Thursday, December 14, 2006 Covington: The week that was By Gary Covington Looking In
THERE'S a big new Mercury drugstore opened near the Buhangin crossing. Two thoughts occurred to me; (1), did they stock anything different from the other 500 drugstores around Buhangin and (2), the prime highway site must have cost an arm and a leg, how will the store return the outlay.
The answer to (1) is no. The same old stuff except in bright new surroundings. The answer to (2)? By charging big prices. One of those little cans of 555 sardines (plain in oil), which costs around P10 everywhere else, will set you back P16 at Buhangin's Mercury drugstore. That's a 60 percent markup on the usual store price. The word "profiteering" comes to mind. If I were you fellow Buhangians, I'd shop at your local druggy, Mercury's prices are off the chart.
On Monday there was a column of views culled from the Sun.Star's website concerning those boosted hotel prices up in Cebu. Some e-mailers were content to comment on the topic -- for and against -- but others, quite a few others, saw it as yet another reason why tourists of all classes avoid the Philippines and instead visit our neighbors.
I can chip in ten centavo's worth here because quite recently I was talking to a tourist from Thailand. He was an American, retired early, who lived there. Nor was he the usual if-it's-Tuesday-then-this-must-be-Baguio sort of traveler; instead settling in a place for a couple of months by long-staying at a hotel or renting a furnished apartment.
Naturally he asked me this and that about the Philippines, I quizzed him on Thailand and finally, inevitably, I asked him what he thought about our archipelago.
He didn't mince words. "Your people are so dirty." he said, "Not in their personal hygiene but in the way they treat their surroundings, even their homes. Trash of any description - from a candy wrapper to a junked auto - is just thrown down. On the road, the sidewalk, a vacant lot." He'd seen subdivisions, which looked "part bombsite and part junkyard. Guys work on their vehicles in the road and then drive off leaving the remains - used filters, old oil, worn out parts - just sitting there."
"And it's so loud. Everybody shouts (He'd obviously been watching The Buzz!). Music and TVs are turned up loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. Motorcycles and autos are fitted with ghetto-blasters - they'd be off the road in Thailand."
Touristy things? "The potential is there but there's so little visible organization. What there is seems to work on the knowing someone's principle and off the cuff, sort of spur of the moment. It's great to visit a cave full of bats (over on Samal) but why have to wait on a baking hot quay - no cafe, no toilets - for the one tiny ferry when there's three others parked on the beach?"
Lastly, and I forget which day it was, there was an intriguing item regarding Cebu's show-stopping weather where a reader asked what was the difference between a tropical depression, a storm and a typhoon?
Easy. A tropical depression is brought on by the previous evening's over-indulgence in beer, conviviality and most likely some likely ladies. A storm brews and the typhoon hits when the missis finds out.
