taken from amazon .com February 2022
[from FB post: February 16, 2012]
General Santos City, Philippines. Tuna capital of the Philippines and home of a dish named "Kunilaw" (sic) which is the local ceviche type dish. Officially, my new favorite food in the Philippines. YUM!!!!!
Oh I forgot to mention... I am travelling in a place that the STATE DEPARTMENT (Margaret and Dave) has listed as "defer all travel except essential". I feel safer here than I do walking the streets of NYC and the people are overwhelmingly friendly. There are a lot of foreigners around too? I mean, several HOURS to the north are some restive provinces, but even that is mostly seen as an internal issue. It's really a shame a nice place like this would miss out on tourist dollars because of people's fear to come. I felt TOTALLY safe on 9/11 when our apartment shuddered from the impact of the planes on the World Trade Center nearby -- doesn't that kind of prove anything can happen anywhere? I would not walk foolishly into a dangerous place, but then again... to write off an entire area of peaceful people due to problems in a very specific place also seems a bit extreme???
February 18, 2012
Thank God for..... good drainage. It poured here in General Santos from 2-7pm yesterday and the road in front of the hotel literally became a river (replete with raw sewage). I asked if it was unusually heavy rain ... "no, not really" So needless to say, yesterday afternoon was mostly bad cable TV in the room.
February 19, 2012
As I literally BOUNCED along for three hours on the road from General Santos City to Davao in the southern Philippines in the LAST seat of the bus, I thought about how coveted that back seat of the school bus used to be when I was a kid so that if you did hit a bump you would bounce up. Ohhhhh.... how I longed for that seat and a bump. My wish came true... just 40 years too late. OMG....to be 50 and airborne in a bus.... hmmmmm Not EXACTLY what I was hoping for.
Oh...and did I mention the sheer drop offs, no guard rails, and fast driving while overtaking on CURVES in the mountains???
F-U-N everyone
Dangerous tuna ceviche
The trip to "Gen San" (General Santos City) was one of my most interesting adventures in the Philippines. I came to know Gene on an earlier trip to Davao who then had gotten a job on the huge Dole Plantation [see: bananas] north of Gen San. He told me the city was perfectly safe in spite of all the dire US State Department warnings. I did research on the internet and it did seem to be an oasis in a somewhat turbulent region (Mindanao). I flew into Davao (my second trip to that city) and Gene met me and we were straight off to the bus station where we took a local, hard-seated bus for about 3 hours up and down mountains and past lovely tropical scenery to reach Gen San. There were police checks along the way as well which I guess made me feel a bit safer - I wish I had felt safer on the bus itself as it careened along those narrow mountain roads! The return trip had my head occasionally hitting the ceiling passing over bumps in the road - oh, if my high school self knew how little I would appreciate it later in life. ha!
Gen San had one of those end of the world feels to it. There weren't many upscale places, period. Even their local mall (the real gauge of a city in the Philippines) was kind of shitty. However, Gen San was blissfully uncrowded! Gene and I walked or took "tricycles" (trishaws) everywhere. It was easy to see most of the city in a day. As mentioned above, we had one wash out day due to heavy rains, but I had lived in tropical Jakarta and knew it was only an annoyance that would pass. My best memory of Gen San was trying kinilaw for the first time. For all intents and purposes, it is Filipino ceviche. Gen San is also the tuna capital (hence the photo above) of the Philippines and one of the major tuna centers of Asia. Accordingly, I had tuna kinilaw - it was instantly addictive. There was nothing particularly "wow" about Gen Sen, but I enjoyed the chill vibe there. For me the Philippines is always a bustling, crowded place, especially in cities. Gen San was remarkably and relaxingly empty.
Over the years I started to take all the State Department warnings with a pinch of salt. I never really got their purpose, to be honest. Americans by and large don't even travel abroad and most who go anywhere "exotic" probably do some degree of research in preparation. You are not going to have Bud and Mabel from Iowa suddenly decide to book a trip to some remote corner of the world in hopes of adventure. Add to that that the US State Department over the years has become increasingly "you are on your own" for Americans abroad. I had a huge dose of that in Iraq where I got caught during the start of the Coronavirus Pandemic. I needed a letter from the US Embassy to travel through the check points to Erbil to leave the country and they could NOT provide that to me. I was just to "shelter in place" (?? I wasn't being bombed) and wait for things to return to normal. They were, in a word, useless.
The State Department issues these dire travel warnings which do have a knock on effect in that citizens of OTHER countries read them and say "oh, if the US doesn't want its citizens going there, maybe we should avoid it, too". At the height of IRA violence during the "Troubles" with bombings taking place in London, was there EVER an advisory not to travel to London? How about when all those clubs in Paris were attacked by Islamic fanatics? No advisory. However, let ONE incident happen in some other country that is not in the "elite club" and it becomes "defer all necessary travel". In short, the whole thing is ridiculous. Gen San is probably safer than most cities of its size in the US.
I ended up eating tuna kinilaw every day in Gen San and I don't regret it. If you know you are getting the best, why not indulge? After all, in a "danger zone" we all should just savor each good moment!