Taal Volcano

For months I'd been telling my older son, 7 at the time of the trip that I'd take him to see a volcano due to his interest and impressive knowledge about them - and of course that I was curious myself. Mount Mayon in the Philippines had just been erupting so that piqued our interest. However, this turned out not to work, for one thing because all hotels in the region were booked up by amateur vulcanologists and another, there was an 8 km exclusion zone around the volcano. Besides, it might actually be rather dangerous.

Philippine volcanoes were now in our minds. I became aware of how many there were. Taal is just 2 hours south of Manila and has a huge lake around it that is of interest itself.

I planned we would fly on a Thursday night, stay in a hotel near both the airport and bus station and take the bus after breakfast the next day. We'd first stay in Tagaytay - a weekend resort for wealthy Manillans due to its altitude and thus cooler air - and then move down to a place on the lake from where we could make a trip to the volcano.

My ulterior educational motive is that my son would see the relative poverty of Philippines, a new large city and the different attitudes of the Filipino culture.

A feature of developing economies is disorder. Unfinished or poorly completed roads and buildings - there just isn't the money nor the skill. At the same time one always wonders at the general level of happiness. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan invented the idea of Gross National Happiness as a response to the pervasiveness of comparison of countries' GDP. It may seem trite, but indeed what is the point of a high GDP if everyone's miserable? Of course it's not that simple and there's plenty of misery in the Philippines, but one is struck by the general gaiety. Perhaps it's that in order to gain development society must become disciplined. Happiness becomes peripheral.

You might say The Philippines (and similar developing economies) are fundamentally demand based. Without cars and a dysfunctional public transport network, enterprising types turned ex-Army Jeeps into "Jeepneys" by putting a carriage on the back - a minibus. But in typical Filipino style they dress them up in bling and provide the driver with a loud, multi-tonal system of klaxons. There's no taxis - but there's motor tricycles into which a taxiload can be crammed if need be.

The Lake Taal region - just 2 hours from Manilla - is nevertheless a very different environment in terms of the pace of life and "feel" of the place. Indeed it's striking even in this short distance the diversity within Philippines. This is not what is popularly assumed. I'm told that each region has a different language and that most can't speak Tagalog (the national language) well. That's surely a consequence of poor education - but for me I confess it adds to my interest in the place. On return I started devising trips to Mindanao and Palawan etc ... not for me palmy beaches.

For my son it was a great adventure. Just to see the lake and the volcanoes on the island. He silently drank it all in. I'd ask him "Are you alright?" "Happy?" - he just nodded and kept looking. The trip to the volcano will sink deep into his childhood memories - a long motorized outrigger trip past islands populated by little fishing villages, regions of rectangular fish farms. I explained to him that it was his great grandfather who'd identified the Tilapia as an ideal fish for aquaculture while working as a scientific adviser for the British colonial office in east Africa after World War II.

A further delight was the chance to ride a pony up to the crater rim and down into the crater. There we saw steam vents and boiling mud-holes. I believe he might have been a touch disappointed not to see actual lava (that might have been a possibility at another cone however it was much less accessible).

View Larger Map

The Greatest City in the World

Chongqing, some say is the biggest city in the world. Not sure by what measures - but I suspect by any. They merged some municipalities to produce an "official" city of about 12 million. Most big cities are officially combinations of different urban entities: the Home Counties for London, the nearby counties of New York State like Nassau and of other states like Newark for New York City and the banlieu of Paris. Thus these cities are officially smaller.

But, I suspect that by a reasonable practical definition of a city, Chongqing is still the biggest, i.e. the greatest number of people living in a contiguous urban area.

That, I'll admit, was part of the lure to go there: what is this huge city - is it just an endless drab sprawl of concrete or could it be a new human concept just emerging?

The reality was not as I'd expected it. Not to say I was surprised since few new places are as you expect them, which is part of the appeal of visiting them. In the case of Chongqing, it is the lay of the land. The Yangtze winds madly through this part of its route, carving deep through the landscape yielding a feeling of marooned hilltops crammed ingeniously with buildings. Our hotel's entrance was on its top floor - guests take the elevator down to their rooms beside the river. It made up the lower floors of a modernly architected apartment building, also containing restaurants and beauty salons etc. New expressways run along the edge of the land 5 stories high on stilts. A light railway runs below this level, under bridges and connected to the higher levels by tunnels.

In the midst of it all are historically earlier constructions showing a fading history of this part of china: concrete block residential buildings, each apartment having claimed its balcony areas as living space, enclosing them first with glass and then with metal bars. Paranoia? Hard to tell. It's hard to find the original wooden stilt-houses - they can't survive the building frenzy of the past few years this close to the center of the city - but there are a few remaining jewels like St Joseph's Church found out of the crowd down narrow stair-paths off the bus jammed main roads.

My 4-year-old son, like many boys is amazed by means of transport, so of the 4 days for this trip the first 2 were consumed getting there: a ferry to Nansha near Guangzhou, taxi to Guangzhou South Train Station, fast train to Changsha and overnight to Chongqing. He won't remember much in terms of detail however the subconscious effect should be greatly educating. Certainly he's already unfazed by the unfamiliar. On a practical level, waking early and hurrying followed by waiting in departure areas has become natural for him. While it is gratifying - and a relief - that he and my other children greatly enjoy these trips, a large part of the justification is a further form of subconscious education. I suppose the idea is an extension of my philosophy, vaguely defined as it is, that regardless of culture humans have the same fundamental motivations and thus there's common ground upon which we can nurture peace. Trips like this might cement such ideas in my children's pliable minds before society's bigotries confuse them. That's the hope.