Tandag, Cajwait beach ~Philippines
The rain here is never absent but that doesn't stop us from doing things. I can not just sit home and scroll my instagram all day while I'm in the Philippines, no way. So once again, the rain was pouring down as we jumped in to Ian's car and went to Cajwait beach.
This isn't really a special beach in anyway, it's just a beach where you can find a restaurant and karaoke and tables with roof. We arrived and from the second I opened the door to get out of the car people started staring at us foreigners. We sat down, listened to some good (everything is relative) karaokes singers and after 2(!!!) minutes this man comes up to us to welcome us to the Philippines. All good, all normal this had happened before.
No weird feelings until the guy comes back with a bottle of brandy. And then with banana cake, empanadas, fish crackers, a whole grilled fish, bread, pepsi, red wine, carrot cake and other pastries. Why? Because he wanted to wish us white people welcome to his country. To show us that filipinos aren't what the news tell us back home, they're friendly and welcoming and just crazy dedicated to make us feel appriciated.
This guy told us that it was the mayor that wanted to send us all the food and then continued by explaining how beautiful skin we have and how ugly he is. And it's not the first time we hear this. Young girls are telling us this when we meet them at the supermarket. And guys, this story is funny with all the weird attention and free food and stuff, but only until this point. Beyond this point I couldn't laugh at the situation anymore. The filipinos are such nice people but they hate their own look, why? Because they practice racism, they're taught to hate their skin. I started this discussion with my friends because I wanted to know if they treat us like queens because we're foreigners or because we're white. And the second choice is the answer. On the top of the hierarchy stands the white people which is so obvious of how they treat us and look up to us only because we're white and blonde. Second comes the filipinos and most discriminated in the philippine society is afroamericans. It just makes me so angry how concrete and socially accepted this structure is here. No one even questions it.
After emotional storms and discussions we got back home and had some food even though we weren't really hungry after all our free food on the beach. We played card games with charcoal painting in the face as penalty for losing.