I’ve had a mellow day today, decided to post again because I almost feel guilty about my last posting, which doesn’t reflect my feelings about the Philippines at all. Scammers exist in Boston and every other city where I’ve lived: it could happen just as well at home as on the road. What makes us susceptible to scams is availability of free time (not being in a rush to get from point A to point B) and/or the need for information (being unfamiliar with the procedures to make something happen, such as the purchase of a transportation ticket, or a decision to move investment cash from one type of account to another).
I’ll point out something else about the scammer’s mind: there seems to be a point of honor among this species, that they never take something the way a pickpocket would – they enjoy the challenge of convincing their victim to part with money by their own action. This afternoon I got reminded of the honor ethic of all the Filipinos I’ve met: as I sat down in a park, a 4-year-old kid pointed out the travel-guide book that had fallen out of my pocket. Later, as I pulled something out of my pocket on the trolley, my trolley ticket fell on the floor: a 20-something guy picked it up and handed it to me. (Even the hustler I wrote about the other night had more than one chance to pick my pockets – never happened.) So my overall impression of the people here is more positive than the guide books suggest in their warnings about people on the streets.
OK enough said on that topic. Moving on to the day’s events, I had lunch at the Robinson’s Mall again. Noticed there is a 39-lane bowling alley on the 2nd floor, where you can bowl a game of tenpins for 85 pesos. Might try that if I have time after my next excursion.
Decided that I had enough time for a walking tour of Quezon City, so I took the LRT to the MRT to the Northern Ave station. It’s a long haul through the city, you get a real sense of the vastness of this place as you look out the windows sailing along the elevated tracks. A suggestion to the future traveler: if you’re going more than a few stops, make sure the aircon is working before moving into the train. Wait for the next train if it isn’t.
Contrary to what the guidebooks suggest, many things actually work better here than back home. Trains run more like 15 to 20 times an hour vs the 4 to 8 in Boston. Airplane flights that I’ve taken so far have run more like clockwork than anything back in the USA. Restaurant service is usually better, aside from a policy at some fast-food places of giving you a number placard and making you wait for food delivery at your table rather than the service counter. Overall I find that I can get more done, predictably, during the course of a day than I can back home.
Did I already point out enough just how vast the shopping infrastructure is here? When I got off at Quezon City, the first thing I noticed was a mall complex half the size of Crystal City (an urban district in the DC area in which I once lived) going up all at once at the edge of a shanty town that had obviously been pushed back to make space. Just past the construction project (one of the hunks waved at me and beckoned me to make a video of him, sarap!) is an existing mall. They don’t seem to tear down the old malls when they make new ones; they get grafted together like Greenbelt and Glorietta at Makati City. Every one of these is bigger than any of the malls in greater Boston. Yet there are so many of them that in the metro Manila area alone (population just over 20 million) there are probably enough to rival the size of the entire Simon Properties mall empire in the USA. Shoemart and Robinson’s are the names attached to most of them. I have already been in about a half-dozen of these malls, and have yet to explore even a tenth of the stations on the trolley system let alone the vast stretches of cityscape outside the reach of the 3-line trolley network. (Trolley tip: get a stored-value card a la the Charlie Card for 100 pesos, instead of single-fare cards. They don’t have fare dispenser machines and the waiting lines for single-fare purchases are ludicrous. Trolley fare is 10 to 15 pesos, as cheap as the Path trains in New Jersey were when I lived there, oh, about when the World Trade Center was first completed.)
Tomorrow I jump on a plane to Palawan and find out what life is like outside this big city once again. The city has been growing on me for the past 36 hours. Have I said how friendly and helpful the people here are? Good, I had to say it again!
Bess reported good news on the family front; her tatay (father) is settling into the new home (Paranaque City) and regaining his appetite.