Dearest Rachel –
Considering the vast open spaces I could see from my balcony, I have to admit that I’d rather expected that we would be tendering in to Subic Bay. However, given that it was a military installation once upon a time – and a Naval one, at that – I really should have known better. If the place is big enough for a battleship to dock, or an aircraft carrier, a cruise ship should be no problem.
As usual, the wait in the theater gives one plenty to think about; some of those scheduled to take my tour along with me keep asking each other about the sand ovens and the mud baths. According to some of those who seem to be confidently “in the know,” we will be given a change of clothes in which we will be buried in either the sand or the mud. Considering I don’t really want to mess up my clothes, that sounds good to me, but how does this person or that have any idea what’s gonna go down when it hasn’t? I should probably be no more trusting of these individuals than I am of ChatGPT.
As we head out to the buses, I am mildly surprised (although not so much in retrospect, as she admitted yesterday that she was not living in Manila proper; why wouldn’t she be guiding in the Subic area, which isn’t terribly far away?) to see yesterday’s guide, Ms. Novem. Unfortunately, she’s guiding another tour, so it’s not like I wind up with her two days in a row; it would’ve been funny to do so, no doubt.
The guide that we do get, Mikey, attempts to inform us of where will be going (and where we’ll be stopping), but while we can hear him talk in the microphone, we can’t make out a word that he saying, and the entire bus let’s him know about it. He eventually sets the mic down, and makes for the middle of the bus to fill us all in. He refers to “stations” along the way, which leaves me thinking he’s talking about places for bathroom breaks (“comfort stations”), but with Holy Week upon us, I find my mind wandering to a different series of stations. I’d probably be nudging you about it, if you didn’t come up with the same thought first. The point is, he’s hard to understand and follow, with or without the microphone, and I eventually give up and watch the scenery go by outside. And there is a fair amount of interesting scenery, no doubt; central Luzon is quite mountainous:
It takes us over an hour before we’re driving through a town? City? It’s too spread out to be either, but it’s not rural here, either – called, improbably, Clark. This must be another remnant of the days when the area was a U.S. military base.
It’s at this point that we disembark from the bus, and climb into a series of maybe half a dozen jeepneys, which do the real heavy lifting with regard to getting us around. Once you get off the highways and into these little towns built into the mountains, you need something small and nimble to get around in. The buses quite literally can only get you so far.
It takes about another half hour of steep inclines and hairpin turns (with the driver beeping his horn at each turn, in order to warn whoever might be coming around the bend of our presence) before we reach what they refer to as the spa’s ‘base camp.’ Here, we drop off our excess baggage, such as the change of dry, clean clothes we plan on putting ourselves in afterwards. It’s suggested that we should only take our wallets – more due to the possibility that we might want to buy snacks and other refreshments at the various spots along the way (oh, now I get what the four “stations” our guide was referring to are! It’s ‘base camp’ and the three separate ‘treatments’ we’re supposed to be getting!) than any fear of having it stolen (although I still find myself more concerned about the latter than the former) – and our cameras/phones.
With that out of the way, we clamber back into the jeepneys in random groups of seven to head to the hot springs. This is where the drivers earn their keep; the canyon barely serves as a road, with a stream of water flowing through it that the cut through so often, you’d think they were worried about someone following their trail, and the need to erase it in the water. No fear of that, though; these intrepid vehicles climb rocks, splash through mud and tilt this way and that, with their drivers seemingly unfazed by any obstacle. In a way, it feels like being on a very long, relatively mild roller coaster. You don’t feel any fear of death or injury (despite not being strapped in like you would be on a coaster), but you do find yourself worrying about losing your grip, either on the vehicle itself, or on the possessions you brought with you, and that’s quite enough to give you a certain adrenaline rush. Maybe not enough for some people, but quite sufficient for myself.
Our first stop is the hot springs, which are nestled in a virtual cliff. The pools are fed with waterfalls, and they themselves spill water into pools below them when people climb into them, and displace their contents. They’re not all the same temperature, but all of them are at least warm, and some are as hot as 111° Fahrenheit. Honestly, after a little while – and this may be due to the warm air around us – one begins to long for some cool water to dip oneself in.
To be honest, I lose track of time; no idea how long we were there at the hot springs. Eventually, however, we began to make our way back down to where the jeepneys are waiting to take us to our second stop; the volcanic sand treatment.
Once there, we were given a button-up tunic and elastic-banded, one-size-fits-most shorts that make us look like novitiates for some strange eastern religion. The fact that we’re then to lie down in this pit of hot sand while the staff shovels it (gently!) over us adds greatly to that impression, to be honest.
Believe it or not, the experience is much better than it sounds, or looks. Once it’s piled upon you, the sand feels like a very heavy, very warm blanket, smelling of sandalwood and flowers (although one fellow passenger ruins it by comparing it to kitty litter); if not for the heat of it, and the shelter we’re in, it would actually feel quite comfortable to fall asleep under. And actually, I think somebody almost does; at some point, while I’m lying there, there is a little commotion by my head. It seems that someone fainted while under the sand. They rushed to pull her out and get her plenty of cold water to drink; at least that’s what I think they do, as I can’t see any of what’s going on while I’m immobilized under the sand myself.
Generally, however, the staff mitigate this sort of thing from happening by fanning us as we lie there under the sand. Meanwhile, I can feel it shifting atop me with every heartbeat, the motion of my body is enough to send at least a few grains into various newly-formed crevices with each pulse of blood through my circulatory system. I don’t know if it does me any actual good, necessarily, but I can’t imagine it doing me any harm.
After rising from my place in the sand (and noting that the process is more difficult than it looks like it should be – no need to fear a zombie apocalypse, if they have to climb out from under six whole feet of this stuff), I make to doff my ‘novitiate’ outfit, but am told to keep it on and head to another nearby shelter for my third and final treatment of the day; the mud bath. Honestly, I assumed that this would be similar to the volcanic sand treatment – where I would be buried, naked, up to my neck in mud – and as such, was not looking forward to it. But it turned out to be no more than having the stuff smeared all over me (well, as ‘all over’ as you can get while wearing these odd clothes; the ladies applying the mud did have me remove the tunic eventually, as well as smearing it well up my thighs), and sending me on my way back to the jeepneys to return to ‘base camp,’ where I could then wash the then-dried mud (as well as any excess sand) from my skin in a final cleanse.
As it turned out, it was that jeepney ride that turned into the most daunting part of the trip; just as it began to climb a particularly steep portion of hill, it slipped out of gear and stalled. Several of us got out, in order to lighten the load, but before I could join them, the beast roared back to life. The driver gestured to the volunteers by the side of the road to get back in (after all, did they expect to walk back to ‘base camp’? Distance aside, they wouldn’t know the way), and we proceeded to make our way back, although not without trepidation with every steep incline.
The rest of our time was relatively anticlimactic, to be honest. Admittedly, I’m no fan of cold showers – I never could fathom how you endured them for your hair’s sake – but after such a warm day and experience, it actually felt rather refreshing to wash everything off in cold water. It was challenging to make sure that every last bit of mud was rinsed away, but I did what I could. The buffet, while decent and substantial, wasn’t particularly notable – heck, I’d actually eaten pork adobo on camera for you back in Honolulu – so there wasn’t much to do as far as that went. Even the jeepney ride back to the buses – which had our driver confusedly going in circles for a few minutes, as the buses weren’t where any of us expected them to be, and only the arrival of most of the rest of the jeepney fleet helped us to locate them – wasn’t otherwise all that eventful. And the bus ride back to the dock, well… that’s when I’m getting the time to transcribe my thoughts on the day and what happened. Frankly, it’s nice to have that level of breathing room to collect them, truth be told.
I don’t know if the day has done me any good, all things considered; I can’t imagine that my skin is cleaner or smoother for the experience. But it’s something I’d never done before, and likely never will again, and that’s probably quite sufficient for the moment. I think you would have been more enthusiastic and energetic about any and all of this, but at least I tried to channel some of that for the occasion, and while I can’t speak for my skin, I suspect that, as my self, I’m better off for it. So I guess that answers my own question.
Anyway, now I have to prepare for our next destination – and yet another turnaround, as one cruise segment ends and another begins in Hong Kong. So keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 