While visiting Bohol in the Philippines in early 2026, I went scuba diving for the first time. It was one of those moments where you judge your life before an event and after an event. “Amazing” doesn’t cover the almost transitionless experience of getting a 5 minute briefing, putting on some gear, having two people check everything and then floating across a sand dune in crystal clear water, breathing deeply, and then descending down, down, down into a vertical world, a cliff of flying beings of color and movement, large and small, unafraid yet careful of your presence. Two fellow divers came into my view like a scene in an IMAX movie, an 80 foot tall and 100 foot wide screen magnified 33% by the refraction factor of my dive mask. They were beautiful and alien with their gear, black wetsuits and gilded bubbles, as they gazed at us curiously reflecting our amazement in their masks. Our experienced guide held us like dangling babies and inserted us inside a vortex of thousands of glinting silver Jackfish. My mind opened to a new world of position, pressure, light and dark, colors both muted and glinting, all of it contained in my eyes and yet boundless. I was speechless except for the ujjayi breath preserving my life I was very aware of maintaining. A voice in my head far in the deepest parts of my being spoke of panic and consequences. But I looked away and up at the electrified siren fingers of an anemone tempting me closer.
Eventually the dive time clicked down, and I emerged as new human being with a desire for new horizons in the depths of the ocean. We were told to shower right away, as we paused and shared what we had just seen. Again we were told to shower, almost with worry in their eyes.
A few days later in Laiya, we went swimming in a pool that may or may not have been regularly cleaned. The hotel was very nice, and the water clear, and we spent a good two hours in that pool, flying down slides and chicken fighting. I developed a minor ear infection. Soreness swelled to discomfort, discomfort lead to blockage. I knew it was just a swelling that was slowly but surely blocking my hearing, but eventually I became deaf in one ear and a sort of mild panic set in.
Having paid about $250USD for travel insurance, I opted to go to the Emergency Room in Manila. We were turned away because the doctor who examines ears was on vacation due to the upcoming Easter holiday. So after riding to another hospital ER, the staff agreed to see me. My Nurse Practitioner wife (who is Filipina) knew exactly what to ask and what to expect. A small crowd of people, unusually disinterested in the white giant in their midst, formed within the waiting area. We were seen by the most bored and disinterested physician. His dozen or so student nursing staff though, perfectly dressed in 1950s Americana nursing uniforms, attended to anything we needed, as they curiously peered at whatever was happening with me. My wife administered the ear drops. The bill was less than the travel insurance.
We walked around the hospital to find a bathroom and ended up in the staff area which was an indoor/outdoor affair with uniforms drying on clotheslines. The bathroom wasn’t good. We eventually left, and with my terrible mood set in concrete due to me still being deaf, we went to one of the busiest places in Manila, Chinatown, to meet family and friends there.
When we arrived, my in-laws happily yelled at me asking if I could hear them. Not being able to, I barely stifled my angry responses and walked across the street starving to hang out with the kids who were playing in the shadow of a tall building. I paced. I tried to focus. I told myself that pain was temporary and this malady would pass. I focused on the color and life happening around me. Manila is normally a hustle and bustle sort of place. But Chinatown ramps everything up.
The stalls of food and cleaning services bleed together in a stained patchwork, stitched together by spiderwebs of etched black wires, interrupted by captured red lanterns beneath a featureless blue sky. The wood of the telephone poles would surely crack if not balanced by an equivalent load of wiring pulling in every possible direction. The impressions of fish and bbq mix with acrid gasoline and sweet fabric softener are baked into the concrete street by the fierce eye of the sun. It’s always watching you dart from awning to umbrella to roof overhang, waiting for you to spend too long in its radiation, ready to wipe your skin red.
My real camera is at the hotel and I aim, instead, with my Lightroom camera app on my Samsung phone. The 6 preset filters help me. I end up shooting my favorite shots of the trip with both eyes wide, one ear closed, the other listening to the music of humanity and my heart slowly refilling with every captured moment.
