To Intramuros and Beyond!!!

It was the first day in a while that we woke up early enough to spend the day in the sun! We had to renew our visas for more than the twenty-one day visa given to you at the airport. Intramuros is the place to go if you need to extend or apply for a specific type of visa if and you're near Manila. Intramuros is the old capital city that the Spaniards used while they occupied in the Philippines. It is a walled city with lots of history and unfortunately a lot of garbage. The actual government office is outside of Intramuros' walls. I'd provide a photograph but taking pictures of government offices is illegal in the Philippines! I'm guessing it has something to do with the resistance fighters and to some terrorists in the south. The first thing we found out is you need pants to go into the building. Meg had shorts on so we opted to go to Manila's China Town instead of renting some from a few people that offered.

We took our first trike ride to what was called China town but felt similar to everything else in Manila with a few more Asian specialty shops. The trike wasn't powered by a motorcycle like most I'd seen but instead was powered by a very ambitious man that let us talk him down to 50 Pesos and after we got to our destination I felt a little bad considering how much work he had to do to get us there and I reasoned he was the one that let took the money.

We walked around and couldn't find any pants that Meg would both want to own and that were a reasonable price. We ended up going to a near by mall that was full of local shops. The mall felt more like an indoor market. Every shop had a space about the size of a storage unit and with the metal gate to boot. We stopped by a church that was on the way and took a peak inside. While we were there a wedding was finishing up. After all of the trouble to get pants, we made our way back to Intramuros to get our visas.

We got to the office and picked up the correct forms. We decided that we didn't have everything we needed (flight number coming to Manila) and we wouldn't have enough time for the visas to get processed that day. We headed out into the inner walls of Intramuros for some adventure.

    

    

    

   

Intramuros has history and you can feel it as well as see it. The experience is more than some rusting cannons, old chapels, and congested streets. It gives you a feel and a look at what Manila is and the Philippines to an extent. Intramuros is an historical site exploited for tourism, used to house the poor, school the well off, and give place for businesses. It is an experience. I left Intramuros with a new connection to the place I had been staying at for several days. I also left feeling a little more comfortable with mingling in the swarms of locals...but only a little.

We went to SM Mall of Asia to plan out what we do the next day about the visas and the like. We ended up back at Green Belt and saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A movie in a nice place like Green Belt and being in the Philippines' largest city, I would have expected to pay more than the ~5 USD but it felt a good price. Movies are way too over priced in the states. I thought it was very interesting and efficient that when buying your ticket you pick your seat ahead of time and are shown where the seat is in relationship to the screen. I'm not sure the practice would work in the US but I wish it would catch on, because you don't have to walk into a crowded theater looking for seats in the dark.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one of those rare gems that I would call both an entertaining and good movie. To give you a more defined understanding of what I mean by those two words...An Entertaining movie that I didn't think was a good movie: 300, and a good movie that wasn't entertaining The Quite Earth. Even if you don't want to see the movie for some reason, you should see the opening credits. The opening credits are vivid, raw, inspiring, and frankly you won't know it until you've seen the movie but also makes perfect sense for the movie. The opening credits actually give you a good preview to the movie if you know what each part means. I didn't think the opening credits made sense until I saw the movie. By the time the movie was out, my watch read well past 2 A.M. It was a long movie, but I had no idea while watching it. We made our way home and had plenty to recall on the journey to bed.

The next day we made our way back to the government office and spent the better part of four hours getting our visas with everyone telling us to go to someone else. The visa we got was for an additional two months from the time we had arrived in the country, which is the typical tourist extension visa that costs 3030 pesos. I was happy when it was over and learned that the government website was very wrong in this case because it quoted a lower amount, a different amount of days, and the ability for multiple reentry. We spent the rest of the day at a cafe planning out our Japan and Korea trips before we'd have to set out for Taal Volcano—worlds smallest active volcano. We went to a friends place that we met with the CouchSurfing event and left a few things with him, while we made the journey at night to the volcano.