Manila
And so to Manila, the capital of the philippines. The flight over was horrible, it was delayed by 2 hours so didn’t leave till 3 in the morning. Sleeping on the jumbo was a non starter so myself and the bob stepped into the warm early morning sun of manila with the reddest of red eyes. Bobby just wanted the nearest bed, whether that was the Hilton or a rusty flea pit I managed to convince him to hold out until we got to friendlys guesthouse on adriatico street right in the middle of manila.
When we arrived at the hotel and after we were let in by the man on the door we found ourselves in a pretty nice backpackers joint. There was a kitchen to cook yer own food, big tv with lots of dvds and all the channels and a nice place outside to sit around and shoot the breeze with other residents while looking out over the manila skyline and harbour. The only trouble though was that all the beds were full and that they weren’t completely sure whether they would have place for us until 12 o’clock. It was 7. Too shattered to go anywhere else we hung around the common room praying that someone would check out earlier than 12. Didn’t happen, for the first time in my life I slept sitting upright with my chin squashed firmly into my chest, I thought that only happened to babies on whos been framed.
We got sorted eventually and after some kip we took to the streets to explore. Manila is right on the water so there is a reasonably pleasant walk along the waterfront. The city certainly has its problems, some of them are very confronting. While the poverty certainly isn’t as bad as india, places such as calcutta make it pale, you still get accosted every now and again by a child or a desperate adult looking for some pesos. I even got asked for money by a pretty desperate american dude. In a weird kind of way I found this comforting as I have been missing india since I left there I figured that this place could fill the void so to speak. Thailand was a pretty easy place to get around and somehow lacked the edge of india. Edge is something that manila has in buckets.
After some dinner (the first meal I’ve prepared in 5 months(the food in the philippines is awful)), we took to the streets with some people from the hostel. We ended up sitting outside on the street, this is the way alot of local people socialise so when in rome, etc etc. There is a pretty cool bar called socialista around the corner from the hostel, we were to come to appreciate the normality of this place compared to the rest of the city pretty soon.
Leaving manila is a pain – we flew to this country with the intentions to make our stay as brief as possible. With a little more research we would’ve realised that most transport to palawan in the south leaves on thursday and friday and that the cheapest flights leave on a wednesday. That left us with 5 nights in manila – after the first couple of nights we had enough of the place to be honest. The place got flattened in the second world war so there is very little of interest to see in the city, the characters hanging around the street corners don’t exactly encourage leisurely walks around the block as a result we felt kinda trapped in or around adriatico street and the shopping centre thats at the end of the street.
The sex tourism industry is unbelievably rampant here, I’d guess the vast majority of tourists here are rich old fat men here for a couple of weeks. More than 9 out of every 10 places masquarading as a nightclub is in fact a brothel. One evening while out to buy some food to cook back in the hostel this guy asked us if we wanted ‘Nice Girl’, he then pointed down to a girl lying asleep on the pavement!! Shocking, it left me sick and wanting to get out of the city. The only other place I would recommend for people to go in manila is a bar we found called the hobbit bar where on top of having a round door all the floor staff are ‘little people’, it was very amusing.
Disaster struck early wednesday morning – our flight was due to leave at 7. In fact it probably did leave right on time, trouble was though that we weren’t on the bleeding thing. The booking didn’t go through at the last minute and we lost our seats. I was wrecked having stayed up to try and sort it out, but was determined to get out of manila, I got myself and bobby up and onto a bus heading south with the clear intention of getting to another island, somewhere with some peace and quiet. We met a girl from england called Alice in the hostel before we left who having been abandoned by her own mates agreed to meet us down on the island of Mindoro.
Thanks for all the bday greetings y’all. Had a blast 🙂
Will be in touch soon,
Phil
Tags: manila, philippines
Phil Gill
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