Well, I told the cabbie to step on it so that I catch my flight in 2 hours. Destination: Taipei, Taiwan. I'll have a few hours to burn there before China Airlines takes me back to the free world! Jeanette left before I awoke this morning and I spent the day making it out to a crappy little shantytown market for some last minute souveniers. (Traffic's not looking very promising right now).
So Manila, what can I tell the masses about you? I'm an anti city person to start with but if I were to plan five nights in any city, Manila wouldn't be very high on my list. Everyone told me you were an underwhelming empty place full of poverty.
I guess I verified that. But we shucked the ugly shell from the 'Pearl of the Pacific' (Manila's former glamorous nickname) and found her precious underbelly. Jeanette and I enjoyed delicious cuisine, a glimpseback West, good people, and as with any place, a flavour of its own.
Plan A was to spend no time here and all our time nature trekking/caving/scoping out the biggest rice terraces in the world up North in Sagada. But, alas, Typhoon Henry had his own version of what we were going to do. We decided not to risk being drenched for all the outdoor activities and just stick around Manila. We accidentally stumbled across a hostel we read about en route to the one we were actually looking for. Though the first night we were a bit put off by certain ominous sounds coming from our roommates' beds we stuck around and luckily the problem went away. The bathrooms were immaculate and it was a much appreciated surprise to find clean hot showers instead of mildewed faucets above our heads - or worse: poop bucket showers! (don't ask). The atmosphere was jovial and we made friends with our Filipino, British, Bangladeshi, Korean, Chinese, and even South African flatmates.
The first full day, Jeanette and I snooped around the only real museum here for a glimpse at impressive gold and chinese ceramic collections,
a weird modern art collection, a beautiful modern art collection,
and most importantly an illustrative exposition of Filipino history: from the 10,000 person islamic settlement Magellan found, to the papal controlled Spanish colony, to the Americanized 'Pearl of the Pacific' in its glory days (US bought Phillipines from Spain along with Cuba, Puerto Rico and a few other Spanish colonies for $20mm in 1898) complete with SEA's first movie theatres, opera houses, other luxuries, to its solemn Japanese occupation days during WWII victimized by one of McArthur's worst tactical mistakes, to military dictatorshop, and finally to democracy established in the 80s. Afterwards we stumbled upon a nice little Singaporian Tea room with which we fell in love and revisited twice more.
That night we went out with some hostel mates to catch a groovin' raggae band & dj. It was clear that we would make the most of 5 nights stuck in Manila!
The next few days we went on a comical and illustrative Manila history walking tour,
visited a entirely worthless (albeit the world's first) chinatown, walked through oneof the city's many proper metal and wood scrap walled slum,
ate like kings and queens, and most importanly unwound from our long and exhausting travels. Philippines, SEA's most westernized country because of the American occupation in the early 20th century, is a nice transition to life back home and has some of the elegant niceties of American life.
We're now circling around this huge airport trying to get me to the right terminal so I gotta run! One more post coming.
EDIT: made it in time, dodged the airport security guards elaborate ploy to syphon bribes outof me, and have completed leg one of three in my 40 something hour journey trip back to reality.
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