MAYON—My driver, for the days before we hike up the volcano, is named Felimon Panesa. But his nickname, what most people call him, is "Boy." Filipinos love nicknames. Everybody has one, and they range from the mundane—Junior and the like—to the bizarre, Dingdong or Ballsy. Felimon's happens to be particularly awkward. I do what I can to avoid saying it out loud, and yet there I am, an American tourist in a former colony, calling out "Boy" across a church plaza and making demands of him from the back seat of an SUV. "Boy, can you take me somewhere for lunch?" "Boy, I'd like to go back to the hotel."
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