A gayer Puerto Galera this 2009 Holy Week

White Beach photo from Wikipedia.

Because of President Arroyo's Proclamation 1699, Holy Week this 2009 would most likely prove to be even gayer than usual. April 9 and April 10 are Maundy Thursday and Good Friday respectively and thus there will be no work on those days, while Araw ng Kagitingan, which normally falls on April 9, has been moved to April 6, the nearest Monday, as part of Arroyo's holiday economics. This means that there will be two adjacent long weekends and I'm quite sure many people will take the remaining Tuesday and Wednesday off and get a wonderful nine-day vacation.

It's quite obvious that many (straight) people will go to Boracay during this time and that gay people will hie off to Puerto Galera. (Head on over to my simple Puerto Galera guide for details.) I'm blogging about this early on so that you can already plan your summer getaways (make reservations, file your leaves, save up, go to the gym, etc.).

This also means that the beaches might be extra crowded so if you want to go to Puerto Galera, I suggest that you go during the April 4–6 weekend instead of the main weekend. I predict that the crowds will be lighter but it will still be gay enough that there will be plenty of opportunities to meet and play with hot guys. Hehehe.

What’s inside Club Bath?

To continue my posts on Club Bath here are the floor plans of the three-storey mansion that Club Bath has repurposed as a bath house. (You can also see the floor plan of Epitome which I’ve written about before.)

The first floor is where the entrance and the exit is. You enter Club Bath through a gate along Valhalla St. near the corner with F.B. Harrison. Inside the gate is a foyer area and the reception can be found at the far end. From the reception area, you can immediately see the gym to the left, and the TV room and Internet room to the right. Behind the gym is the locker area and at the very back is the wet area, containing shower stalls and a steam room (no sauna). The shower stalls do not have doors so shy people are not allowed, but there are dividers to give some privacy. There is adequate lighting in the shower room so you might find it a bit disconcerting.

The second floor is where the bulk of the action happens. Most of the space is given to 25 private rooms. (When you go to Club Bath, you must either avail of a locker or a private room.) The numbers/letters you see on the floor plan are the room numbers. Aside from the rooms, there’s also a comfort room, a hidden free cubicle, and two open-air balcony areas where people can smoke.

The corner balcony area is the brightest spot in the whole mansion, no thanks to decorative street lamps installed by the Pasay City Government. But the balcony is not seen from the street; there are bamboo curtains installed to give a modicum of privacy. The other balcony, on the other hand, is quite dark and I’ve seen some exhibitionist action going on here.

The third floor contains four more private rooms and an open-air dark room and lanai for even more smoking. The dark room also has three free cubicles, for use by patrons that have not availed of rooms.

So there. Hopefully you found this useful if ever you decide to try Club Bath and so that you won’t look like a lost newbie. Hehehe.

Walang Kawala: a reaction

I didn’t want to waste the very long Christmas break so I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging. But the holidays are quite over and I think that 2009 is looking to be a very good year so I’d like to greet all of my readers a very happy new year! I won’t write a 2008 recap post but instead I’ll get down to business and give my reaction—I refuse to call it a review—to the last gay-oriented movie I saw last year and this is the Joel Lamangan-directed Walang Kawala.

To get to the point, Walang Kawala is not a very good movie. But it’s not entirely crappy unlike Hugot. And while the acting of the two lead stars, Polo Ravales and Joseph Bitangcol, leave much to be desired, I can definitely say that their kissing scenes are pretty hot (unlike, say, the ones between Harold Chua and Justin de Leon in Ang Lalake sa Parola). The only acting I liked in the movie were those of Emilio Garcia and Polo’s real-life ex-lover Jean Garcia.

I found it surprising that the review board did not cut Marco Morales’ frontal nudity gay bar scene—the overly-hyped daring act whose only purpose is to woo the gay audience but did nothing whatsoever to advance the plot or to add to the movie’s artistic value. It’s a blatant in-your-face display of cheap film cheesiness. (Yet, I would be hypocritical if I say that I didn’t appreciate the cheese; Marco Morales is uber-hot especially when I saw him one time in Megamall. Hehehe.) Other standout gay-cheese scenes include Paolo Rivero’s loving caress of a sleeping Joseph Bitangcol’s body and Emilio Garcia’s power-tripping sexual acts on both Polo and Joseph (for those who are inclined into sado-masochism).

As for the plot, I didn’t find it remarkable nor did I get anything redeeming from it. I think that it’s just an elaborate game of Where’s Waldo? It’s basically the story of two gay lovers from the province where one, Waldo (Bitangcol), went to Manila in a fit of jealousy after the wife of the other guy, Joaquin (Ravales) came home. Joaquin leaves the wife and comes looking for Waldo and they both became ensnared into the human trafficking operations of Rufo (Emilio Garcia), a corrupt cop. Aside from the story, the cinematography and the music are also quite forgettable.

I guess the movie is good enough to watch at least once, but I’d recommend you and your friends just chip in to buy or rent the DVD, if you haven’t seen it in the theaters.

Here are some other choice reviews and reactions of the movie elsewhere:

• Joel McVie’s very entertaining take
• The Bakla Reviewer’s poignant prose
• The resident ClickTheCity.com critic’s scathing assessment
• Richard Bolisay’s very insightful commentary