'Today we are friends,' said the people who drugged the traveler, drove him to a rice paddy and left him there

By Mark Mather
Scripps Howard News Service
MANILA, Philippines
San Jose Mercury News, October 6, 1996

I first saw Rosa and her little sister, Maria, in the gloomy cool of Manila's cathedral. We began talking over a Coke in the deserted square after Maria had asked for a light for her sister.

We sat in the shade amid the crumbling remains of Spanish colonialism. Rosa had enormous eyes and dark, wiry hair. She was primly dressed and was, I thought after three days in Manila, the first person I had met not trying to sell me something or somebody.

My new camera, bought in Hong Kong, lay heavy in my bag and my white legs branded me a new arrival, like a passport stamp.

Rosa was easy to talk to and I, though used to traveling alone, was eager to respnod. We decided to spend the afternoon together. Rosa had planned to visit Taal volcano, rumored to be frisky in the aftermath of Mount Pinatubo's eruption. As the cab crawled through the traffic, Rosa warned me to keep my bag away from the window: "Thieves are everywhere."

Planning a journey

Rosa was showing her 12-year-old sister the sights before returning to her family in the south of the country, close to Borocay -- by coincidence, my next destination. "It would be an honor if you would travel with us. My parents' house is small but you must come stay," Rosa said.

Maria talked about their father's fishing boat and the picnic we would have. Rosa smiled. I did, too.

We arranged to meet two days later at a shopping mall downtown. I had canceled my one-hour flight in favor of the ferry, which the book said took at least 16 hours. I reasoned that this was real travel, where you earned your destination with a stiff back and new friendships forged in common discomfort.

Squeezing our luggage into a cab that Rosa had hailed, we set off through the morning rush hour to catch the ferry. It was the feast of John the Baptist, and the children were celebrating by throwing balloons full of water. All around us, cars and people were being hit; the water sparkling in the morning sun. One got our windshield and we laughed. This is why I came away, I thought.

We stopped at another mall and Rosa and Maria got out to pick up some provisions for their parents. I sat back and watched another balloon hit its mark -- the suited recipient struggling to keep his temper.

A spiked soda

Ten minutes later, Maria returned with a burger, a cola and her sister's apologies for keeping me waiting. It was too early for junk food. I toyed with the cola but it tasted full of chemicals -- not all of them, I was soon to find out, were for flavoring.

Suddenly I was at a table with Rosa and two Filipinos, a whiskey in my hand, but hang on: I don't drink whiskey. One man was wearing a white track suit. He slapped me on the back: "Have another drink. In the Philippines we know how to drink."

I did not doubt him. Hold on, though, this was not a ferry.

"Don't worry about the ferry -- today we are friends."

I was becoming less sure of that. I got up, fell over and crawled back up to my chair. No one helped me. Rosa smiled and put a glass in my hand. The track suit approached with swhiskey. I covered my glass. He pushed my hand away and poured, stuffing the glass in my mouth.

Why were they doing this? The party continued. The right side of my body seemed to be partially paralyzed. A rummage in my day pack revealed that my camera had turned into a similarly weighted rock.

Finally, my imbecilic brain comprehended the situation. Now I was scared. The drugs in my breakfast cola and the whiskey were fighting for ascendancy. The alcohol was winning.

The drop

More familiar ground, at least: I was dragged outside to the taxi -- good of it to wait. Rosa took the wheel while the men held my arms in the back seat. They needn't have bothered, as my addled brain had already opted for total cooperation.

The sun was setting on the paddy fields as we stopped. I'd been out of it for nine hours. I was pushed head first out of the cab. Lying comfortably on the dirt track, I watched as my friends disappeared with my belongings. I lay still, almost happy, until a man returning from the fields helped me up. He steered me to a police outpost.

I was a hundred miles from Manila. In the station the policeman watched as my right leg buckled and I sank to the floor. He wore dark glasses and slicked-back hair. My Samaritan withdrew in deference. I began to blurt out my story, like an aggrieved child.

"Wait," he said as he got up and urinated on the wall farthest from his desk. In the other corner I saw a cage in which a man wearing only ripped shorts was muttering gibberish. I lighted a cigarette that Rosa had kindly left me. The policeman swaggered back, zipping himself up. "You are smoking in the station. That is an offense and you are going in there." He motioned toward the man in shorts.

Reporting the crime

He let me plead for a while, but I had no money, so he became bored and told one of the locals craning through the window to take me to the district police station. The man in the cage laughed hysterically.

At the next police station, which actually looked like one, I sat next to a man nursing a stump in place of his right hand. Blood seeped through his white bandage. It was cut off, a jocular detective told me, after he helped them identify two thieves. "You were lucky," he added. Yes, perhaps I was.

A policewoman loaned me the bus fare to Manila after the British consulate declined to help me out. It is difficult to be rude to a consul; the title and clipped English tones make for an impressive telephone presence. Well, it was after 5 p.m.

The credit card people were sympathetic as they assured me I probably wouldn't have to pay for the TV and other goodies I found had been bought that afternoon. Three days later I flew to borocay with my new, ill-fitting wardrobe.

Later I heard from a friend in Amsterdam that Mark and Marcel -- two Dutchmen I had met while recovering who, over a month, helped me get over my experience -- were drugged and abducted north of Manila. Mark was stabbed repeatedly and run over. He was dead when Marcel awoke next to him in a paddy field.

Perhaps you should be reading his story -- if he could tell it.