Ja & I sat in a steamy sauna after being slathered with honey and kalamansi. A milk bath with rose petals punctuated our spa day after a thermal stone massage and having our bodies wrapped in a papaya concoction. It was pure luxury at 1400 pesos which comes out to be roughly $30 US DOLLARS! The package included a lot more.
Most of the persons working at the spa had attended university and had degrees in physical therapy and made 200 pesos a day (4 dollars). A weeks wages would afford the general public what was so easy to afford for myself and my cousins.
The economy is very strange in the Philippines. I wish I understood it. Things seems to have been strange for a very, very long time.
Entrance into the Ayala Museum in Markati at the tail end of my trip was 350 pesos (7 dollars)... costing less than a blouse I purchased in Baguio.
And yet the woman at the spa was very warm and generous though her world is different than mine. She and her husband had three children in college. There was a tinge of struggle that I felt present to her life.. a life that said "I have enough" unconvincingly through a sad sweetness.
She mentioned that it was the US dollar that helped and that the most comfortable in her country had access to family and money that lived outside the country. Those without family abroad struggled the most.
She shared quite a bit... very quietly and candidly answering my questions as she scrubbed me with salts and treated my skin with fruits and essential oils. She was kind...
I would've returned every day if I could but a new leg of my trip was about to begin; my descent down the mountain into the province towns...
JNET
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