Deep Thoughts Over a Candy Buffet

I once traveled with a wise man who decided you could learn a lot about the culture of a country in the candy isle of a store. I decided to follow Billy’s example while we were in a city supermarket with a larger selection. Here’s what I picked up:

On a five star scale, here’s my rating of the above candies. Cloud 9, I gave it five stars…how can you go wrong with caramel, crunchy peanut, nougat and a delightful chocolate shell? The Mango Fruit Jellies are a candy made by a company called Healthy and Young…ironic, don’t you think. I really like mango, but I’d be ok if I never had another one of those, one star. Nips, they’re like M&Ms only less chocolate, three stars. Twizzle Marshmallows, nothing special here…but apparently the Filipinos like marshmallows because this was one of three brands of candy marshmallows on the shelf, one star. Yan Yan, ok, so it is imported from Japan and not a “Filipino product”, but I really had a hankering for some, five stars. Dried papaya isn’t technically a candy, but it is a naturally sweet snack, four stars. Last but not least, Peanut Browas is a small unsuspectingly delightful peanut cookie, four stars. Sorry Billy, they didn’t have any bean candy bars.

David, Katy, and I walked across the street to the little sari-sari (convenience store) to get some sodas. We got a couple bottles of Sparkle…it was a slightly sweeter version of Mt. Dew. David asked for it in cellophane because apparently that's what you do when you don’t want to keep the bottles…I’m not gonna lie, it was kind of weird walking down the street, drinking Sparkle from a plastic bag.

While on an extremely large sugar rush, I’ve had a day to mull over the differences between the city and the province and my thoughts are 24 hours deeper than they were yesterday. From the street level, the city and the province don’t look too different. Aside from the fact that the city has a couple supermalls and a number of taller buildings in places, it looks a lot alike. You drive by all sorts of street venders and things like that, just like in the province.

Now, with that said, there were some differences, it seems like there is a lot more distinct separation of the rich and poor in the city. In the city, you’ve got some really nice houses in gated communities with a guard posted to keep out the unwanted. We drove through a few pretty nice neighborhoods. We didn’t drive through Beverly Hills (yes, the Filipino Beverly Hills), but from what I hear, these are fancy mansions with five car garages, and all that jazz…if Weezer were here, that’s where they’d want to be. In the province, it seems like you drive down the road and you see a few nice houses mixed in with a few houses that qualify as shacks in my book. Cement houses, some wood houses, and woven bamboo basket houses (at least, that’s what they look like to me) all mixed together. Vance says that building with wood has really declined because termites will do a real number on your house. I guess the bamboo woven material is something you can buy in a roll at your local Big Brother Home Depo (We passed that one on the way home, but I guess only contractors and really rich old retired Americans buy from these stores). Vance says you can put together a nice house in one day, that is if you’re living in bamboo style.

There’s also the difference in noises you hear in the city and province. It was soooooo quiet in the city. We slept with all the windows open in the city and you couldn’t hear anything but the rain. Sleeping in the country, you hear all the chickens of Lote cock-a-doodle-doing when 5 am rolls around.

One thing that remains the same in the city and the province is Jollibee. I picked up a "Yum" burger with cheese on our way out of the city. It's kind of a meatloaf style hamburger patty and it has a sort of thousand island sauce. The truth is, I like the yum burger better than the sandwich I split with Katy at Starbucks.