Christmas Eve

I've briefly touched on my Christmas Eve experience in a few previous blog entries, but I don't feel that I ever fully explained the night. Andrew suggested that I write it as I explained it to him, so that's what I'm going to attempt now.

It was December 24th and Sagada was a ghost town. Earlier that day the streets were full of locals and tourists, but the evening shooed them into their houses and hostels, leaving me alone with Madonna, Pastor Lester, and Jen. We were crowded into a bus stop/bathroom waiting for a vehicle traveling to Besao. I was told that there were no vacancies in Sagada, so we were going to travel 40 minutes up the mountain to Besao to stay with Pastor Lester's brother in his beautiful home. I later found out that there were vacancies in Sagada (plenty actually) and that Pastor Leser's brother's home wasn't beautiful as much as nightmarish.

We arrived in Besao around 9:00 pm that night (after accidentally leaving Pastor Lester on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere while he was taking a piss). We took a path to the house that wound down the side of the mountain. It was quite difficult because it was pitch black and the only light I had was my cellphone. Madonna kept bitching that she couldn't see, so I had to keep moving the phone behind me and then back to the front. When we finally arrived at the house I was happy that I didn't break my neck during the descent. When we opened the door the happiness melted away and was replaced by disgust. I'm used to staying in places that aren't the cleanest, but this was absolutely filthy. There were piles of shit everywhere, cockroaches running around, cans of sardines left open all over the floor, meat left out with bugs crawling all over it, and a toilet that I swear could've been on Fear Factor. I sure wouldn't let my ass touch that thing for fifty thousand dollars. Besides, I could poop in the closet and no one would know, ever.

We searched the house for places to sleep (the brother was off boozing somewhere) and quickly realized that the home had two working light bulbs: one on stairwell and one in the living room. I hadn't been able to shower for nearly 24 hours, and against my better judgment decided to use the bathroom for a quick bucket bath. This required taking the light bulb from the living room. I went into the living room and began stacking some chairs so I could reach the ceiling. It was at this point that I noticed three things:

1) According to the credentials on the wall, the brother had once been a police officer.
2) He was a major fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and velvet sunsets.
3) Judging by the syringe hidden/forgotten under the chair, he preferred to inject his drugs directly into his veins. I can respect that.

I gave the needle a wide berth and proceeded to unscrew the light bulb. When I got it down the girls wanted my help in the kitchen. They were going to make a Christmas supper of fried dried fish, sardines in tomato sauce (junkie cop's favorite no doubt), rice, and scrambled eggs. It wasn't exactly a Christmas goose, but it would fill the hole and possibly even dilute the disgust. As I said before, the disgust was amplified rather than diluted when a cockroach was found running laps in the rice.

Anyway, they finished cooking and asked me to do the dishes, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. Wouldn't want to mess up the place... I finished the dishes and went to take my bath. Madonna had boiled some water and placed it in the bathroom for me. I'm going to go on record and say that I have absolutely no idea as to the correct procedure of taking a bucket bath. As such, I spent 5 solid minutes deciding if I should stand in the tub, pour the water in the tub, pour the water in the scoop, or pretend to get a shower. I ended up crouching on the floor, one foot in the bucket, and one hand on the scoop to beat away cockroaches. I started to pour the water over my body, forgot that hot water burn baby, and scalded myself. Five 'fucks' and a 'good goddamn' later I wiped my tears away and added some cold water to the hot from a nearby gigantic bucket. Bucket baths are stupid.

I finished my terribly unsatisfying bath and decided to call it a night. That's when the brother came home, completely shitfaced, and stumbling all around the goddamn house. He kept screaming some shit in Tagalog at his brother and then left. For the next 2 hours he kept coming in and out of the house ranting and raving with an ever changing entourage. It was funny and terrifying all at once. Pastor Lester insisted that I sleep in the downstairs bedroom, and after seeing the lunatic brother busting in and out of the house, I decided that that was a good idea. Well, when I actually saw the room my mind changed pretty quickly. The room itself wasn't so bad. Cockroaches were running around on the floor, but cockroaches were everywhere else too. I inspected the bedsheets and found only a few stains. So far so good. I checked out the pillow and was a little disgusted to see a few stains here and there; they appeared to be blood. I flipped over the pillow and nearly threw up. The whole other side was a gigantic bloodstain. Like, this guy must have a prosthetic nose because his original was mostly on that pillow. I was absolutely blown away. I ended up sleeping half-on the least filthy side with my hat on. In my mind my hat would protect me from Hepatitis C.

I barely slept a wink that night, but eventually the gentle tapping of insects put me to sleep. We left the next morning and I was never as happy to leave anywhere in my life as I was to leave that hovel. In retrospect I really should have taken some pictures, but I think that would've been rude. You really need to see this place to believe it.

Well that's all.