Business as usual

Since the bombings in Zamboanga and Quezon City I’ve been to the shopping mall near my home almost daily, just to see how quickly things would return to business as usual.

Last weekend’s crowd seemed thinner, but this week life appears to be returning to normal – except for the longer queues for security checks at entrances and the traffic as vehicles are searched for bombs.

If you’re a chronic worrier, watching some of the security guards conduct the checks could give you sleepless nights. Anyone who can build a car bomb surely knows how to get past those vehicle inspections. Most guards obviously can’t tell a hole in the ground from a vital body orifice. If the Philippine National Police wants to tap the nation’s approximately 100,000 security guards for the war on terror, the guards should be properly trained in bomb detection.

But what the heck, the inspections seem to add to the public’s sense of security. People are returning to business as usual, refusing to let terrorists control their lives.

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Whether we like it or not, however, terror is now factored into our plans. As the long All Saints’ Day weekend approaches, families are debating whether they should go on vacation outside Metro Manila, whether it’s safe to take a bus to the provinces, and whether they should risk mingling with the crowds in packed cemeteries.

Bus operators have complained that business is down since the bus bombing in Quezon City. The travel industry, which was starting to recover after the attacks in the US on Sept. 11 last year, is expected to be hit hard by the bombings that killed up to 190 people in the Indonesian island resort of Bali two weeks ago. December is normally a peak season for tourism, but I’ve been told that some hotels, resorts and travel agencies have started receiving cancellations for the period.

Some tourists reportedly transferred from Bali to Boracay island, but Edd Fuentes, who operates the Sun Village resort in Boracay, has not heard of it. The peak tourist season is supposed to be starting, but business, Edd told me, "could be better."

Edd’s Sun Village Boracay again sponsored this year – together with Smart and the Philippine Tourism Authority – the Travel Now essay-writing contest of The STAR’s Lifestyle Travel section under editor Millet Mananquil. The winners, led by University of the Philippines law graduate Alman Dave Quiboquibo, received their prizes yesterday for essays about travels around the Philippines.

Reading the essays, and having seen much of the country myself, it’s depressing to consider how terrorism has wreaked such havoc on our tourism industry. The PTA’s Nixon Kua said the industry was in crisis.

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It becomes even more depressing when you consider that some countries in the region continue to get international visitors. Results of the seventh Asia Lifestyles study conducted by the Far Eastern Economic Review showed that China is now the top leisure destination in the region while Singapore is the top business destination.

Obviously, perceptions carry much weight in travel decisions. And the perception is that if kidnappers and Islamist types ever set foot in China, they would be shot on sight. The perception is that in Singapore they would be arrested on sight then executed later.

As for the Philippines, the perception is that ransom kidnapping is a growth industry here while the country is a top R&R destination of Islamist terrorists. In the off chance that a terrorist (a real one with the right identity, not some fall guy) is convicted, he would be out of prison before you can say "lethal injection" and then deported, even escorted back to his country by the man who would make it possible, President Arroyo’s adviser for special concerns Norberto Gonzales.

While Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has been wimpish in dealing with Jemaah Islamiyah and its leader Abubakar Ba’asyir, President Arroyo has been tough on terrorists and other lowlifes — at least in rhetoric. Her problem is that when she issues an order to her cops and soldiers, something gets lost in the translation.

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We can help make up for the lack of international visitors. Nixon, Edd and Smart’s Mon Isberto said domestic tourists were the only hope of the country’s travel industry. We have many beautiful destinations. The winner in our essay contest wrote about the magic of the Cordilleras. Other winners wrote about lesser-known destinations such as Silay and Bolinao.

But we can’t help getting bad press for the bombings in Zamboanga and now Metro Manila. French Ambassador Renée Veyret told me last Monday that she was in Cebu just two weeks ago, roaming the city alone, and that she planned to climb Mt. Apo in a couple of months. She comes from an Alpine region and misses mountain climbing.

The French government nevertheless has issued a travel advisory on the Philippines. The ambassador explained that she is responsible for the safety of her compatriots in this country, so naturally the embassy had to give advice on travel to the Philippines.

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The Internet has allowed me to keep in touch with friends from different parts of the globe. In the months after 9/11 those in my group e-mail list always commiserated with anyone whose country was hit by a terrorist attack. There were lengthy philosophical discourses on the insanity of it all.

As the attacks hit the countries of nearly everyone in my e-mail list, however, the messages of commiseration dwindled. The bombing in Bali merited just a sentence or two to our Indonesian friend. I’ve stopped e-mailing my Israeli friend after every suicide bombing in his country. As for the sniper killers who roamed Washington, after the attack on the Pentagon and the anthrax scare last year, we simply asked our American friends if they still went to the supermarket.

Terror is becoming a way of life around the globe. Yesterday we watched as Chechen rebels held hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theater. A boy was kidnapped for ransom then killed in Germany. One day when we’re all in the same boat we will realize that we can’t hide at home from terrorists forever, and we’ll want to see the world again.

In the meantime, we can explore our own country first.