Over these 8 days in the Philippines, I have experienced more than I can put into words. I have seen indulgence and destitution, felt absolutely safe and completely vulnerable, met fear and exhilaration, probed and was rebuffed, was silent and yet part of the script, found joy and devastation, relived flashbacks and made resolutions, lived in fantasy and embraced reality. I lived through 8 days that were all at once an extension of my experience of this year, and yet were a year all to themselves.
Our party of 10 met at the Budget Terminal on the morning of the 9th, each having had different sorts of days prior, but were about to share in the same experience to come. This truly was our first trip abroad alone and together, everything initiated and planned whenever we found breathing space over the academic year. Arriving in Manila, we were joined by Agi, our resident classmate, guide and 11th member of our permanent traveling party.
The Fernandina 88 is a 12-storey hotel in Quezon City, and while sounding like a bad hotmail address, is actually a decent hotel. There were problems with pests, air-conditioning and water heating, but for the price we paid, those 4 nights spent there were well worth it. The main room was the penthouse on the top floor, where 6 of us slept with the 5 others on level 5, me rooming with Agi. For all intents and purposes, it was a bachelor pad in a foreign city.
One level above our penthouse was the rooftop pool. The miniscule size of the pool notwithstanding, the roof offered us a view of Manila that takes your breath away. Manila is the city that I had imagined it to be. It is immense, and yet is denser and more crowded than any I've been to. It is an amalgamation of sprawling mall complexes and consumer centres juxtaposed against gated communities and a dilapidated rural suburbia. It is a city of jeepnies that rule the roads, traffic stretching miles and billboards the size of whole buildings. It is the city of Shakey's Pizzeria, Mercury Drug Stores and Manny Paquiao. It is simply magic.
We made a pit stop at the local hypermarket for supplies, most notably 30 litres of drinking water. We could have filled a pool larger than the one on our hotel's roof. The first night was spent at Eastwood City, a new complex with shops barely opened, and very closely resembles a bohemian enclave of stores and eateries. Dinner was at Dencio's, with more food that we could even imagine eating, then a short wander around amidst the sounds of live jazz music and ambient lighting. It was a brilliant first night out about the town.
Agi's Dad introduced the Filipino people as a consumer society. Spot on. We were introduced to all facets of that consumerism on Day 2 at Greenhills, a complex of designer boutiques and small stalls selling alternate versions of the same products, the only difference being how genuine the branding was. I made my first of 2 purchases there, a coffee brown polo tee with a turntable motif which looked oddly familiar, but was not attempting to imitate any brand and was from a small independent label tucked away at the back of one of Greenhills' many buildings. It was a timely purchase too, since I needed something collared for dinner the following evening with Cielo and her relatives. At 450 pesos, it was a steal. Lunch was at Teriyaki Boy. We met Lex halfway through the day, and our presence in his home city was probably one of the more surreal experiences in his day. He was our necessary guide through the meanders of Metro Walk, the location of purchases of great entertainment value. Dinner was at the first of 2 Chicken Inasal joints we visited on this trip.
Adjacent to our hotel is Ali Mall and Areana Centre, 2 shopping complexes with the quintessential stores like Goldilocks, and our destination of choice for the earlier part of day 3. Lunch was at Max's, and then it was off to Market Market, where we would spend an afternoon playing Laser Tag. We were positively pummeled by a bunch of 9 year olds who spoke accented English, though I managed to top my team's tables in both the games we played. A quick change later, we met Cielo for dinner at a swanky buffet joint with a roving band, after which we paid a visit to Serendra, perhaps the most up and coming strip in all of Manila. It is a huge complex of warehouses displaying huge international brands, though we only went into Fully Booked, a really chic bookstore with an immense graphic novel section. We stepped inside Embassy, the It Club of Manila, for a short while, but detoured over to Cuisine, the neighbouring bar, for that evening's drinks.
The 11 of us plus Lex traveled a few years back in time to when we were still amused by amusement parks on day 4 when we made the 2-hour drive to Enchanted Kingdom. Quite unlike it's name suggests, it is a place that has seen better days, but still draws a huge number of locals and the odd Singaporean bunch. We began the day with the Space Shuttle, a 90-second long roller coaster ride that was unbelievably scary, including backward loops and 10-metre drops. I sat out the Pirate Ship, then rejoined them for an absurd simulator ride, bumper cars, and finally a few laps around the Go-Kart track, which is second only to the one I tried back in Phuket in '06. Dinner was at Agi's house, where all 13 of my classmates who were in the country were in the same place at the same time, along with our schoolmate Rachel.
Barely 5 hours later, we were at the airport awaiting our domestic flight to Palawan, where some of us had Ya Kun Kaya Toast of all things. The arrival lounge at Puerto Princesa is really something, and it's the first time I've had my name written in ink on a sheet of paper as part of the immigration process. Old school ftw. The Legend Hotel right smack in the middle of the capital town is quite nice. Small, with few facilities, but excellent service willing to do anything at any hour. It was also the only modern building for a number of blocks. I roomed with Gerald. Palawan has better air and smoother traffic, but it is about 20 years behind Manila in terms of progress. That is part of its charm. Lunch was at Kalui, a nearby restaurant, then a few hours at the pool, and a 3-hour dinner at Salo, accompanied by Videoke. We began the evening with the goal of finishing up the bottle of Vodka which had been traveling with us since Day 1, so with a few improvised rules, we managed to play through two-thirds of a game of Circle of Death before we emptied to bottle, drank ourselves silly and went to sleep.
Perhaps the copious amount of alcohol downed in such a short time compounded any pathogenic sources I may have come into contact to so far, and I felt horrible on the morning of Day 6. I made the wise decision to give the Honda Bay tour a miss, managing to regain my faculties to enjoy the rest of the trip uninhibited. The photos of that morning at the beach do remind me of those few hours missed, but I'm glad I didn't make any rash moves. The others came back in possession of an actual ball, so our time at the pool that afternoon was slightly better spent, followed by dinner at Salo again.
Day 7 began with a trip to Baker's Hill, a scenic location with talking Mynahs, brilliant photography lighting and Chihuahua puppies. We moved on to a nearby Hot Spring, which I found incredibly soothing, then lunch at Kalui and an afternoon of lazing at the hotel and its pool. We spent the evening at Capitol Square, eating at a Chicken Inasal joint and walking along the unassuming sidewalks filled with hawkers peddling everything from jewelry to Balut.
We flew back to Manila in time for lunch at Shakey's, followed by an afternoon at the Mall of Asia, an enormous shopping complex. I made my 2nd purchase of 700 pesos worth of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, much of which has been consumed already since arriving back in Singapore slightly over 12 hours ago.
It's not so much the things we did on each day that stick with me. It's the time spent in between doing things unplanned that I remember best. The countless card games in Cielo's van, the strange quotes that we would spend days laughing about, the time spent standing around waiting and chatting. I continue to believe that it really isn't about where the holiday is; it's about who those days are spent with that makes it something special.
So, to Agi, for having the patience to plough through the logistical complexities which sprang up along the way; to Cielo for the convenience of transport; to Lex for the hilarious company. And to Mel, Joash, Mong, Chun Wui, Gerald, Mai, Elliot, Patrick and Cheryl. I don't think we could have come up with a better group to spend these 8 days with.
