Mountains of muck, former Jihads and Michael Palin…

On your bottom, Michael! Backwards!’

This was ‘good advice’ from the director who was filming him, writes Michael Palin in his deliciously enjoyable short travelogue of 19 incident-filled days in the Philippines, ‘but not what a deeply confused 82-year-old, carrying flippers, and wearing punishingly tight goggles, wants to hear on a specially cleared beach.’

Michael Palin with a woman selling Pagpag 

Somehow, though, Palin manages to manoeuvre himself down the rocks into the sea, where he’s rewarded by the ‘miraculous moment’ of swimming next to a ‘mass of glittering silver’ – a shoal of sardines in perfect formation. There’s a photo of this in his small book.

Accompanied by a camera crew and a team of supporters, Palin hops from island to island, sampling the Philippines in all its crazy variety. There’s a useful map at the front for anyone who (like me) is a bit foggy about the archipelago’s 7,641 islands and how to tell them apart. Basically, the northern ones are Roman Catholic and the southern ones more Muslim, and in one of the Muslim areas, the city of Marawi remains semi-derelict after being ravaged in 2017 by Islamic extremists. But it’s coming out of it, according to a persuasive former jihadist whom Palin meets, and its new slogan is ‘From Terrorism to Tourism’ – which might be ‘a little too honest’, Palin suggests.

One of the islands, Pag-asa, is only one-tenth of a square mile in area – so tiny that the airport runway sticks out of both ends. The Chinese claim its waters, and have been known to ram Philippine fishing boats. Chinese ships sit ominously in view, reminding Palin of the vulnerability of these islands to the ‘raw reality of power’.

In Manila, Palin visits ‘Smokey Mountain’, the rubbish dump so huge it has houses built into it, and he comes across one of the most revolting forms of food I’ve ever read about: ‘pagpag’. A woman called Doring trawls round the branches of KFC late at night, strips flesh from leftover bones, washes it three times, refries it in ketchup and presents it the next morning on her stall. ‘I like a gastro challenge,’ writes Palin, ‘and have eaten maggots and bull’s testicles in my travelling life. But pagpag defeats me.’

It’s an honour for him to be granted an audience with President Bongbong Marcos, son of Ferdinand and Imelda (she of the 3,000 pairs of shoes). The president stipulates that Palin may only ask him three prepared questions. Palin is very nervous. But the tables are turned as soon as they meet. ‘Michael Palin!’ Bongbong squeals. Having studied PPE at Oxford in the 1970s, he’s a lifelong Monty Python fan, and longs to know how they came up with the fish-slapping dance. He treats Palin to a much longer and more friendly audience than was originally stipulated: British soft power at its best.