It’s Day 5 of our trip already! The jet lag is finally dissipating but we still wake up way too early most days.The people here have a well-earned reputation for friendliness. They smile, make eye contact and make a genuine effort most of the time to help if you have a question. But of course Manila is a world-class, huge city with many of the problems of any huge city anywhere. Mostly, it’s big and chaotic – it took a couple hours to find an airline ticket office the day before yesterday – we had to ask at about 5 other ticket offices before we could find anyone who knew where the United office had moved in recent months.
Yesterday we went down to Paranaque where some of Luis’ relatives live. We got to see the humble childhood abode of our brother-in-law Carlos, with its nice gardens and barking dogs, and the relatively upscale remodeled home where great-aunt Purita lives with her family. The flavor of the neighborhood is very friendly; a thatched gazebo sits in a vacant lot next door, and serves as a hangout and meeting point for the neighbors to drop by.
Today is less humid than yesterday. I love the warmth here, though I don’t love the dress code: Filipino men dress the way tropical men do everywhere I’ve been outside the USA, in long pants and short-sleeve shirts. I am writing this in a busy Internet cafe where there are several other white guys, some in shorts and some in long pants. We stand out in our shorts; I bought a pair of locally-made jeans the first day but can’t abide wearing them during the day. When we’re wandering around, we don’t see too many American-looking people. We’ve noticed a fairly big presence of Koreans.
One of the other big impressions I’ve gotten here is the presence of armed guards, working for private security companies, at virtually every business. The only time I have been confronted by one was this morning, when Luis and I were doing our morning exercise in the hotel’s 39-story stairwell. We took a break on the roof deck, and a guard menaced us with his rifle while politely pointing out that this area is considered private (it was unlocked and had no signage pointing this out, so I shrugged it off). The BSA Tower is not a place I would recommend staying unless you want to be in this specific neighborhood locale, which is a convenient urban location attached to the huge Greenbelt mall complex. It has no lobby or other common space at all, and they penny-pinch on everything (to the point of shutting down one of the 3 elevators most of the time to save on electricity–a big inconvenience in such a tall building). But the rooms are quite large so you can more or less ignore the things that don’t work (like the door lock to our balcony).
I made eye contact with a guy at the next table during our merienda three days ago; he left a note with his mobile number on it so I struck up a cell-phone text message conversation with him. I think Luis has probably already written up the story of our later encounter: a Valentine’s evening stroll along the Baywalk of Malate with Dondon and his two friends (he said one was a cousin).
Cell-phone texting is quite big here, as it is in other Asian countries. It’s priced cheaper than voice calling and everyone–even businesses like the travel agent that we used for a couple of our local plane tickets, and even in their ads and business cards–gravitates to it as a primary means of communication.
Well our hour here is up so I’ll write more another time!