"If you're going to San Francisco..."

We were indeed going there, or thru there.

On the bus, a so-called 'ordinary' bus, as opposed to the fancy modern 'air-con' variety, an idiosyncratic old single-decker with no glass in the side windows & displayed on the windscreen 'BLESS OUR TRIP', pictures of Our Lady & assorted rosaries, fortunate talismans considering Filipino driving!

Baking hot sunshine, blue sky. A pleasant draft cools my face as bus breezes along.

The sound system is playing a medley of Your Hundred Favourite Hits to the same insistent dance track beat.

Just outside of San Francisco (Philippines), a tiny shanty town, as if on cue, that song comes on...

"You're gonna meet some gentle people there."

I kid you not. It couldn't have been better timed, even with a stopwatch, this fortuitous synchronisation. Such an apposite juxtaposition sure Blew My Mind, to adopt the pithy idiom of the blissed-out sixties hippy in that somewhat better-known American West Coast city.

This was turning into quite a trip & a blessed one indeed.