Manilla is probably the worst place I have ever traveled too. Grant thinks it up there, but not the worst. I literally couldn’t eat meat there because of what I saw and so if you are ever looking to become a vegetarian and need the motivation should visit this place.
Again, waking up at 4 am in SD to LAX, 12-hour flight to Tokyo, 8+ hour layover in Tokyo, 1:30 am flight and 5:30 am arrival to Manilla on minimal sleep is nuts. Grant will be happy to see that I am writing this as he definitely shared his thoughts on this...multiple times...during the stay. I turn into “Travel Luke,” which is essentially a machine that can function on no sleep and food, while Grant functions like normal requiring both. These two people do not get along and butted heads in Manila.
Upon arrival, it is a requirement that you go through customs and border security. Never have we been greeted by such chaos and confusion. If you are a Phillipino and have your appropriate documentation this is a breeze to get through... if you are a foreign traveler...this is your worst nightmare. At 5:30 am, the line was so long that you couldn’t see the end. There was a total of 6 people checking hundreds if not thousands of people in. Each person entering was required to answer questions and take a photo. We found the fastest line and waited well over 2 hours for them to look at us, see how ragged we looked, to quickly stamp our passport and snap a photo of us.
AT&T has a program with most countries where we get the same plan for $10 a month. Shocker...The Philippines is not on this plan and so we had to get a local SIM card. We went with “Globe,” a local cellular provider I had researched and after negotiating the rate she quickly grabbed my phone and did something to it. She was either moving at incredible speed or the sleep deprivation really was getting to us. 15 seconds later she had activated my card, updated my phone to accept the carrier, put in the Sim Card and I was ready to go.
Next up was transportation. If the border crossing was not bad enough we were then greeted by a hoard of people trying to get us to go with their taxi service. This is not uncommon for poverty-stricken countries such as this, but Grant and I were in no mood for such shenanigans. Knowing that there were limited things to do in Manila — Grant booked us a nice hotel near the airport at Resort World. When we had looked it up previously waking was only 15 minutes. We looked it up again and our GPS had changed it to an hour and 20 minutes. So we needed a ride.
Of course, the Taxi wanted close to $40 to go this distance and that was only disclosed to us because we refused to get in the car until he told us upfront. We laughed and said no way. We called the hotel and they had a free shuttle that came every hour. We found it, hopped on, and headed to our hotel for a solid rest.
The hotel room was NY city small, but it had two beds and AC so we were set. I was excited to check out this Resort World area as it was supposed to be nice. It was the strangest thing to me seeing absolutely gorgeous newly built resorts next to shanties that if you sneezed wrong could blowdown. Security was extremely tight and it seemed that every corner had an armed official ready to subdue any malefactor.
I wandered through the resorts, casino, mall area and hit a dead end. Instead of returning the way I came I wanted to see what the area behind the resorts was like. Signs were highlighting how this was a tourist area and it definitely was culturally enriching. With a Chanel and Gucci within sight, the locals in this area were living in rubble and highly unsanitary conditions. The area had local markets and shops designed to allure the clientele from these areas to the area.
It was close to 90 degrees with the sun beating down and meat and fish laid strewn about tables being chopped. If the smell was not putrid enough the number of flys that infested the bloody carcasses definitely would turn your stomach. The stall purveyors would dump the liquified innards and bloody remnants from their overflowing buckets on the street in front where people stood. It was beyond gag-inducing. Animals littered the streets and began to ingest these contents only to turn to the locals for affirmation of their good deeds. That’s a site I will not be able to lose for a while.
The area was littered with Jeepneys (think extended jeeps that act as buses) and trikes that carry locals. The area locals were not pleasant to tourists and I had to be cautious not to be hit by these folks. I wandered around for another 2 hours weaving in and out of the city streets trying to get a feel for how people live.
I made it back to the hotel and came in to find Grant had still been sleeping. He has no interest in Manila and I can’t say I blame him after that depressing outing. There were two places on my list to see and I decided to scratch them both. The sites were equally depressing as one was Intramuros, which was a Spanish fort that served as a prison during some war. It was known for its Spanish architecture and was extremely somber with over 600 bodies of captured soldiers laid in a mass burial spot. The other was the 4th largest mall, but it contained more Western-based stores than Eastern so I passed.
Grant eventually woke up and we rendezvoused to the Marriott restaurant. His thought process was that they would have quality food as a global brand and were less likely to get sick. I ordered the adobo, which was just a chicken-based dish but couldn’t stomach it. I took a few bites and ate the rice only. You know it’s bad if this carnivore who prides himself on getting meat sweats from his consumption is turned off. We left to go to the airport early to avoid having to deal with any unforeseen surprises. Manila was not our scene and if you the blogs were clearly correct...get out as soon as you can. The rest of the islands that made the Philippines are to be something special, but the population and infrastructure need major improvements.
Ninoy Aquino International Airport had been voted constantly the worst airport in the world for years. They recently got off that list, but I am not sure why. There are no kiosks to check-in so everyone must do it at the counter. We got to the airport 3 hours early and it took well over 1.5 hours to just get our boarding pass. Having not spent any money we planned on blowing all of it on random items at the souvenir shop. I found a nice wood carved mask and Grant found cookies, but that was pretty much it. We didn’t have that much time to look around and left with about half the money we brought in.
The next stop of our journey is where I am now writing this blog...Singapore. To be continued.
