Acclimating to Asia

December 5-6, 2006

After a near-mishap involving a Ziploc bag of liquids tearing during security clearance and a tearful separation from Mom at JFK airport, my flight to Hong Kong clocks in at a pleasant if slightly leg-cramping 18 hours. Cathay Pacific is a great airline for two reasons: for one, the food is good (hot noodles! and yogurt! and brownies!), and there are unlimited snacks (cookies! and apples! and peanuts!). Second, they give you these cozy socks with rubber bumps on the bottom and a toothbrush and mints and a mask to put over your eyes, which went very well with my fuzzy neck pillow. It is a not-so-great airline because of the poor movie selection; I was forced to watch My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Trust the Man (which is apparently a romantic comedy with David Duchovny and Maggie Gyllenhaal whose release in the States was so unanticipated that I didn't realize the film existed).

The cool part about the flight was that we went over the North Pole, and it felt like being on top of the world when you watched the little flight path map. Since I was zooming ahead several time zones, the sun was sort of out for part of the trip and I could look out the window and see the icy terrain all cracked and jagged below.

The Hong Kong airport is super high-tech and rather metallic, and it had a restaurant that boasted deep-fried ramen. (Ew.)

After a painless two-hour flight to Manila, the first thing I noticed was that is was noticably hot and humid, even at midnight. My other salient observation was that the rest of the passengers arriving at Ninoy Aquino International Airport were Filipino, and they were greeted by hordes of jubilant family members. As I learned later (thanks, Lonely Planet), the average Filipino has five children (Bambi [see below for introduction] explained to me that he has 62 first cousins since Leticia has so many brothers and sisters), and 1/10 of the population lives abroad -- meaning homecoming around Christmastime is a crowded, hectic, boisterous, weeks-long celebration.

(Another travel-guide-informed realization -- one of the reasons the Philippines changed its stance on Iraq when one of its own was kidnapped there a couple of years back was because so much of the population lives and works abroad. If they had refused to comply with the demands of the kidnappers, it was basically saying that the government doesn't care about the 10 percent of the population abroad and the even larger percentage with a family member abroad.)

December 7, 2006

In Manila, I am staying with Leticia, a friend Mom met in graduate school some 35 years ago, and her family -- including her daughter Nicole, who is a year older than me, and her son Bambi, and his adorable three-month-old son Adrian. Nicole works for 411 (yes, that 411 -- international assistance), which apparently is staffed by a lot of Filipinos. She says it's a pretty good job except when Americans call asking for addresses or phone numbers after a night of heavy boozing.) They -- and their staff -- live in a seven-story building in Malate, which is in the "Manila" part of this map of Metro Manila, which is a hodge-podge of a bunch of municipalities. On the roof of the building, Bambi breeds roosters, which, contrary to popular belief, crow not just at dawn, but all the time. Cockfighting is a prominent sport here, and they tried to take me to one, but they had all finished for the day.

For breakfast, Leticia's two maids served me rice and eggs, and attempted to serve me some kind of fried crispy fish concoction. Rice here comprises or accompanies absolutely every meal -- the McDonalds advertise a McRice Burger, and the KFCs serve rice alongside the fried chicken. Apparently, a lot of rice is grown in the north. Go figure.

After spending much of the day just hanging out in the air-conditioned house, I got a little stir-crazy and wanted to get out. I decided to go to Intramuros, or the Walled City, the main tourist attraction here, which is basically the remnants and reconstructions of the colonial city centre from when Spanish imperialists ruled Manila (from 1560ish until 1898). Bambi changed some money for me (US$1 = ~50 Philippine pesos [PHP]), and put me in a 150PHP cab ride (which was too much -- it should have been about 80).

I arrive at Intramuros and promptly cannot find where I am on my map, so I sort of wander around, just watching the hordes of uniformed teenagers mill around and get snacks from street vendors and cluster in little circles gossipping. Apparently, school had just let out. I was definitely the only white person in sight. It was quite jarring -- everyone stared at me and whispered, and the pedicab drivers and street vendors and beggar children kept following me saying "Yes, ma'am?" in heavily accented, lilting English. I just nodded and kept walking in what I hoped was a confident manner, and tried not to reveal that I had little idea where I was. Apparently, white women don't often traipse around the city by themselves.



I finally got my barings and found a visitor's center at Fort Santiago, which served as the military headquarters when the Philippines was occupied by Spanish, British, American, and Japanese regimes. During World War II, it was used to house hundreds of prisoners-of-war who were eventually executed by the Japanese. Pretty much everything in Intramuros was destroyed several times over the course of Manila's various occupations and bomb raids, so it is all reconstructed. What's notable about Fort Santiago is that the Philippine nationalist who wrote passionate prose about independence, Jose Rizal, spent his last night here before being marched to his execution in 1896.

By the time I finished poking around, it was getting dark, and I had been told not to go wandering around by myself at night. So I asked a nice guard at the front of the fort if he would help me get a cab. Navy officer Anthony stood with me for 20 minutes during rush hour and helped me get a taxi, which would only take me if I agreed to pay 200PHP, which I did. While he tried to get me a cab (and apparently the light-on, light-off thing that is so effective in NYC is nonexistent in Manila), soft-spoken, sweet Anthony offered to be my "personal tour guide" around the city. I politely declined, after deflecting questions about whether I was married (I wear my Harvard ring on the wrong finger, I guess) and what my plans were for my time in Manila.

Leticia took us out for to a Spanish restaurant -- many streets and other aspects of the Philippines retain influences from the long colonial reign of the Spaniards. This includes the devout Catholicism practiced by a large majority (something like 92 percent) of the population. Christmas here is celebrated to the nines in a gaudy, lights-flashing, tropical sort of way. More on that later.

December 8, 2006

After my failed attempt to see Intramuros on my own, Leticia sent me out with Nicole and Jorald, our driver and friend. San Agustin Church and Museum was our first stop. Built in 1587, it is where the last Spanish governor of Manila surrendered to the Filipinos and Americans in 1898. It has withstood five earthquakes and three national invations (and WWII bombings), and it's also been restored, so it postively gleams. We arrived at the perfect time -- a wedding was about to begin! Ignoring the signs that said no tourists allowed, we oohed and aahed over the bridge and the flower girls who kept breaking formation and throwing confetti at one another. We wandered around the museum (the grave paintings of Biblical scenes and exhibitions of gold-threaded vestments from the seventeenth century contrasted nicely with the tinny playing of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" piped into the exhibition halls) and the picturesque monastery garden (where, by the way, one Father Blanco experimented with medicinal plants in order to write a book, Flora and Fauna in the Philippines. Go Hist and Sci!).



We also walked through the Casa Manila -- basically a shrine to the lifestyle and home decor of the Spanish imperialists. The delicate wood-carved detail on the walls and ceilings were stunning, though. Interesting fact: the toilet area had two wooden seats next to each other (FOP style -- do it with a buddy!), and sometimes they carved a chessboard in between the two seats so that companions could pass the time. In other bathroom news, here they are called "Comfort Rooms" or CRs. A misnomer if there ever was one.

Oh, our car had been towed. So we had to take a pedicab to pick it up. The rampant corruption the Philippines has been known for since independence in 1946 was in effect -- if we paid enough money they would give it back, along with Jorald's license. So we bribed.

After a quick stop by Rizal Park (10 PHP to see the spot where martyr Rizal was executed, highlighted by a reenactment the event in Soviet Realist sculpture), Nicole and I head to one of the dozens of malls. In "Robinsons Malls" (as it is called) we eyed a live performance of Barbie's 12 Dancing Princesses (which was in English -- and all Filipino kids were watching! They are basically all bilingual, partly, I suppose, as an indirect result of the American occupation from 1898 -1946) before moving on to the stalls where we bartered to get sunglasses for 90 PHP.

Jorald picked us up, and we made our way -- slowly -- back to Malate. A few observations about the traffic in Manila, which is clogged and congested and horn-honkingly horrific. The rather narrow roads are not only filled with passenger vehicles, but dozens of jeepneys (pseudo-buses made out of leftover vehicles from the American occupation) and pedicabs, trucks and motorcycles.

December 9, 2006

After a 14-hour sleep and a relaxing morning, Jorald took me to the Mall of Asia. It's about the size of three airplane hangars and might as well be located in Los Angeles. It has a Citibank, an ice skating rink, live concert stages, a 100-foot tall Christmas tree, and every store and fast-food joint imaginable. It was built on land that was put on top of Manila Bay, so it's like they literally created this shopper's paradise from mere water. As we were there, I noticed that people came in droves -- apparently mall-going is an affair that calls for all 18 members of a given immediate family, including a great-grandmother and a three-week-old infant, all ooh-ing and aah-ing at the window of the Kate Spade New York store.

Interesting factoid: they call the McDonald's here "McDo's," pronouncd "McDoughs." BUT the Philippines are one of the few countries in the world where it's NOT the number one fast food chain. Here, Jollibee has that honor -- it serves burgers with rice as side dishes alongside sweeter dipping sauces a la duck sauce. I had an ice cream from an outfit that looked suspiciously like Cold Stone Creamery but is apparently Australia's equivalent. I bought a shirt at what is one of the many stores here that is like H&M except with cooler clothes and cheaper. Sigh. Amazing.

As we were leaving the mall, it was refreshing -- after all that slick commercialization -- to see an eclectic group of people dance and sing down the mall's runway-like main drag as part of a parade celebrating 143rd Pasay Day (Pasay City is a sub-part of Metro Manila). Many were were these garish t-shirts in various Day-Glo colors that said I Heart Pasay. Some donned what I guessed was traditional native Filipino attire, such as grass skirts and dark body paint. Some adorable children dressed up in what looked like Aladdin- and Cindarella-eque costumes bought at CVS, but it was so adorable and they were beaming and being a part of the parade. They saw my camera and posed with their banner. I promptly fell in love with a nine-year-old boy who was banging very exuberantly on a drum, pausing every so often to wave at me and grin at his friends.

Later that night, I managed to track down an old friend of my Mom's, Nina Yuson, and I went over to her house in Makati City (another part of Metro Manila. Sidenote: it's freaking giant. At least it feels that way, since it takes eons to get anywhere because of the traffic.). Nina pulled out this ancient photo album containing pictures of my mom when she was pregnant with me, because what's when Nina and her family (four kids, the youngest about my age) visited New York and stayed on 91st Street. That was a nice reminder of home.