Philippines, 2022 Part 4: An Ode to the Ocean Breeze and Don Pedro

The Ocean Breeze was a Nibaliw Beach institution; large square shaped open air bar right on the beach about 3 minutes walk down from us. It was the main hangout for ex-pats who lived on, or frequented, our beach and it was where I usually spent most of my time while here. The best (and sometimes worst) thing about the Ocean Breeze was the owner, Peter. Peter was like something straight out of an old Hollywood movie. He was half Scottish and half Canadian and had been a professional chef for years before he retired. He liked to brag that he had once cooked for Queen Elizabeth which of course we had no way of verifying. He had been coming to this beach since the late 70’s and he knew this country better than just about any ex-pat I’ve ever met. He was also completely rude, crude, crass and any other adjective you could think of for someone who had no filter, said and did whatever they wanted and honestly didn’t give a shit what anybody thought of them. 

Me and "The Don" - Don Pedro somewhere around 2011

We met Peter during our first trip here in 2010 in grand fashion. For those who haven’t read the account of my first trip (shame on you), this was before we bought the beach house, we had rented a place on the beach for a weekend and the Filipino manager had told me about the bar that a lot of ex-pats hang out. So we went there to check it out, there were several older western guys hanging out drinking and right in the middle of it all was Peter, drunk as hell and holding court. I didn’t know he was the owner so I was ignoring him and trying to talk to the other, more sober guys but Peter kept interrupting to the point that it was getting annoying. That was Peter. Eventually I learned that Peter liked to sit at the bar like he was a customer and do what he could to get everyone else to order more beer, even if he had to shame them by calling them ‘kuripot’ (cheap). At one point a truck drove up and out came his wife at the time, Imelda. Imelda was really nice, she was from the area but had been living and working in Canada for several years and was really westernized, spoke perfect English. She introduced herself to us and her and Virginia hit it off immediately, conversing in Ilocano, their native dialect. She was very apologetic about Peter and kept telling us how sorry she was for his behavior. It was obvious that they were on the outs and were not fond of each other. Right at that moment, Peter got up and took the keys and said he was leaving. Imelda tried to stop him because he was completely drunk but he would not be stopped. She even showed us the dents in the truck from all the times he drove home drunk and ran into a pole or some other object. I remember thinking at the time “Jesus, this place is like the wild west, there are no rules!”. Peter had a house just behind the beach and compared to most places in the area, it was a frigging palace, the kind of place I have always dreamed of owning. Two floors, several bedrooms, huge living room, dining room and kitchen and an entire separate outdoor kitchen and BBQ party facility. 

In the years that followed, I learned that most, if not all, of the ex-pats had sort of a love/hate relationship with Peter. He owned the Ocean Breeze which was ground zero for us ex-pats and gave us a place to hang out and visit with each other and that was no small thing. As well, he had been here so long that he knew everybody in the extended area and could get you anything you wanted, usually cheaper than normal price. He also was in good with the local police which explained how he was able to get completely fall down drunk and not worry about driving home. Because of all his connections and how well known he was, he was known locally as “Don Pedro”, a nickname that fit him perfectly. But, due to his devil-may-care attitude and actions, he managed to piss off everybody sooner or later because he truly didn’t care what anybody – be they friend or foe – thought about him. As for me, I figured him out pretty early and I adopted the attitude of the other ex-pats; be friends with him because of what he can do for you and because, let’s face it, he’s entertaining as hell, but always watch your back and don’t trust him with anything. Peter LOVED drama, he loved causing it and he loved being right in the middle of it all and so the Ocean Breeze was ground zero for a lot of it. When we met him, he was fond of saying “I’m sexty-sex years old!”. Next year it was “sexty-seven” of course. Peter was an absolute pimp, he had a never ending stable of young girls in their early 20’s who he told everybody were his girlfriends but in reality they were using him for what they could get out of him; money for stuff they needed. By our second year, he and Imelda were basically separated, and she lived in Canada so he did whatever he wanted. He liked to brag to everyone about his young girlfriends but we were told by more than one of them that he was a non-starter in the bedroom because he was drunk pretty much 24/7 and his willie didn’t work anymore. So for the girls, it was perfect, they didn’t actually have to sleep with him, just be one of his girls and he would buy them whatever they needed. You’d see it constantly at the bar, the girls would ask him for loads for their phones, manicures, food, anything and everything. The funniest thing he ever said was one night one of the girls at the bar told him she was hungry and he replied "You want a longanisa and two itlog?" (sausage and two eggs), that one had everyone at the bar laughing for a solid 10 minutes. I remember one girl he was with regularly at the Ocean Breeze, she had a child and one night after he’d passed out, she told me that she was only with Peter because he paid for her son’s medication and she asked me not to look down on her for doing what she had to do for her son (of course I didn’t). He had no shame when it came to women. One time he gave Virginia and I a ride to the Nepo Mall to do some grocery shopping and as we were walking in, we passed by a group of about 6 or 7 college aged girls. Sure enough, as we passed by them, Peter propositioned them, asked if any of them wanted to go home with him. I made a comment to him, something about him being almost 70 and hitting on college girls and he simply looked me in the eye and said “Don’t ask, don’t get”. That was Peter. 

Peter, me and Carlos, an ex-pat buddy from San Fran.

But Peter was useful too. He had connections everywhere and loved to help people out. Our first year I asked him where we could get a good deal on a videoke machine for the beach house and he took Virginia and I into Dagupan City to meet with his friend Nelson Cho who gave us a great deal on a state of the art machine. When our toilet broke, he brought me to his friend who was a plumber and arranged to have a new toilet put in at a fraction of the price that the one we just put in last week cost us. He had been coming to this beach since the late 70’s so he was a fantastic source of information about the local area and the Philippines in general; the culture, the history, the people, everything. In the two or three years I had with him, I learned a ton about this country that I would never have learned anywhere else. 

One thing about Peter though, craziness and drama seemed to follow him everywhere, usually of his own making. I remember one night at the Ocean Breeze, he had one of his girls with him, a stripper from Visayas. Out of nowhere, one of his other girls showed up at the bar and things got very tense as they did not like each other one bit and were both vying for Peter’s undivided attention. Now, the stripper normally would win that one hands down because she was beautiful with a dynamite body while the other girl was a local girl with a flat chest and braces but she would not give up without a fight and decided to start stripping to get Peter’s attention. Not to be outdone at her own game, the stripper started matching her, article of clothing for article of clothing while the rest of us at the bar looked on in stunned silence. Eventually there were two girls there in just their bra and panties and a proud Don Pedro just sitting there beaming at what he had wrought. 

Another, more scary moment I remember; one evening I was hanging out at the Ocean Breeze, it was just me and Peter. A huge, stocky Filipino guy pulled up in a San Miguel beer truck and sat at the bar with a couple friends. Peter told me the guy is a delivery driver for San Miguel and he had once borrowed some money from him and still had not paid it back. He was of course drunk as hell by that time and one thing about Peter was that he was extremely arrogant and not afraid of anybody so at one point he yelled across the bar at the guy “Hey! You better pay me the money you owe me, fucker!”. The guy looked embarrassed and pissed off at being called out like that in front of his friends but didn’t say anything. Eventually the guy’s friends left and Peter kept making loud remarks about the guy owing him money. At one point Peter got up to go to the bathroom which was in the cabin area behind the bar and soon after he did, the other guy got up and went too. A little bit later I could hear them talking and I was on a stool that could see the area behind the bar so I turned to look just in time to see the guy yell at Peter for embarrassing him in front of his friends. A fearless – and clueless – Peter doubled down and said “Fuck you, give me my money!”, at which point the guy slapped him…HARD…right across the face, knocking Peter’s glasses to the ground. Regardless of whether Peter had it coming or not, he was a frail man in his mid-60’s and that guy had no business hitting him like that, he could have done some real damage. He came back and sat down and kept drinking and then Peter came back holding his broken glasses. It was the first and only time I’d ever seen him frazzled and he was rambling incoherently about the guy breaking his glasses and then he sort of came to his senses and said he was going to call the police. He told the guy he was calling the police and started dialing his phone and then something very strange happened. The guy said something to the effect of “Go ahead, call them and I’ll tell them what happened to [name I can’t remember].” At that, Peter suddenly hung up his phone and told the guy to get out and don’t come back to his bar ever again. Later I told a few of the ex-pats what had happened and they told me that there were rumors years ago that one of Peter’s wives had been having an affair and that Peter had done something to him, or at least bragged that he did. But, they all said nobody believed it, that the real story was that the guy had just gone back to where he was from and it was just Peter being Peter. So who knows what the truth is but man, there was never a dull moment when Peter was around. 

Never a dull moment at The Ocean Breeze. God I miss it...

Anyway, Peter died suddenly in 2013, right before my last trip to the beach. The Ocean Breeze was still there but Imelda had returned from Canada as she inherited everything Peter had so she was suddenly very well off financially. She ran the bar for a little bit but eventually sold it and the new owners tore it down and now you can’t even tell where it used to be. I had a nice chat with her one my last trip, she was always very nice and very friendly and I like her very much. I can’t even imagine what she must have been put through being married to Peter so she deserved everything she got. These days the beach is a lot more boring without the Ocean Breeze and I miss it tremendously. I’m still in touch with a few of the ex-pat friends I made there via Facebook but not very often. Hopefully none of them have a problem with me writing this. If I had the money, someday I would love to open a bar similar to the Ocean Breeze here, if only to give us ex-pats someplace to hang out but I doubt it will ever happen. The Ocean Breeze will just have to live on in our memories I guess. But oh what memories they are...