Manila: Our Last Day and a Half

If you’ve never been to Manila, here is an accurate description by O:

I don’t like it here cause there’s too much traffic. I like cities with little traffic like the beach.

No city is immune to traffic, but Manila is a special gem in this category. What ordinarily would be an hour drive from the airport to my uncle’s house took us almost 4 hours… on a Saturday afternoon! We left for the airport at 4am Monday morning… and there was still traffic (albeit a little).

It still has its charms to some folks. Westerners tend to hang in Makati; it’s definitely the ritzier neighborhood for sure. You then have an interesting juxtaposition of gated communities surrounded by shanty towns and an SM City or some other mall. I will say that Makati still looks the same, but the rest of Manila has cleaned up quite a bit in the 10 years since I’ve visited. There aren’t as many visibly poor/homeless people: people camping out in underpasses, kids barefoot and in tattered clothes running around a dump site, beggars on the streets especially at the airport, etc. Granted 99% of the people are poor by our standards, but I’m talking poor poor like the folks you see on the commercials you see late at night. I’m not sure where they have gone because I know they still exist, but they weren’t blatantly in your face. The only time we came across anything resembling Manila of the past was when we went to Rizal Park and saw some homeless folks sleeping under a tree and a group of young children (4-8 years of age) asking for spare change.

Anyhoo when we arrived we were stuck in so much traffic that I was able to analyze the differing landscape from my last visit. Since the day was wasted on traffic and we had a christening to attend the next day, we went to SM across the street. The kids were blown away by the enormity of the malls in the Philippines. While we didn’t go to the biggest malls (like Mall of Asia), these malls are usually 4 or 5 stories of an entire city block or two.

The parents and godparents of baby X (her name really begins with X).

The next morning was my cousin’s daughter’s christening, which I am godmother (ninang). When my aunt and uncle found out that we were visiting around the same time as them my cousin moved the christening date so I could be godmother (I’m sure my aunt and uncle influenced that). She’s quite the smiley, happy baby. The after party was quite the celebration: lechon, cake, karaoke, booze, and photo booth.

S enjoying her first real Filipino ice cream, at the bargain price of P 10.

After the party we took the kids for a stroll around Rizal Park. Though the kids probably won’t get the history, it was way different now since I was there last. One side of the park has a huge statue of Lapu Lapu, the Malay leader who successfully fought the Spanish conquistadors. On the other side of the park is a monument dedicated to Rizal, a famous and much adored Filipino.

We’re now on an airplane back home. Everyone is a bit grumpy due to beach withdrawal and waking up at very silly o’clock. But hooray for airplane wifi as we are flying over Japan right now. For now vacation is over until our next adventure in August.

P.S. I’ll probably do one more update with photos pulled from the DSLR after we get settled in.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.