My friend's birthday fell on a weekday, but since they had to work, we celebrated on the weekend instead. I bought a cake from a shop I'd had my eye on and gave it to them along with a tumbler I won with coins at the SM Mall arcade as a gift.

In return, my friend drove me to Subic. And right there, the entities from that mysterious village that occasionally pop into my head and haunt me whenever I try to sleep made an appearance.

As you take the highway from Angeles to Subic with a friend, you sometimes come across a strange sight. If you're blankly staring out the car window at the scenery, a small village suddenly appears right next to the highway. At a glance, it looks like around two or three hundred people live there. There aren't just one or two houses, but quite a cluster of them. Yet, strangely enough, no roads leading into the village are visible.

From the highway, all you can see are the roofs and a few houses of the village. It makes you wonder, "Just how on earth do those people get in and out?" Unless you intentionally go looking for it, you can't help but just drive right past it.

What's even more puzzling is how they get by. If it were a typical rural village in the Philippines that we often imagine, you'd expect to spot at least one sari-sari store, along with a small church, a school, or a market. But in this village visible from the highway, such facilities are hard to notice. There are places where you can't even spot a small shop, let alone a clinic. So where on earth do the residents buy their daily necessities? Where do the kids go to school, and where do people go when they get sick?

No government-related facilities are in sight, either. Back in Korea, you'd expect to find something like a village hall or a community center, but such traces are hard to find here. Of course, I know that the administrative system in the Philippines is different from Korea's. Even so, it makes me wonder how a single residential area where hundreds of people gather is handled on maps and in administrative districts. That village surely belongs to a certain barangay, and its residents must be counted in the demographics. Yet, in reality, it feels like a small society hidden away in a place you can't see from the highway.

Another hard-to-understand thing is employment. Looking around, there are hardly any rice paddies or fields. No factories or large businesses catch the eye, either. So what on earth do the people living there do for a living? There's no way of knowing whether they commute to a nearby city, work in construction or service industries, or make a living somewhere else that we simply can't see from the highway.

Perhaps what I'm seeing is only a part of the village. The road might continue to the back where it can't be seen from the highway, and following that path might lead to stores, schools, and churches. Since the highway only cuts through and shows the very edge of the village, it might just look as though a bunch of houses suddenly popped up out of nowhere in the middle of nothing.

Yet, that exact point is what makes it even more fascinating. Just passing by in a car for a few seconds gives you no clue at all about how the people there live their lives. All you catch are a few houses and glimpses of people. Surely it has a name on the map and falls under an administrative district, and there must be people who have lived there for decades.

However, I couldn't even find it on Google Maps.

Is it because I'm just inexperienced?

To someone speeding down the highway, it's nothing more than scenery that flashes past, but inside that place, someone's daily routine must be playing out—waking up in the morning and eating, heading off to work, kids going to school, and coming back home in the evening.

That's why, every time I head to Subic, those villages somehow catch my eye and linger in my mind. How on earth did those people manage to get in here to build a village, and how have they managed to survive until now?

I can't help but feel curious about their lives, which are only visible from the highway.

And this is the exact same sight I saw under the massive bridge wetlands on the way from Manila to Angeles.