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.

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.