BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

I was on a call with a Filipino friend this week.

Richie is a good mate. We have been in some interesting places and tight squeezes together across the Philippine archipelago.

^{Richie (R) and me (excuse the workman’s crack) on a scanning adventure, 2012}

We reminisced about the time our scanning gear was stolen at gunpoint by natives. We chuckled about the time our colleague David, overladen with his equipment, fell down a hill and into a river, and we recalled a dinner atop a mountain with a crazy landowner who insisted we smoke cigars and quaff fine wines during the beginnings of what fast became a devastating typhoon which blew the roof off our quarters.

Richie was my driver out there but soon became a trusted lieutenant; he is now doing up German classic cars in Quezon City but still drives foreigners around from time to time in his ‘mighty bus’, a souped-up Japanese van known as Jimmy.

Richie reminded me that he saved my life once when I slipped off a rock backwards and was heading for a fatal impaling on some spiky bamboo until he intervened – we ended up in a pile on the floor and I am eternally grateful for his intervention. He also reminded me of an Indian colleague we once met out there…let’s call him Raj as to use his actual name would be unjust.

We had all been working together for a week or so on a plantation near Pampanga and returned to Manila for a couple of days before I flew home. The three of us and a couple of tagalongs went out for a meal in Malate one night. There is an area known as Manila Baywalk there, a long promenade known for its sunset views across Manila Bay, and you can find good Thai, Filipino, Korean and Western eateries a stone’s throw from there.

We ended up enjoying a feast, rather too many beers and shots. I must have been plastered as I recall dancing that night – as rare as a blue moon. I stumbled into a cab in the early hours and headed back to my apartment in Global City, promising to meet the others at Richie’s wife’s real estate party the next morning, arranged for 11am in Makati. Richie’s wife sold expensive apartments there and the more foreigners that showed up at the grand opening show party the more impressed her bosses would be.

So, I struggled out of bed the next morning. Jet lag, beer, sunburn, exhaustion from too much work and too much play rendering me a bedraggled mess. I made sure the cab window was down as I crawled in downtown Manila traffic to the party location. Yet somehow I arrived early and managed to sneak into a fast-food joint for a sobering pre-party coffee and bun.

I really wasn’t feeling great, but we’d promised Richie’s wife we’d be there.

The others were on time  – all present and correct – so we went into the party, which at first sight was a sales party for Manila’s great and good. Security were everywhere – labour is cheap in the Philippines, there are more security personnel than pot plants. There were plenty of fancy dresses and slick suits on show too. While others were dripping with gold, we were dripping with alcohol sweat. Still, we were on our best behaviour and making an effort. This was a party where Richie’s wife was really hoping to snare a buyer for one of dozens of eye-wateringly expensive apartments.

Think Trump Tower skyscraper – palm trees, lots of chrome, pools, vast apartments and marble everywhere. Not my cup of tea. A tad too Piccadilly, but the kind of place one could do pull-ups in the shower without waking the neighbours.

When she clocked us, Richie’s wife was far from impressed. She could tell we had all been out until late and we still reeked like a brewery. She tucked in my shirt, pulled up my flies and made a comment in the tone of an annoyed mother about how I’d only shaved off half my stubble. Nonetheless she allowed us each a glass of champagne, stuffed our pockets with mints and told us to keep a low profile. If her bosses approached, we were to remark on how lovely the apartments were and how we would like to take home a sales brochure.

All was going well until Raj decided that it was time to head for a comfort break. We were admiring a penthouse at the time, and we’d clustered around the penthouse pool when he disappeared for rather a long while.

When he returned he seemed fresher faced than when we’d last seen him.

“Gentlemen, I would suggest that now is a good time to leave,” he said, with a look of real determination on his face.

“But you’ve only been here half an hour,” Richie’s wife complained.

“No, really, we must leave,” he urged.

He looked genuinely perturbed. As if he’d seen a ghost.

Richie’s wife was very angry.

“Now!” he insisted.

So, we decided to listen to Raj, apologised profusely to Richie’s wife and nodded graciously towards her bosses.

We couldn’t think what was so bothering Raj but the look on his face evoked genuine emergency.

In the elevator back down to the street, Raj let us know that he had deftly sidled into a lovely looking bathroom where he had made a hefty and emergency deposit at the porcelain bank. He’d gladly become released from the previous night’s beverages, spicy pork and rice. At which point he’d noticed a lack of loo paper in the bathroom. After which he realised the bathroom had not yet been plumbed.

I asked Richie if his wife had ever forgiven us. I always regretted not forcing Raj back into that building to apologise but I was so hungover at the time I was – I am ashamed to say – a willing sheep.

“No,” he responded.

Oh dear.

“We must enjoy our lives,” said Richie, “as we’re guaranteed a very warm eternity.”

Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.