Hi, Boyfriend!

I am back in Singapore.  The plane got in from the Philippines close to midnight on Friday night and Elysia and Citrus picked me up at the airport.  My daughter was in her pajamas as were several other children and she was beaming when she saw me.  Four days, the longest we have ever been apart, and she had a lot to tell me in the car.  But first, she demanded to know why I had forgotten my cell phone charger.

As my dad once said, Singapore is the antidote to the Philippines.  Here it is clean, wealthy, and the tap water is drinkable.  In Cebu City, Philippines, it is dirty, there is a lot poverty, the tap water killed two of my dad’s puppies.  The nicer places are gated off from the rest of the population.

I stayed at a budget hotel that caters to expats.  It has rooms that appear to be clean but would probably glow under black light.  All over.  In the morning the restaurant was filled with seventy year old white expats and their young Filipina girlfriends and I was glad that I had slept in my clothes with a t-shirt on the pillow.

There are prostitutes everywhere.  Hotel staff, including at the top-rated hotels such as the Marriott, will deliver women to your room.  Or you can just sit at a cafe at the mall.  I went to get a chocolate milkshake — not a euphemism — and there was a small parade of women discreetly walking by the old white guys outside.  “Hi, Boyfriend!” 

If there is one quality-of-life law that could transform parts of Southeast Asia, it would be banning old white men from walking around with their shirt unbuttoned and scratching their gut.  It is a common sight.  Elysia noticed it in Paddaya, the sex-tourist capital of Thailand, and these guys were out in full force in Cebu.

That is pretty much my impression of the Philippines other than the nice mall and hanging out at the hospital waiting for my brother to be discharged. 

My brother, by the way, is doing much better.  His facial scars should be gone in a couple of months and — yuck — most of the scars from the dog bite are inside his mouth anyway.

The hospital and doctor bills came to about $2,500 and it was good that I flew here to pay them, as my dad arrived the evening after my brother was out of the hospital.  Luck was all around.  My brother did not lose an eye or ear or his nose, or his life, and the bill would have been at least $10-20,000 in the United States. 

My dad understands he must get rid of the dog, particularly since it had already bitten three or four other people.  He needs to figure out a way to get rid of the other two dogs and not take any more chances by having them around.

I think the solution is for him to speed up his departure from the Philippines.  He can stop by Singapore on his way to the United States and see how the other half-brother lives.