Hold on to your organs... here we go

Here are my reflections on the philippines, Manila especially, post trip....

Due to my lack of knowledge about the Philippines, Wikitravel became my travel information guru when I was initially thinking about heading there for my Lunar Holiday. If you look up cities on Wikitravel they always have a "Stay Safe" tab to clue you in on the dangers of the city (They update it frequently, so the format for Seoul and Manila changed signifcantly since I originally looked in December). Seoul's is almost comical, it warns foreigners about taxi drivers taking you on an extended cab ride so the ride costs more than it should, and about U.S. Military boys creeping on girls at clubs. Manila's was a whole different ball game. The warnings ranged between contracting severe food poisoning, contracting TB, getting mugged at knife point, getting pick-pocketed, and - my favorite- getting drugged at bar, getting raped then having your kidneys stolen. The later clearly being the most frightening!!! They also put a post script after that saying, don't bother going to the police because the police are getting paid off by the criminals. Hah!!! 

On to the trip: Needless to say, after those tips  I decided to get in and out of Manila as quickly and painlessly as possible. It worked well on the way down- we flew into Manila then directly back out on an inter-island flight to Boracay. On the way back, however, we had a day lay over in the city. We ended up getting on a red eye that night so we didn't have to spend the night in Manila...whew... but we did have to hang out in the city for roughly 12 hours. 

Having said that, I wish only good things for the poor Filipino woman working in the Korean Air office at the Manila airport. I was tired, crabby, and, well, a royal bitch when I found out we couldn't get on any other flights except the red eye. We had left Boracay at 4 that morning and were exhausted. The thought of killing time, underslept and clueless, in a city that warned against rape and kidney stealing was to much for me to handle. But she was a gem and let us keep our luggage in her office and gave us a play-by-play itinary of things to do in the city. She even wrote down what cab costs should be between the different points so we wouldn't get ripped off. 

So armed with my travel book on the Philippines and Miss Korean Air's instructions, we headed out.

 First stop: Intramuros(Inside the Walls), the old Spanish settlement set up by Jesuit Missionaries in the 1800s. It is the most recommended place to go in Manila for history but we were not prepared for what we were going to see.... a destroyed historical gem, disturbing in it's levels of poverty, frightening in it's levels of crime, and a pathetic display of what colonization can do to a country. The spanish had built one of the last constructed walled-in cities in the modern world. It was once stunning, but after the U.S. occupation, WWII, and the Japanese occupation of the city, it was destroyed with no money or preservation societies to restore it to it's former glory. Having said that, the former "glory" was not glory for the Filipinos, they were not allowed in Intramuros except as workers. So in the 1970s when they received complete control over the area, they ran whatever was left of it into the ground. There are a few preserved buildings- clearly preserved to attract tourist revenue however. 

A few facts I found out while there and after some research back at home:

- Manila has the highest population density of any major city in the world. It dwarfs massive cites such as Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City, etc. 

-The Philippines is absolutely considered a third world country. 

-Manila was the second most damaged city in WWII after Warsaw. 

We spent over half the day wandering around this area. Here are a few pics:

This is a row of old jail cells built into the wall of the city that has now been turned into a row of little cafes. I ate some yummy pork adobo there and people watched. 

This is a little taste of the restored and the bombed. 

The main method of travel in Intramuros, the Tricycle. 

This was taken across the street from the Catholic Archdiocese of Manila. 

Coca-cola has a minimal presence is third world countries.   

Crazy "Jeepneys" that they have been driving since WWII and are one of the main forms of public transportation throughout the city. 

STARBUCKS! Ok normally I would not be to excited to see a starbucks in a historical area capitalizing on all the tourists, but not that day. We had been across the street taking pictures of a bombed out building when we heard screaming from behind us. There was a full fledge street fight going on about 10 yards from us where about 5 men where throwing bricks and rocks at each other. Keep in mind this is 10 am. The starbucks was half a block away, and in my western mind, looked like Mecca. More importantly, there was an guard at the door with a machine gun. This we found out was not just because it was a western chain, it was the standard at probably 75% of the business establishments we say. 

Second stop: The Mall of Asia. Welcome to the west. It was like being in a mall in suburban Detroit. I couldn't believe the contradiction. 

We had loads of time to kill still so we decided to see a movie, Australia.... now there's a flic to only see if you have to kill time! After that we decided to get pedicures and massages because we felt that after being massaged everyday in Boracay, we could stand a bit more. 

The spa place made us really feel the cultural differences between Asia and the West. Here I had come to the Philippines to get nice and dark and yet, every Filipino wants get get whiter. The menu of things you could have done at the spa included:

-Quick bleaching

-Whitening masks

-Whitening scrubs

-Bleach/Whitening capsules

You could have these done for your legs, arms, face, whole body, back, chest, you name it. 

The day ended up being very eye opening. It is a city I never want to visit again. But it is a city and a country that needs to find it's feet and I'm grateful that I got to experience it.