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Philippines - The bad

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Sad indeed. Tells a story, and not a pleasant one. What is heartbreaking is often times they are indentured to another and their take for the day is collected from them by the thugs they are serving. Even sadder is the kids are conditioned to help and it becomes all they know.
 
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The one with your shadow fills in the blanks with Dukes comments....
 
This World has many different "worlds" within itself. You just showed us one of them.
 
Yup . . . was in the PI in '78 and had to go find a young'un who'd gone AWOL - to get married to a cute little gal there who didn't (and whose parents didn't) realize that marriage to an E-2 wasn't gonna be the Gravy Train imagined, purely aside from the fact that it was illegal to marry without permission from waaaay up the Chain of Command.

Found him, the squalor up there in the Barrio above Olongapo was far beyond anything I could have imagined. And I heard/read that it got a lot worse when the Navy pulled out of Subic Bay.
 
Olongapo! What memories from '62-'63. Marine Detachment USS Los Angles, First time I got put on 2 weeks restriction for getting back to the ship a minute late. Roaming the outskirts opened my young eyes to a lot of the world and how lucky we have it in the US. You have the same in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Africa. Cambodia, Laos , Nam.
 
Very few of the RTW riders show these conditions in their pictures of where they have been. You know they are there but are ignored because it will spoil the 'fun'.
Out of sight out of mind.

It is in our own U.S.A.
 
Olongapo, what a lovely place that was.

I remember the bridge into town over ____ River, where the kids would dive into the filth to get coins tossed by the sailors. It wasn't too far removed from what I had seen in Mexico's border towns.

Then, when you got to town the circus began. Jeepneys, amazing imitations of pop singers in the bars who could sound just like the artist they were covering, yet couldn't speak a word of English, and, well, the rest of the foolishness such places will provide for the entertainment of transient military folk.

The San Miguel beer fascinated me. One night a pitcher could be downed without a buzz, the next night a glass or two was enough. I think only the export-destined beer was closely monitored for consistent alcohol content.
 
Tijuana has areas like that (that you can see from the US side) and I've heard about the tourist area in all the other resort towns, don't go out of the tourist area. Not that Tijuana is a resort but Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Playa del Carmen...
 
Spending 20 years in the Navy I have been the the Philippines several times. Used to heard San Miguel was the only beer with 24 different tastes per case.
Some good times and memories.
 
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