-
7NNT25: Days 23 & 24 – Angeles City
Soundtrack: any bass-heavy party track from the last 30 years. Angeles City is just down the road from Manila, less than 100km, so only about 2-3 hours to drive if the traffic is normal. It seems to have three claims to fame: the food is awesome; they know how to party; and there used to be a really big US air base here (now converted to an international airport). I was hoping I could use it as a base to do the Mt Pinatubo trek, but sadly that was not to be. When picking accommodation options, I stumbled across a hotel too swanky to really be true, at a price…
-
7NNT25: Day 22 – Manila
Soundtrack: “In These Shoes?”, Kirsty MacColl Shoe day. Older folks, such as myself, will remember legendary First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, who in western media at least was portrayed as liking the luxuries in life, including shoes. When the Marcos dictatorship was ended, the western media was full of stories of the hundreds and hundreds and thousands of custom and designer shoes she owned, this was part of the claims of excess that the ruling family indulged in. Successive Philippine governments used the shoe collection, among other things, for their own marketing/propaganda purposes until earlier this century, when a part of the collection was put on display in…
