General Santos, Philippines - March 3, 2008
Spent three days in General Santos. A bit about this city. It's a relatively new city and it's named after a recent founder who pioneered the city. Much of Mindanao saw 'pioneers' coming from other parts of the Filipinas who 'colonized' these areas like Mindanao. Many of the people in this city speak various Visayan languages. My wife and her family are Illongo speakers coming from the island of Panay near the city of Iloilo. Apparently the area of my wife is all Illongo-speakers, and other speakers colonized other areas of the city. The main street of General Santos is even called "Pioneer Street".
In General Santos, we stayed at Sydney Hotel, as I wanted to have somewhere to go at night and relax and watch tv or whatever else while the wife visited family. This was an expensive hotel, but worth every cent. Great location, has a restaurant, and like everywhere in the Philippines, has great television stations. Many of them in all the different languages, Chinese, Japanese, English, Spanish, German, Indian, Korean, etc. Having lived in Korea for years which even with cable tv has very very very few non-korean stations on tv, it was a real treat to be exposed to the tv networks of a country which truly are international.
As to the city of General Santos itself, it's still the same as before. Very few people have ever seen foreigners, and I still get stared at all the time, even when I visit my wife's family, the neighbors all stare as well. Fortunately her immediate family is very nice and friendly and normal. I enjoyed seeing the kids around and her immediate sisters and such. Walking anywhere else around her neighborhood and I'm such a novelty I quickly get overwhelmed by it, but this time I have a great hotel to go back to and watch international tv networks to my heart's content, so I'm all good.
As to general observations about General Santos, this time I stayed at this hotel near a very nice park. The city has very wide roads and very manageable. As the roads and streets are SO wide, it seems real hard to keep out of the sun (as opposed to other cities with tiny little sidewalks next to tall buildings). I liked General Santos better this time, but neither myself or my wife liked walking much at night, as little kids would always follow me everywhere asking for money or knocking on the Jollybee Restaurant window even in the height of the day asking for money. People target foreigners way too much here, which is probably why whatever few foreigners do end up visiting here, don't stay for very long. But it's a nice looking park and main street and such if they did.
Continued journal entries in the Philippines:
March 5, 2008
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