Life Without Poutine: Manila

I arrived at Incheon Airport at 5:30 am on Friday morning, ready to catch my flight to Manila. Now as usual, my experience at the airport proved to be a bit shaky. However, this was the first time where it was of my own doing. When I went to Toronto in May, I took two suitcases of stuff with me so that when I flew home at the end of my contract, I’d have less things to take with me. I foolishly, though, returned to Korea with only my large piece of luggage, thinking I’d taken enough stuff home already that I wouldn’t have enough to necessitate two bags on my final flight home in August. Turns out I was wrong; my one and only piece of luggage was 12 kg overweight. Crap. (You were right, Doris.)

Thankfully, the airport provided a service where you could just buy a box for $8, fill it with as much junk as you need to, and use that as your second luggage. A final thank you to Korea for this. Have I told you that I love you yet?

The problem with this is that I now had a large suitcase and an almost equally large cardboard box to carry with me to Manila, Honolulu, Sacrament, and San Francisco. Sonofabitch.

I arrived in Manila at around 11 am, exhausted from my 5 hour bus ride to Incheon Airport and the subsequent flight, so as soon as I left the airport, I agreed to the first voice that shouted, “Taxi?!”

This proved to be a mistake.

I was asked to pay 1, 600 pesos upfront and got into a minivan. I had no idea what the conversion rate was, but because I had just spent a year dealing with currencies that run in the thousands, I hoped it would be similar. Besides, although I initially planned on taking public transit to my hostel, that was before I gained a second piece of luggage and a ukelele. On top of that, I was so tired that I figured it would be worth it for a ride directly to my hostel, where I’d be able to dump all my crap.

It turns out one US dollar comes to about 45 pesos, which means I paid almost $40 for my ride. Crap.

Still, I had made it—although it didn’t look like much of a hostel. The wall said Pink Manila, which was the name of my hostel, but I walked in to a gym with beefed up Philipino dudes eyeing me while they pumped some iron (do they still call it that, or was that like an 80’s/90’s expression?) I felt like I was fresh meat walking into a prison cell, and they were trying to decide if they wanted to make me their bitch or not. There was also a dude at the door who watched me with unblinking eyes and arms crossed as I struggled to get my crap through the door.

Hi, Manila. Nice to meetcha.

Eventually, I was directed to the elevator, which had a sign that said the hostel was on the 5^th floor. Phew.

Once the doors opened up, two things immediately caught my eye: beer and a swimming pool. I was home.

I took my stuff up to my room, and returned to the front desk, where I rewarded myself with a couple beers and chatted up Chrissy, the hostel owner, for a while.

After some talking, I started to rethink my career path; this girl looked to be my age, had her own hostel, and had already visited easily over 30 countries in her life. In fact, in the previous six weeks, she’d just been to Montreal, Cape Town, and two other cities that weren't even remotely close to one another. And she was looking to buy some farmland in Cape Town!

I also learned that Manila is definitely not a good place to live. Apparently the city gets flooded annually during typhoon season, and the government does nothing to help its citizens. So basically, if you own property on the first floor of anything, you’re pretty much boned.

So essentially, there are two seasons in Manila: Typhoon season and Construction season. (Although Construction season may be year-long, since everything is under constant construction.) The city is currently working on an expressway going directly to the airport, so the roads in that area are always brutally congested, as I immediately learned on my cab ride to the hostel. Plus, roads and buildings are always being repaired.

There are also giant buildings that are constantly being worked on. There were a couple buildings by my hostel that looked like they were going to be Hyatt or Marriott-styled hotel buildings. Chrissy said those buildings were taking forever to be built. What blew my mind, though, was that there were guys working on scaffolding that went up to terrifying heights along the building, with no signs of harnesses or any sort of safety nets or equipment to speak of. I mean, this isn’t New York City in the 1930’s we’re talking about here!

Rejuvenated by a couple San Miguel beers, I left the hostel and walked out into the rain in search of the Spanish colonial area of the city. There was a church or two I wanted to check out. (Chrissy said the rain was always stop and go—torrential downpour could stop any moment—and she was totally right; from the time I stepped into the elevator on the 5^th floor and when I got to the bottom floor, the rain had already eased up.)

I walked to Taft, one of the major roads going north/south, and waved down a bus. Well, it wasn’t so much a bus as a mixed breeding of a short bus and a low rider (minus the hydraulics, of course.) For a whopping 20 pesos (less than 50), I hopped in, hunched down, and walked my way to a seat on the low-ceilinged bus. The bus seated two rows of passengers facing each other in sweltering heat.

I also made note of the Light Rail station nearby and promised myself I’d ride it at some point. Just cuz.

The traffic, as I already mentioned, was ridiculously congested and often had to drive through detours because of construction.

One thing’s for sure, though: Korean bus drivers (and Nicaraguan taxi drivers) would be terrified to drive Manila! They drive with total reckless abandon! There’s a constant orchestra of horns blasting from left and right, as one car gets cut off after another.

This, I thought, is the Filipino experience.

I got dropped off at my street, except it wasn’t named the correct street. I kept walking north before eventually asking somebody where Ayala was, and he directed me back to where I had just walked from. I then asked a police officer if this was in fact Ayala, and he said it was, despite it being called Business Street (or something along those lines). I quickly learned that correct street signs are not something to take for granted in Manila; more often than not, though, the problem was that signs were just flat out missing. In fact, my cabbie initially had trouble finding my hostel because it was supposed to be on the corner of Bautista and Don Pedro, except there was no sign indicating Don Pedro.

I eventually got to the colonial neighbourhood and found the Intramuros church. It’s the oldest church in the Philippines. It was pretty on the inside and out, but I think I’ve finally had enough of churches. In all of my recent travels, between churches and temples, I’m all out of oooh’s and aaah’s. It’s getting to the point where I see His face and I think, You again?! Can’t you smile just once?! Let me see the Buddy Christ smile.

Still, I was happy I saw it.

Once I stepped outside, though, the downpour had returned. Within two blocks, I had doubled in weight. A vendor walking down the street scorched me for close to $10 for a desperately needed umbrella, and I continued on towards what is apparently the oldest Chinatown in the world.

Except…it didn’t feel like much of a Chinatown. Sure, there were a couple of Chinese spots to eat here and there, but there were also places like McDonalds and Starbucks. And the majority of the rest of the neighbourood was just various stores all selling the same thing: shirts. Shirts, shirts, and more shirts.

Honestly, I wasn’t impressed with Chinatown, but I actually still enjoyed myself. It was nice to just get lost in the neighbourhood and walk among the locals in the pouring rain. (I actually did get lost; I just made random lefts and rights for a good 20 minutes.)

Eventually, after randomly stumbling upon a couple churches (neither of which I ventured into), I spotted the Light Rail and headed straight towards it so I could get back to my hostel.

Now I’m still not sure why, but for some reason, there was a huge line of people waiting on the right hand side of the stairs leading up to the ticket booth. Yet there were also people walking up the left hand side. Clearly, I headed up the left hand side. Nobody stopped me, so I figured I wasn’t doing anything terribly wrong. If I got in trouble, I could just play the foreigner card.

I bought my ticket from a very friendly woman who asked where I was from and whether or not I was Filipino. This was not the first time this happened. In fact, the first words out of the mouth of the customs guy at the airport weren’t about my luggage or anything; he asked, “You got any Filipino blood in you?” When I answered that I didn’t, he refused to believe me and said, “Nah, you totally do. You’re one of us!” and gave me back my passport with a smile.

The train ride proved to be another interesting experience. I’ve ridden packed subways back home in Toronto, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. People were crammed in so tightly that I felt like I owed the person in front of me dinner by the end of the ride. The ones I felt really bad for, though, were the poor short people. One dude basically had to turn his head so as to not jam his nose into another guy’s armpit. And every time the train stopped to let people off, somehow even more people managed to jump on!

I eventually made it back to my hostel and was all ready for an early bedtime, but the lack of working AC in my room made it particularly difficult to fall asleep. After a while, I was joined in the room by an Irish fellow named Rob. After getting the AC turned on for us, he said he was going to jump into the pool with some of the other guests and invited me to join them. I figured I might as well.

Knowing I had a long flight to Honolulu and a full day of traveling with Honey and Lex ahead of me, though, I didn’t stay too long and, and I soon went back to bed.

A restless hour or so later, I met Jenny, the third guest in our room. She was a fellow Canadian (British Columbia), fellow Native English Teacher in Korea, and all around awesome person. She taught in Gyeongju and was 1.5 years into her two year stint in the land of Kimchi. Like myself, Jenny was stuck in Manila for a night on her way to a much more exciting place.

We ended up talking more or less in the dark for longer than I think either of us had expected to about Korea, Canadia, and that weird thing called adult life and how it always has surprises in store for us, both unbelievably positive and heart-shatteringly negative, no matter how prepared we think we might be.

I think we eventually conked out at some time around 3:00, despite the raucous partying going on downstairs (our hostel was in the university area.)

Jenny and I parted ways the following morning after McDonalds breakfast, as her flight was much earlier than mine.

The Korean flare

On my own yet again, I ventured north to nearby Jose Rizal Park. Having ridden the bus and the light rail, I figured I’d give walking a shot, so as to get a ground level feel for the city.

I stumbled upon this beautiful park along the way.