Last year, while I was working away from home I posted one of my complete travel memoirs - Peloponese and the Ionian Islands - so this year, as I'm going to be away for a few weeks again soon, I thought I'd do the same this year. This time I'll post a memoir from 1995 when I visited the Philippines. It has been quite heavily edited to remove some personal information which I'd rather not spread around the internet.
Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.
Part 1
According to the official survey the Philippines consist of 7107 Islands. Of these roughly 2000 are inhabited although only about 500 are larger than, for the sake of example, Bilston Town Centre. The largest of the islands though is Luzon which at 104,683 square kilometres is the size of Ireland and Wales together. It is on Luzon that the capitol city, Manila, is located. Metro Manila was formed in 1975 from the amalgamation of 17 towns and communities and, at the last census, had a population of over ten million.
It is a city of startling contrasts. Officially a Roman Catholic country the money changers in Manila, and there are thousands of them, are without exception Islamic. At one end of Manila's social spectrum there are millionaires who live in palatial mansions while at the other there is the Tondo - a grim slum of a shanty town which runs for mile after hideous mile parallel to the South Superhighway and the railroad tracks, and houses one and a half million people in poverty and filth. In the centre of the city, completely surrounded by some of the least lovely modern concrete developments I have ever seen is Intramuros, a walled city of beautiful mock Spanish-Mediteranean buildings and narrow winding streets. Lavishly decorated restaurants serving a bewildering variety of world cuisine sit cheek by jowl with branches of the Jollibee - a sort of down market Filipino fast food joint.
We arrived at night about a week before Christmas and everywhere were signs of civic festivity - enormous illuminated stars hanging above the street, multicoloured flashing snowflakes four foot across at the airport looking for all the world like the displays on demented slot machines, giant snowmen painted on buildings in a country that has never even seen snow, Santa Clauses and Reindeer by the sleighful. Our route wound from the airport through the city past the seedy looking twin fun fairs of Star City and Boom na Boom which were illuminated with a desperate garishness apart from one of Boom na Boom's stranger looking attractions - a futuristic fortress that would have been at home in a Mad Max film with a sign announcing it as 'The Dark Star'. Both fairgrounds were spookily absent of revellers.
At the hotel, the Las Palmas on Mabini Street, we were all too tired from the eighteen hour flight to do more than check in, get our instructions for morning, order wake-up calls and fall straight into our beds. Tomorrow the trip would begin properly. For now there was just the roar of the air conditioning and the rumble of traffic to send us gently into our slumbers.
Note: this trip was made at Christmas 1995. In the time since then I'm sure much has changed so it may not be a great idea to treat this as a guide. Treat it as a memoir, which - give or take some editing - is exactly what it is.
Part 1
According to the official survey the Philippines consist of 7107 Islands. Of these roughly 2000 are inhabited although only about 500 are larger than, for the sake of example, Bilston Town Centre. The largest of the islands though is Luzon which at 104,683 square kilometres is the size of Ireland and Wales together. It is on Luzon that the capitol city, Manila, is located. Metro Manila was formed in 1975 from the amalgamation of 17 towns and communities and, at the last census, had a population of over ten million.
It is a city of startling contrasts. Officially a Roman Catholic country the money changers in Manila, and there are thousands of them, are without exception Islamic. At one end of Manila's social spectrum there are millionaires who live in palatial mansions while at the other there is the Tondo - a grim slum of a shanty town which runs for mile after hideous mile parallel to the South Superhighway and the railroad tracks, and houses one and a half million people in poverty and filth. In the centre of the city, completely surrounded by some of the least lovely modern concrete developments I have ever seen is Intramuros, a walled city of beautiful mock Spanish-Mediteranean buildings and narrow winding streets. Lavishly decorated restaurants serving a bewildering variety of world cuisine sit cheek by jowl with branches of the Jollibee - a sort of down market Filipino fast food joint.
We arrived at night about a week before Christmas and everywhere were signs of civic festivity - enormous illuminated stars hanging above the street, multicoloured flashing snowflakes four foot across at the airport looking for all the world like the displays on demented slot machines, giant snowmen painted on buildings in a country that has never even seen snow, Santa Clauses and Reindeer by the sleighful. Our route wound from the airport through the city past the seedy looking twin fun fairs of Star City and Boom na Boom which were illuminated with a desperate garishness apart from one of Boom na Boom's stranger looking attractions - a futuristic fortress that would have been at home in a Mad Max film with a sign announcing it as 'The Dark Star'. Both fairgrounds were spookily absent of revellers.
At the hotel, the Las Palmas on Mabini Street, we were all too tired from the eighteen hour flight to do more than check in, get our instructions for morning, order wake-up calls and fall straight into our beds. Tomorrow the trip would begin properly. For now there was just the roar of the air conditioning and the rumble of traffic to send us gently into our slumbers.
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