Lake Placid…

Saturday.

Waking up I didn’t feel any worse that what I did on Friday ad I think part of my sweating had subsided a small amount.

marge had been texting some of her friends during my morning sleeping and the plan was set in stone to head to Lake Pandin. Marge’s mother made me a Ginger and Herb tea which tasted like vomit in a cup but as all mothers know… the old remedies work and I wont like it defiantly helped make my symptoms more mild this was also with a decongestant and paracetamol courtesy of the Philippines health department.

the Lake is only just up the road from Marge’s house. To get their it is about 4KM up the road. This involved us getting a Local Jeepney. These are great as they just travel the main Arterial routes of the city and you just flag them down and hop on. Most rides cost around 80C NZ sometimes 1.20NZ depending on how far you are heading.

lake Pandin sits about 1.5KM back of the road. We get off the jeepney and it’s a bit like pushing the Stop button on a bus… except you just say it in Tagalog… as per in famous Philippines there is a Tax to pay to walk up to the Lake… there is a lady walking up and down the street and she calls out to us and explains we need to pay the toll. She then explained that we had to walk down the road to the Local office…. This is new. Last time marge was here there was no Tax… but this was before Covid 19 so perhaps it’s a legitimate tax.

the office was a bit far to walk in the heat and I discovered that if you parked a car at the bottom was 10 Peso more…. So from 30 Peso to 40 Peso…. So I just said to marge just pay the 40 peso the the man at the gate and tell him we drove here on our magic carpet and its stashed in the carpark ditch ….. hey, who is going to question that logic…. And to be brutally honest….. most people who work here in mundane jobs really don’t care at all I think most of them are on auto pilot….
Voila…. It works… the broken system can be be even further broken by a Kiwi.

The Walk up to Pandin Lake is a Newly paved road with tall walls wrapped in the finest Razor wire to give you the sense of paradise on earth…… more like a prison compound and if you jump the wall you will be torn apart by angry convicts, there is nothing over the wall apart from greenery but still doesn’t give the impression of remote beauty by any stretch.

I some times wonder what happened to the Philippines… I mean the Americans invaded… raped and pillaged the villages killed some soldiers and left them with Crappy Creamer… McDonalds and no source of western Influence except a small amount of English….. nothing makes sense but nothing is completely confusing… just odd… odd cities and odd policy’s and procedures.

The Lake is not large, 1.5 KM long by 2.0KM wide. On the foreshore there is a office….well hut… yes Hutt is a good description…. More like a Maori Hutt from 1890….. but yes in this Hutt Marge’s friends are waiting and what I didn’t understand is we pay about 1300 Peso (40NZD) and you climb aboard a raft made of bamboo and 2 working class Filipino men take you out on the lake by paddling the raft and you sit in the middle and enjoy the calm still water and have a meal together.

and all this was really rather quaint and relaxing. The Total time on the water is around 2 Hours and you can drink fresh coconut water, dine on a traditional meal and go for a swim. I spent most of my time making new friends and trying to capture natural moments of true happiness.

the Nature of capturing true Happiness is hard to do, you need people talking naturally without thinking about a camera. When 2 people share true happiness the photo has a harmonic that you cant get by asking someone to Say “Cheese” these photos tell a story to the camera and anyone viewing it. The facial expressions have small details that show you truly what might be going on behind their eyes.

with this challenge and language barrier I spent most of the afternoon taking photos of Marge’s Friends and their family and sharing it with them. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my Bluetooth speaker which was regretted by everyone as music is a Universal Language.

the Meal was a traditional Lechon Pork that is slow cooked over a Charcoal open flame BBQ, Smoked fish with the Head still on. My favorite empty Carbohydrate of Steamed rice and some Cucumber salad. This is all served on a Giant Flax Leaf as a Plate and in true Butt Fuck Nowhere style we eat the whole lot with out hands and no cutlery… this is celebrated by washing your hand in the lake afterwards….. luckily Marge came prepared with some Baby wipes in her bag!. Good on marge.

I  didn’t swim and before we started to call it a day completed on the lake the Rain set in for about 20 Minutes to remind us that we are in a Topical Location.

the Trip Back to Marge’s Parents place was easy and the Jeepney ride was as seamless and unhygienic as the ride to the Lake.

 Introduction to the  Pink Pills of Doom

Over the last few Weeks marge has been taking some Small Pink Pills and I finally built up the Courage to ask her what they were……. As I assumed the were Contraceptive pills of some sort…well they look about the same size and being pink seems appropriate for that .. blah blah blah… well they are not anything of the sort.

they are a pill that is from Japan and they are designed for cleansing the lower Colon…. If you catch where this is going…. So after doing some beautiful research from my friend google I have discovered that the pill is designed to do this from it following ingredients

• Bisacodyl: 15 mg.
• Additives: lactose hydrate, cellulose, crospovidone, methacrylic acid copolymer S, methacrylic acid copolymer LD, sodium lauryl sulfate, polysorbate 80, hypromellose, triethyl citrate, talc, white soft sugar, acacia (gum arabic), titanium oxide, macrogol, povidone, carnauba wax, magnesium stearate and Food Red No.3 (coloring agent).

this is designed to help the lower colon contract and relax… the other 2 are designed to pull water out of the body in large quantities to….. well clean out the lower colon…… so yes these pill are designed to allow all genders give birth to everything that you have eaten in the last 30 years of your life…..

Well after felling sick and bloated and internally gross for the last few days.. this could be what I need to expel this nasty bug out of my system.

the internet basically said take 1 pill for every 30 KG of body weight…. So 3 it was at 7PM.
marge explained that it should  take a few hours to work and that to drink some water.
I was excited and nervous at the same time.

I drank about 1L of water before settling down with my book for the night……. And as the minutes ticked by it was 10:30 and after a few hours of book reading and watching the New Adam Sandler film on Netflix. that I would say is a solid 9/10…. Probably some of the best work he has done in years…….. I have no urge or inkling to go so I guess I just call it a Night and decide the pills don’t work on men cause they are pink…. but they don’t work…