Just another Friday, but I’m glad to have had it. That makes it special enough.
At beer o’clock, we headed into town and kicked off our Friday revelry at Sloppy Joe’s. One wine and three beers later, we moved up the road to Jewel Cafe for dinner.
The innards were still fine, and I ate all of it. That’s what you get for 600 pesos these days.
After dinner, we paid a rare visit to the Alaska Club. Owner Jerry was there, and I purchased a ticket for the “Battle of the Bars” event taking place on Tuesday at Thumbstar. Jerry then joined us at our table, and we had an enjoyable chat reminiscing about the good ol’ days when his bar was in Angeles City, the bad days that led him to relocate to Barretto, and the recent lack of tourists that makes the bar business here a struggle.
We did our nightcap at Cyclone Bar, which now incorporates the staff from the recently closed Cloud 69. The music was blaring so loud that we almost turned around and walked back out. The bartender graciously turned it down a notch, and we stayed. Still too loud, but tolerable. Our waitress friend Sheryl joined us for a couple of lady drinks, and we watched a couple of two-week millionaires in action (buying multiple lady drinks for multiple ladies). Cyclone seems to be doing well; it was by far the busiest bar we saw last night. Happy for them, as a return visit from me is doubtful. Why go to a place and suffer ear damage when I have so many other available options that are much more pleasant?
A trike ride home brought our night out to an end. I enjoyed myself, but that’s just the way I roll.
Here’s some good news:
On the last day of January 2016, here at LTG, I was writing about an Itaewon Friday night. Not to put a positive spin on it, things didn’t go or end well. I guess I’ve always been a mess.
From Facebook memories, I got reminded of my South Carolina home life twelve years ago.
Today’s YouTube video tells us what Filipinos are made of. No wonder no one here speaks Spanish.
Humor time:
I’m not ready to stop yet! Keep ’em coming!
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
How’s that going? The ‘knowing it’ part? You’ve often talked about not realizing until too late what it was you’d had.
A street scene in Matain.
A very evocative image. Nice.
>…and the recent lack of tourists that makes the bar business here a struggle.
Have you noticed that? I saw a headline, but did not watch the video about how tourism to the PI was down, while all other SE Asian nations were experiencing a boom in tourism. Any thoughts on this? Has the PI peso weakened against currencies other than the USD, like the UK pound, euro, etc? This would seem to make it more attractive to western tourists if this were the case.
Related, but have you seen an increase in non-western tourists to the PI, like folks from China, India, etc.?
Daddy Jerry doesn’t need proper tourists. What Jerry needs is more sex tourists like what you were, Big John, before desperation drove you to throw everything at becoming a full time sexpat. But, as you know, sexpats wouldn’t be seen dead paying barfines and get the prossies to visit before or after work in the bars (think of your “friends with benefits programme” before you became all righteous on account of a bird coming with your rental property) and bypassing EWR (or whatever window dressing they put on it now) can make all the old pimps apoplectic as they consider it shoplifting. Go figure, Big Boy.
Aloysius, life goes on, and those transactional relationships are just an empty memory now. At my advanced age, other things matter a lot more than meaningless sex.
Brian, yes, I’ve noticed foreign tourism is down here. I see a lot more Filipino families coming in from out of town to enjoy the beaches than I used to, but that doesn’t help the bar business here much. I hear Thailand’s tourism is down, and that, by comparison, Vietnam is booming. Not sure what’s up with that.
I haven’t tracked other currencies against the peso and don’t really know what drives those numbers. I like the trend as of now, though. The lowest I’ve seen it was back in my tourist days when the exchange rate was in the low 40s.
I saw a group of Indian-looking gents a few weeks ago, and they really stood out. We get some Koreans here as well, but nothing in significant numbers.
Kevin, the knowing is still a struggle, but I’m trying to learn to close the barn door sooner. I spent two hours in solitude this morning on the roof trying to assess where I was and what to do next.