From Boracay to Greece: Vacations and Representations

(No, this is not Malu Fernandez speaking)

This December, my PhD supervisor Mirca Madianou visits the Philippines for vacation and fieldwork. She plans to spend the Christmas holidays with her baby Alex in a nice beach resort before setting off to do her interviews of migrants' left-behind families from January to February. (Of course, I've booked her to do a MediaTalk already. Hehe.)

So in our last meeting, I had the surreal experience of acting like a Wow Philippines travel agent and recommending beach resorts for her to check out. Her requirements were: 1) she wants to spend one week in a nice, secluded resort, and 2) she wants to spend the second week in a place where she can do more stuff and meet "locals" as opposed to foreign tourists.

It seemed easy enough, but then once she pulled out the map of the Philippines and started asking question after question, I felt nervous and uneasy, as if I could not really "speak for" my country. Some of my blunders:
1) It took me a tad too long to find Davao on the map when I was talking about Pearl Farm. (She's still wary of going to Mindanao though, especially because of the baby)
2) She was asking about what to see and do in Bohol and Mindoro, and I could only say that I had never been to either but I did know that the chocolate hills are in Bohol.
3) Anxious about the advisory that there's malaria in Palawan, which ruled out her top choice El Nido, Mirca asked for another recommendation for the nice, secluded resort. And then I remembered reading a travel article about Amanpulo. She proceeded to ask, "So where's that in the map?" And again, yikes, it took too long to spot Amanpulo, which apparently is in a group of islands near Puerto Princesa.
4) She started asking about Boracay. And I have to pretend that I had been there, but--GASP--I've actually never, ever been. Shock. I recommended that she stay in my friend's hotel, but remained vague yet specific at the same time about what she should expect in Boracay. "If El Nido is like Santorini, then Boracay is more like Mykonos," this faker said.

I dunno. With Mirca, I'm quite comfortable talking about media theory and even empirical studies that deal with India, UK, even Greece. But when it comes to Philippine issues and current events, I feel more tense and confused. I remember the time when she asked me whether I thought Manila can be deemed multicultural or even cosmopolitan. And of course I gave two sides of the story (based on academic literature, of course), but I never felt like I answered her question sufficiently.

Anyways, the enjoyable part of our last meeting was when I recounted to her my Greece experiences. Mirca had listed some must-sees and must-avoids for me, as did my other Greek friends. And of course I wanted to give her my own cursory anthropological reading of Greek people and their/her culture.
1) I told her that, just as she had recommended, I went to Gazi, the site of her fieldwork.

But I told her that the place was pretty lifeless when we got there after lunch. And then I recounted how I was so baffled that I checked my guidebook later, and I was surprised to find out that Gazi has been called "Gay-zi" by locals and is a place that should be visited at night. Mirca apologized afterwards for not spelling it out clearly to me that it's a clubbing place and not a sightseeing place. It's just cute that she was prolly hesitant to be upfront and tell me to go to the Greek gay village. But we did see some cuties anyway so no problem. See the "boyS-in-the-background stealth foTOWgraphy" (Paul-Plazo 2008):

2) I also told her that a friend had recommended that Nenita and I go to the shopping district Kolonaki and have coffee at Dacapo, but our many attempts were foiled. There were simply too many people people-watching. Dakapo (think Serendra) is so interesting in that the people are all facing the street and eyeing everyone as they walk by. Nenita and I tried prolly five times to find a table but were unlucky every time. And when we went to another cafe, we were escorted to a crappy table where we couldn't do our own people-watching. And I told Mirca it's likely because I was wearing shorts and we weren't dressed like flashy Greeks. To this, Mirca said, "Oh gosh. I hate Dacapo. It's like, how do you say it... new money." See? This is why Mirca and I so get along.

3) And finally, I told her that I thought that I had gained more insight as to her motivations behind doing her own PhD project Mediating the Nation. In her PhD, she examined Greeks and Turkish speakers in Greece and how they talked about "us" and "them" in relation to news consumption. I narrated how I spoke to a few locals and gathered that some Greeks tend to be quite wary of migrants, particularly non-Greek Orthodox (i.e., Muslim) migrants. This is especially interesting given that one other Greek that I spoke to during my travel said that their country's economic boom in the 70s/80s was a result of Greeks in the diaspora sending remittances back to the homeland. You'd think then that they'd be more sympathetic to migrants. Mirca did agree somewhat that this resurgence of Greek pride and identity in very essentialist terms made her take notice and examine nationalism in relation to the media.

Anyways... are you comfortable representing others more than representing yourself, or the collectives that you belong to? Is there truth to the idea that Filipinos know more about other countries than their own? How do tourist spots represent and misrepresent a country? And where do you recommend Mirca to go to for her holiday? What tourist place or splace represents the Philippines favorably? Which place or splace practices the virtue of infinite hospitality (and get me brownie points)?

Aprez vous!