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Published: March 14th 2013
7-10 March
Manila
Manila is the tenth largest city in the world with a population of about 21 million - not counting the people who live on the street, I imagine. It would be interesting to see statistics on those numbers. They must be very high.
Manila is also not your average South East Asian city. Actually it feels more like a Latin American city. Probably the mix of Spanish and American influences. The Philippines was a Spanish colony for 300 years before becoming an American colony and it is the only country in SE Asia (besides the new East Timor) which claims Christianity as its "official" religion. Also, unlike other SE Asian cities, the cuisine is just awful.
A little known fact is that much of Manila was laid to waste during the Second World War. It was second only to Warsaw in its destruction. This is where America and Japan came to blows, and Australia can probably thank Manila for being the distraction which kept the Japanese from invading further south.
The old city, Intramuros, which lies within a fortified city wall must have been quite attractive once. Very little of the original remains,
Fortified walls
Intramuros, Manilabut there are glimpses of its former grandeur in the cathedrals and some partly restored buildings. My favourite, St. Augustine's Cathedral, is modest from the outside, but the interior, in its cool cement greys and pale turquoise, with blue glass chandeliers is quite lovely.
The moat around the city wall has been filled in to construct a golf course and makes for a refreshingly green and well manicured space in the heart of what was old Manila. All I can say is thank goodness, because if this moat was still filled with water it would look and smell exactly the same as all the other waterways in the city - putrid.
The Pasig River flows past Intramuros to the north and has the notorious reputation for being the most polluted river in the world. Several small tributaries and canals run through neighbourhoods to join it on its dirty course -each filthier than the last. This entire river system has been declared dead, but I'm not convinced. There must be hundreds of bacteria and other parasites thriving in the blackish garbage and sewage filled sludge. The stench is indescribable, but people live next to and over the water and
don't even seem to notice. Yesterday we saw a woman walking to the middle of the main stream and throw a bag full of garbage straight into the river - she kept the bag back for next time - setting a good example for "reuse".....pity about the " reduce and recycle".
Chinatown is situated on the opposite side of the Pasig River to Intramuros in a loop in one of the Pasig tributaries. Imagine the smell. It is the oldest Chinatown in the world, but again, not much of its character remains. A street or two of dilapidated shop houses and stalls overflowing onto the street, but it is nothing like Chinatown in Bangkok or KL. during the Spanish reign Chinese merchants were forced to take Christianity as their religion and were designated this area to live and work because it was within cannon shot of the guns on the Intramuros fortified walls, just in case they didn't behave.
Speaking of guns..... Manila is a city of guns. Everywhere you look there is an AK47 or a shotgun or some sort of assault weapon slung over the shoulder of a security guard. This morning we were sitting in
Starbucks, which is inside the Robinsons Mall, and there was an armed security guard on each of the two entrances into the shop. Never mind that we had already been searched by a pair of armed guards at the shopping centre entrance. Overkill? Or is there really that big a security problem here? Walking down a street, at every entrance to every shop, bank, hotel, restaurant, cafe, clinic, bus stop, 7Eleven and apartment block there is at least one guard with at least one big gun. It can make one quite nervous.
We stayed at the Best Western La Corona in Ermita. This area is just south of Rizal Park and we chose it over the Makati area because we thought we would go for a run in the park, and because it is part of old Manila and promised to have some character. All the guides and Trip Advisor recommend staying in Makati, the new financial district with the smart hotels and massive shopping centres, and we did visit Makati, with its new high rises and clean streets and manicured gardens, but I'm glad we stayed where we did.
Makati is where the old Manila airport was,
and the main road through was once the runway. The Shangrila and Peninsula Hotels rub shoulders with the Green Belt mall and new glass sky scrapers, and there is a Starbucks on every corner. It is a bit of a miniature Singapore and is so different to the rest of Manila that it is difficult to believe that it is a part of the same city; but you don't need to wander far to get back to the grime and poverty which is true Manila.
Manila South Cemetery lies a block away from Makati Rd, and it is akin to many of Manila's other cemeteries in that it has become a village for the living. People have moved into Manila's cemeteries in search of a place to live due to the lack of affordable housing in the city. We peeked in to the cemetery at a side gate, but chickened out of visiting as the looks we solicited from the population were not friendly.
Homelessness is a big issue in Manila. With the poverty and unemployment comes families living on the streets. We walked by an underpass rank with the smell of urine and encountered several families living
in the dusty pee stained squalor. There were 16 small babies - not yet toddlers - in the mix. In Manila every flower bed, park bench, and sometimes even disused fountain, holds a bed roll and the piddling personal possessions of a destitute person. It is a morbid picture.
This is the reason for the high crime rates in the city - abject poverty and hopelessness. If there was ever a case for birth control... Alas, that currently popeless church wields too much power in this country!! And the officially quoted population growth rate sits at 5%.
We are warned not to take our cameras or valuables out with us when we go walking. We are also advised to avoid certain areas even in the day time. So it was GoPro strapped to my body that went out with us, hence the wide angle pics. Sadly by the end of our stay we were short on good Jeepney shots and the only way I was going to get them was to take my big old Leica out the front door. Our hotel was on a busy Jeepney route so I figured I'd be ok standing on the corner
taking a couple of pictures as they went by. The doorman followed me out with a VERY nervous look on his face. "Careful Ma'am, please, careful Ma'am," as he followed me the 3m to the intersection, and literally pulled me back to just outside the front door. The litany continued until I eventually gave up and came back inside. I think this place must be more dangerous than Johannesburg!!
Needless to say, we did not end up running in Rizal Park. We walked through to scout it out and decided it was a no no. In the mornings the park is a bit too quiet and two fair heads with headphones attached to iPhones could be tempting fate. We were already attracting attention wherever we went. We actually didn't see any other tourists besides ourselves walking around Manila, except in Makati, and we were obviously being noticed. Andrew came up with the great idea of buying caps to disguise our blondishness, and that did help quite a bit. AK and I a'la Angelina Jolie.
So, though we are not sorry we spent three days in Manila, it is a city which we will probably remember mostly for the
bad stuff as it was really impressive bad stuff. The pollution; the fiercely crazy traffic; the homelessness, hopelessness and poverty; the worst airport we have ever transited through after Daresalaam; and the pot noodles.
"What is the biggest problem here?" We ask a taxi driver. "Poverty," he replies. "How can you solve the problems here?" "Discipline. People have no discipline. There are rules but no one follows them." This is the second time we have heard the same answer. Could he mean that corruption is actually the big issue? He tells us a joke: " in London, when a crime is committed, it takes the police ten minutes to get there. In New York, when a crime is committed, it takes the police 5 minutes to get to the scene. In Manila when there is a crime committed the police are usually already on the scene...."
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robin
non-member comment
From Rob
Frikkin' hell - it makes Joburg sound positively heavenly!! In fact I went onto JHB city centre (outside of the revamped hipster spots) on the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. Really enjoying the blog!