7NNT25: Day 18 – HCMC – Manila
Soundtrack: “Concrete Jungle”, The Specials
It was an earlyish morning, but at least not 530am. Grabbed a standard breakfast in the hotel, while the room was awesome, the breakfast lacked a little dedicated pho station so it was just bacon and eggs for me.
Traffic to the airport was a lot less busy, possibly helped by it being a second public holiday, and it only took 25 minutes. Customs and immigration took a while, as there were a lot of people leaving, but I got through with plenty of time to wander the various overpriced souvenir shops on the way to the gate. The flight was full, who knew that so many folks would be flying to Manila. It was my first experience flying Philippine Airlines, and they are okay. Service was solid, but I’m not sure if anyone with any food experience would have correctly identified the beef, gravy, rice, and chunks of possibly taro or sweet potato as “beef rendang”. Beef curry maybe, but unless rendang is a completely different dish in the Philippines, that one was a bit of a dud (it still tasted okay, but I love a good rendang, so the disappointment was real).
Flight was otherwise uneventful, though I did have a moment of realising that yes, our flightpath did take us over the middle of the South China Sea and all of the politics of that, but aside from a little turbulence there was nothing to be concerned about. The flight ended up running early, so we did a bit of a scenic loop around Manila Bay.
Having done the eArrival app stuff customs was simple, and it wasn’t long before I was in my pre-booked car and heading for the hotel. I’m getting the idea that the Philippines might be a little bit lawless in places, just from the repeated speaker announcement that for our own safety we should only take real taxies to leave the airport. Fortunately I’d booked a car.
Manila, first impressions, concrete jungle. So many tall buildings, and more under construction, motorways that snake above and below: navigation is definitely 3 dimensional here. It definitely feels like a huge city. My hotel is in the Malati area, supposedly one of the better areas. I’m not sure if it’s a better area because the police assistance tent had three officers armed with automatic weapons, or if the ATM I went to had a private security rapid response team of at least 6 folks armed with pump action shotguns and handguns sitting around, but I haven’t seen or heard any shooting.
My hotel room is ok, not as wonderful as HCMC but under $100/night buys different things in different places. I appear to have found the sweet spot for the aircon so that helps.
Took a quick wander around the neighbourhood, it’s fairly close to a bunch of bars and restaurants, including a crazy looking US-diner themed place, but also has lots of laundry services with offbeat names like “Let’s Talk Dirty” and “Bjorn to Wash” with a going rate of 50 PHP/kg (less than $1.50 ADU/kg). Also found a 7-Eleven that sells fried chicken so just to get in the Philippine spirit I tried some, and it was ok (many observations later a lot of places sell fried chicken here, it’s almost easier to list the places that don’t). I also tried Popple, an apple flavoured soda drink, and it’s everything it says on the label, full of artificial apple flavour.
Had a quiet evening, just letting my body have a bit of a rest, also Manila daytime temperature is in the high 30s right now, making for a draining experience. I did pop out for dinner to satisfy my curiousity about Jollibee, a Philippine institution. It’s like almost every type of fast food rolled into one: burgers, chips, fried chicken, rice, spaghetti, chicken burgers, weird meat things, ice cream floats, all sorts of things. There are no fancy touch screens, just step up to the counter and order, and try to make yourself heard of the yelling. The staff are yelling all sorts of commands at each other, truly it looks chaotic. Then I got my ticket and waited for them to yell out my number. I went with the bacon burger, fries and coke, All together it cost about $8. The fries were really good, I’m beginning to think most Filipinos are born with a fry basket in one hand. The burger was pretty bad, old, and with some weird creamy sauce. Looking around, not many people were eating the burgers, so I’m guessing I ordered the wrong thing, and I should have gone all deep fried.
A pretty uneventful day really, and in the midst I got a message from the folks who I’ve booked to do a tour on Saturday that there’s some activity taking place involving the local indigenous community, and that Mt Pinatubo might be off limits for the tour, it’s a case of wait and see. Given that was the thing I basically moved a bunch of other stuff around for, I’ll need to see how the rest of this part of my itinerary hangs together. There are still a bunch of other places and things to see, and I still need to head down to the Australian Embassy to vote.
