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Posts Tagged ‘angeles city’

Angeles City is a large urban area in Pampanga, north of Manila and featuring the former USAF Base, Clark Freeport. The entertainment area is the barangay of Balibago and the main strip is Fields Avenue. Since early July there have been 13 murders involving foreigners. An American, a Canadian, a South African, A South Korean, two Britons and seven Filipinas, spouses, girlfriends and live in domestic helpers. All shot with 9mm bullets and several by the same gun.

You can read more here.

My good mate, the late John Martin lived there for many years and fell afoul of the corrupt cops and judges when he was framed for dealing Shabu. he had sold his business (a country club with bowls lawn) and retired, hence he had money and was thus a target. He suffered two weeks in prison and then 6 months handcuffed to a bed until he was able to pay for his release. He is certain the local top cop of the time was behind it and I am pretty sure his wife of the time was in on it too. A little payback for John’s peccadilloes on Fields. Of course he could just as easily been bumped off.

This web site has reported several murders of expats over the past few years but quite frankly this latest crime spree is scary. While I doubt the casual tourist has much to worry about, those expats who live there are more of a permanent fixture and therefore a target for any local wanting to make some quick cash. If it isn’t a bullet in the head, it can just as easily be a set up with an under age girl alleging molestation or soliciting. They would try it on with a wheelchair bound castrated cripple with no hands if they thought he had money stashed somewhere. Logic and justice are irrelevant, all that is important is that you are a foreigner and have money to spare and the poor Pinoy deserves your hard earned.

While you can become a victim anywhere in the country and of course, anywhere in the world, even at home, Angeles City is a more dangerous place because of the vice that lures so many there. Once you cross the line into the less than morally pure territory that is Fields Avenue you leave yourself open to all sorts of risks, even if you are squeaky clean!

If you run a business over here one of your biggest headache creators will be staff. I used to think it very cruel and neo-colonial, the way many Pinoy and Chinoy (Filipino and Chinese-Filipino) employers treated their staff. Like a cross between recalcitrant children and indentured slaves. Now I can appreciate why.

I have learnt if you give them a fair go as you would back home, too many will take unfair advantage of you. Our last IT staffer started out like a nipa hut on fire. As she realised we were decent blokes she took advantage, turning up later and later, missing whole days and eventually not even bothering to apologize. She’s gone now.

Looking for a replacement has been a challenge to my Angeles City based partner. Our office there is in residential premises so we usually meet clients at their offices or somewhere neutral like Starbucks at the Mall. Seems too many Filipinos must feel the job isn’t legit if we have to meet off site. Of course back home we do that if we want to interview in a neutral locale or if there is still someone in the role who will soon be fired.

Eventually my partner used his network of business contacts to hunt down some hopefuls and, with an introduction from someone they trust, we had several actually turn up to be interviewed. One will start monday and hopefully be able to hit the ground running, as they say. It’s all fun and frolic in the Philippines!

Before anyone accuses me of being a hypocrite, I freely admit I have been to Angeles in the past and I enjoyed the place for what it was then and is now.  I believe we must always have places like Angeles, they serve a purpose that human nature creates and I won’t be so naïve as to deny it.

But times and people change and I find myself quite disillusioned with the whole sordid sewer of a place that is really just a very small section of an otherwise vibrant and wonderful Filipino city.  So with that understanding between us (writer and reader), let us progress.  Angeles City sprung up to serve the needs of the US military.  Back in 1902 when the US Cavalry set up a remount station and cavalry camp there the local barangay was some distance from the camp gates.  Gradually the place grew as those bars and brothels that sprung up outside the camp gates met with the spreading tentacles of Angeles City proper.   

The hey day of Angeles would have had to have been in the 1960’s and into the 1970’s during the Vietnam War.  The expats who have retired here who spent time in the USAF stationed at Clark still hold the attitude that they own the town and the people.  Or at least many I have met do.  I can understand that sentiment as the USAF poured up to a million dollars a week into the town, more sometimes.

The airmen had the money and lust, the local girls had the looks and the need.  Perfect symbiotic relationship in anyone’s book.  Clark had the highest divorce rate of any military base according to one source.  He explained it was no wonder when Mrs Obese Ohio ’74 spent her days hiding in the house because the locals stared at her and hubby was off in the bars chasing sweet young Filipina’s all night long.

I spoke to one man who was one of the team that investigated the backgrounds of women engaged to servicemen.  He said it was more of a surprise when they found out she wasn’t out of a bar or had been selling her services one way or another for some time.  Most of the Filipinas were working girls, how else would they meet their future husbands?  He said he would love to follow up on some of the cases he had back then and see how many were still together, how many were divorced and so on.  He felt that there would be a higher percentage of couples still married than the national average.  He also felt if the marriage broke down after more than five years you really couldn’t pin it on the girls’ previous employment. 

June 15 1991 was the day Mount Pinatubo speeded up the inevitable.  With the nationalistic bent of many in the country; many who gained nothing from the US bases as they were but might if they were open to local development, it was a fairly foregone conclusion the Yanks would have to go home.  I have asked dozens of Filipino’s and I have yet to find one who has benefited from the USAF not being at Clark.  I have yet to find a single Filipino who doesn’t want them back!  Obviously I am asking the wrong people.  I need to get out and ask the rich minority who own businesses in the Clark Special Economic Zone that replaced the base. 

Unlike Subic Bay, where far sighted Richard Gordon organised the local middle class to protect the greatest asset their town (Olongapo) possessed, when the USAF left Clark it was in a bit of a hurry.  People were assured their homes would be protected and their belongings safely packed and sent on to them but many I have spoken to claim locals simply walked on base and looted every home they could enter.  They never saw their personal effects again. 

It is close to 20 years since all of that happened yet I can remember it as if it were just last week. One thing is certain, Angeles City is more than just Fields Avenue in Balibago. It is a thriving city with hospitals, universities and a heck of a lot going for it beyond the red light strip bordering Clark Special Economic Zone. Get away from the entertainment area and explore the city and surrounding province and you will find a lot more to do than just hang out in bars and drink beer.

Not the same person of course as you can only be murdered once, however Angeles City has claimed another Kano  ((Kano – short version of Americano is the term many Filipinos use to describe all “white” people)) victim. Apparently the body of a 55 year old German resident was found dead in his Angeles City house, his dogs poisoned also. The details of this latest murder are not relevant for this article, what is of importance is that people take note that another foreign resident has been murdered in the Philippines. This man was single but did frequent the bars of Balibago, who wouldn’t if he were living there as a resident and unattached? He may have upset one of the working lasses. He also ran tours to Mt Pinatubo, so perhaps he had business rivals?

Whatever the motive, the end result is another tragic death. The Philippines is a great place to vacation and even retire to but it is not like Kansas, Dorothy! It has its own rules and they can be obscure and harsh. People there play for keeps and are all too willing to kill for what we would consider the most juvenile of reasons. As in the land of the blind where the one eyed man is King, so too in a land of extreme poverty a few bucks can make you worth the risk of killing.

The police, particularly the Angeles City Police, are corrupt. You would be wasting your time going to them for help as the odds are in favour of them being behind most of the crime aimed at foreigners. The elected officials are no more pristine or pure and the entire culture is systemically corrupt. Which is partly what makes it such an exciting place to live!

With the ready and willing and very affordable sex on tap, the cheap, plentiful and good quality beer and rum and the tropical heat and throbbing disco beat, this place is JUMPIN’! Just watch your back, watch your mouth and watch who you trust! Better still, buy my eBook ‘Philippines Survival Handbook’ and take notes before you go and take care while you’re there! Who wants to live forever?

As I have warned all of my readers in depth in my eBook ‘Philippines Survival Handbook’ you are more at risk of getting into serious trouble from the Philippines National Police in some places than the criminals they are supposed to be catching. In Angeles City the rate of scams and set-ups is getting so out of hand there is a new web site pumping out reports and information that is cutting so close to the bone the local authorities are running scared. You can tell that because they are attacking the site and whoever it is who is behind it. As someone once said, ‘they only attack you if they fear you’.

The reality is that so many foreigners are being set up with fake drug busts, under age girls asking to take a shower in your hotel room and so on it is starting to affect tourist numbers. On top of that tourists are getting robbed at gun point and shot for whatever they have on them. At one time it was expats living there for some time who ran afoul of the local heavies that were shot, beaten up, set up or executed. Now it seems the locals are targeting anyone, even those who have been in town only a night or two.

For all the up to the minute news on what’s happening in AC, check out Margarita Station’s Newsletter They have a great article cut from a local newspaper that is worth a read.

If you want to read about the corruption and scams from the website giving bent coppers sleepless nights, check out the Central Luzon Corruption site.

Angeles City is not a place for newbies. It is a serious, wild west style frontier town in that the law is whatever it is at the time and you will always be at a disadvantage. Even long term expats and very street savvy travellers get zapped there. It is an ‘Adult’s Disneyland’ for cheap sex and bars but you can find that nitelife elsewhere without the blatant corruption and risk. All the same, you have to try the place at least once, just keep your wits about you and make sure you have a copy of my ‘Philippines Survival Handbook‘ on your laptop and at least US$2,000 in your ATM for paying your ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card.