I'm going to condense my time in Manila into just this post since I wasn't there very long. To start, Manila is...well let's call it an intense city. The heat was oppressive and I began sweating profusely before I even made it out of the airport. Also I will never again complain about the traffic in Korea now that I have seen what can only be described as every action sequence from Fury Road all happening at once at every god damn moment of the day. Traffic lanes don't even rise to the level of a suggestion; they're more like a weird modern artifact that no one really pays attention to anymore. Weaving through traffic in a taxi without wearing a seat belt (not by choice - none of the cabs I took even had them), dodging tricycles, jeepneys, buses and other cars with chaotic abandon while "Staying Alive" by the Bee Gees plays on the radio was exactly my first experience in Manila.
I suppose this does have a benefit for the locals though: there were at least a dozen times when the thought, "Dude if you just get me there alive I'll pay you whatever the hell you want, I don't even care anymore," popped into my head. People spent so much time warning me about pick-pockets in the city that they failed to mention, "Oh but don't worry, you'll be killed in a fiery explosion on the highway long before anyone gets the chance to rob you."
The warnings about pick-pockets are actually why I have very few pictures of Manila. Petty crime there is quite high so I opted to leave my phone locked in my room. It's a shame though; I saw some pretty cool stuff while I was there. During the first day I spent a lot of time exploring the neighborhood around my apartment, trying some of the local food and, well, sleeping. I barely slept the night before getting on the plane, and I'm pretty sure the pilot was drunk based on the fact that it felt like we kept jumping the curb the whole flight down. Point is it was a long day.
The next day though I visited the Mall of Asia, which is one of the largest malls in the world (the 11th, I think) and has a fantastic boardwalk along Manila Bay. It was on the boardwalk that I tried balut for the first time. If you don't know what balut is, Google it! Film your reaction and send it to me in a video. It was delicious so I don't give a crap. I explored around the mall for a while and had some drinks on the boardwalk as the sun started going down on the bay.
After the mall I took a taxi ("Ahhhh! AHHHHHH!!!") up to Fort Santiago, and it was here that I really started to regret not having my camera. The fort is over 400 years old and has some amazing remaining architecture. I explored around here for a while, walking along the old battlements along the river and reading a lot of really cool stuff about the history of the fort, most of which I don't remember because I don't have any damn photos of it. The fort also houses a museum in honour of Jose Rizal, a national hero and key figure in the rebellion against the Spanish. I had never heard of Jose Rizal before, but his story is truly captivating. The museum itself was amazingly thorough - clothes Rizal wore; letters he wrote; a huge timeline of his life; even a piece of his vertebrae recovered after his execution was featured.
No I did not make that last one up. There was a piece of his goddamn spine in the museum.
So that was Manila! Pretty cool overall. I had a great time there and managed to get out without anyone stabbing me in the face or taking my stuff (well, mostly; a tricycle driver did "accidentally" take me to the wrong part of the city, and then "forgot" how to get to Sampaloc, and then demanded I pay him full price, and being that it was dark and a bunch of his friends were around and what he was essentially scamming me out of amounted about about five bucks I just let him have it, that son of a bitch). Tune in next time I remember to update this thing for part 2!
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