Last night right after my previous entry, I ran into one of the famous horse-buggy touts along Roxas Blvd. A petite young man, actually quite good-looking, ran up to me after the buggy-driver first called out to me. Once he latched onto me, it took about 3 blocks of zig-zag walking before he finally let go. This was supposedly to garner a 20P fare up to Intramuros. (Guide books say to watch out for these guys, some of whom are scammers, but given the dearth of tourists this week, these guys were probably legitimately desperate for a fare.)

I learned a tip worth passing along: easiest place to find a no-nonsense masseur. During my early-evening walk (I have been doing a lot of walking, enough to get chafing on my left thigh!) last night, I remarked to myself just how pleasant the weather was. Bubble-gum pop music was playing through loudspeakers next to the fountain (where a bandstand is set up on weekends), young kids were running around playfully, the stars were out, humidity was low and the breeze off Manila Bay was quite pleasurable. Next to the fountain across from the Aristocrat restaurant, I noticed a cluster of a half-dozen masseurs touting their services. Wandering back toward them a few minutes later, I stood 30 meters away watching them with some other customers. Then I approached and agreed to a 30-minute session. No-nonsense, professionally trained, quite good actually! And their little area serves as a shield against the touts offering all manner of other items, you can enjoy the stars, the music and the well-maintained fountain while getting a really good massage. Yes, you’re sitting outside in a cheap plastic chair not lying on a tatami mat in a private room. But this ambiance was somehow better for me given my mood last night. (Including 20% tip, the cost was about $2.50. No kidding.) I think I’ll go for a 60-minute session tonight!

I’ve discovered some cheap fast food, too: there is a burger joint on the Baywalk across from Aristocrat that serves a pretty tasty whopper-sized garlic-mayonnaise burger. And if you climb up to the food court at Robinson’s Mall (huge mall not quite a kilometer from my room, opposite direction from even huger Mall of Asia), you can get a square meal of pancit (with beef liver chunks) and fried pork chop, with a Coke Light, for 80 pesos ($1.70) at the Chin’s stall.

Stopped by a travel agency after trying to dig through my Lonely Planet guide for a couple hours looking for excursions next few days. My local friends here are busy for whatever reasons so I figured I’d find a way to go on my own a couple days. Now’s when I really miss Luis’ travel-planning expertise! The agent made photocopy fliers of a couple of really expensive tour packages priced respectively at $450 and $750 for a 2-night trip to Donsol or a 4-night trip to the sights around Baguio. I’d rather just hop on the bus myself and book the hotel directly, skipping all the rest.

Batanes still beckons. I’m tempted to just call the Asian Spirit reservations desk and plop myself down there to see what adventure awaits. It’s a really remote place with only 3 or 4 flights per week.

Oh, I wanted to note some things my local acquaintances of told me about their lives. Won’t name names because of course this was told to me in confidence but it’ll help you get a glimpse of what life as a Filipino is like.

  • One young man (age 21) here in Malate is taking his college graduation exam tomorrow morning. He studied hotel management and hopes to get an assignment in Canada, the USA or France.
  • A 33-year-old who has spent several years in Saudi Arabia received an overseas job offer this week. It was $750 per month for executive-secretarial work; he countered at $1000 and is in negotiations. The workplace is in some town in Iraq (he said he’d need to look at a map to see exactly where). He assured me that the paycheck would be much more than he can make here.

And here are three notes on obscurities that I’ve noticed here:

  • Filipinos like ice in their beer.
  • The Starbucks outside my hotel doesn’t open until after 9am. In fact the only shop I’ve found open by 8am is one of the two Figaros.
  • The LRT mass transit line closes at 9:33pm.

I started writing some more of these down in my room. Guidebooks are kinda incomplete. My biggest beef with the two guidebooks that I have is that their “getting there” section for each destination never seems to be accompanied by a “getting back” section. Without this info it’s impossible to plan a day-trip; you need to know when the last bus leaves. (Example, we got stuck in Valencia when we found out sometime after 6pm that the last jeepney is at 5pm. Distance was short enough to hire a tricyle, but wouldn’t it be nice to know ahead of time?) Travel agents aren’t much help because they are so focused on package-tour sales.

Well I think it’s time to finish this up, maybe I will check out of my hotel and leave Manila tomorrow or maybe I will linger for a while longer. Life in Malate has really been kind to me so far!

I got two reminders of politics back in the USA today. One was in the Manila Times, which reprinted an article from the Boston Globe about whatever scandal just befell the Mitt Romney campaign (something about a leaked memo bashing the French). Run, Mitt, run! The other was from a former business client of mine, who is helping with the draft-Gore campaign. He pointed out that the website he’s working on got a huge number of hits after Gore won an Oscar. So a lot of things in my life are tied together somehow in weird ways.