My trip to Manila was killer! First a little background on the Philippines. It was 'discovered' by Magellan, the first guy to sail around the world, and claimed by Spain in 1521. Spain ruled until the late 1800's when it sold the Philippines to the United States. The people however were ready for independence and a few wars broke out. Japan even occupied the country for a short time in WWII, but eventually in 1946 they were granted their independence. So as you can imagine there is a lot of Spanish influence in the city of Manila. And of course there is some American influence as well. Without offending anyone, I would say that the Philippines aren't very 'Asian' at all. If anything it reminded me of Central America, especially Nicaragua, a lot.
Much more than anywhere else I have been in Asia. I wasn't expecting that at all and it was really interesting. With about 31 hours there we had a whole day to explore. So my fellow FA, Lu, and I went off exploring. As I was hoping to track down a copy of Japanese Rosetta Stone, our first stop was the Greenhills Shopping Center. Kinda like a mall and a flea market met and had a love child, the shopping center is freaking huge! Huge. I am sure there were a lot of things we did not see, Rosetta Stone being one of them. However there was a little fella that came up to us asking if we wanted to buy software, saying he had the 26 languages DVD's for sale. But it just felt to sketcky especially since I know you can get it in Shanghai and it works. So I avoided him. For me getting to Greenhills was fun. We decided to forgo the $5 taxi ride and hop on the metro line. I personally love experiencing public transportation and would much rather use it than a taxi. It was great, got us where we needed to go and we had to walk a little bit to get to Greenhills.
Now here is where I was reminded of an important lesson. As an often solo traveling woman I am often on the defensive and tend to think on the defensive too. (See dad? I am careful.) Meaning that I don't often trust people. At least random people on the street. Remember this story from Tel Aviv about the taxi driver who tried to swindle us? So when we were walking along the street and a torrential downpour broke out, I was hesitant to jump into the back of the Jeepney (similar to a bus), or even a taxi, as I was afraid they would try and charge us a crazy price. But we jumped in the Jeepney anyways and drive about half a mile more to Greenhills. Come to find out, the guy wasn't even going to charge us for the lift! Lu gave him a few US dollars and said he was very pleasantly surprised. Good lesson to be learned, not everyone is out to take advantage of you. (Don't worry Dad, I will still be careful.)
After our shopping adventure, which took a few hours longer than I would have thought, there was just so much stuff to see, we headed to Intermuros, the old Spanish city in Manila, where we checked out the old fort and the cathedral before returning to the hotel for a 2 hour massage, that cost $15. :-0 I actually felt guilty only paying the girl this amount. After the massage we stumbled across the street to get some dinner. We happily found a traditional Filipino desert, the Bibingka, which we tried and loved!
There are so many other things that I would have liked to done, but for our short time there I think we did pretty good. Hopefully there will be another trip there in the near future. But for now I am happy to be going back to Spain on Tuesday, to Malaga. And then next month off to Bangkok and Hong Kong! Loving life.
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