It felt like a particularly long day, having taken a ferry to start the morning, followed by two long-distance buses and a ‘grab’ in between to go from an island in the northern part of Cebu to a place down south. So when I got dropped off at Moalboal at around nine at night, and I looked at the location of the hostel after having dismissed all the tuk tuk drivers swarming me with offers, I wasn’t too surprised to find that it was another forty minutes away on foot.

Of course, I would have preferred it to be closer, but it just had been that kind of a day. Anything convenient would have been quite inconsistent, a matter of chance, or a gift of the divine, who I still maintain has much more pressing issues to cater to besides the occasional struggle of ill-prepared travellers.

Perhaps if I had researched a bit in advance, I would have had some idea of the fair price of the Nicomachean. Still, the 150 pesos proposed by one of the drivers seemed a bit too steep at the time, especially with the Seven-Eleven signage in the distance, which presented itself as a place where the money could be better splurged.

After spending fifty-one pesos on a bottle of Coke and then twenty something at the small bakery beside it, I decided I’d make the day even longer and attempt the full walk.

I was munching on bread, taking light sips to swallow and walking at the same time, with roughly twenty kilos as baggage, and for some reason it felt not just refreshing but also, in a weird way, comfortable.

Perhaps because it was the first dose of sugar I had, or actually the first meal after more than twenty-four hours, the reason for which I shall establish some other time, there was a pop to my step that had been absent thus far. I must have hardly walked a couple of minutes in the dark alley off the main road when a tuk tuk overtook me, making noises of resistance against the bumpy road and stopped.

Taking past experience as a predictor of what was going to happen next, I said out loud that I didn’t want to avail his service, to which he responded by stressing that I didn’t have to pay. For a moment, I thought I had heard wrong, but in fact it was I who was mistaken. The guy was done for the day and offered me a ride back, perhaps because he felt sorry seeing me trudge along with a bag that looked much heavier than it actually was.

In a location so touristy, where pretty much anything of utility tends to be commodified, the man’s gesture stood out not just as an act of kindness but of rebellion.

A part of me even thought that he should have proposed a heavily discounted fee instead of a freebie, and then progressed to the latter if he really was in the mood. But such is the nature of the world we have come to inhabit and accept, that even generosity is ill-advised and when witnessed, needs to be viewed with scepticism, oftentimes for the right reasons, especially when there is a camera and social media involved.

This was, however, different. He had this smile on his face, not anything too animated, but still very welcoming, the best he could manage at the end of a day which I’d wager will always be longer than my longest. It was ultimately the smile that made me want to get on, which I did, but I told him that I could pay, after which I noticed that his smile faded away, and it was business as usual. I asked him how much and he said that I could pay whatever I felt like paying.

During the ride, only two things occupied my mind. The first was a sense of relief for having taken the tuk tuk because the ride put into perspective what the momentary insulin spike perhaps had failed to consider. And the second question was about what the fair price ought to

be for the man’s generosity. I had a reference based on the price I had earlier refused, but I felt that I should offer more, even if marginally. The only problem was that I didn’t have many pesos on me at the time. I did, however, have a couple of old fifty-dollar bills.

Now, had this been in Nepal, I would have offered the man the 50 dollar bill, but the note, which was given to me by my mom and to her by some relative many years ago, was so old that I feared, in this part of the world at least, they’d be considered fakes. Perhaps the fear was irrational, but after hearing a few stories in Cambodia, I had already lost trust in what was initially intended to be my emergency fund.

In the end, I just paid him 150 pesos, which wasn’t great but still something. At the moment, I did not really understand why he no longer had the smile he had when he first offered me the ride for free.

It was only a few days later, when I was randomly taking a stroll in some other part of the country and tuk tuk riders were swarming me, asking if I wanted a ride, that I suddenly realised how wrong I had been. The fair price for the generous man that night would have been for me to accept his generosity, as it was offered, pure and without any conditions.

For what could be a more befitting reward for a person who wants to genuinely help than to accept their help? Had I simply said thank you, the man might have ended his day with the quiet satisfaction of knowing that, beyond providing for himself and his family, he had also shared a small moment of kindness with a stranger.

Did I take away from him that night, the chance of a rebellion?