96 Sarah Webb
5 The term bayanihan is derived from rural neighbourhood practices of moving
a family’s entire house to a new location, and is often used in a national sense to
refer to a communal coming together to achieve a particular goal. Bankoff draws on
Filipino anthropologist F. Landa Jocano’s extensive work on Filipino social values to
suggest that the meaning of bayanihan “is definitely more complex than mere ‘unity’
or ‘togetherness’—it has the connotation of shared identity and common association”
(Bankoff 2007, p. 28).
6 DENR is the acronym for the Department of Natural Resources. The interviewee is
referring to the contested devolution of the Park during the 1990s (see Dressler 2009).
7 However, as is apparent from comparing Sablan’s (2003) account with the description
included in this chapter, many of the jokes and narrations told inside the Underground
River are the same.
8 Issues of accessing the Underground River have converged with a growth of
businesses in the provincial-yet-urban downtown of Puerto Princesa rather than at the
entry port of Sabang. Studies document how even during 1997 when the number of
“nature tourists” was less than 40,000 (79 per cent domestic), the accommodation hub
and tourism revenue were concentrated in downtown Puerto because the Park was
considered to be an easy day trip (Goodwin 2002, p. 341).
9 All names used in this chapter are pseudonyms.
10 The woman in her sixties and her daughter were visiting from Mindanao. All the other
guests were living in Metro Manila at the time of their visit.
11 Indeed, on one occasion, my Tagbanua research assistant did literally challenge the
narration of a tour guide, by correcting him on local history and then taking over the
narration himself.
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