Bridging Laoag and Macau

MACAU – They’re playing our song in this former Portuguese colony turned over to China two years ago. Over at the Moonwalker Restaurant and Bar along well-lit Avenida Marginal de Baia Nova, their version of Malate, Filipino bands sing the oft-requested Anak (yes, the Macanese know Freddie Aguilar’s song) and Dahil Sa ‘Yo, even if the predominantly Chinese crowd can only relate to the former’s plaintive melody.

The Portuguese owner of nearby Dom Galo restaurant where a Filipino duo sings, says Anak "is similar to a Portuguese song."

Vocalist Lito Argana, singer-girlfriend Rosette Abano, Aileen Chan and vocalist-saxophonist Isagani Limbaga of the Music Extra band left Manila to play six times a week at Moonwalker. At an exchange rate of six pesos to one pataca (the Macanese currency), the grass is greener here than it is back home, where Lito has played to the far more discriminating Filipino audience at Tradewinds Hotel and other places.

All of them, including a Filipino waiter and waitress, send money to their families back home. While they refuse to reveal just how much they earn at Moonwalker, Aileen says she sends P15,000 a month to her family, with enough left for her needs in Macau.

Not bad, considering that theirs is no eight-hour job (they perform 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., Monday to Thursday; 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., Friday to Sunday). Tuesday, when the rich Chinese businessmen go back from their Monday holiday, is their dayoff.

The Macanese audience is easy to please. Sing them a revival song, like the ubiquitous Blue Bayou, La La Means I Love You and Elvis Presley songs rendered by a mestizo married to a Filipina, and they’re pleased as punch.

Ask the ever-busy waiters, who hardly have time to pause when the crowd starts streaming in just as the band is swaying to the beat of Sugar Ray’s Someday.

On a very good day, the pretty Filipina waitress, whose husband and children are also in Macau, says the crowd is so big, some customers actually slip away without paying their bill!

Liezl Arguillan and Ogie Celestial of Iloilo and Baguio, respectively, came to Dom Galo, a restaurant-bar along Avenida Sir Anders Ljung Stedt, three years ago, upon the invitation of Filipino relatives employed in the place. Liezl’s elder sister worked at Dom Galo while Ogie’s cousin is a waiter there.

Liezl and Ogie form a singing duo who renders English, Tagalog and even Portuguese songs upon request. On top of their list are Anak and Dahil Sa ’Yo. Working hours are 8 p.m. to 2 a.m., Monday to Sunday. Another Filipina, Teresa Gonzales, goes solo Friday to Sunday.

Liezl, who admits earning more than her husband does in the Philippines, says the audience here is much easier to please. "Here, if you mispronounce Portuguese words, it’s okay. In the Philippines, the people get angry if you mispronounce a word," she says.

But who’s complaining? The important thing is Liezl and Ogie, who used to sing at Alberto’s Bar in Baguio, are earning more than what they used to get back home.

Mark Lorenzo, a Filipino waiter at Moonwalker, says there are six Pinoy bands playing in various bars here, like Tropical House and JD Burger. A far cry from the smoke-filled ones found in Manila, these bars are like open-air cafés that allow customers to chat and dine outdoors. Ventilation is good and service – especially from a Filipino staff – is fast.

Mark and members of the ever-growing Filipino community in Macau (numbering about 40,000 as of the latest count) can now go home faster via the newly opened Macau-Laoag route – in one hour, 10 minutes – versus the one-and-a-half-hour flight one has to go through via the Manila-Hong Kong-Macau route of old. Air Macau recently inaugurated its Macau-Laoag route to serve the needs of the Macanese and Filipino communities, thus building bridges of friendship between the two cities (a direct flight from Manila to Macau via Air Macau takes two hours).

If you’re lucky, you just might meet a Filipino stewardess (there are 26 in all) garbed in the airline’s signature red, white and blue, in the 250-capacity airbus.

Simon Ip, deputy general manager of Hong Cheung Travel Co. Ltd., is upbeat about tourism prospects between the Philippines – or more specifically Laoag – and Macau.

On the day he met this writer, he reveals that the flight from Manila to Macau was full. A wave of visitors is expected, thus making the already packed casinos at Hotel Lisboa swell with inveterate risk-takers. That, adds Ip, is a good indicator as any that there is a pressing need for a Laoag-Macau-Laoag route.

Statistics from the Macau Travel and Tourism Office are just as upbeat. Last year, a total of 42,111 Filipinos visited Macau. This represents a growth of 15 percent from the past year.

The number of Filipino overnight guests in Macau hotels and guest houses posted a dramatic growth of 63.72 percent last year.

Yes, Ip admits, potential flyers from Macau hem and haw when his staffers dangle the prospect of going to the Philippines. Blame it on the Abu Sayyaf hostage crisis that has scared many tourists away.

Solution: Hong Cheung Travel staffers brandish a map of the Philippines showing the location of Laoag vis-a-vis Palawan.

"We show them how far each is to the other," says Ip. "We also treat Laoag as a different area of interest. We tell them about what a nice resort-hotel Fort Ilocandia is, and the array of golf tours found in the area."

Then, there’s the volume of other Asian tourists flying to Macau.

"Taiwan is a big market. We have 20 to 30 flights daily from Taiwan to Macau. Opening a new destination is a good way of seeing other Asian countries," Ip continues.

It’s also a good way of seeing stark parallels between Macanese and Filipino ways.

For one, there’s Chinese blood running in many a Filipino’s veins. Jose Rizal had Chinese ancestors. So does former President Cory Aquino.

Macau itself is like our Ongpin on a bigger scale. Macanese cuisine is found in the restaurants all over Ongpin.

Signature Macanese cuisine like minchi – minced pork and diced potatoes fast-fried in soy – duckling cooked in its own blood, and pork and tamarind in shrimp paste, among others, dot menu lists in Ongpin and Macau restaurants.

Why, a Chinese restaurant inspired by Macanese cuisine – Lutong Macao – even exists along Jupiter street in Makati! Diners who flock to Ongpin restaurants and to Lutong Macao are proof positive that this kind of cuisine has found itself into Filipinos’ hearts.

Then there’s the rich Christian heritage which gave birth to magnificent churches, fortresses and quaint buildings. If we have the breathtakingly Gothic Paoay Church and the old Nolasco mansion in Ilocos Norte, Macau has the St. Paul Ruins, the oldest of its kind in Asia. Built in 1602 by Japanese Christians who fled persecution in their homeland (many of them companions of our very own San Lorenzo Ruiz), the ruins stand tall and majestic in an area steeped in history and culture.

Walk over to the Museum of Macau, actually a former fort that was the original heart of the Portuguese settlement. A lion and a dragon, symbols of good luck, greet the visitor at the entrance.

Filipino guards (watch them perk up when you talk to your companion in Tagalog) usher you to display cases contrasting the civilizations of China and Europe.

Ascend a short flight of stairs and another Filipino guard (they’re all over the place!) will show you a replica of a Macanese farmer’s old house (complete with the sounds of shuffling mahjong tiles); an array of colorful Chinese opera costumes, the popular theater puppet show, tools and implements in old Macau – the works!

Letting the Filipino guards take you on this journey to the past will bring you around the three-level museum, soaking up a culture steeped in the ancient disciplines of art, literature, architecture, etc.

Once you step outside in the warm sunshine, soak up the panoramic view of the city below – the kind that, save for the old ruins, makes you feel you’re in Tagaytay and on top of the world.

There are a lot of other old places to whet the appetite of history buffs.

Buckle up for a leisurely ride on a time machine at Pousada de Sao Tiago. Imagine fully armed soldiers guarding the Fortaleza de Barra, a 17th century fortress converted into a hotel overlooking the Macau harbor. Dine against a backdrop of 18th century furniture, crystal lamps and drapes made in Lisbon.

Walk around Largo Senado, with its globular fountain and stone mosaic pavement modeled after a Portuguese square. By day, marvel at the renovated China Coast shop house that is the ever-busy tourism office and the Santa Casa da Misericordia centuries-old charity headquarters.

At night till the wee hours of the morning, mingle with Filipinos playing tong-its (their humble version of the very lucrative gambling done at Hotel Lisboa?) and pouring their hearts out to their kababayan – domestic helpers, teachers, missionaries, waiters, band members, pharmacists, bellboys, sales clerks, etc.

But the hub around which the wheels of the Macau economy grinds exceedingly fast is the gambling casino, bar none. Macau’s 10 casinos, with opulent gambling halls and thousands of slot machines, are the magnets that attract tourists from all over to Macau all year-round.

Hotel Lisboa alone has multi-level, 24-hour casinos where fashionably dressed people – 19-year-olds in their high heels and body-hugging attire, executives in their business suits, etc. – come and go.

Storm signal number 10 (the equivalent of storm signal number three in the Philippines) may be up all over the city; schools and offices may already be closed. But not the casinos. The dice still roll, the cards still shuffle for a game of blackjack, the roulette still spins and slot machines still ring for all to hear.

This is the kind of atmosphere and more – that of a Las Vegas environment – Fort Ilocandia in Ilocos Norte hopes to replicate through its 24-hour Casino Filipino located at the main building’s second floor, where game tables and slot machines are there for trying. The attendants are multilingual (the better for foreign guests) and two VIP game rooms are there for the more discriminating. It’s written all over Ilocos: these striking similarities between Macanese and Philippine culture. You see it in the giant globular fountain dominating the inner entrance, the wooden stairs and furniture with curlicue designs, the brick-covered archways, the therapeutic pebble steps (reminiscent of the cobblestones in old Macau streets) leading to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an 18-hole, world-class golf course designed by the legendary Gary Player, and the beach open to water sports like jetskiing, surfing and sailing.

Step out a bit further and see European architecture in all its majesty: the centuries-old Paoay Church; the Malacañang of the North, home of the late former President Ferdinand Marcos, clay jars made by hardy people who inherited their skills from their ancestors.

All these call for stronger bonding: the kind Ilocos Norte Rep. Roquito Ablan foresaw when he negotiated a second direct international flight to his province (the first was a Philippine Airlines charter flight connecting Laoag to Hong Kong and Manila), and sought the Department of Tourism’s support.

At this time when we need all the good PR we can get for our country, nothing comes closer to hitting the nail right on the head.