Manila was a bit of a washout. When we arrived, it was hot and the pollution index was seriously high. From our hotel on the 20th floor, we could see a nasty looking yellowish-brown smog hanging over the city and obscuring buildings in the distance. The health advice was to avoid outside exercise. And it was hot. Obviously, it was hot, we are close to the equator. Well over 30°C and humid. High humidity makesiHH the heat feel worse.
We went out in the evening to find food. Manila is one of these places where everything is piled on top of everything else. Our hotel is a perfectly reasonable three-star hotel with a Starbucks adjoining it. However, two steps down the road, is a small, far more local shop, which mostly seems to sell pot noodles and usually has a collection of people, children and dogs hanging around outside. An old woman is selling fruit from a rusty basket on a bicycle. Then comes a lean-to shack with a charcoal burner at the front. A couple of people are frying up some sort of fritters which occasionally get bought by passers-by. At the back of shack are children sleeping on the floor. It is impossible to walk down the pavement because it is being used for every conceivable purpose except for walking. There are people sitting, sleeping, praying, begging, fixing scooters, cooking food, playing games and fighting. A little further down the street are food stores, restaurants with two plastic chairs on the pavement, 24-hour massage parlours, a money-exchange, cafes, several bars and strip clubs. Barely dressed young girls lean out of the door to entice passing potential customers. Even though we are walking down the road, past the parked cars, we are assaulted every few metres by someone trying to get our attention. Get a tattoo, buy a drink, eat some noodles. The pestering is relentless. Strong smells abound. Some of the cooking is pleasant but this is mixed with the stink of rubbish and the occasional deeply unpleasant sewer smell.
It is all a bit full-on and by the time we reach a shopping mall, the Princess has slipped into a kind of culture shock. Stepping into the mall was to step into a completely different world. We needed to queue past the security guards and the scanner and then, suddenly, everything was bright and clean. Smartly dressed, pleasantly perfumed people were going about their clothes shopping or sipping latte macchiato with oat milk in the coffee shops. The air was cool and clean. Everything seemed fresh and modern. There were familiar shop brands and restaurant chains. It looked and felt like any contemporary western mall. Different worlds all piled on top of each other. Outside the mall there were grubby children in rags playing on the steps of the Sheraton Hotel.
Intramuros literally means “within the walls”. This is a small area within the centre of Manila. A centuries-old historic district entirely surrounded by fortifications. This was considered, at the time of the Spanish Empire, to be the entire City of Manila. Intramuros served as the seat of government of the Philippines, a component realm of the Spanish Empire. The walled city was the religious and educational centre of the Spanish East Indies. Intramuros was also an economic centre as the Asian hub of the Manila galleon trade, carrying goods to and from Acapulco in what is now Mexico.
Next day, the rain kicked in properly. Tropical rain in the rainy season. The downpours ranged from heavy to gentle but never quite stopped. The clouds were thick and heavy. Humidity was way up. You could probably wring water straight out of the air. It is impossible to stay dry outside. Far too hot for a raincoat. An umbrella helps a little but the rain is going everywhere in the gusting squalls of wind. If that does not soak you then you will soon be dripping with sweat because of the heat. There is no winning. If you go outside, you will come back soaked.
On the upside, the pollution was reduced. I imagine some of the particulate matter gets washed out of the air. When we were in Dehli, there was talk of seeding clouds to try and create rain in a bid to reduce the pollution level. Here it was happening quite naturally. This was possibly a good thing but the weather was not ideal for tourist activities. Simply going outside at all could be an epic. Trips into the countryside were completely out. There would be no views, just mud and rain.
Do not swim in Manila Bay. Levels of faecal coliform bacteria are measured here that are thousands or even millions of times higher than the safe limit. Probably a result of poorly maintained and overloaded sewage systems. This is especially the case during periods of high rainfall. Good snorkelling can be had around the Philippines but you need to get far away from the cities. In our case, given what we had read about bacterial pollution, there was no way Princess was even considering the possibility of putting a toe in the water.
Peering down from our 20th floor perch, I can just see a section of road that is flooded. This is useful to estimate how bad the rain is. In gentle rain, puddles form either side of the road. With more rain, these expand until the road is completely covered. Initially nobody is put off by this except pedestrians. The traffic slows down but keeps going. As the flood depth increases less traffic passes. The little scooters are first to lose their nerve. Then the passenger carrying motor carts, small cars, larger SUVs and finally trucks. A quick glance at the flooded road section is all we need to estimate how wet it is outside. It is our rain gauge road. Just now it is at the small car limit.
For 300 years the Spanish happily plied their trade from Intramuros. Churches, Universities, Plazas and hospitals were built. In 1898 there was a war with the newly founded United States (US). Rising tensions in Spanish Cuba led to an all-out declaration of war. This concluded the same year with the Treaty of Paris. Ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines was ceded to the US. Cuba was set up to become an independent state in 1902. In a single year, Spain went from being a major world power to being a failing one while the US stepped forward as a newly significant player.
The Americans made drastic changes to Manila. Intramuros walls were pulled down to allow easier access to the city. The moat was filled in and turned into a golf course. An act that would probably please the current president of the US. All change again in 1941 when the Japanese invaded. This was part of their sudden sweep across the Pacific that was taking everyone by surprise. The Imperial Japanese Army was pushed back, eventually retreating into the Intramuros area. General MacArthur approved heavy shelling. Over 17,000 Japanese were killed and the Intramuros was razed. 40% of all the walls were destroyed. During the battle of Manila, which only took a month, 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed. Not long after WW2, the Intramuros was declared a historical monument.
Just as we were leaving to visit the Intramuros, the national emergency alert system barked into life. This is the mechanism that sends warning messages to everybody’s mobile phone. Severe rain warning. We could have guessed. Outside the Intramuros, we enlisted the help of two disaffected youths with motor bike carts to take us around. They assured us that they were trained and authorised guides. Each cart was big enough for one person. They were draped with plastic sheet so we could stay a little dry. We also had an umbrella each. Even so, a soaking was inevitable. The two lads tried hard. For three hours they ferried us between locations. We did not learn very much and I did not get any good photographs. It was quite fun. We eventually parted company back at the mall. Here we could dry off a little and find some dinner.
It was time to leave. We did not see a lot of Manila and nothing of the rest of the Philippines. Perhaps we will need to come back at a different time of year. We are sat at the airport now. The emergency alert system is still spitting out warnings but the planes are flying so we should be able to get to Seoul.