Friday 10th Feb

Eventually took off just before midday, flight was rammed. During the flight one of the hostess decides to run the most bizarre quiz I’ve ever heard, come to think of it, I’ve never had a hostess run a quiz during a flight before!!? Anyway, just trying a few basic Tagalog phrases so I can at least say hello, thanks etc. Anyway, our first stop is Manila for the next two nights and then after that we’ll head South, we’ve got 7,000 islands to crack on with so I think we’ll have enough to keep us occupied.

Got to our apartment about 6.30pm, it’s in an area (or Province as they call it) of Malate. It’s a really big, high ceiling apartment on the 25th floor, we immediately dump bags and run up to the 33rd floor and stand on the roof top gazing out at the Manila night sky, the place is alive!

We head back down to ground level, then we hit the streets, we’re not going too far as we’re both knackered from two days of travelling plus we have a very early start tomorrow. We head to a huge mall and find a restaurant that looks ok (it isn’t fantastic but we are so tired I don’t think it would matter if we ate cardboard). It soon becomes apparent from the menu and from looking around at my fellow humans that the Filipino diet isn’t a healthy one.

And a few facts about the Philippines; 116 million people, approx 15 million of which are in Manila. The language, Tagalog, uses the alphabet, unlike many other Asian languages, so it’s easy to recognise some words, but definitely not others! Fortunately the majority speak English. Like most places in the world, the Philippines has passed through a few hands; Spain 1544 - 1898, America 1901 - 1935, Japan 1942 - 1945, as many as 150,000 people were killed in WWII in Manila alone, resulting in the City being badly destroyed. Quite what happened after the war to rebuild things who knows….but their famous ruler, Ferdinand (and Imelda) Marcos reign was somewhere between 1965 - 1986 during this time there was a great deal of political unrest, corruption and uprising. I wonder how much different things are today? Anyway, enough history for now….

Saturday 11th February

I’d booked a walking tour of Manila, which as I mentioned is made up of Provinces, we’d arranged to meet our guide at 8am in Santa Cruz, we get up early and hop in a Grab car (Uber equivalent) and we’re off to meet Venus. She was lovely but full on at 8am, talking excitedly and I’m definitely not someone that can normally deal with speaking to anyone much before 10am, so it was a full on assault on the senses. Plus just staying up right and not being run down by traffic. I managed to get her to start off with a coffee (well pineapple juice for me) before we headed into the tour. Strangely we saw no other Western tourists, so we were quite a novelty on the streets. We were mainly walking around the St Cruz area which is where all the street markets and China town are, then we hoped onto a Jeepney (an extended jeep that you flag down like a bus) and we head to Intrumanos which is where the Spanish influence can be seen, the one remaining church which survived the WWII bombings, Saint Augustine. Venus explains the sort of life she has had, but needless to say it’s hard but she’s clearly passionate about what she does and works hard. She does as many as three or four tours a day (ours lasted 2.5 hours). She leaves us in Intrumanos and J and I walk around, it’s a mini district within fortress walls and it culminates in Fort Santiago, which again you can walk around. After we’ve finished walking there we decide to get ourselves over to Pasay which is where the bus terminal is, we’ve decided that we’re going to travel south by overnight bus tomorrow night, We walk as far as the Stadium in Ermita and then catch a Grab up to the bus terminal (about 30 mins by car) in Pasay City, it is huge, the size of a shopping mall. We eventually locate the ticket office and purchase two tickets for the overnight bus which is going to take us from Manila to Legazpi (about £50 for two of us), I’m hoping for first class flat beds 😀 but we’ll see (we booked the most expensive so fingers crossed).

Sunday 12th Feb

Fortunately we wake up a it later, and can have a relaxing morning as I managed to get us a late checkout (7pm tonight, which was brilliant of them). We don’t catch the overnight bus until 8.45pm. We spend sometime researching the next part of the trip.

We walked from our apartment to Rizal Park in Ermita. Walked through the park and saw a huge queue of girls, I asked what they were queuing for and apparently, the Flipino boy band, SP19, are playing a concert at 6 tonight and it’s 1pm and they’re already in a queue in 30 degrees! Mad. We continue walking to the Japanese garden just to sit and people watch. Again, we’re the only Westerners around, since leaving the apartment we’ve only seen one other couple on the streets.

We hear the band sound checking, the queue goes wild and for some reason I feel incredibly emotional but I think I always do around live music, I think it’s seeing the joy it invokes in others too.

I pull myself together and we onto Paco Park / Cemetery (just what I need to cheer myself up!). Local hero’s from the end of the Spanish period are buried there.

We then head back to Malate, back to Robinson’s mall, I am so appalled by the food choices but I can’t risk street food today with a 12 hr coach journey ahead of us, so we’re playing it safe (we hope).

Final bit of shopping before we head back to the apartment to clean up and pack up.

So… how do I feel about Manila? It’s hot, dirty, messy, appears disorganised, heavily polluted, busy beyond belief, roads are crazy (witnessed several road traffic accidents yesterday), poverty is rife, lots of people living on the streets, sleeping on cardboard or in tuk tuks etc., so on the surface things don’t appear great. Actually it’s bonkers here but at the same time humbling, vibrant and so alive. What really stands out for us is the people, they are all so friendly, you feel safe, you don’t feel like you’re their meal ticket (of course there are lots of beggars and I find that really hard) but people aren’t threatening, they’re friendly, helpful and smiley. I’m glad to have experienced it, it makes me really appreciate our lives in the U.K. I’m not sure I could stay here for too long. It’s a total fusion of everything that’s gone before and left it’s mark, plus you add the Asian influence into the mix, so it’s totally crazy but I think it does have to be experienced.