Manila is a big, dirty, gritty city. Its quite in your face. We landed at Clarke, unaware its a 2 hour bus ride north of the city (worse than landing in Avalon instead of Tulla). We got to our hostel (called a pension house here) in Malate & were immediately struck by the number of armed guards. Every one of them with shotgun or pistol close at hand. The other thing to notice straight away was the poverty. Across the road from our accommodation was a family living on the street. Unfortunately not an unusual occurrence.
We had to stay in Manila a day longer than planned because of a Typhoon (called Ramir). It was to be the third one in about a month, and predicted to make land in northern Luzon just when we were meant to be in the area. Even though the travel agents in Manila were pretty apathetic about the whole thing, we decided it would be pretty stupid to get caught out, so we brought forward our flight to Palawan. The rice terraces of northern Luzon would have to wait.
To kill our time we went to the Chinese cemetery on the local elevated train. The security checked my waist and our bag for weapons (for a train!). The cemetery is massive and has grand monuments with second stories, toilets and kitchens for the dead to use in the afterlife (or for the living to use during celebrations). Morbidly interesting.
While known in the past as the Pearl of the Orient, we didn't stick around long enough to try and experience the other side of this intense city. Essentially we were impatient to head off to the island paradise that is Palawan......
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