Oh dear, not a great start. Been here 2 weeks now and I haven't updated this at all yet!
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| St Agustin Church |
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Well,as best as my memory will serve, after a mammoth 12 hour stopover in Riyadh, and somewhere in the region of 36 hours awake, we got on the sleepy flight to Manila. Arrival was a rude awakening. We were accosted by cab drivers as expected, and flew through the streets at high speed amongst the thousands of other vehicles in the garish light of the capital. The cabbie didn't quite know where our hostel was, and asked helpful questions such as "is it on the left or right?". We managed to hold back sarky responses such as "you're the bloody driver".
The hostel; Our Melting Pot, was a nice place. Small, but good setup, and a really good free breakfast. The girls on reception were really helpful too, but the guys really struggled.
First night we went out for a wander, stumbled into the red-light district full of old white men with young Philippino girls, so walked straight back. Found a small outside bar serving buckets (different kind to what you got in Laos and Thailand) of San Miguel for £2.70.
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| Jeepneys are fun |
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Second day in Manila we went for a wander, then on a walking tour of the only touristy bits of Manila, Intramanos and San Agustin Church, plus a park where Rizal was held hostage and executed (Rizal is the guy who incited the Philippinos to kick out the Spanish). Exciting as it wasn't a proper tour, just two of the girls from the hostel taking a few of us out, so they bundled us onto a Jeepney and took us through the fringes of the rougest part of Manila to get there! Jo and I got chatting with a few people, and that night we went out for drinks at a cheap Mexican bar. Got on really well with a Canadian couple Kim and Ryan who were sadly leaving the next morning.
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| A church at the entrance to Estramanos |
Day three and we hit a bit of a lull. So far, jet-lag had only meant we struggled to get to sleep a bit, and I woke up wide awake at 6am, but it beat the shit out of us on day three, and we stayed in the hostel trying to sort out flights and a rough itinerary to get as many of these islands as possible. Eventually left at 4.30pm, and walked to a mall. This sounds uncultured, and it sort of is, but sadly it's because Philippino cuisine is fast food or fertilised chicken eggs. If you want good food in Manila, you need to go to one of the millions of malls.
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| Unmarked grave at American War Cemetary |
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Day four we navigated ourselves via jeepney to the American War Cemetery. There were over 17,000 graves, many unnamed as they simply didn't know and so are unmarked. Every single one was buried with full honours of a funeral however, hence why it took over a decade to complete. There was also a cenotaph in the centre of this huge place with a load of murials of battles with stories giving loads of information. I was happy there for ages, but Jo gets bored quickly in these sort of places, so after she had respectfully seen as much as she could bare, I left her sunning herself.
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| A small collection of the 17,000 |
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We wandered onto the huge Mall of Asia after lunch, which we expected to be hideous, but wasn't too bad at all. I tried to take us for a nice walk afterwards, but we seemed to be unable to escape half-built condos, so we gave up and got a taxi home.
Stopped off for a coffee on the way back as it was only 7ish, and we were both falling asleep already.
Day five, and we were done with Manila. I'd read that it is a similar city to Bangkok, and you can have enough of it quickly, but it's not. Bangkok has a lot more to do, see, and stay at than Manila. We got up early and walked down to hail one of millions of cabs that had been hooting us for days, but didn't take into consideration that seemingly the entire population of Manila either a) drive a cab, or b) take a cab to work in the morning. We waited for ages, waving at everything. Luckily in the end we caught one down a sidestreet dropping someone off, and got to the airport in time to fly to Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan.
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