“My friend, where are you going?”
The question is a fair and reasonable one, since I am a young, white man towering, somewhat confusedly, over a sea of Filipinos.
However, months of experience have taught me that an honest answer to this particular inquiry is not likely to yield much in the way of directions or impartial touristic advice. An admonition to buy some unidentified meat is much more likely. Now I happen to be a big fan of unidentified meat – some of my best friends are unidentified meat – but if I stopped every time I was called I wouldn’t get very far in this city.
It was never going to be possible for me to blend in here, no matter how much Ilokano I learned. Figuring out all the ins and outs of any new culture is hard; it’s just much more obvious when you look so different as well.
Still, the market seems to have been specially designed to thwart my vegetable-purchasing aspirations, which brings us back to the question: “where am I going?”
