By Irma Faith B. Pal • Sun, Mar 11, 2012
In the southern tip of Negros Oriental lies a bay that one traveler’s guidebook simply describes as "a place with many sailboats”.
Indeed, Tambobo Bay in the municipality of Siaton is such a place, but it is definitely more than that. It counts not only a community of Filipino fishers among its residents, but an increasing number of foreign travelers who have chosen to live in their boats while moored in the bay’s still waters.
There were about 30 cruisers moored in the bay when MetroPost visited Tambobo Bay last weekend. "There could be more, especially during amihan (north wind) season,” said Michael Prader, a retired artist from Austria, and one of the foreigners who have opted to live on the bay.
"The foreigners here in Tambobo are different from those you find in other places in the Philippines,” Prader said. "The foreigners here are not tourists but travelers -- they take time to adjust to a different culture. ”
Tourists, he explained, are short-time visitors who just like to relax in a different climate and take advantage of the comforts they might not have back in their home country.
For Prader, 60, coming to Tambobo Bay 10 years ago was a serendipitous discovery. He was hopping from Thailand to Malaysia and other countries in Asia looking for a simpler life, when someone told him that in the Philippines, "even people in the villages speak English”.
So he came to the Philippines, and talked to as many people about the possibility of living in one of the islands, until someone at Apo Island, part of the town of Dauin, also in Negros Oriental told him about Tambobo Bay.
As he didn’t have a boat that time, Prader went over to Tambobo from Dumaguete City, and instantly fell in love with the place. He immediately arranged to rent a bamboo house, and started building his dream boat.
Prader is now building a second boat, assisted by local carpenters.
One of these carpenters is Nemesio Avellano from Valencia, Negros Oriental, who has since opted to live in barangay Bonbonon in Siaton, repairing interesting boats with various foreigners since the 1980s.
Avellano said that even while he specialized in building houses, the "yachties,” as they are called around here, would patiently guide him in building or repairing their boats.
"There is something special in the way the foreigners live here,” Prader noted. "Foreigners hire the local people who do not seem to have a chance to find jobs elsewhere.”
This setup, Prader explained, makes it convenient both for the foreigners and the locals. "We find it cheaper to make something here, while the workers find comfort in being able to come home to their families everyday.”
Prader said he enjoys his life now as a Tambobo Bay resident. "I like a different kind of life -- a simpler way of life.”
And like most cruisers, he supports himself with a pension from his home country.
Another Tambobo resident is Diane Pool, who first sailed out of San Francisco, California in 1991 with husband Bill, a forensic geologist.
Starting with a bare hull in 1975, Bill and Diane built for the next nine years their 38-foot Atkins design "Pilar”, so named after the heroine in Hemingway’s For whom the Bell Tolls.
They launched her at sea by 1984 and lived on "Pilar” seven years before she took them on an nine-year journey to the Pacific, staying in some places for some months at a time, through the waters of Mexico, the Gambiers, Tahiti, Hawaii, Caroline Islands (Micronesia and Palau), the Solomon Islands, Australia, and then by the year 2000 to Tambobo Bay in the boot-shaped island of Negros Oriental in central Philippines.
Bill and Diane learned about Tambobo Bay from other cruisers while in the Solomon Islands. "We get to meet with fellow cruisers and we compare notes. There’s also the Single Side Band radio,” she said.
"We were attracted to Tambobo immediately because there are not a lot of places in the world that are safe for boats; even expensive when there’s a marina,” she said. "Here in Tambobo, we can leave our boats because it’s safe. This is not a tourist thing like in the Caribbean or Hawaii; we see Tambobo as our little paradise,” said Diane, a graphic artist/designer.
She said living on a boat in an area far from the city compels one to live simply so as not to complicate things. "Living simply gives us time to read, which is another way of expanding one’s horizons,” she said as she showed her book shelf on the boat.
She remembers how a local was curious how yachties could live on a boat, and was wondering if they had at least a table inside.
"Pilar” has a two-cylinder engine which runs on 27 gallons of fuel at 100 nautical miles/four to five knots. It has berths for four people to sleep on, a toilet and bath, a galley with a sink, an oven, a stove fueled by wood, and a canning machine, 90 gallons of water that could last her a month, and a storage for everything. And a table. No refrigeration, no fans, no hot water, no GPS. "Bill and I are dinosaurs,” Diane proudly said.
"Every boat here has a story,” she remarked, as she took this writer on a tour of "Pilar” in her dinghy, as well as around the bay to get a closer view of the other boats, which either bore names of their country, or flew little flags of their country.
She pointed out some catamarans, a trimaran, and a junk from Japan, Australia, Israel, Korea, Italy, Canada, Austria, France, Belgium, and the concrete boat from Russia.
Pool, 63, discovered her love for sailing at the young age of 26 when she met Bill who was 22 years her senior, and a Marine during World War II. "The first time I woke up on a boat, I felt I had ‘come home’.”
Upon their arrival in Tambobo Bay in 2000, Diane offered to tutor Reading to one kid on a weekend. "Then many came.”
What followed next was a Saturday school program called the One Candle Schoolhouse where the local kids also learned writing, computer skills, the art of self-expression, and life skills like budgeting.
They also learned to translate English storybooks to the vernacular, Visayan, or weave an original story based on a picture story book. "I just felt that the local kids had to learn to do it by themselves; and they were enjoying the fact that they could actually create things.”
Bill, a forensic geologist in the US, built a carpentry shop, and started teaching locals how to repair and build boats.
They started with kids five to 15 years old. Bill and Diane would take them to the local market where they were taught how to budget money; each would be given some amount to buy ingredients for a recipe they were going to cook. The couple would also take the kids for a tour of Dumaguete City, more than an hour’s drive from the town of Siaton. "We took them to the bookstore, an Internet cafe, an art show along the boulevard, and took them for a ride on the escalator at the local shore. They’re grown now, and some of them have families and babies of their own.”
The Once Candle Schoolhouse has since evolved to become Bright Lights Community Learning Initiative, with campuses in the barangays of Bonbonon and in Siit, and recently, teaching livelihood skills as well.
More cruisers like Doug Schuch and furniture-maker Kenji Iemura have pitched in to volunteer their services to teach sailing, pottery, or painting, or donate good quality musical instruments.
Other foreigners like Simon Stack who have made Dumaguete or Valencia their home would drive their motorbikes all the way to Tambobo twice a week to teach the local children literature or computer applications like PhotoShop and Excel.
"There’s something about providing opportunities that make other people help themselves because you see so much potential in them,” Diane noted. "I feel good simply being with the local residents of Tambobo because I feel that we’re all connected, and that we can help each other to get better together,” she added. "Being in a community like Tambobo puts depth in my life,” Diane said.
Local resident Arlene Palallos was in her mid-20s when she would paddle her baroto (small banca) from yacht to yacht within the bay to sell yellow bananas from a bilao.
She said the foreigners liked the local sweet tundan and in no time, she was friends with them. They would go to her parents’ payag (hut) where she would serve them guisadong monggos, which they also liked. Then they started returning the favor, and the couple-yachties would invite her to their boats for salads and sandwiches.
Then they suggested to her if she could prepare meals, like in a restaurant, and they would come buy food and drinks. Which she did, first by preparing native dishes like lokon (big shrimps) and adobo, and clay oven-baked bread stuck together, referred to in Siaton as torta. Then the foreigners advised her there was too much sugar in her bread; since then, she wouldn’t add any sugar if it was the foreigners putting in the order.
From her share in the sale of her mother’s property, Arlene invested in a refrigerator and the building of a bamboo dock where the foreigners could moor their dinghies, and head straight into her little restaurant.
Business must have been good all these 13 years as she was able to put her daughter through college at Foundation University. Palallos continues to run Arlene & Boy’s Café, and would greet each foreigner who comes in with his/her first name. "They are more than customers now; we are friends,” she said.
She recalled that even without her asking, the customers one time chipped in to pay for the surgery on her brother who figured in a motorbike accident. "They also give financial advice; I know they want us to improve our lifestyle, and not only to eat once a day; they always give from their hearts.”
After Bill passed on in the US, Diane said she was at a loss. "But I came back to Tambobo because I knew the local kids were counting on me. What’s better than seeing kids enjoying learning?”
"I wouldn’t have stayed here in Tambobo this long now if it weren’t wonderful,” she said. "I like the space, the freedom, watching nature from the cockpit, it’s absolutely gorgeous here. There are now many cruisers here on the bay yet, you never feel invaded.”
She said that in the US, she felt more alone among thousands of people. "But here in this small community of Tambobo -- although I now live alone on the boat -- there’s life starting in the early morning when you wake up to see neighbors sweeping their beachfront.”
As she would say, "I am more of a foreigner in the US than I am here,” where she has found a simple life aboard her boat in Tambobo Bay, that everyday is a witness to the sunrise in the east, and the sunset against a backdrop of the Cuernos de Negros mountain range.
Tambobo Bay resident Diane Pool gives the author a tour of the bay and her boat. (Photos by Alex Rey Pal)
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