Talei tries Durian!

Talei has always claimed to have a lousy sense of smell. Well ...

Out at dinner one night in Manila, just as a tease, after asking her if she'd ever tasted durian and receiving a negative that wasn't coloured with the expected "Oh yuck! NO! Please No! No! No!" I ordered her an iced durian puree, lying through my teeth and saying "You'll love it!", wanting to see her reaction.

Do you know about durian?  If you don't, it's a fruit that tastes fine, sure, rather like chocolate mousse, but the smell!!!  Oh boy, that smell! It's like the rank stench of rotting meat coupled with the odd whiff of breadfruit, old boots and turpentine, and is so lingering, insidious and penetrating most Asian hotels ban the fruit on principle.

I tried some for the first time in Kuala Lumpur last year and ... well, it was a very chic boutique desserts cafe and thus I was determined to be equally chic and worldly by acting as if this durian-eating business was totally within my scope.

Sorry! Couldn't do it! My durian parfait only had to come within a foot of me and my well-honed gag reflexes were fully and instantly engaged!  Eating it ... well, I was determined to do it if only to say I had but I have to say it's desperately counter-intuitive. My body, being relatively normal, is innately tuned to vomiting at the smell of rotting flesh and certainly to NEVER putting it in my mouth.

In the end, chic-be-damned, I sat there holding my nose as I ate. It was nice. Like I said durian is "Natures' Own Chocolate Mousse." and most flavoursome, but oh boy, what was Mother Nature playing at giving it that smell.

Anyway, now it was my turn to inflict it on Talei, so I ordered her that iced durian puree and took out my camera to await her response.

Her reaction?

Yup, absolutely NO REACTION whatsoever!

There she is with the most putrid stench right under her nose, one so bad I'm gagging across the table, two feet away, and she's not reacting at all.  "What is wrong with you???" I say to her.

And she responds with a ...

She's on a big Emo kick at present, entirely determined to never show emotions, especially to The Geriatrics, and not reacting to this hideous smell could very well have been a way to get back at me for this torture ... however, if that's what this was about I can only say "Kudos" because not reacting to the smell of durian can only be called a First Order Heroic Trojan Effort.

Of course, it could also be that she has, like she says, a truly lousy sense of smell.  But whoever knew it could be this bad!

Jeepney!

In an everly increasing cookie-cutter world, it is astonishing to see something completely original and endemic when you visit a country, something real and true that grew out of their own historical reality, so I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when I first saw the Filipino jeepneys.

Of course I knew jeepneys existed, but only as a name so I always thought they were something like Thailand's tuktuks, thus, as I mentioned before, as soon as I arrived in Manila, I was practically screeching "That's a homemade car. And there's another. And another."

I love homemade cars.  There's a tiny island someplace in the world - and I won't tell you where because I've just told an old friend who is looking for a subject to photograph for a book, so you'll  have to wait for that to come out - where the salt winds blow so strongly car bodies rust out within six months of arriving ... and so locals replace those bodies with fibreglass ... and they're getting increasingly original in their designs. No one warned me about this either, so when I visited the island back in the early 80s, I found these cars mind-boggling, the concept so new to me that cars didn't have to look like your average and boring factory-built cars found everyplace else on earth, that it took me long minutes of staring at them with my mind ticking over before deciding "Dammit, these are fabulous!"

And thus began my love of homemade cars. I'd even be willing to go to Mogadishu to see theirs.

But there's no need to visit war-torn Somalia to see homemade cars because a visit to the very pleasant and charming Philippine Islands will also give you a large dose.

Let me tell you again what I've already told you about them:

"You may recall my passion for tuktuks when I first visited Thailand, but that only lasted a day ...  

 Philippines doesn't have tuktuks, 

but they do have these, called "Tricycles"

or Trik for short. 

... and although Triks can get pretty fancy ...

 

Police Trik!

These are specifically for Tourist Police.

Yup, they have Tourist Police.

... they paled into insignificance while my passion for jeepneys only increased the more of them I saw.

They tootle up and down Manila - as well as everywhere else - all day and night, each with their own route, and I got to know the Makati Avenue ones very well - Homeboy, Firebird, Frances, Christ Almighty, and The Almighty Saves. 

Man, they were so incredibly cool. First I loved the slick new ones ...

 

... and then I fell in love with the old ones ...

... and then I couldn't get enough of the ones covered in gorgeous paintings ...

The delay on my camera meant 

I missed the shot I was after: 

the pink one in front.

 Another two!

... and then I fell in love with their wonderful names ...

However, all transport in Manila appear to have wonderful names:

... like this one which is actually called "Safe".

... but then I fell in love with the private jeepneys ...

 These are called "Owners" 

which I learned stood for 

"Privately Owned Jeepneys". 

... and I became so increasingly enamored I began having lively thoughts about how wonderful it would be if Fiji had jeepneys too and wondered how I could go about organising internships for Fijians at the various private backyard jeepney-building workshops scattered throughout the Filipino provinces.  

It's a good idea, you realise! And finished jeepneys only cost about US$1000 each so ... well, it's such a good idea, Fiji really should do this!"

OK, that's what I've already told you, so let's now tell you more.

Jeepneys are what the Philippines did with the Willy jeeps the Americans left behind after WWII.  The incredibly brutal Battle for Manila ...

Tribute to the 100,000s of civilians 

who died in this battle.

... left the city a flattened ruin without a scrap of remaining infrastructure, so when the war finally ended, severely traumatised locals were left to scramble together their lives with NOTHING!

But the Americans had left behind their jeeps and so the locals took them to make-shift mechanic workshops and lengthened them and made them over into their new version of public transport.

I've already told you how I actually saw for myself, in Tagaytay Province, one of the original WWII jeepneys, and how excited I was that it was still on the road and still transporting people after ... mmmm, is it 70 years?

And I've already told you how I saw two old jeepneys on the side of the road with big "For Sale" signs and it was all I could do not to immediately jump out of the still-moving car to inquire after them.

And I've already told you how Naldo and Shirl got me my own little jeepney ...

Silver version! 

With "Denise" on the front 

and "Makati Avenue - Landmark" 

on the destination panel as

a tribute to my first ever jeepney ride.

... which was so moving, I cried.

Naldo and Shirl love jeepneys too, and Naldo actually proposed to Shirl on one, as did this fellow:

 

She said yes!

And here's a shot from that actual Makati Avenue - Landmark - ride.

Anyway, our entire week in Manila, jeepneys, unlike tuktuks, never got old because there was always more to see and love.  Oh, and JUDGE!  Talei and I decided we'd find THE JEEPNEY; the one we loved above any others, and I decided "Oscar" was the coolest jeepney I saw in Manila... although, as we've since seen in photographs that there are much much cooler ones in all the provinces, where the jeepney is celebrated to the nth degree ... and Talei, since she's still there, is waiting until she's seen alot of them before making her own choice.

And the best jeepney name we saw was "Vince of Peace." and ... "Wack with Christ."

 On large so you can read that name!

Jeepney photographs? I have hundreds of them!

Want to see a few?

So there you go, the most amazingly incredible endemic Filipino invention EVER ... although I still have to show you Filipino chandeliers which are also amazing and endemic versions of the ones the Spanish put in their churches ... and they have to rank as pretty cool too.  But NOTHING comes close to being as cool as the Philippines very own symbol of their creativity, ingenuity and ability to survive anything thrown at them:

Long live JEEPNEYS!!!

Missions Accomplished - #2 & #3!

You may recall that two of those missions I was determined to accomplish while in Manila were:

1) (actually #2) see the 3-D reliefs on the ceiling of San Agustin.

2) (actually #3) see the stained glass windows in Manila Cathedral.

Missions accomplished.

Please judge for yourself, however here's what I think:

SAN AGUSTIN'S CEILING!

San Agustin!

1) The 3-D reliefs of San Agustin were great, although not GREAT!  I have seen two trompe d'oeil ceilings that are better, although both of those were in Rome - one a Cardinal's palace and the other ... gosh, St Stephens' Basilica? - both of which are beyond breath-taking.

A small sample  of San Agustin's:

OK, looking at this photos now, I see I've misjudged because they really are amazing!  Honestly, I'm just too too critical, aren't I!

And I do have the story behind this trompe e'oeil someplace but can't lay my hands on it at this moment, although I do recall it was painted by two priests and a young Filipino boy, who went on to become a famous artist in his own right, back in the 16th - or was it 17th? - century.

MANILA CATHEDRAL'S WINDOWS!

 Manila Cathedral!

2) The stained glass windows in Manila Cathedral are completely stunning. In fact, let's throw in breath-taking, amazing, GREAT!  Yes, everything you've ever been told about the beauty of the glass is correct. I kept running back to take photos of ones I'd already photographed because the light had changed slightly and they were again different. Really quite astonishing!

If you know the story of the glass in these windows, it was - or so I've been told - The Vatican's attempt to reproduce the glass in the windows of Chartre's Cathedral in France, the casting of which is meant to be all sorts of "De Vinci Code" secret mystical voodoo-type stuff, a secret procedure that was meant to be kept out of Vatican hands etc, etc.

Anyway, after Manila was so brutally destroyed during WWII, with just about every building flattened and so many 100s of thousands of lives lost, The Vatican offered to rebuild this particular Cathedral exactly according to the original blue-prints, which they did - thank you Vatican! - but, as a special treat and acknowledging the vast level of suffering the Filipinos had gone through, they attempted to give the place very special windows with exceptionally beautiful stained glass ... and so chose to make the best examples of the glass they'd come up with during their experiments to find out exactly how the Chartre's Cathedral's glass was made.

It would be interesting, wouldn't it, to assay samples of the Chartre's glass and the Manila glass to find out how close The Vatican came to getting it right!

Anyway, here's a small sample of the stained glass in Manila Cathedral, although I must warn you that my limited camera skills hardly do it justice:

 Not so stunning, yes! 

But the fault is mine!

Let me try again!

 Window and close-up detail!

And two photos showing how the light kept changing?

 OK, I haven't done these windows justice.  It's so difficult choosing from thumb-nails.  OK, I'll go through them on large and select my favourites then ... although you will have to wait for them!

So, that's it for now!  Two missions down!  And, yes, more still to come!

Our Manila Jaunt

DAY ONE

The best thing that can be said about Philippine Airlines is that it makes Air Pacific look efficient and professional.

We arrived at check-in early because Beth warned us that nothing is more annoying than being trapped behind a queue of home-bound Filipinas each with half a dozen red-white-and-blue-emigre-bags packed full of clothes for family, and each bag overweight and so having to be emptied and contents redistributed, items given to the next person in line, who would then, in turn, be overweight and have to go through the same. She was adamant it was something to be avoided at all costs because it would make us want to tear our hair out with fury.

So there we were, first in line, with a queue of home-bound Filipinas each with half a dozen red-white-and-blue-emigre-bags forming behind us, as we waited and waited for the check-in desk to finally be manned.

And was easily 20 minutes before a young girl - who all along had been leaning on the next counter, lollygagging, giggling and gossiping with a gaggle of other young airport staff - peels herself away and, apologising profusely and looking so genuinely sorry like something genuinely important had delayed her, races behind the desk to do her job.  Unbelievable!  It was like she thought we couldn't all see what she'd been doing all along!

And then she didn't know how to do up the luggage tags and had to ask at the Air New Zealand counter but couldn't understand the instructions so a NZ girl had to come along to show her, delaying that line ... but she was staring off into space while being shown how to do it.  Keith said "At least your bag will arrive in Manila.  Where'd you like to bet those hundreds of emigre bags end up?"

"My money's on Anywhere-but-Manila!" I said, and I have to tell you that I definitely didn't see a great many of those emigre bags on the luggage carousel at the other end.  Have fun forwarding them, Vladivostok!!!

Seriously, seriously, seriously, not even FIJI has staff as stupidly inefficient and unprofessional as this!

But then, on the flight, there was no record of my having ordered a special meal, however the head steward was so apologetic he made me a special meal himself, so that was entirely forgiven ... but then, right when I'm thinking Philippine Airlines isn't as bad as all that, the pilot announced we'd landed at Ninoy Aquino International Airport and I was immediately flustered because I'd thought we were landing at Centennial International Airport and Naldo and Shirl were picking me up there ...

... so I sent a panicked text to Naldo, and got one back saying "No, you've already landed at Centennial.  It's on the board in front of us."  Honestly!!!

Folks, here's a warning: there are TWO international airports in Manila a few kilometers apart. I'd only discovered this the day before and went into immediate panic mode.  See, I'd deliberately booked my flight so I'd arrive at the same time as Talei's flight from Darwin, because the plan was that we could go through together, Talei not being used to international travel ... but suddenly that was off because I discovered we were both arriving at different airports.  See the problem?

Since Naldo and Shirl had so kindly offered to pick us up - thank you so much, guys - I was concerned on their behalf but they insisted it wasn't a problem, saying that Centennial being new and much more efficient (mmmm, not so much, btw) they'd pick me up first and then we'd all swing by NAIA for Talei.

But then - totally "Mice and Men" - that typhoon blew up between HK and Manila  and it was closely followed by a cyclone between Darwin and the Philippines, so none of us had any idea what was happening, but Naldo and Shirl said they'd be at the airport anyway to wait for us whatever went down.  Gosh, they were lovely.  Totally the dearest sweetest couple who I know I'll cherish for the rest of my life.

 

Naldo and Shirl!

Who are Naldo and Shirl you may be asking?

The backstory to this is that ... well, Maryland is a Nurses' Aid at the Old Folks Home Baby Jane runs and is so downright lovely every single day Jane counts it as a blessing to have such a highly skilled but so-kindly professional among her staff.

Then, as if Baby Jane wasn't blessed enough by having Maryland in her life, she mentioned to her that Talei's degree (none of us has any idea what this degree is in; apparently it's too new and esoteric for geriatric minds like ours to grasp, so Talei just says "Graphic Design") required her to have an internship in an animation company only all the available posts had been taken and none of them knew how to organise anything else ... and Maryland says "My niece's husband works in an animation studio in Manila. Would you like me to ask?"  Miraculous, huh!

So that's how it came about!  Nepotism! Calls are made - thank you Maryland - and thus Talei is offered a five week unpaid internship at Rocket Fish Animation Studio in Manila which she immediately accepted ... but then Baby Jane begins to have second thoughts because she's hearing so many stories about Manila being so Shonky and Dodgy and thus, worried sick, she's flustering to me on Skype about Talei being so young (this coming from Jane who was backpacking solo around the world so much younger than Talei is now) and definitely too young for Shonky and Dodgy so I say "Would you like me to fly over and see she's OK?" and Jane leaps on it immediately and is all "Oh would you? Could you? Oh please, would you! Could you!" and she's suddenly so happy it could only be a plan.

So that's why I was in Manila, at the RIGHT airport, walking out into the intense heat and humidity, to be met by a cheery wave and shout "Denise. Denise." from deep within the crowd: Shirl, who said she instantly recognised me from the recent photo in my blog:

 

Recognising me from this?

Should I be offended?

So that's who Shirl and Naldo are: Maryland's darling niece and her drop-dead-gorgeous husband.

I'd already discovered their blog "Naldo and Shirl" and so already thought I knew them as being the most gorgeous and sweety-pie couple of honeys, but I had no idea how much so. Indeed, their blog is stories about a couple of deeply-in-love newly-weds who do wonderfully silly-but-clever artistic projects together, and that's exactly who they are, but they are so much more besides. If you throw in sincerely talented and original, and mix in joyous and funny, there you have them: Naldo and Shirl.

So then it's a walk to the car - with me going "OMG, that's a homemade car there! And look, there's another one. And another one! And another! OMG, the Philippines has homemade cars. That is sooo cool!" showing myself to be "First Order Colo!" ("colo" is a Fijian word meaning "straight from the jungle") because what I was pointing to were JEEPNEYS and every single other person on the planet has to already know all about the Philippines most prolific form of pubic and private transportation. (Of course I'd heard of them but I'd always thought Jeepney was the Filipino word for tuktuk.)

Jeepneys are just gorgeous but I'll save that for another post.

Thus to the OTHER airport to pick up Talei.  Yup, we had to wait, although not for long, so N&S were right in their assumption that Centennial would process so much faster than NAIA.

As for Talei, I don't know what Baby Jane was so worried about.  She came through all intact with all her luggage too and was completely calm and in control.  Jane really does underestimate her, doesn't she.

So then the long drive to our hotel in Makati where an entirely new and unexpected drama arose.  Oooooh, Manila, Manila, Manila!!!! However I'll save the rest of Day One for another day!  You'll just have to drop back tomorrow to hear the next of our travails.

Later:   The hotel drama?  We were booked in, sure, but they said the room hadn't been paid for ... whereas I knew it had since the money was already paid to our usual HK travel agent, Paul, who has never once got it wrong.  This happened to me once before, in China, and on that occasion I adopted my father's really scary "Now you listen here, young man!" voice and gave the Chinese hotel staff such a scolding that everyone, despite not understanding a single word I was saying, burst into tears!  And they checked, still bawling their eyes out, and found that the mistake was theirs and not Paul's.

And here it was, happening again. And yes, I was tempted to again channel my inner-father only ... well, I kept thinking of our friend Carole Day who vanished last year in Manila, never to be seen again, after giving a Filippino fellow a right scolding ... so decided to just play nice, pay again (for only one night since I wanted to have some remaining pesos to play with) (I never replaced my credit cards after I was robbed in China) and let Paul and/or Keith sort the whole thing out in the morning.

And after our luggage was finally stashed, we all went out to explore the Makati Red Light District.

Mmmm, and what will Baby Jane make of that particular admission?  I'm predicting a big rant about me being irresponsible and recklessly endangering her daughter's life, moral health and general well-being. So let's circumvent that by saying "Yes, honey, I did indeed take your precious daughter into insalubrious, sleazy surroundings and she had a good time."

DAY TWO

 After so long in so-smoggy HK, 

any city with blue skies gets my vote!

Talei was working all day and Shirl was meant to be taking me out exploring only I had to sort out our unpaid room problem so we deferred our jaunting for a day.

Couldn't reach Keith. Couldn't reach Paul.  Couldn't find a HSBC ATM machine. Down to my last few pesos. Thinking lots about Carole Day and wondering if I was walking in her final footsteps. (I wasn't. She vanished in Ermita and I was in Makati)

Nonetheless, I had fun. I walked the full length of Makati Avenue looking for the bank all the while spending an entire battery photographing jeepneys.  

You may recall my passion for tuktuks when I first visited Thailand, but that only lasted a day ...  

 Philippines doesn't have tuktuks, 

but they do have these, called "Tricycles"

 ... while my passion for jeepneys only increased the more of them I saw.

They tootle up and down Manila all day and night, each with their own route, and I got to know the Makati Avenue ones very well - Homeboy, Firebird, Frances, Christ Almighty, and The Almighty Saves. 

Man, they were so incredibly cool. First I loved the slick new ones ...

 

... and then I fell in love with the old ones ...

... and then I couldn't get enough of the ones covered in gorgeous paintings ...

The delay on my camera meant 

I missed the shot I was after: 

the pink one in front.

... and then I fell in love with their wonderful names ...

... and then I fell in love with the private jeepneys ...

 These are called "Owners" 

which I learned stood for 

"Privately Owned Jeepneys". 

... and I became so increasingly enamored I began having lively thoughts about how wonderful it would be if Fiji had jeepneys too and wondered how I could go about organising internships for Fijians at the various private backyard jeepney-building workshops scattered throughout the provinces. 

It's a good idea, you realise! And finished jeepneys only cost about US$1000 each so ... well, it's such a good idea, Fiji really should do this!

And I rode in one too.  I was so wanting to only I didn't know where I'd end up and definitely didn't have enough remaining pesos to catch a taxi back if I got hopelessly lost ... but then I got chatting with some lovely locals who told me I should check out Greenbelt and Landmark so when, only a block later, a barker/tout/whatever jumped out of a jeepney and said "Landmark?", I was immediately clambering onboard.

Since I intend to do an entire post on jeepneys, I'll leave this for now and just say it was really fun and I met the most lovely lady who told me she was on her way to St Ninos Church which was very modern and architecturally interesting and would I like to see it.  Oh yeah, indeed I would!

St Ninos is astonishing:

As you can see, it's just a bare shell in the centre of a lake with absolute simplicity inside ...

 ... but the reflections of the water and light dancing over the roof are just stunning:

There is no way of locking it so it remains open all day and night, and I was just starting to feel most impressed with the honesty of locals until I noticed it had a lockable area down the back:

Stunning, isn't it. And despite the heat and humidity outside, it's just so cool in here with constant breezes off the water, so I sat there for ages as a lady played the most beautiful organ music and all around me people came and went, praying for a while and then off again to do business.  Nice, nice, nice!

After that, I spent the rest of the day exploring Greenbelt and Landmark shopping malls - a real hassle when you're broke - and didn't get back until after Talei returned at 8.30pm.  And since there was another hassle at the hotel about the unpaid bill and I still hadn't sorted out my own money problems, I borrowed money from her to shut them up for another two days.

Took Talei out for dinner. You may recall how Keith and I fell in love with Persian cooking when we were in Kuala Lumpa ... and during my walks I'd spotted "Hossein's Persian Kebab" which I HAD to try, so I took Talei there.  It was so delicious, we kept thinking about it, and so we went back later in the week to order the exact same meal, but this time it wasn't. Isn't that odd!

 The DELICIOUS version!

Talei paid!  And she also paid for the massages in the Red Light District that I dragged her along to later.  

Gosh, isn't it lovely having an obliging child along with you to use as your own personal ATM machine. I highly recommend it.

DAY THREE

Life's too short to worry about money, particularly when you're on holiday.  I decided to stop wasting valuable Jaunting Time, tapped into my own personal ATM machine, and set out for our deferred Day at Intramuros, the 16th century Spanish walled city. 

And it was so great: a totally magic day with the infectiously joyous Shirl, who is exactly my kind of Jaunter; totally curious and interested and wanting to know more:

 Shirl the Born-Jaunter!

Her first visit to Intramuros as well!

I intend to do a separate post on our discoveries, so for now I'll just tell you it was terrific fun and we met some gorgeous people.

Actually, more than just-gorgeous people! Special people! While we were taxi-ing across the city - Manila is surprisingly well organised, by the way - Shirl said "I love people who love their job. There's always something very special about them." and for the rest of the day, it was like the Universe conspired to illustrate what she meant:

Our friend,

History Buff Guard-Dude!

Like History Buff Guard-Dude, right! Shirl and I were arguing over the floor boards at "Casa Manila" - like, seriously, how can the place be a reproduction of the 16th century wealthy merchant's house that was bombed into rubble during WWII, when each of the floor boards was between a foot and 18 inches wide?  I was saying the place HAD to be original! - when the room guard suddenly ran off and came back with a room guard from an entirely different room to provide the answer for us.  That second room guard was History Buff Guard-Dude, who so loved his job, he'd researched every inch of the place and knew everything about it and was simply in raptures that somebody wanted to know something obscure that he could share.  It was a very special moment indeed.

And it turned out that Imelda Marcos said the exact same thing I said: that 16th century wealthy Spanish merchants would have exceptionally wide floor boards, and in her quest for authenticity she managed to stop buying shoes for long enough to source extra-wide hardwood timber for all the floors of all the reproduced buildings in Intramuros.

 Intramuros after WWII!

Yes, rebuilding the bombed-out Intramuros was Imelda Marcos' baby, and she did such an amazing job of it, we came away stunned, awe-struck and convinced the time had come for a thorough and more fair reassessment of her Legacy.

And our genuine and heartfelt admiration for her lasted for two days ... until Shirl and I visited the Shoe Museum in Marikina City and we came away horror-struck and shaking our heads with deep, dire disappointment. Seriously, no one NEEDS that many shoes. And they certainly don't need 18 identical pairs of knee-high black leather boots!

Oh, and the other great thing about 'Jaunting with Shirl' is that she has the exact same praeternatural sense of direction I do, and we managed to get hopelessly lost which, as it turns out, we both love because we always end up discovering things we'd otherwise never see ...

... which is just perfect.  Like, see that final photo: a swing-chair in the middle of a courtyard somewhere unknown down some Intromuro-ian backstreet. No idea who owned that courtyard - we guessed the place once belonged to a convent because it had a very strong nun-vibe - but we accidentally found ourselves there and it was so quiet, cool and breezy, and so hot and sticky everywhere else, we sat in that chair for ages, just enjoying it. Nice!

Oh, and I have to tell you about our Magic Ride back to Makati, right on the other side of the city.  No taxi would take us because it was rush-hour (which lasts four to five hours each night) and they were all scared of gridlock, so Shirl decided we'd zigzag across town in public transport - the sort of journey you can only do with locals because I never had any idea where we were - and that's what happened.  Totally FUN!!

 

Shirl trying to work out where we are 

and what to do for the next leg!

And again the Universe conspired to have everything lined up perfectly because the instant we'd get off one jeepney the exact right one for the next leg would pull in ...

... and we even stopped outside a HSBC ATM machine and I was able to draw out my entire daily limit (which only temporarily halted my money problems as it turned out).

So "Our Day at Intramuros" was simply wonderful - an entire post on it still to come - and that Magic Ride Across Manila was exactly the perfect end to it, although I did drag Talei off for yet another post-dinner massage in the Makati Red Light District - my shout!  - which was the cherry on the top of Sheer Perfection!

DAY FOUR

My bank account was empty!  Yup, seriously!  I'd planned to spent the day at Ayala Museum  (entry fee 495 pesos) ...

... but after paying for another two nights and repaying Talei, I was broke again but not in the least worried because I knew there was an ATM on Ayala Avenue, and so I rocked up, entirely insouciant,  only to find I couldn't get any money out.

Seriously dire straits, right?  No idea why because I knew there was money in there!  Nonetheless ... nothing. I went into the bank to check and they simply confirmed my account was empty and said there was nothing they could do about it and I had to check back in HK!

Dire, dire straits! So did I panic?  No! I did what any sane and rational person would do under those circumstances; found myself an air-conditioned Starbucks, made a great many phone calls to track down Keith (the bill for those calls came to over HK$600. and he's furious with me!) without success, and then turned out my travel purse to examine every single nook and cranny.  Finally, success! I'm always stashing away emergency supplies of money when I'm traveling, and I found a Fijian $100. (moneychangers laughed in my face when I tried to change that.), 300 yuan, and enough pesos to buy a chai latte to stop the Starbucks staff glaring at me!

Moneychangers next stop, obviously! Then Ayala Museum.  I'll be posting on that later so no more here, although I will say it made me realise how little I knew about Philippines History and I had so many questions thus I spent the remainder of the day wandering around the shopping malls looking for bookshops (they have heaps, by the way, and, unlike HK, books are very reasonably priced) sneak-reading snatches of the various history books to answer MOST of the questions I had. And despite been down to my few remaining pesos, I even bought one that was particularly cheap, with a lovely cynical author, so I could read more later at my leisure.

BTW, discovered later the dangers of skim-reading because in one of those books I read that Egyptian mummies are frequently found to wear gold found and smelted in the Philippines, and also that two mummies actually wore Filipino-made wrist and ankle cuffs ... and I just assumed this was common knowledge so mentioned it ... and no one had heard of such a thing, and I simply could not recall which of the great many history books I'd glanced at contained this snippet.

But anyway, after this dangerous snippet-gathering, I wandered back to the hotel, where I again tried to ring Keith without success - what does he get up to when I'm away? He certainly doesn't answer his phone! - reading in my room and desperately waiting for Talei to return from work (seems they work very long hours in the animation industry) and again perform her ATM function!

DAY FIVE

The money woes deepened! I finally managed to get through to Keith after ten at night and, although he said he was too busy with end-of-school-year exams to sort out the problem with my mysteriously-vanished cash, he promised to immediately transfer money into my account and deal with the problem later.

The money never arrived! I trust Keith implicitly so knew he'd done what he promised, but I went back to the Ayala ATM to discover the account was still empty!  

Still, holiday's are too short to worry about finances so again I tapped my favourite personal ATM machine and went out for another day's jaunting with Shirl: our quest to find out more about Imelda Marcos in order to evaluate her Legacy by seeing for ourselves all those shoes she left behind when she and hubby fled after the Edsa Revolution!

However, the day started with me going to work with Talei. No, it wasn't "Take Your Geriatric Relative to Work Day".  It was just that Rocket Fish Studios is next door to an entirely different HSBC and I wanted to discover if it was simply that the Ayala branch was screwing me around, so I ... well, I snuck into the studio behind her because, yes, I wanted to snoop!

Rocket Fish Studio consists of rows of young folk working away on computers doing ... well, don't ask me because I don't understand any of it.  Anything Talei told me about what she was actually doing was totally - WHOOSH!!! - over my geriatric head. However, I did manage to work out that it's a cartoon called "Lalaloopsy" , but ...

... beyond that, I have no idea, although I do know I'd go lalaloopsy if I had to do what they're doing - all that endless "sew magical and sew cute" sweetness and light - but it's such a complex procedure each person works on a different bit so at least that's a blessing. Imagine having to endure the entire thing all day, everyday, month-in, month-out? Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!  I'd be out hunting for A Dark Lord within a week!

However, all the people at the studio I met were total darlings. And I checked out all the Anime Avatars I could see - yeah, they all have anime avatars, even Talei, which is apparently an cyber-identity or outwardly-expressed-soul or something else I totally don't either understand or get - and, sure, those anime all may have been fierce and damaged warriors, but they all had incongruously kind eyes so I decided, in the end, Talei was in safe hands.

After that, and after also discovering that this HSBC branch didn't have my money either, Shirl and I set off for Marikina City to see Imelda Marcos' shoe collection at Shoe Museum.  Naldo said it sounded like a very dull day we had lined up for ourselves - men don't get SHOES, do they! - but it wasn't! Another all-round fun day.

However, as Shirl said, the day mainly it was about using the MRT.  See, I'd made an ignorant and uninformed comment that Manila only had taxis and jeepneys as public transport and she told me I was wrong and that the city had a very small but very fine railway system and I said I'd like to see it.

(Oh dear.  Seems I can't load any more photos into this post.  I'll try again later.)

And that's how we got to walk into lots of police action: police everywhere, all over the railway, stopping everyone all the time and all sorts of baggage examinations with The Magic Stick. Totally bizarre!  We found it hilarious because the police were demanding everyone open everything, and then they'd just stick a wooden stick inside and rattle it around for several seconds without even properly looking.  We couldn't figure out what that stick was doing - did it have eyes? was it a metal detector? - and decided it had to be a MAGIC stick, with great supernatural powers, capable of doing EVERYTHING.  

Then, the next morning, front page news, Abu Sayyaf said it would blow up the Manila railway (which is really very mean of them because they'd just be making Manila's traffic woes so much worse.) (Really, is a bit of consideration so difficult?) but the police had been told that legally they weren't allowed to put their hands into anyone's baggage nor even look inside, so they were were doing the best they could within those constraints, and so we felt sincerely bad that we'd been laughing at them and The Magic Stick.

Oh, and Shirl says I really have to warn you about J. P. Risal Avenue! We didn't know but it turns out Marikina City has THREE long roads, running parallel, that are all called J.P. Risal Avenue. Naturally, when we got a taxi at the station to go to the museum and Shirl gave him the address, we ended up on one of the three OTHER J.P. Risal Avenues and so got hopelessly lost, so had to keep stopping locals to ask for directions.  So Shirl wants everyone to know that if you want to go to Shoe Museum, you're far better off asking the driver to take you to the big cathedral - the one built in 1630 - since it's a famous landmark and the Shoe Museum is immediately across the road.

I'm so sorry I can't download any more photos to show you this very fine church, however I will posting on Shoe Museum later so I'll show it to you then.

After the Museum, we were very sad and depressed. After seeing only 800 pairs of the 8000 the museum rotates (she had 60,000 pairs all up apparently), I have to tell you there's something deeply and viscerally upsetting about Imelda Marcos having so many thousands of pairs of Charles Jourdan and Bellami shoes - they're about US$300. to US$500. a pair - paid for out of the public purse when her nation was so impoverished, with practically no infrastructure and folks having to make do and improvise to get their post-war lives together.  That WASTE got in deep with both of us, especially considering how we'd come away from Intramuros full of admiration and respect, and thus we had a very glum late lunch/early dinner in a very special restaurant nearby, in the stables of a 16th century rich Spaniard's mansion, and talked about the Edsa Uprising of 1986, when millions took to the streets demanding the Marcos get out!

So that was our next stop, the streets of Edsa, so we could walk the walk of those millions and see for ourselves the spots where the tanks refused to shoot and the soldiers joined the public in their protest!

I can't show you the photos, but I can tell you there's now a giant golden Angel of Democracy statue standing on a hill looking over the Edsa Streets where it all happened:

I can't post photos, but I found this very moving song about the Edsa Revolution that shows the very streets we honoured, despite them now being unrecognisable because of the new tangle of over-passes and on-off ramps.   Enjoy!

By then it was night so I returned to the hotel and my money woes!

Yup, I finally reached Keith who blamed me for the problems I was having, claiming I was doing something wrong at the ATM machine, but did kindly agree to transfer a lot more money into my account ... but, yeah, yeah, when I went down to Ayala Avenue the following morning, that cash hadn't shown up either.

DAY SIX

After the long and ultimately useless walk to and from the bank, my mood getting darker and angrier with every step, I reach the hotel in the foulest mood ... only to find that Talei is sick!  Stomach pains! It happens whenever she's stressed and all she usually needs is a long talk to work out her problem and once you make her express her anxieties aloud, it immediately lifts ... but I'm entirely without any sympathy because I'm so furious and determined to sort out my money issues.  "Oh, go take a hot bath!" I snap at her.

Many more phone calls but still I can't reach Keith. Then, right at the wrong moment, I get a call from the front desk. Yup, hotel is dunning us again for payment.  Oooh, it makes me cross! I go down to the front desk to demand to see the manager because I really want to yell at someone. However, the manager is no nice and so understanding, I have to find the HSBC emergency hotline number - the lovely manager finds it for me - so I can vent all the churning rage!  And, yup, that was a loud and vicious phone call because I was as nasty as I could be, but the operator was so nice and understanding too, and promised HSBC'd look into it and get back to me ASAP.  Don't you just hate that! How dare people be nice when you're angry?

Talei then says she's feeling a lot better so I send her off to work, however I don't feel like doing anything myself except sit around fuming ... except the hotel tea really really sucks so I HAVE to go out to get myself a Starbucks ...

... and barely am I there, with a chai latte in my hand, looking for an outdoor table, when I get a call from HSBC saying there's nothing wrong with my account; the money is all there, and I've only just started very adamantly telling them that it's NOT when I get the beep, beep, beep of another call ...

... and it's from Rocket Fish saying that Talei has been taken very ill and they're driving her back to the hotel.

Choice!  Do I race over to Ayala Avenue to check whether or not HSBC are lying toadfish, or do I go running back to the hotel to take care of Talei.

Talei, naturally.  She's a dear sweet darling, and, besides, looking after her was why I was in Manila in the first place.

It's not just her stomach. She's running a temperature and is feverish, so I put her to bed and we talk. Nothing is wrong.  She loves Rocket Fish, she loves Shirl and Naldo, she loves everyone she's working with, she even loves Lalaloopsy ... but Manila is so crazy and she's worried about getting lost and it's always so hot and the air is so polluted she can hardly breathe.  Poor honey!  She gets it all out of her system and then falls asleep, so I read for several hours until she wakes up again, take her for a massage - her shout! - and afterwards she's right as rain, so we go for the long and now very familiar walk to Ayala Avenue to check on my bank account ...

... and the money's all there!

Yup, the money is there in its entirety just like HSBC told me it was!

So what happened?  All I can say is I have no idea whatsoever!  Manila just been Manila????

But needless to say, I drew out as much as permitted just in case it vanished again!

DAY SEVEN

Tagaytay!  The province outside Manila.  Naldo and Shirl took us to see the volcano.

Since I still can't download any more photos I'll wait to tell you all about that in another post.

Here I'll just tell you just that it's exceptionally beautiful - very like Fiji in the lower altitudes and very like New Zealand as you drive up into the mountains. And that there are furniture businesses every place with the most amazing furniture out on the streets.  And that they build jeepneys in the sheds around and I saw TWO for sale and it was practically more than I could bare, resisting getting myself one.

We also saw an original WWII jeepney, made from one of the jeeps the American GIs left behind, and it was still on the road, still working perfectly, and so I fell in love all over again, although I didn't get my camera out in time to get a picture of it.

Oh, and I flew.  I actually flew.  There are zip-lines across a ravine in the National Park and seeing them awoke some deeply-felt urgent need in me so I had to try it. Amazing experience, although waayyyy too short. Hardly had my mind and body got themselves together enough to realise "I'm flying!" than BANG! we were on the other side.  So I did it again and again it was "I'm flying" BANG!!!  Not nearly long enough since there isn't nearly enough time to reach a point when your mind/body decide what to do with that new information and I'd really love to know what happens next ... 

... so when Shirl told me her province has a zipline that is kilometers long, I decided then and there I HAD to come back to the Philippines - with Keith this time - if only just so I could try it.

DAY EIGHT

I left. Naldo and Shirl drove us to the airport, and Shirl gave me a package beautifully wrapped in paper covered with shoes.  Inside?  A tiny little jeepney. It's absolutely exquisite so I'll have to show it to you, although in another post.  And when I saw on the front the name "Denise" and on the side "Makati Avenue: Landmark" - my very first ride - I cried.

Thank you so very much for it, guy.  You couldn't have given me anything that I'd more treasure for the rest of my life!

SUMMING UP

Hot, humid, crazy, easy to get lost in, corrupt, shonky, dodgy ... but gosh, I did so LOVE Manila!