Back in 2002, when I was spent eight weeks in Tokyo as an intern, the only English channel available on TV was BBC News. I vividly remember an ad that ran frequently during breaks. A camera, presumably aboard a chopper, would zoom into a tiny, sun-kissed, green island surrounded by turquoise water. And then a caption in small font would appear at the top “If you do not like this one, we have 6,537 more (or some number like that) ”, accompanied by a logo of Philippines tourism at bottom
Rewind a further 17 years, and on a tour of South East Asia in 1985, my parents had visited Bangkok, Pattaya, Hong Kong, Singapore, and as strange as it sounds, Manila. I recall them describing, many a time over the next couple of decades, shopping for cotton clothes and getting drenched under a waterfall aboard a bamboo raft.
With these memories working at their subconscious level and having received rave reviews from friends who had recently visited, I was keen to pay a visit for a long time. Once I even booked tickets to Manila, but had to cancel the trip at the last moment as I had a job interview coming up. It was in a way a stroke of good luck, as when I finally did go, I added Boracay to the plan as well.
Traveling is hugely liberating in the sense that it gives you a chance at an alternate life. I like to travel like a cash strapped student would: it’s something I should have done in my teenage and early twenties, but it's never too late to live your dreams. I thus decided to take an overnight flight to Manila to save a night of hotel expense. A typhoon had hit Manila just that day and schools and offices were closed, but hoping that normalcy would be restored the next day, I headed to the airport after work, slept for a few hours on at the Singapore airport, and boarded the 2 am flight to reach Manila at 5:30 in the morning.
The airport terminal was like a bus station, and like one in a third world country. Money exchange counters were closed, there was no coffee and the tourist information counter staff was "attending to something just as important", as a placard on the desk mentioned. Armed with a map of the Manila train system, and another one of the area surrounding the hotel, I swapped the comforts of an airport cab in favor of Manila's chaotic public transport. Walking out of the airport, I hopped onto a Jeepney - think of a really long Mahindra Jeep, with ten seats on each side at the back instead of 2 or 3. It dropped me at the Baclaran station, where at 6am in the morning, about 100 other Jeepneys were lined one after another heading to different parts of the city. These Jeepneys and the metro were the backbone of the public transport system, complemented by buses in some modern parts of town and cycle rickshaws in the older ones. I took the metro to Quirino station, and a short walk through a patch of slum, a slew of seedy bars, and a row of quaint restaurants and guesthouses brought me to my hotel. It was located in the old precinct of Malate, an erstwhile thriving neighborhood that fell to unscrupulous elements and is now fighting back to restore its old world charm.
In almost every blog, I write that the locals were friendly, but Filipinos have got to be strong contenders for the title of the friendliest people on the planet: I was greeted by the hotel staff with warm smiles, and smiles I got in plenty all through the rest of the trip. I dropped off my small backpack at the hotel and spent the morning exploring the old neighborhoods of Manila.
After a short peek into the nearby Malate Church, I walked west towards Manila Bay and then headed north along the promenade where some locals were taking their morning walks. The atmosphere was somewhat akin to the Worli Sea Face: a mix of modern and dilapidated buildings, the grey sea, cars whizzing by, but minus the sea link. I turned eastward at the US Embassy and entered Rizal Park, named after the hero of the Filipino's freedom movement towards the end of the 19th century. He was executed in this area and a memorial was setup to honor him.
A short walk from the park brought me to the walled city of Intramuros, the historic core of Manila during the Spanish occupation. It seemed that every building there was built over and over again about 7 or 8 times: destroyed by earthquake, then by British invasion, then again by an earthquake, then perhaps by the Japanese invasion, then again by an earthquake, and so on. Most of the town lay in shabby condition, with the exception of a few well maintained buildings used as Government offices, shops or business centers. The most impressive of the lot was the San Augustin Church, with its beautiful cathedral and cloisters-turned-museum.
A block away was the Manila Cathedral, whose façade was strongly inspired by the Notre Dame in Paris, though nowhere as stately.
A couple of hundred yards north of the Intramuros gates was Fort Santiago: destroyed for the most part except some walls, the main gate and some storehouses. A museum dedicated to the life of Rizal stood in the compound.
Across the river from Intramuros was Quiapo: it is to Manila what Bhuleshwar is to Mumbai or Chandni Chowk to Delhi. A mad rush of shops, street vendors, people, and vehicles of all shapes and sizes - to the extent permitted by the narrow streets. Given the heavy downpour the previous day, the area was littered with filth and I wanted to get out soon. I nevertheless paid short visits to the Quiapo and Santa Cruz churches: these were quite ordinary from the historical or architectural perspective, but were overflowing with devotees even on a Saturday.
It was past noon by this time and I headed back to the hotel and took a nice siesta. In the evening I headed to Makati City, the face of modern Manila. I had to change train lines at the Taft Avenue terminus, where I encountered the most bizarre ritual I have ever seen at a train station. Given the small size of the station, all departing passengers were kept on hold behind turnstiles as the arriving ones cleared the premises. Then they had to wait again at the entrance to the platform as passengers of another arriving train alighted. A hundred-plus staff was managing this complicated boarding and alighting process. I have boarded a plane faster in some instances than it took me to get onto a local train here.
Makati was quite the opposite of old manila: wide roads instead of narrow streets, big malls in place of street markets, skyscrapers giving way to slums, order and cleanliness in place of chaos and filth. Surrounding the core of office buildings and malls were "villages": it seemed the elites of Filipino society occupied the large bungalows therein. Manila was a challenging place in terms of finding vegetarian food on the go. Even the sphagetti available at Jollibees, the largest chain of fast food restaurants in the Philippines, contained pork in it. Train stations had stalls selling dumplings and rice-and-meat combos, and there were no veggie options.
As a result, I had survived the day so far on apples, bananas, chocolate milk and mixed nuts. Makati however had a wide selection of international cuisine: I got a nice pizza at one of the local joints, headed back to the hotel and called it a day.
The city was abuzz at 5 am in the morning, on a Sunday, as I headed to the airport for my flight to Boracay. I took a Jeepney to an intermediate point and changed to another one to the airport: given that even the most uneducated Filipino spoke a bit of English, and was ever willing to help, even the madness that was Manila was becoming navigable. My flight was from the new terminal, which was somewhat closer to international standards. Witnessing Sunday mass at the "chapel" right next to the check in area was somewhat of a shock. This country took its Catholic faith very seriously. Even in the Makati malls I had strolled through the previous evening, I had noticed signs for chapels within the premises. But to be clear about the multicultural ethos, there was a Muslim prayer room as well at the airport.
An hour's flight aboard a 50 seater Bombardier to Caticlan airport, a 5 minute walk to the ferry nearby, a ten minute boat ride across the strait to Boracay and a half hour walk took me to the gorgeous White Beach, consistently voted as one of the best in the world the past few years. 4 kms of white sand, blue water and coconut trees, with blue-and-white sailboats on the horizon and kites in the sky. The thing about beach vacations is that there isn’t much to blog about. You get magnificent
views from the flight, run barefoot on the soft sand, have a beer, take a dip in the water, have a beer again, get a massage, have another beer, and eat a lot all day long, and then repeat the whole routine the next day.
Except that I don’t drink that much, and I didn’t have another day at this earthly paradise. The long return trip included the walk back to the jetty, the boat ride, then a 2 hour bus ride to Kalibo airport - a different one from the one I arrived at - and a longish flight which included a stopover at Cebu. I am transgressing from the topic here, but in case you have read my blog about Why I read, endless waits can be a source of pleasure if you have a good book in hand. On the way back, I plodded through a few chapters of Godel, Escher, Bach: it’s a book about how "strange loops" can give rise to intelligence. It intertwines music, art, mathematics, artificial intelligence, genetics, zen Buddhism, Achilles and much more! It’s a mind bender, but it’s a book which you will either give up after 100 pages, or add it to your all time top 10 list!
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