I was in the Philippines for a wedding; five days and I was out of there. So it was with a sense of ease when, at around dawn, I disembarked the plane at Ninoy Aquino airport and filed dutifully towards the quickly lengthening queue.
The queue wasn't moving. This usually fills one with a mixture of dread and boredom, as it becomes apparent that they must be checking more vigorously than usual. For some reason I'd always assumed the Philippines wouldn't be so strict, like Cambodia or Malaysia where they pretty much wave you through like a policeman directing traffic. But given the reticent rate at which we were moving it would appear that the Philippines was, surprisingly, quite thorough with its checks.
I stepped on to the little mud brown feet painted on the floor that help you know exactly where to stand when being addressed by the immigration officer. Typically, you'll hand your passport and arrival card over and they will check it, then stamp your passport with a date. This time was different, she asked me where I was going. When planning this trip my only intention was to be there at Max and Khristine's wedding, which was in Tagaytay, slightly north of Manilla. So that was how I responded, it was also what I'd written on the form- such a form that I thought made this conversation redundant. She noticed it on the form and exclaimed 'oh, you're going to Tagaytay'. She asked what I was doing there. I said I was going to a wedding. I had the invitation in my hand, as I wanted to write down the address for the wedding, and brought it up with the mechanical action of a chain smoker lighting a cigarette or a commuter placing a travel card on the gate, and slipped it under the Perspex divider as I replied "I'm going to a wedding". She snatched it up with a mixture of consular disbelief and bureaucratic listlessness, whilst inspecting the lettering of the invitation she sighed a disgruntled acceptance that, judging by the bevy of familiar faces I passed at baggage, she had sighed several times that day.
I later learned that a fellow wedding goer, flying in at the same airport and on a Zimbabwean passport had received a stamp that expired the day after the wedding. She was used to it, apparently, and didn’t mind as, like me, they were returning to Bangkok that day anyway. Although she added that her passport granted her visa free access to North Korea, so every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose.
The assortment of foreigners attending the wedding was supposed to meet at a Starbucks in a road side service station at 6am. I was first so had to continually get up and walk around to make sure they weren't sitting in some other, unseen section.
I ordered a large (as in the biggest size) hot mocha and sat down on a bench seat facing the door and glass windows that looked out onto an as yet unopened food court on the left and the open road on the right.
A police officer walked in, an Uzi or some other automatic weapon hanging round his waist, he approached the baristas and engaged in conversation. The first two fellow guests arrived, we'd met once before at the soon-to-be-married couple's New Year’s party only a month or so ago. He was from Denmark and she from Zimbabwe, they were due to be married in the summer. After them came a German guest, his first time ever in Asia. I suppose the Philippines is as good a place as any to start however I was slightly miffed that, it being my first time in country as well, I wouldn't be able to come across as a quietly informed, seasoned traveller in the way I was used to. I had to focus on not being a travel bore who only talks about someplace else, however.
The minivan arrived and we got up to leave, the armed police officer was busy rearranging the sugar packets, he turned out to be a security guard. I would later learn that all security personnel, even park wardens at the Makati public park, carry automatic weapons.
The journey from Manilla to Tagaytay was the worst traffic I have ever experienced, in Southeast Asia or anywhere else. We finally arrived at the hotel, Max and his groomsmen were here, with Khristine and her bridesmaids already at the garden resort where the, outdoor, wedding was taking place.
The wedding was that day and because several hours had gone by since we left Manilla, there was no time to waste getting through the one lane road to the Secret Garden.
The most popular mode of transport were these trucks similar to a Sawnthaews, except whilst those were typically red or one other block colour, no two of the Filipino ones looked the same. They had a similar front grill, and most were long like trucks, but the variety of shapes and sizes was enough to suggest that they must be sold just as a basic shell in a few different sizes, and then the owner spends several months knocking together additions and patterns, external seating, double layered roofing, open bank windows on either side, tearing out front facing seats and drilling in rear benches. Stiff plastic that looked like augmented bunting with a word that may or not have meant something was stuck across the top of the windshield, surely obscuring the driver's view.
Dancing between them like pickpocket urchins in Victorian London were these carriage style Tuk Tuks, similar to the ones in Indonesia. They had seating for two people on the back of a motorbike, converted so both could ride side saddle, with a foot rest running just off the rear wheel. There was a tarpaulin cover over the top of the bike and a sidecar on the right hand side providing space for a third person. Two people were sat on the back of the one in front, both eating ice cream from small tubs, the guy had red hair and the kind of tan that regional celebrities affect.
We arrived at the garden resort several hours later, starving and blinking in the shutter speed twilight that bridges the tiny stream between day and night on the equator. With exhausted energy Max's German friends and I stumbled down the hill and grass path that led to the wedding suite. In the Phillippines they do it American style, with several groomsmen and bridesmaids, and it was the men that we found inside. I was the only non-German groomsman, although one of the chaps looked and sounded Spanish, and it turns out that’s where he was from originally. He was also the only other one who lived in Bangkok.
We each received a Barong Tagalog, a lightweight embroidered shirt for formal occasions. They were sandy coloured and see-through, like a sheer curtain. I wish I had worn a long sleeve shirt underneath as now you could see my bare arms through the blousy material and my tee had some sort of lettering across the chest.
Still, it was something new to me, and given the amount of time that had passed since I’d last eaten coupled with the copious amount of booze the Germans and I were consuming, I was beginning to feel a tad overwhelmed.
All accounted for and dressed up, we stepped out onto the sloped path up to the large pavilion where the ceremony was to be held. Outside the entrance we were paired up with the bridesmaids, I got Khristine’s sister. Gingerly she locked her arm inside mine and we marched into the pavilion and down the aisle, splitting off immediately. Where the altar would typically be seen there was a wide sofa with a low slung back set to the rear of a raised platform, with a podium at the front. The groomsmen stood in a line, flanking the aisle, and watched Khristine appear through the entrance to the pavilion. The sun goes down fast on the equator.
As the key players took their place we background characters retreated to our table. Switching from miscellaneous distilled spirits to a local beer, we each had to stand and say a little something. I had considered a joke but knew that was a mistake, and in general Asian crowds are happy to talk all the way through a speech so I felt more like I should just speak directly to Max and Khristine. They were the first friends I made in Bangkok and in the time that had passed I had seen them both grow and change but remain true to their goal of being together. They’re the only couple I know to have made a long distance relationship work. I had lived in four different apartments since I met them three years ago, one of the first things that Max and I did together was journey out to the northern suburbs of Bangkok during the flood with my friend Felix, another photographer. I introduced so many new people in my life to Khristine first, I had attended networking events with them, badminton on the weekends, New Year’s Eve just a few months prior. So many happy memories and important moments during some formative years of my life and though I was sad to leave all that behind, I was happy that they had made it.
But I didn’t tell them any of that, I just said how happy I was for them, sat back down in my seat, and burst into tears.