Alvin (my younger brother) just uploaded his first round of pictures from the Philippines to Flickr, and I spotted this one right away:

— from DJ Moka

Edwin Bugnay is my paternal grandfather who died before I was born. Yes, Edwin is actually my grandfather’s first name, and Bugnay is my father’s family name. My dad and some siblings took the name Edwin, the rest kept Bugnay. Yes, it’s rather confusing, but so is the Spanish naming convention and the Spaniards ruled the Philippines for more than 400 years. We can attribute any cultural confusion to them. The Philippine islands are named after Spain’s King Philip II, which I learnt while travelling because many people asked me about it.

There’s a bit of cruel irony in the fact that the Filipino accent cannot pronounce the “f” sound and instead turns it into a “p” and “Filipino” is spelled with an “f” and not a “Ph” like people expect, from the name. As if it isn’t confusing enough! My geography professor at SFU told everyone the Philippines is consistently the most misspelled of any country.

I wasn’t born in the north where my father and brothers are visiting now, I was born in the far south in Zamboanga del Sur near Malaysia and Indonesia in the province of Mindanao, which is Muslim and also shares a dialect with Indonesia. Mindanao has a reputation for kidnappings (ransom money for guns, from what I’ve read), so it is unlikely you’ll ever get there because everyone will try and talk you out of visiting. I met an SAS parachutist in Australia who was trained for rescue operations of tourists kidnapped there, and I met a Filipino girl in Vancouver who — while there — was blindfolded and taken hostage for her family business money and later released. It remains to be seen if Mindanao will ever be safe enough for me to travel there.

The north is where Allan was born, and where the majority of my father’s family still lives. (Alvin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the only Canadian by birth out of all of us.)

The Cordilleras is a mountainous region and the roads are treacherous:

— from DJ Moka

Driving is best left to the locals, as you can see.

This region is where the famous Banaue Rice Terraces are located, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Allan was in the Philippines with Michael and my dad three years ago, but Alvin has been once, in 1984, when he was nine years old. That’s the last time I went, too (I turned 12 during that trip), and I was supposed to be on this trip but the timing was such that I couldn’t get away for three weeks. I’ll have to travel vicariously through them, this time, and plan my own trip later.

Allan’s photoset
Alvin’s Philippines collection (he hasn’t made a set yet) [fixed]