(I have lots of catching up to do so am going to try to post a little more often since most of the stuff is alreay written. If you want to see more Dubai pictures, I’ve added some to my last entry and put an album on Facebook here. For now, the latest story.)

“Don’t stay in Manila.” “I HATE Manila.” “Manila is not safe.”

These are actual quotes from friends via email who have been to the Philappines. I emailed a couple people to ask for some advice since my trip here in the Philappines is so last minute with India out of the question.

So I have no intentions of staying in Manila. But when I land after another overnight plane ride, I realize I have no idea of where to go in the Philappines and am in no state to make any calculated and informed decisions. Plus, I’m here for 21 days, which is a record for me. I catch a cab to a hostel by the airport and plan to lock myself in there for one night, sleep, and and make a plan.

As the cab driver dodges “trikes”, local bus systems, stray dogs and children, I realize how much I have missed southeast Asia and it’s chaos. There is no pining for the Middle East, that’s for sure.

I check into a sleepy hostel guarded by a rather large iron gate closed tightly with a padlock. A sweet Asian couple welcomes me in and I settle into my dorm room. I feel safe in the hostel; there is only one other girl in the dorm with me and we have a nice chat and get along so well that by the end of the night we are friends on Facebook. I admit I pretty much spend the whole afternoon and evening swinging in a hammock, Skyping and reading the Lonely Planet on the Philappines. The background noise is intense: barking dogs, crowing roosters (which I hate, hate, hate) and diesel engines that would fail an emissions test in a nano second. But I love it, and I come up with a plan and book a flight to another island for the next day.

The next morning at 6:30am, I am blissfully sleeping, still on a time change difference, when I hear some commotion. It turns out that Linda, the other girl in the room, needed to be at the Chinese embassy early that morning but her cell phone alarm didn’t go off. She can’t find it so asked the owners to call it. They did but there’s no answer, so they are perplexed.

I sleepily volunteer to call it via Skpye. No answer. But my eyes grow big as I look to the middle of the room, where my (nice, borrowed) cell phone was peacefully charging the night before.

“My phone is gone too!” I exclaim.

I’m perplexed that my computer is still there, but incredibly, unexplicitedly relieved and thankful. I check my wallet, hidden at the bottom of my backpack. Phew. Still there.

(Let me interject that many South American and European hostels have lockers. The Middle East and this one in Asia did not. The hostels themselves are usually very secure from outside intruders; if there was an outside theft, the hostels reputation would be shattered online and they would probably go out of business. Basically you sleep with your stuff close to you, or if you don’t trust your bunkmates just put your stuff in your pillowcase and sleep on it. I trusted this place completely with it’s huge iron gates and guard dog. But I did sleep with my stuff by my head, except for the cell phone which needed a charge.)

I don’t mention that I checked my wallet for some reason; I’m still half asleep. But the owners tell Linda to. Her wallet was in her purse at the foot of her bed and she gasps when she opens it. Empty. $100USD and some Pisos are missing. She is understandably upset and I feel bad for her.

To me the explanation is obvious. Someone somehow jumped the gate that night and got by the dog. The hostel room was not locked. He stole stuff small enough to tuck away in pockets and left the bigger items like the netbooks because it’s hard to shimy over a gate like that with stuff in your hands. I voice my theory.

“Impossible.” The owners say. “Just last week late at night a drunk guest tried climbing the gate and the police, who frequently patrol the area, almost shot him. Our dog goes nuts. We’ve never had any theft in the 4 years we’ve been running this place.”

It does seem almost impossible, but there’s no other explanation.

Then there is lots of whispering between Linda and the owners. The owner trepidly suggests that we search each other’s stuff. I’m still a bit clueless, but I shrug and go through her stuff “just to see if she misplaced it.” Nothing.

Then she wants to search my stuff. I welcome her to; I have nothing to hide. She apologizes. I start to realize what’s going on when she begings to go through my stuff painstakingly. I’m the suspect.

“Look, if you just give me the money I won’t say anything to anyone. I’ll keep it quiet,” She tells me.

I have never been accused to theivery before and while I understand, I’m starting to be uncomfortable. “Look, I don’t have your money. I realize I look suspicious, but why would I steal from you?”

She goes through my books, all my clothes, and my pockets. Every nook and cranny. She goes through my box of maxi pads and opened each one up, looking inside for money. Of course she finds nothing. The owner suggests searching each other’s persons. By the owners constant protests that an outside intruder cannot be involved, combined with their reminders that there is still cash in my wallet, I know they think I’m guilty, too. I whip my pajama shirt off and stand there completely topless, then whip down my shorts. “I”m not hiding anything,” I say defiantly.

I reiterate that I was robbed too.

“But I never saw your cell phone,” Linda says.

“And you’re not missing any money,” The owner says. “How much longer are you travelling for?”
“Five weeks.”
“Why do you not have more money?”
“I don’t carry lots of cash in my wallet. I use ATM’s. I just came from Dubai and changed the last of my demirs into pisos. I went straight from the airport here. I haven’t been to an ATM yet.”

Do they really think I would be travelling with enough cash up front to last me my whole trip!? How on earth can they possibly think that the low amount of cash in my wallet further proves my guilt?

“I didn’t hear you come in the room to go to bed,” Linda says.

So because she didn’t hear me go to bed, that means I stole from her?

“We have never had a theft before,” the owner reminds me yet again. “And our dog barks at everyone. Plus, our office was open and there were cell phones in there. Nothing was taken.”

“You need cameras,” Linda says.

“And lockers,” I chime in.

But my suggestion falls on deaf ears. I get why they think it’s me, really I do. But I’m not enjoying the interrogation, and with every passing minute I feel more uncomfortable. The drama is dragging on, and I have a flight to catch in the next couple hours. To me, it’s clear we’re not going to get our stolen goods back. To Linda, it appears that she wants to continue to make a fuss until I cough up her cash.

They call the police who come over and search the place. They ask if we want a police report, and in an act of defiance, I say yes, only to somehow document that I did indeed get robbed too. We go to the station to write reports. The police put the siren on breifly as we whip through Manila. The police seem to think it’s exciting to help out two white girls in distress.

Everything takes forever and time is ticking. After hearing “our case”, the head Policeman announces proudly, as if he has just solved it, that “after hearing everything, if this property is indeed as safe as they say it is, it was an inside job.”

Wow, look out Sherlock Holmes, there’s a new boy in town.

But I start to get a little scared. If everyone thinks an inside job, where does that leave me? I’m not sure if a country like the Philappines subscribes to the “innocent until proven guilty” thing.

They ask for my passport, I give it to them. Linda looks surprised. “You are Canadian. Your Facebook network says London.”

“London is a city in Canada, 1 hour away from my town,” I reply curtly. I see what’s going on. They are reading into every little piece of information to prove my guilt in their head, including assuming I was lying that I was from Canada, because surely London is in the UK.

Time is ticking, my stuff is all over the hostel, and I’m going to miss my flight if things don’t get moving. Plus, at this point I’m not sure where I stand with the police.

“Can I go?” I ask the police trepidly. “I have a flight to catch in an hour and a half.”

They look at the clock, at me, and at Linda.

“Yes,” they say finally.

I breathe a huge sigh of relief. I get escorted back to the hostel in a police car again, with the siren on briefly, and I shove everything in my bag and high tail it to the airport, just barely catching my flight. My relief to be out of Manila is immeasurable.

The whole ordeal, from the minute I woke up until I left for the airport, lasted about 6.5 hours. Linda’s Facebook status update that day: “Why the lies? We’ve never met before so why give the wrong impression? There is no video.”

Never a dull moment.

I am very, very happy when I get to Boracay, my destination.