Phil..Philippines!?!?!

Before my arrival to the Philippines, I did some research on the area. I mostly focused on points of interest and information on that would be need to know. Some of the information that you should know is about the crime, scams, and terrorism in the country. I found myself a little weary at the prospect of being in the Philippines and ate it hard. I let it digest and pass through me. Fear isn't always a useful tool for life. Fear can keep you from living your life. With only the useful fear left in me, I found myself in the Manila Airport.

The Manila Airport isn't difficult to navigate once you've departed your plane. I planed to exchange some money at the airport. I had read about the process of exchanging money in the Philippines, which left me suspect of money exchangers on the whole. I reluctantly waited in line to exchange 200 USD, as we had less than 1 USD in NT because we planned it so well. There was a man idle, just to the right of the line and eying everyone. I was worried that the man was watching for people exchanging large amounts to mark them for mugging. The man was actually on break. Once his break was over, he went inside the money exchanger's booth and started helping the older man with a quick hand on the calculator. After the money exchange, we made our way outside.

Outside there was a man and a handmade sign with Meg's name on it. The airport security checked credentials and I grew nervous. Once we were moving in the shuttle, I slipped into an easy state of calm. Getting to Kabayan Hotel Pasay was quick and easy enough. The scenery at night was familiar to what I've seen in Guatemala. In Manila, like in Guatemala, security is an issue. There are guards in most places, and those include places even of a lower economic standard. The security at Kabayan was always helpful. When we arrived around 4 AM the security behaved no differently.

We checked in and waited while they prepared it for us. The hotel was nice enough to not charge us an additional night to check in eleven hours early. We got to our room with heavy eyelids. Meg placed all of our damp clothes from Taipei that weren't fished drying around the room. Within minutes of arrival to our room it had a hobo moved in look. I plugged in my laptop and other electronics on the 220 Volt plug-ins and passed out shortly after that. Most electrical plug-ins will either be European style (two circular holes) and American style (two horizontal holes) or just American style, but will be above the American 110 Volts and otherwise be the same all around. For your electronics just get a down converter or make sure they can take 220 V, most laptops can.

I awoke in a dark room with a single window. The view was a beige wall of boredom. We spent over two hours figuring out where to go get food at. I did manage to leave for a few on a trek across the street to the nearby 7-Eleven and back. By the time we were leaving the hotel the sun had slipped away. Getting into the cab, I made sure he turned the meter on before taking us to a nearby restaurant and shopping center. You should always make sure the meter is on before you agree to leave or you'll get over charged. If the driver doesn't want to use the meter just get out or haggle the price. Meg and I surveyed the area once we arrived at our destination and settled on Teriyaki Boy. The food was uninspired and over priced according to my taste-bud to dollar ratio. I took a few shots of Manila's skyline from the place (first photo in the post) and one of the area.

Dinner left us wanting more and we got some ice-cream with kiwi and a lot of shaved ice. The desert left me wanting more. I hadn't planned well how much we'd be spending and wasn't sure how much the cab ride home would be, since on the way there we came a round about way because of Manila's traffic that makes all others in comparison look desirable. I found the place we went for dinner was a preview of what was to come with the rest of Manila. Manila is a heavily populated and busy place. The City of Manila is also very unoriginal. The place we went to had a lot of fastfood places similar to the USA. The music you'd hear walking around was easily over 95% American, and most of the rest was Korean, Japanese, Spanish, etc... I found it rare to hear local music in public places. So after spending some money on food I found I didn't have a lot. I was a little paranoid the first week or so about being mugged so I never carried much on me. I played it safe and spent no additional money. We went on a walk.

Near by there was a theater for shows; we didn't go in. They had Mama Mia as their main show when we went by. The front entrance had a great fountain and some strong lights at ground level. A few children made some shadow-puppets with the lights. Catching a cab wasn't too much trouble from out front on the street from the theater. Letting the cab driver know how to get us to where we were staying was a simple process because of the hotel's key place holder card. The place holder card even has contact information for the hotel, a map, and their address. The hotel has you give them your room key and you're given a place holder card in exchange. The point is keep you from losing their key, and to make me paranoid about someone come into our room.

Back at the hotel,we tried planning our next move for tomorrow and beyond. Accomplishing little we fell asleep. We got up late on Saturday and decided we might need passport photographs for extending our visas at Intramuros on Monday. I had already brought extra passport pics with me from Costco. We went to the SM Mall of Asia. The mall was huge! The mall was a clone or mirror of Manila. SM Mall of Asia isn't anything different than you'd see in the USA or Canada. I know the mall is huge so it makes sense it has some slightly unusual mall items like an ice skating rink and such, but really no different than the super malls in the USA. We got the photos taken and walked around. The book stores we found there had most of their books in English, much like everything in Manila. We ate some food at Tokyo Cafe. Tokyo Cafe was adequate for our needs but not much more than that. We picked up the photo prints once we were done with our food. While leaving for Green Belt 3 in Makati district, I took some shots of the mall's very large LED dome display.

One lucky thing we were able to plan the night before was that we found a group meet-up for Saturday night. We found the event through CouchSurfing but it was also on MeetUp.com, which is where most of the people attending found it. The event was to be at Green Belt. Green Belt 3 was simple to get to by cab and the Mexican restaurant we were going to was equally easy to locate. The greeting person outside of the restaurant had an entertaining accent when she said hola, which came out more shola. We arrived a little late to the gathering but weren't the last to show up. We thought it might be locals only there. I was surprised to find out that there was a diverse group of people there. There were a few locals, an Indian gentleman, a Scottish woman, an Australian woman, an Australian man, a Mexican-American, and later we also found a Persian. Some of the foreigners were just visiting for business and others were working in Manila. It was nice to meet-up with some other travelers. We got a lot of good advice and connections. I made a few friends on FaceBook.

By the time we got back to the hotel I was looking forward to some personal time in which I could just sit quietly and read. I'm not sure when it happened but I fell blissfully asleep and woke again late in the afternoon. A trend was beginning to show. We mostly spent the time awake planning for what we'd do once we were no longer at the hotel and were to eat that evening. We finally got out after dark and found a nice cafe. Returned home without any additional stops and rested up for our adventure at Intramuros the next day. At Intramuros it is an adventure in bureaucracy indeed.

Spoiler Alert: Since I'm writing all of this well after leaving Manila I have a few parting thoughts about the city as a whole...

Manila feels like an Asian-Spanish-Twist on America. You hear English a lot, American music, American fastfood, etc...it just all has a few tweaks. It will feel familiar and foreign at times, but as a whole just polluted by all of the jeepneys (like small buses) and cars traveling about at all ours.