nearly as frosting-drenched and gross and delicious. Still, it passes the time and fills the hole in my life where sex and companionship should be.

Cinnabon: Distracting you from the depressing realities of the modern condition since 1985 

Despite my state last night I somehow bought an expensive plane ticket to Caticlan, from where Boracay can be reached. I have no plan beyond that, which is just as well when I meet an Aussie on the plane, also traveling alone. We arrange to find a place together. His name's Jordan, he seems nice, and right now that's enough for me.

Aw, airplane friend