Filipinescas

The author is British, but has spent extensive time in Japan and Korea, as well as his travels in the Philippines, and much of this book is spent comparing places, people or their culture to these other places. Published in 1968, Kirkup advises in the Author's Note at the start of the book that the book was written at intervals during the six years prior to publication, and records his seven long trips to the Philippines.

For a book which uses so many Tagalog (Filipino) words, it is ironic that most of the ones which confused me were in English. It must just be the authors style to show off with complicated or underused words. On P10/11 I came across coprolalia, synteresis, rutilant and disoppilating (three of which have reassuring red lines under thanks to my spellcheck). Thankfully this use of weird words calmed down after the first 20-25 pages.

There is a lot in this slim book - only 176 pages, but there are 22 chapters covering myriad topics. I found the reading slow and hard - I think primarily because I didn't find it very stimulating. There were just so many dull sections interspersed by the odd interesting nugget. To keep me interested it needs to be the other way around - I can put up with the occasional dull bit, but the rest has to make up for it.

The author says it is the only travel book published about the Philippines since World War II - it may well be, I have not read a lot about the Philippines (which is why I bought this one when I saw it!). I have visited there only once, for 4 weeks, although 3 of those weeks was spent in one place - a children's home where my partner and I volunteered. I helped buy materials for, then constructed an oven and helped build a building to become a bakery with which they cook bread and sell to maintain an income stream. We also helped plant mahogany seedlings in a plantation which they grow and then harvest to sell for milling as construction timber. In the other week we travelled in nearby islands and in Manilla. But I digress. The point I think I was going to make before I got distracted was, other than Manilla, I didn't visit any of the places the author covered, so perhaps that might have made a difference.

A tiring 2.5 stars, which I don't feel I should round up.
What a terrible cover image - whoever thought that was flattering needs to take another look.