“You look just like an American movie star!”

A cafe owner in the Philippine village of Sabang was very insistent on this point. On his phone he produced a clip of Russell Crowe from the movie Gladiator.

“See!? Exactly the same!”

His two Filipina employees looked at Russell, then looked at me, and agreed enthusiastically.

Could it be that my time in Asia has been aging me into the doppleganger of 1999 era Hollywood sex symbol Russell Crowe?

Or could these people be beardists, believing that all bearded men look the same? You be the judge.

Beardism aside, we spent a great two months in the Philippines.

In the tourist town of El Nido we visited Sarah’s brother, who has built a small hotel empire there.

Something we found strange in El Nido was the number of waterproof bags for sale around town. They were everywhere you looked. This mystery was solved when we arrived at the main tour boat dock, which fails to connect to the shore.

Hundreds of tourists each day must leap into the waist high water to get back to their hotels. An excellent situation for vendors of waterproof bags.

One memorable stop was the village of Culion which was formerly the largest leprosy colony in Asia. Today it’s a vibrant community, still centred around the large hospital. Many people there are former patients and their descendants, some still bearing the scars of leprosy.

At the Culion leprosy museum our guide had been born and raised in the colony, where his parents worked and his grandparents were patients. He started his presentation with a question.

“Before I begin I must ask, is anyone here American?”

Only Canadians, we informed him.

“Ah,” he seemed disappointed. “The Americans are heroes to us”.

He explained that the US government had founded the Leprosarium in 1906 to rid the Phillipines of leprosy. Exactly 100 years later the WHO declared the mission accomplished.

We managed to spend a few nights in Manila, the world’s most densely populated city. This was an intense place to explore. High rise apartments spring up from very impoverished shanty communities. We saw the world’s largest IKEA at the Mall of Asia. We also saw a person pooping in the street.

One thing the city had in abundance was bored security guards. At most store entrances there’d be a uniformed guard armed with a single wooden drumstick, which they would use to probe through your bags. They used medium weight drumsticks, suitable for light or medium rock. It would have been hard to take them seriously had they chosen jazz sticks.

Our final stop in the Philippines was in the port town of San Fernando.

One of the challenges we always have in boat life is finding a place to dispose of garbage. Some places have facilities for this, and some just don’t. In those places we’ll carry a small bag of garbage around with us until we can find a receptacle. Disguised in a cloth shopping bag so we don’t look too weird.

On our second last day in the country I approached the security guard at yet another mall entrance, remembering too late what I was carrying. She poked with the drumstick and looked into my bag, which contained, exclusively: trash.

She was probably asking herself: “Why is 1999 era Hollywood sex symbol Russell Crowe smuggling a bag of trash into the mall?”

Next stop: Japan!

Some photos…