we finally made it to tacloban! our flights were delayed for a day due to a tropical storm that was bad enough to cut the pope’s time here short, and then delayed further as a plane carrying prominent filipino government officials had crashed and remained on the runway at the tacloban airport. it is far warmer and more humid here than it was in manila. tacloban is an endearing little dirty city of about 200 000 that only really became famous after it was decimated by typhoon hayain last year. most of the downtown has been entirely rebuilt, and the place really seems to be booming. it has apparently become a lot more cosmopolitan since the typhoon, as lots of businesses (western-style coffee shops, fine dining establishments, and even used book stores) have opened up to cater to all the aid workers and to take advantage of the influx of aid money. seemingly the first things rebuilt after the typhoon were shopping malls and fast food restaurants. there is a dunkin donuts franchise quite literally every block, but none of them have coffee. its on the menu, they just don’t have it. despite the fact that one can live a luxurious life here with money, obviously most people don’t have those kinds of means, and life remains very tough economically, not to mention all the terrible loss of life from the typhoon.
tacloban is on the island of leyte, on the eastern edge of the philippines about half way down the archipelago. the vernacular of the area is called waray-waray, although the national language tagalog is spoken by everyone as well, and educated people speak english quite impressively. after much searching we found a place to stay. with all the aid workers who came after the typhoon the prices for rent increased exponentially. an average room with air conditioning, hot water and wifi rents for about us$1000/month. we weren’t prepared to spend that kind of money for rent in the philippines, so we found a couple rooms with none of the above amenities at a hostel called ron and fire’s place on the outskirts near the bus station. ron is an australian and fire is a filipina, and there are occasional travelers sifting through which is cool! something (we can only speculate that it is a trapped bat) flaps around in the rafters when the fan gets turned on, and the neighborhood rooster ensures we wake at the crack of dawn.
