It’s coming down to the last few hours here so I thought I’d pause to record the events of this, my last day here in Manila. Tomorrow I’ll board a 1pm flight back to Seoul, back to work and back to cold. But I’m not sad about it.
The trouble I’ve found is that being here makes me want to visit more places, to get out of Manila and explore the rich environment that beckons beyond the boundaries of the city. I did a little of this today and I’ll go into it, I will. But I wanted to note how much I hate travelling with so little time at hand. I almost didn’t do anything today because it was my last day. I did, thankfully and I’ll go through it now.
See, last night I was happily drowing a beer at one of the bars I had read about on the internet. I knew nothing of where it was, but it was a name and that was what I told the taxi driver. I saw a look of recognition and 20 minutes later I was in a bar with live music and cheap drinks. So, all was good. There were altogether too many single girls around the place smiling at me (more than usual). I started a conversation with a group of them and they kindly advised me that they were mostly college girls after a bit of money on the side, wink, wink. I realized why all the internet publicity about the place. Anyway, my new friends weren’t so we chatted for a while. I headed back home around 3 but with an offer and a phone number.
The offer was to visit the girl’s home province, a 2 hour drive out of Manila. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to really see the way most Filipino’s live and so the next day at 1pm I called the girls and we arranged to meet at a mall where they would drive me.
Now, I didn’t mention previously but it’s worth noting now that one of their friends was as they referred to it as ‘gay’. Actually their friend was a transvestite. He/she wasn’t originally with the three, but in the course of the night they brought him/her along for drinks and my first real exposure to the third sex was underway. I found it perfectly harmless. In the past I had really found it distasteful, but I did my best to push that attitude aside and treat him/her just like one of the guys, er, girls, er… anyway.
So you can picture it, an old Hyundai going down a congested highway at what seemed like a top speed of 40, a guy, two girls and a tranny. I did my best at aiming the camera haphazardly out the window and trying to capture the natural scene around me. Natural for a Filipino is essentially a life of poverty, on average. Kids everywhere with no shirts and dirt all over them, people selling things on the side of the road, and houses so close that they overlapped. It was of course what I expected, but what I really came away with was the attitude of the people. There was no shame or low spiritedness that I could see. People just lived this way, together.
When we arrived at the house, I met with one of the girl’s mother, brother, sister-in-law and their kid, her own child and four or five other kids and siblings and cousins. The house was about the size of a large Australian living room, with a couple of cramped bedrooms tacked on the side. And they all lived there together. Over the course of the day, I learned that the girl actually supports everyone there with the money she gets from her baby’s father and various other boyfriends scattered across the globe. Hey, this is life here.
The kids sat watching the TV constantly, but when I went outside to explore, I found them following, though always keeping a distance. When I turned to them to offer them sweets or to take a picture, they ran away and hid. The house was located in a kind of village with houses all in a row and at least two kids hanging around outside each one. I’m sure they would have a ball, so many together, however it was a little subdued maybe due to the lateness of the hour.
Surprisingly, there is a large Korean presence everywhere here. We headed out to a Korean KTV loung to sing some Karaoke, no Koreans to be seen, but the same books of songs that I’m used to from Korea. I could see writing in Korean here and there, but I think not once I saw someone I could practice my insignificant Korean skills on. After about 30 minutes we got bored and headed back to Manila. It was, all in all and interesting day.
Yet, the day was not over. I parted ways with the girls and decided at the last minute before I got to my hotel to go back to where I was the previous day, Greenbelt. It was late enough that there might be something going, and boy there was. I found a bar called Club Havana, playing some live Latin music and I had a drink and a groove in my best salsa style. After a little of this, I realized just how long a day it had been and reclined in a Starbucks before heading here, to my hotel and it’s adjoining internet cafe.
So you can have fun with only a few days of exploration, but it’s does just leave you longing to make a longer trip of it next time. If the funds were right, I could seriously spend three or four weeks in each of the adjoining countries, just living and travelling and relaxing. Each country in South East Asia, while often having similar traits, are in their own way unique. The people and the attitudes are slightly different everywhere you go. The food changes and the environment has a unique stamp of living in a slightly different way. I was glad to speak to a few Filipinos and especially the girls who were so kind to invite me back into a place that a western person might probably be ashamed to show a visitor. Of course, there is nothing shameful about it, but that is how we westerners are sometimes. I can say this though, this westerner will be back here soon. Goodbye Phillipines, until next time soon.
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