Perla del Mar de Oriente

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Manila is a god awful place. This is what I was told by every Filipino I know in the United States: Filipinos who've never been to Manila, Filipinos who have been to Manila but left a long time ago and never wish to return, Filipinos young and old, Filipinos born in the Philippines but immigrated to the United State a million years ago, and Filipinos who were born and raised in the United States and have never been to the Philippines but have only heard about it through second hand sources, like their parents or grandparents, and upon hearing of the place and its decrepitude, have no wish to go there, ever. I grew up with all kinds of Filipinos: half blooded, a quarter blooded, one-eight blooded, one-sixteenth blooded, and full blooded Filipinos who told me and continue to tell me the same thing; Manila is a god awful place. Consequently, their opinion of the Philippines isn't any more flattering. The only Filipinos I know who have a positive opinion of Manila are the young and newly immigrated, the ones who have not been fully assimilated - and are therefore uncorrupted - into their new environment, and who constantly wax nostalgic about the Philippines; the FOBs (If Owe Bees), as we condescendingly called them when we were young.

I would love to tell everyone and declare here once and for all that I alone stood for open mindedness among my Filipino peers and elders, that I impaled their malevolent opinions, that I stood for justice in all things Filipino and insisted that a place must be given a chance before a veracious opinion can be formed on a place that is a very big part of who we are, but that would be lying through my teeth because I was no dissenting voice, because I grew up believing the same things and developed these same prejudices as if they were god-given truths even though I had never been there myself. When I decided a couple of years ago that I was going to skip the "Holidays" in the United States and opted instead to travel in the Philippines during the months of Christmas and New Years, i.e. the "Holiday Season", as every person in the Western world is wont to say, everyone thought that I was out of my mind, everyone begged me not to go, everyone told me to be careful, everyone told me that I was in for a big shock, and most important of all, everyone told me to stay away from Manila. I dismissed all of the advice given above except for one. I stayed away from Manila.

Overseas Foreign Workers

High up in the air at 33,000 feet, where the sky is bright and the cumulus clouds shade part of the blue-green South China Sea, the beauty of archipelagic Southeast Asia is apparent; from the edge of the island of Borneo, to the barely visible northern tip of the island of Palawan, and the many little islands that dot the giraffe like archipelago of the Philippines. The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Manila was mildly entertaining. It was full of overseas foreign workers coming home from Malaysia and other parts of the world for a few weeks of vacation.

This phenomenon, of Filipinos working overseas but maintaining permanent residences in the homeland, has been around for three or four decades now, I think, although I’m not sure because most Filipinos I know are immigrants to the United States or are sons and daughters of immigrants to the United States, not temporary contract workers overseas who still maintain a home in the Philippines. The guy sitting next to me is a fellow in his forties, a quiet guy from the outskirts of Manila - Cavite, I think, although I can’t remember exactly if that’s what he said - who works in an oil refinery plant on the island of Sumatra, in Dumai, Indonesia. He is looking forward to coming home after having been away for four months, toiling away in barely tolerable working conditions just to support the family: two daughters, three sons, a mother, a father, a grandmother, and a wife who is eight months pregnant, and thousands of cousins, uncles, aunts, and distant relatives who routinely borrow money from him but never pay it back because they think he’s a rich overseas foreign worker with an inexhaustible bank account. I didn’t ask him anymore personal questions after that. Quite frankly, I did not want to know how difficult his life was. I did not even want to imagine it.

The great thing about Filipinos is that, because I am Filipino, I understand them, at least for the most part. I understand Filipinos more than I understand any other ethnicity in the face of this here planet Earth. My background is common enough in the Central Valley of California, a third generation descendant of migrant farm workers from Delano, although surprisingly very few Filipinos I’ve met in the Bay Area would ever acknowledge, or more likely are ashamed to acknowledge, our existence. But my family, starting with my grandfather, has been toiling away for almost six decades now, picking grapes, peaches, asparagus; pruning, cultivating, and harvesting the fields from Bakersfield to Ryer Island and as far up north as Yakima in the state of Washington, and sometimes ending up in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska working as deckhands or processors of wild Alaskan Salmon and King Crabs on Alaskan fish processor ships, feeding the masses of this great nation of ours. Due to this somewhat remote upbringing in the boondocks of the Central Valley of California, my only knowledge of Filipinos came from these migrant workers of Carlos Bulosan’s and Cesar Chavez’s contemporaries, proudly humble but highly combatant, unabashedly provincial, and fighting for recognition of their contribution to society. These are the people who shaped my views of the world in general and of Filipinos in particular, and it is from these proud folks where I began to understand who I am as a Filipino and how I came to understand other Filipinos; about the way they feel, their likes and dislikes, their silly jokes, their food, their language, and their fighting spirit. None of this helped me to understand Filipinos in the Philippines however.

In the Philippines I came to understand what most Filipinos aspirations are: most of them just want to get out. I understood that they are fascinated with karaoke, I understood that they love disco music (John Travolta and the Bee Gees’ popularity have never waxed and waned in the Philippines, it has always stayed on top, way up there with the Pope), I came to understand how thin skinned they can be, I understood how proud they are of the Philippines (although most of them just want to get out), I understood the subtleties of their behavior, I understood their mannerisms and the idiosyncrasies of their body language (pointing with your mouth towards an object), I understood that when the airport security staff are giving me those huge silly grins of theirs, exposing their big teeth and calling me sir a lot when arriving in or departing from Manila, that usually means give me a nice big Balikbayan tip, and generally, I understood what they were saying even though they are speaking a language that I may not be conversant of, like Tagalog.

There are common words in the Visayan and Tagalog language. Salamat means thank you in both languages. Kumusta is also a common word although it is neither Visayan nor Tagalog; it is a bastardization of the formal Spanish greeting, Como Esta Usted or Como Estas Tu. You will often hear many bastardization of Spanish - and English - words into Visayan and Tagalog. However, there are certain words that may sound the same but have totally different meanings in either language. For example, lagay means to put in Tagalog. In Visayan lagay means penis.

Dugout Doug

The plane descends to 10,000 feet in preparation for our landing into the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. At the mouth of the moon shaped Manila Bay the little island of Corregidor is barely visible down below us, a dot in the deep blue sea. That’s where Douglas McArthur camped out during WWII, double U double U two the big one, as Archie Bunker would say, while the rest of his men fought to their deaths or suffered the brutality of their Japanese captors. While Dugout Doug ate steak, drank wine, and smoked his fabulous Cuban cigars, his men starved and endured Japanese torture as they walked a thousand miles in the Bataan Death March. Many of his men were American and Filipino Soldiers. They fought side by side against the Japanese, abandoned by Dugout Doug McArthur when Manila fell, who escaped comfortably to Australia. But Dugout Doug had a huge ego, and if it wasn’t for that he wouldn’t have declared his grand declaration of I Shall Return, and through the force of his personality, orchestrated a massive operation that is still written about to this day. The return to the island of Leyte consisted of a battle with ground forces and the greatest battle in naval history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. American soldiers and Filipino guerrilla forces fought the Japanese on the ground while the 7th and 3rd Fleets fought the battle at sea. All of this was orchestrated by Dugout Doug, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific Theater, and he is generally given credit for the successful invasion of Leyte, which was the beginning of the end for the Empire of the Sun, because it was all downhill for them afterwards, and the beginning of the legend of Dugout Doug.

As I was looking out of the window and marveled at the chaotically organized settlements in and around Manila, the plane descends and the wheel screeches as it touched the tarmac of Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The plane lands safely but still speeding at two hundred miles an hour as it runs through the full straightaway for the next two hundred yards or so. The pilot tilts the wings back flapper upright and puts on the airbrakes. Suddenly the plane makes a tight fifteen degree turn while still running at a considerable speed, something like sixty miles an hour, and then stops abruptly. It had the same effect as slamming on the brakes at sixty miles an hour while turning at the same time. It scared the beejeesus out of the passengers. I heard cursing from the back, likening the pilot to some maverick Jeepney driver. Ten seconds after the plane came to a complete stop a Korean Airlines 747 slowly passes right in front of us on its way for take off. People murmured something that’s equivalent to “Holy Mother of God” in Tagalog, Visayan, Ilongo, or whatever language they were speaking, but there was no doubt in their expression of the horror they felt. Once the Korean Airlines 747 cleared past us the plane cruised down to the airport terminal at NAIA Centennial II, strictly for Philippine Airlines.

Manila Hotel

There was a long line at the Immigration check-in as we descended down the steps from the airport concourse of the NAIA Centennial II, strictly for Philippine Airlines. They were mostly overseas foreign workers coming home from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong. I was told by the fellow standing next to me that the rest of the foreign workers would be coming in later today from the Middle East and Europe. There were very few tourists as far as I could see, and the few non-overseas foreign workers were mostly Filipino families hauling in their huge Balikbayan boxes filled with canned goods, hand me down clothes, electronic gadgets, and other stuff to giveaway to their relatives in the Philippines. Then there was me, an idiot lone traveler, braving Manila for the first time just because I can, with nothing to prove and everything to gain. By now I have traveled enough to be immune from culture shock. Nothing can shock me now cause I don’t care anymore, just like Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor singing Piggy. Hey Pig. Yeah, you.

Navigating through the airport was relatively easy considering the kind of stories that I’ve been told. The first time I was here I didn’t have to deal with customs because my baggage went directly to my final destination, Cebu City. This time around I had to retrieve my baggage at this airport, and I was surprised that I only had to wait for twenty minutes or so. The lady at customs smiled at me as I wheeled in my one luggage. She spoke to me in Tagalog. I did not understand what she said but pretended to, saying something ridiculous like, “no, I have nothing to declare”. She kept smiling at me, which made me kind of nervous, but she waved me through. She was probably wondering why a Filipino like me was not lugging along a huge Balikbayan box like the rest.

Manila taxi drivers have a legendary reputation for being unscrupulous. The Lonely Planet guidebook seems to think they are all employed by SATAN. Actually they’re not, but many do have a close resemblance to Lucifer, very sinister looking are these folks, and even more evil when they laugh. As I was walking out of the airport the heat and humidity no longer engulfed me like it did the first time I was here a couple of years ago, when I was full of anxiety and uncertainty. Now I am relaxed, experienced and full of myself. I thought, “I’ll show these sonovaguns not mess with me!” There was a concierge outside to greet and help out the uncertain traveler of how to get around in Manila. Surprisingly I saw an official sign for a metered taxi with an arrow pointing to the right, which the concierge recommended. This is rather surprising because none of the guidebooks mentioned this. The seasoned Manila travelers have also told me not to get on a taxi at the airport, only the ones outside, because knowing that you’re a tourist with an abundance of cash, so they think, taxi drivers at the airport will refuse to turn on the meter no matter how much you beg them to. The lady at the concierge counter told me to take the metered taxi, so I did. I was encouraged by the sight of a long line of foreigners, Haoles mostly, waiting for a metered cab. Uniformly colored yellow Toyota Corolla cabs stamped with the seal of approval from the Philippines Department of Tourism churned out one by one to take passengers to their destination, all very official and seemingly safe. Satan or Lucifer was nowhere to be found in any of these cabs.

I told my cab driver to take me to the Manila Hotel. No problem he said. He turned on the meter. Fifty pesos immediately flashed on the meter. The traffic was horrendous as we exited the airport. We were driving at a snails pace. The smog and the soot from the pollution were incredible. I still found it hard to believe that the inhabitants could endure such filthy air. Inside, the cab was air-conditioned and clean, shielding me from the heat and the filth outside. It took about fifteen minutes before we finally snaked our way out of the traffic jam and onto Roxas Boulevard. Roxas is pronounced Ro-has. I have a Mexican friend back home whose last name is Rojas, which is pronounced similarly as Roxas. I don’t understand why my computer spell checker underlines Roxas as a misspelling and not Rojas, and that irritates me, and it doesn’t matter whether I am using Word or Word Perfect, it still underlines it as a misspelling. Quite frankly I use neither. Instead I use LaTeX2e, a typesetter, which is more flexible and less irritating to use than Word or Word Perfect or any of those overpriced software, but the spell checker that I use for LaTeX2e still does not have Roxas in its database, so I put it there and took care of that irritation once and for all. Maybe I’m revealing too much of myself.

Roxas is a wide and surprisingly clean boulevard. There are no trash, no homeless camping out on the sidewalk as I’ve been told numerous times, and no chaos. The traffic is still busy but there are no jams as far as I can see. The buildings along the boulevard still looks sooty and grimy from the polluted air, but other than that, it looks fantastic. We pass by huge hotels and government buildings along the way. At the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), I saw a huge banner advertising CineMalaya, a Manila Independent film festival. To our right is the humungous Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the Central Bank of the Philippines, the Philippines version of the Federal Reserve. Up ahead is the wide, spacious, and romantic Luneta Park, now officially called Rizal Park, I think, although I’m not sure because no Filipino I’ve met in Manila ever called it by that official name. Every Manileño calls it Luneta Park while the guidebooks, Lonely Planet and all, calls it Rizal Park. At the corner of Luneta Park on Katigbak Street and Bonifacio Drive where Roxas Boulevard ends, is the magnificent Manila Hotel, once the headquarters of Dugout Doug, the Philippine Military Attaché or some ridiculous title like that given to him by his friend Manuel Quezon, the first president of the Philippine Republic.

The Manila Hotel is a grand and swanky old lady, perhaps graying and wrinkled like Imelda, but is still looks fabulous as the oldest and once the grandest hotel in all of Asia. Thousands of dignitaries have stayed at this hotel since its inception on October 6, 1912. Ernest Hemmingway and Jack Dempsey stayed here in the 1930s. The Duke of Windsor and the Prince of Wales in the 1940s. Marlon Brando stayed here several times during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Nelson Rockefeller, Charlton Heston, Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Beatles in 1965, Neil Armstrong, Bob Hope, Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man), Sammy Davis, Jr. (The Candy Man), Henry Kissinger (infamous for bombing Cambodia while denying it to the American public), Tony Bennett (Left his Heart in Frisco), Frank Sinatra (he did it his way), Brooke Shields from the movie The Blue Lagoon, Al Jarreau, Liza Minelli, Alexander Haig, John Denver, William Katt (The Greatest American Hero), Chuck Norris, Ben Kingsley (Ghandi), Randy Oaks of the TV show CHIPS, Julio Iglesias, the writer James Michener, Linda Blair of the Exorcist, Corey Hart (Sunglasses at Night), Duran Duran, Neil Sedaka, Basia (left Matt Bianco in half a minute), Gloria Estefan, the band Toto, the band Bon Jovi (no wonder they’re so popular in the P.I.), Bill Clinton (Monica’s boyfriend), Michael Jackson, Nelson Mandela, Prince Charles, the actor Brendan Fraser, former Frisco mayor Willie Brown, David Hasselhof, Ricky Martin of Menudo fame and She Bangs, Megawati Sukarnoputri and every president, delegate, attaché, liaison, and secretary of an ASEAN nation have all booked a room in the grand Manila Hotel at one point in their lives, and sometimes have stayed here multiple times because of they think Manila is just the finest and dandiest place in the whole wide universe. Maybe not.

Denny Terio of Dance Fever has also booked time here but surprisingly no John Travolta, who is revered in the Philippines as the greatest dancer of all time. The main lobby of the Manila Hotel is grand, with chandeliers and classic furniture. It kind of reminds me of the lobby of the Overlook Hotel from the movie The Shining. I could just see Jack Nicholson sitting in front of the huge table just below the stage with a Steinway grand piano, typing madly a thousand pages of typescript containing nothing but All work no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work…

I booked a room through an internet special for a discount. Not surprisingly, they gave me a room overlooking the unattractive South Harbor of Manila instead of the magnificent landscape of Intramuros on the other side. Quite frankly that didn’t bother me because the room was nice, although it’s old and aging. It was only two thirty in the afternoon so I stayed in my room all afternoon and got myself situated and organized, took a nice long shower, and drank a couple of beers from the mini-bar. Normally I try to stay away from the mini-bar because there’s always a markup in the pricing. The reason there’s a mini-bar in every hotel in the world where business travelers’ stay is because it can be written off as a business expense because it is included in your hotel bill and are therefore refundable or claimable in your taxes if you’re self-employed. As they say in the corporate world, use and abuse that travel expense to its maximum. I am just an independent casual traveler however, so I try to avoid such unnecessary expenses if I can help it but today I decided to indulge in a little beer drinking while watching the wonderful Manila sunset dip down below the horizon, an amazing combination of red orange and yellow colors with a tinge of a green flash at the very moment just before the entire sun slipped underneath the field of view.

Hot Ermita Nights

The skies were now covered with thick clouds and lighting struck from a mile away as I stepped out of my hotel and strolled down Roxas Boulevard on my way to Ermita and Malate, a place that’s supposed to have the hottest night life in all of Asia. Quite frankly, I don’t think any place in the whole wide world can top Bangkok’s Patpong Road off Silom in terms of wildness and raunchiness. Sexual appetites and longings of all persuasion will be fulfilled in these alleys of the red light district of Bangkok.

I feel a hint of a drizzle as I pass by Luneta Park on Roxas. The night is hot and humid but a cool breeze is blowing in from the bay, making the stroll quite delightful. The huge US Embassy compound sits at the corner of Roxas and Kalaw street. Armed guards are poised at the gate, ready to beat the living daylights out of anybody who dares to trespass, and from the look of their faces, I wouldn’t be surprised if they would love nothing better than to give a good beating to anyone who even thinks about trespassing. The mean and sinister looks on their faces are enough to deter anyone from even dreaming about it. There they are, guns in holsters, a shotgun over their shoulders, a cigarette on their lips and puffing away while thinking of using unnecessary force, violence, and massive brutality.

After a long walk by the bay I crossed Roxas towards Pedro Gil St. Knowing how to jaywalk is a necessary survival skill whenever you’re in an Asian city. After all my travels I’m getting good at it but the best jaywalkers are the natives, the inhabitants of the city. They know when to cross, when to force the issue between motorists and pedestrians, and they know when not force the issue. Normally I just follow the most astute jaywalkers of them all, the roadside vendors, kids no more than the age of twelve hawking cigarettes, newspapers, Chiclets (I thought only Tijuana kids hawked this stuff), enticing the motorist to buy their stuff. Following a skinny kid in ragged clothes with a tray full of Salem menthol cigarettes and Marlboros, I made it to Pedro Gil Street unscathed. Pedro Gil, like all the other streets in Ermita and Malate, is a narrow alley not fit for a two-lane traffic. Yet the streets are jammed with jeepneys and taxis honking like mad and trying to get past point A to point B in the midst of a throng of humanity. I walked past a woman screaming at her husband at the corner of Pedro Gil and M.H. del Pilar, flinging her handbag at him and hitting him upside his head. The husband was too timid to respond or retaliate. Even though I did not understand what they were saying, somehow I understood that this was a marital squabble and that it was none of my or anybody else’s business. A little girl in dirty clothes came running to hug the father to prevent him from getting clobbered some more by the mother, which confirmed my suspicion.

I kept walking, minding my own business, past the huge Hyatt Hotel and Casino and turned right on A. Mabini Street. It is now drizzling, light rain pouring down, the streets getting slick and shiny, reflected from it the neon lights of the pubs, restaurants, and girly bars of Mabini. So this is what this place is like, I thought. I was expecting something wild but I did not have high expectations. Nothing beats the red light districts of Thailand. The Soi Cowboy alone would put any attempt at debauchery to shame. The streets in Ermita and Malate are lined with these types of establishments; girly bars, restaurants big and small, regular bars, money exchangers, little karaoke shacks, little makeshift eating places with a billiard pool table at the center and young Filipinos wasting time swigging San Miguels, a cigarette in the corner of their mouths, stroking and aiming a billiard stick on the cue ball for the corner pocket.

I turned left on Remedios Street and headed towards the circle where there were tons of kids, probably homeless, playing and ass grabbing. The drizzle became steady pouring light rain. Thunder and lighting has subsided. I stood at the corner of Remedios and Adriatico underneath the awnings of the Café Havana to shade myself from the rain. Three waitresses came out and yelled Hola!. I was in a rather awkward situation. I didn’t want to tell them that I’m a cheapskate and that I am just waiting for the rain to stop. They spoke to me in Tagalog. One of the waitresses said “Would you like a beer, Sir?” I said, “Sure, why not,” and sat down in one of the outdoor tables and ordered a bottle of San Miguel and looked over the menu. The menu had items in it with Latino-Cubano names, somewhat pretentious, and not at all appetizing. I ordered something that was equivalent to steak with green chilies and Spanish rice, which wasn’t too bad quite honestly. Afterwards I ordered a Sangria, which is just basically the same thing as a red wine cooler, a spiked punch. It was okay but I preferred a stronger drink so I ordered a double shot of Tanduay Rum on the rocks, my favorite brand of rum in the whole wide world. So there I was with my Tanduay on the rocks, sitting at an outdoor table of Café Havana, watching the dirty little kids playing in the rain in Remedios circle, enjoying the vibe and the live music emanating from inside the restaurant, and waiting for the rain to stop.

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Photos

The Archipelago
The blue South China Sea dotted with beatific islands under cumulus clouds

Cine Malaya
A Manila independent film festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines

Manila Hotel
The grand old dame, sort of like Imelda

Manila Harbor
The view from my hotel room

Roxas Boulevard
The wide six lane boulevard under smoggy and sooty skies

A Wedding at the Manila Cathedral
Ring bearers and flower girls. Filipinos are keen on pageantry.

Josephine Bracken
Wife of José Protacio Mercado Rizal y Alonzo Realonda.

Japanese Girlfriend
Girlfriend of José Protacio Mercado Rizal y Alonzo Realonda

Firing Squad
José Protacio Mercado Rizal y Alonzo Realonda, executed by the Spaniards for treason.

Comments

[FOB]

Manila is not the Philippines
Well, tell your friends Manila is not the Philippines, and maybe you guys should also read with foreigners say about the country, you can find them here.

[Miyake]

Re the Manila Hotel
Cool, thanks for sharing with us, I am planning my Philippines trip in October, your article can be a good reference. Btw, according to people on Kolalo (http://www.kolalo.com/hotels/philippines/manila-hotels/), Manila Hotel, built in 1912, is located in the cultural and historical district of Manila, and is nestled on 3½ hectares of land along Roxas Boulevard.... what will you say? it sounds like a good choice?

[Piper Holly]

People in Manila just trying to be hospitable to you.. just please don't get them wrong. I'm glad you have a roadtrip to our Country. Just like the other guy say. Manila is not the only place Philippines can offer... Every city have their own flavor.. so picked a place that will suite you. if you don't like busy , chaos city life. Try the nature loving place of Tagaytay, Cavite...Indescribable beaches of Romblon, Cebu.

[Jenkie]

Manila Harbor
Where is it ? What is the complete address in manila harbor ?

[phaedrus]

I don't know the exact address to be honest with you. It's at the back of the Manila Hotel.

[THUY]

GREAT
Hi! this week i come Manila and find information about manila port, ur picture s very beauty, thanks cause u give us good feeling before my trip.