Out and about in Cebu

Most Koreans will tell you that their favourite seasons, spring and autumn, are becoming noticeably shorter each year, so that the switch from hot, humid summer to cold, dry winter now occurs  too quickly to properly enjoy the trees as they gradually change the colour of the mountains across the peninsular. 

Nami Island, the perfect place to enjoy autumn, or at least your own small piece of it

And for most people the change back from bitterly cold (-17'C) winter to summer can't come quickly enough. In this case $300 buys you a 4hr direct flight to Cebu where you can warm up early.  Cebu is pretty much slap-bang in the middle of the Philippines, sitting comfortably within the tropics.

View of Cebu City from the Cebu Taoist Temple

Of course the cost of visiting Cebu has often been dearer; indeed the first Europeans paid tragically with their lives; case in point, one Portugese Snr Ferdinand Magellan. For his time Snr Magellan was a pretty savvy navigator; born in 1480, by age 33 he had already spent 8 years learning how to subdue locals in Portugese India. By late 1519 Magellan secured finances from the Spanish King Charles I and was preparing to boldly go where no European had gone before; searching for the calm strait of water between the Atlantic and the Pacific which now bears his name. How Magellan knew about the strait and who originally charted it remains a matter of much speculation.

Charles I of Spain and
also Charles V of the
Holy Roman Empire;
"I speak Spanish to God,
Italian to Women,
French to Men and
German to my horse".

By early 1521, Magellan reached Cebu with only 2 of his 5 ships and only 150 of his 270 crew. There he befriended a cunning chieftain Humabon who converted to Christianity in return for Magellan's agreement to 'convert' a local rival; chief Lapu-Lapu. Rarely has a man's pulse risen so quickly as Magellan confidently strode up the beach smiling with 48 soldiers, then promptly ran back screaming in abject terror from the murderous onslaught of Lapu-Lapu's 1,500 unhappy warriors. Magellan's death by multiple bamboo spears and lances was neither quick nor merciful, proving that bad things happen to good people, clever people make stupid mistakes and lucky people get unlucky. Today you can overlook the sorry site of the Mactan Shrine and the Lapu-Lapu monument from the luxury terraces of the Shangrila hotel, pondering the folly of it all while casually chasing an olive or two around your vodka martini.  

April 1521: death is a beach;
locals speared the unprotected legs of the visitors to prevent retreat to their ships

Europeans would not return until 1565 when Spain's Snr Legaspi attempted to convert the locals once more. In a classic example of 'shoot first, ask questions later', Legaspi first opened fire on the city with muskets and and then burned 1,500 houses to the ground, killing perhaps 500 in the process. Only afterwards, in the ashes of the houses, the soldiers found a wooden statue of the child Jesus given by Magellan to Humabon, showing that the locals now prematurely interviewing with St Peter had in fact maintained and spread their Christian faith among population for 44 years without any outside coercion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Ni%C3%B1o_de_Ceb%C3%BA

A statue of Legaspi stands outside Fort San Pedro,
quite possibly the world's only example of a military fort re-purposed as a botanical garden

The hanging gardens of Fort San Pedro;
perfect for photoshoots or snuggling on bench, under a tree with that special someone

Much as Korea is a convenient starting point to explore Asia, Cebu is the perfect place to start exploring the Philippines. Across the Cebu Strait from Magellan's miserable death at Mactan is the island of Bohol, location of the world-renown 'Chocolate Hills', so called due to the dusky brown colour of the vegetation at certain times of the year.

The small but perfectly rounded 'Chocolate Hills of Bohol'

A trip to the Chocolate Hills invariably includes a stop at a nature reserve to see the world's smallest (av. 12cm/120g) primate, the painfully shy Philippine Tarsier in its natural surroundings. The female is known for its multiple sets of breasts, which may or may not explain why the male has the largest eye-to-body size ratio of all known mammals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_tarsier

From infeasibly small primates to the world's largest fish; down the coast a little from Cebu is the improbably named Oslob where visitors can swim alongside whale sharks, ie; sharks which filter-feed in the same way as whales. 

Each day a group of approx. 8 whale sharks appear voluntarily in the shallows at Oslob hoping to find food. The locals paddle out in traditional small boats to meet the whale sharks, feeding them while tourists snorkel and take photos.  Admittedly there is some controversy about the impact of taming wild animals in this way, but this is probably the best chance to swim with animals 12m-15m in length and 15 tonnes weight in their (almost) natural habitat.

Slow and graceful; whale sharks reach up to 15m long, 15t in weight

An extended family of 8 is normally present each day

The suction of water into the mouth is powerful; a safe distance of 4m is advised

http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/whale-shark-oslob/index.html

All in all a short break in Cebu provides the perfect remedy for the worst of the winter blues in Korea, leaving you warm, relaxed and energised for the start of spring.

Stairway to Heaven

Here in Korea it's 'Chuseok' again; that chaotic time of year when families everywhere criss-cross the peninsular to visit the husband's parents the wife's parents, the grand parents and the shrines of their parents to leave ritual offerings and say prayers for their ancestors through time immemorial.

This year the autumn equinox harvest festival is a little unusual; stretching over a full 10 days and set to the distant rhythm of war drums beating across the Pacific. The holiday begins innocently enough by exchanging boxes of spam, extra virgin olive oil, or possibly war survival kits, if you subscribe to the ominous portents of the conservative media. 

War survival kits, now a popular alternative to traditional spam or olive oil at Chuseok

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170925000797&ACE_SEARCH=1

Rapidly the vacation becomes fraught as record numbers jostle elbow-to-elbow through airports, tailgate for tedious hours along the highways and pack the trains to capacity. 

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171001000143&ACE_SEARCH=1

For some the pressure is too much, with divorces in the weeks before and after Chuseok rising to twice the daily average.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=237244

In the western world the concept of god or divinity has undergone some major revisions over the centuries, much like we now roll out new software updates for our computers. The first humans probably huddled around camp fires, nervously asking each other how to prepare for the hereafter, desperately hoping that the answer wouldn't be more nerve-racking than preparing for a first mammoth hunt or perhaps even worse, a first date. 

Seemingly the first holy men recognised an opportunity to improve their social status and quickly launched to market Divinity 1.0, based on visible, mortal, tangible god-kings like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The pharaohs evidently believed the afterlife to be rather empty and ill-furnished; they therefore spent a lifetime arranging to store plenty of food, luxuries and concubines to take with them when they passed over. Meanwhile the peasants could only take the rags they stood up in. All in all, this was not a very equitable belief system for the great unwashed.

Egyptian Pharaohs - leaving no creature comfort behind in their journey to the Afterlife 

The next roll-out, Divinity 2.0, featured a whole host of new, improved, more ethereal gods; this time invisible and immortal, with dominion over each aspect of earthly life. Greek, Roman and Norse priests gave us a god for everything from love to harvests and from war to volcanoes. 

Greek gods; one available for every occasion, all sacrifices gratefully received

As before, each god required devotion and sacrifices in return for delivery from evil. It all sounded wonderful but as the centuries ticked by we slowly realised that protection from war, famine, pestilence, etc could not be bought with any amount of prayer or sacrifice.

The wisest holy men foresaw their high social status being utterly ruined by unsatisfied customers and so, analysing the flaws in their model, they rushed out Divinity 3.0 even before Divinity 2.0 was abandoned. This time just one single Great Omnipotent Deity requiring devotion and sacrifice. Cleverly, our devotion this time would not earn us tangible rewards in this lifetime but virtual rewards in the next life - which we would need to take on faith, of course. Finally a bullet-proof deity concept which could survive the most intense customer scrutiny !  

Local variations of Divinity 3.0 were rolled out around the Mediterranean in quick succession including Judaism, Christianity and Islam - although in some parts of the world the latter is still arguably considered even less user friendly than Windows Vista ever was.

Meanwhile Korea was surviving happily on a simple diet of shamanism, or the worship of nature spirits, until Buddhism was introduced in the late 4th century. Since Buddhist and shamanistic teachings were not contradictory and since Buddhism tended more towards philosophy than deity worship, Koreans found it possible to integrate the two and follow both doctrines together. 

The spirits of the trees, mountains and animals are highly revered in shamanism

Korean Buddhism largely went unchallenged for a full millennium until the late 14th century when neo-Confucians supported a military coup, winning themselves the opportunity to try to displace Buddhist mysticism with a traditional and deeply hierarchical Confucian rationalism which included ancestor worship.  Therefore the modern Chuseok vacation reflects an ancient fusion of  Buddhist and Shamanistic concepts overlaid by more recent Confucian reverence for one's ancestors.

Although Korea undoubtedly had its own versions of Divinity 1.0 and 2.0, little was known about western divinity until books by Portuguese Jesuit Matteo Ricci were brought over from Beijing in the early 1600s. However even then the Chinese translations  limited the Christian doctrine to a relatively small, wealthy, educated overclass. It was not until the 1780s, when the literature was re-printed in simplified Korean Hangul script, that Christianity became accessible to the masses.

After centuries of Buddhism and Confucianism which both reinforce rigid social hierarchies, with little upward mobility within the system, Christianity eventually started to win followers through its message that all men are equal under god and reward is ultimately based on effort and merit not birthright. Current figures suggest that among Koreans, 20% identify as Protestant, 8% as Catholic and 15% as Buddhist, leaving about 55% following  non-organised worship including shamanistic or Confucian rituals.

For those with faith, the stairway to heaven is, somewhat predictably, earned by putting in long and regular hours. Gentle inquiries show it is not unusual for a family to dedicate their entire Sunday to promoting church business. Given the lack of family time available during the week, this means that a devoted Christian family can regularly spend half the weekend (or half of its entire weekly family time) serving the church. This ardent presenteeism suggests that entry to the Afterlife may be controlled by a celestial Human Resources Dept. which values time-keeping over productivity in the same way that we see here in this life every day.

Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart:
"They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other,
but not enough to make them love.
The future isn't what it used to be, Mr Angel."