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It’s warm, 35 degrees. Our car picks us up from the airport and we head into the manic manila traffic. Asia hits our senses; roads gridlocked with jeepneys, tricycles, motor bikes, taxi, buses, the noise of incessant horns tooting, with a lack of rain; the pungent smell from the stagnant drains mingled with smoke in the air. Ahh Asia, we love it! As we head into the business district, cars, mainly SUVs, join the fun. Every rentable vehicle has its own name, jeepneys, tricycles and even taxis, like Maurice, Batman, Sweetheart or Bigma.
We are staying in the red light district for foreigners, its cheap, I assure you that’s the only reason! There are a few bars full of old European men and, in the streets, Filipino women. Once again Carl gets regularly offered Viagra, and when I am with him – how rude!
Our hotel does amazing Italian food so for the first 3 nights in the Philippines we eat pasta and pizza and drink red wine and beer. We dine outside watching the bank opposite with uniformed security guards armed with machine guns and shot guns sitting on a stool on the corner of the street 24x7
the only action being to occasionally unload a money truck.
There is nothing to do but walk to the mall, seen one mall seen them all, so we book a slum tour, Smokey mountain tours. Our side of the city is near the business district, appears middle class Philippines, with lots of high rise apartments and malls, as we near the slum area the high rises and malls disappear, as do the SUVs.
We hop onto a jeepney with our tour guide and the locals into the chaos of gridlocked traffic jams of jeepneys and tricycles, constant tooting, no road rules and people mysteriously disappearing as they reach their destination but the jeepney not stopping.
The first slum was like little lockups 3mx3m, one room, mattress, cooking bench, power, and out the front of the slum area was a wide pathway where the kids were being washed in barrels filled from a hose, women doing the washing in old top loader Hoover washing machines, holes in the wall with metal grids selling the basics, lollies and chippies to the kids. The pathway overlooked the most disgusting river, it was black, stagnant and literally all covered in garbage,
mainly plastic and polystyrene. To live here the rent was $80 nz per month There were little areas with a few pcs and it cost 1peso 3c nz for 6 minutes. Kids were using their six minutes to blast aliens out of the sky.
They took us through the market, explained the food the locals eat, chicken heads, chicken feet, salted eggs, dried fish – yuk! But they love sausage, like meat pattie sausage. Amazingly there were like 60 stalls selling meat but yet I only saw one fly! But I soon found out why, they had better places to be.
As we walked over the bridge, Smokey Mountain was pointed out, I would not call it a mountain more like a range of hills, but it was not a hill or mountain - it was a rubbish dump! They recently moved the people living on top of the rubbish to an area along a busy road which we visited next.
This slum was free, no power, no rent, their livelihood was from scavenging and recycling. They would go out at 11pm to 5am, take the kids, and scavenge the streets, and during the day, Smokey mountain.
It was a real hive of activity, it stunk, rubbish everywhere over the ground, unstable huts made from wood and iron, some on top of rubbish piles, they called home. Searching through rubbish and sorting into big sacks, large trucks loading up the filled sacks. Three girls sat peeling garlic all day for restaurants for 150p $5nz. One boy sorted just KFC leftovers, splitting out the lids, containers, spoons, serviettes, buns, etc, and even the bones. He had a basin and washed the bones with the leftover meat left on them. They then used these bones and meat to cook a broth or soup and sell in a container for 30p $1 nz.
We walked through their housing, if you can imagine walking along tunnels, one meter wide, 6 foot high, very dark, no lighting, one side a gap in the wall, I see a small area inside with a mattress, clothes and people but not much else. On the other side of the tunnel was a ledge with burning coal and a pot boiling on top. Its dark, the floor is made of stones, with sacking filling the holes, its damp, wet even, its creepy. We walk up
some ladder stairs into a house made of wood, two rooms, kids asleep on the floor, a window letting in some light. I am worried our weight will crash through the floor. Their livelihood is mixing beef with fat, drying it and selling it as a snack. He has 9 kids!
We walk past a group of boys playing basketball, they love it, it’s their summer break from school, they get 150p per month to pay for books and transport to the free school, but many don’t go, they are up all night scavenging, or the 150p is used to buy food.
Some families live under the bridge, on poorly made wooden structures, gaps in the floor boards showing the river and piles of rubbish under foot. Their homes will be washed away during monsoon and hopefully too the rubbish in the river. They will rebuild from scavenged pieces of wood.
The smell is getting to me, we are walking in dirty black puddles through tiny lanes, past small rooms made from pieces of plywood with people living inside. Children get TB, I can see why, they are dirty, there are no bathrooms and we see no
barrels or hoses.
But the one amazing thing of the whole tour and in both slums was that they all had a smile for you and a big good morning! No one seemed to resent us being there and all profits go back into educating their children, or adults on how to strengthen their living structures to cope with monsoon and typhoons, and on birth control, many have 8 plus kids. All it does is compound the problem!
All I can think is how unlucky they are and how lucky we are.
We were not allowed to take photos, but I have added some other traveler photos from other tours of smokey mountain slum reflecting exactly what we saw.
That’s manila for now, off to the island of Palawan to visit Puerto Princesa first for three nights, then hit the beaches. The taxi driver says Carl looks like Nicholas Cage, honestly what they will do for a tip!
Below is some info on our Hotel if you are thinking of travelling to Manila.
Accommodation - Hotel Durban http://hoteldurban.net/ Hotel cost 2000p $65NZ, the room was clean, had large LCD TV with 70
channels, including English, CNN, Fox, Star Movies, HBO, AXN etc. The room was basic with double bed, which was quite hard. The staff were amazing, efficient, polite and helpful. The food was delicious, the pasta and pizza that is what we tried. Dinner was about 350p $12nz with small bottle of beer 70p $2.50 NZ, and glass of wine 180p $6. We ate outside at Restaurant facing street, nothing to look at though other than armed guards at the bank. A few customers there for red light district so the occasional scream at night! Within walking distance to many malls, a couple just across the road. We would recommend the hotel. Watch the taxi drivers, ensure you agree with them before moving that they will use the meter. We had one that the hotel agreed with him meter but we noticed as we started moving that he had turned it off, which resulted in argument as he would not agree to our price and would not stop.
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