[Alex Trebek]: "Contestants, it's time for Final Jeopardy. The category: world capitals. The answer: This capital city is so awful to visit that if David Newman were given two choices - return to the city or be tarred and feathered - he'd take the latter. In a heartbeat. Thirty seconds, contestants."
[Jeopardy music playing; contestants racking their brains for something to write and cursing the fact that they wagered so much.]
What's the correct answer? Properly phrased in the form of a question, it is "What is Manila?" Yes, Manila. The capital of the Philippines and my entry point into the country. The city and surrounding areas are home to some 20 million people, all of whom are compressed into such a tight area that Manila ranks as one of, if not the, most densely populated cities in the world.
I'll try to think of something nice to say about Manila before I get to the honest part.
Thinking....
Still thinking....
Nope. I got nothing.
So here's the honest part: I hated it. I gave this city a fair tour and then some. I walked streets most visitors don't even dare to set foot on, and paid the price for it in terms of things I saw and encountered. I don't usually speak in absolutes, but I will never go back. If you've been to this city and you liked it, then I say to you, whoop-de-fucking-do. It's got the feeling of a lawless, Wild West kind of city where anything goes because the police are either outnumbered, indifferent, incompetent, or on the take. Cockfights, pistols, prostitution, gambling, and drinking at 8:00 a.m. are the norm, not the exception. This sign, which I saw at the entrance to a hotel, says it all:
A fuller explanation is in order. The numero uno reason this city ranks at the very bottom of places I've visited so far is the widespread poverty. Maybe I sound like an ass when I say that, but it's no fun being surrounded by human misery and suffering 24/7. True, it provides a valuable service: it's eye-opening and educational and makes me soooo thankful for what I have. But it's heartbreaking and frustrating, depressing and terrifying. The poverty here is an equal opportunity beast, affecting men and women, young and old. An army of beaten and broken souls inhabits this city. On the first morning I was in Manila, I left my guesthouse early to grab some breakfast. On my way to the market I saw hundreds of children (that's no exaggeration) sleeping on the streets; many naked, all dirty. Sometimes their parents were sleeping next to them; sometimes there wasn't an adult in sight. It was painful to see this right in front of me. I literally had to step over kids lying in the street to get where I was going. Then, just when I figured it couldn't get worse, it did. I turned a corner and saw a community of homeless people who had turned a portion of a sidewalk on an empty street into their living space. Their "homes" were little more than newspaper roofs and cardboard walls. In the space of a typical American bathroom were groups of 10, sometimes 15 people, living together. Without any plumbing, the street became their toilet. I could not believe my eyes when I saw people using the street as a communal bathroom (for both number 1 and number 2). Watching people do their business on the street, and then seeing and smelling the result, left me numb. This scene was replayed countless times. And then it got worse, again. Later on that day, I almost stepped on a man in street. Why? This man was an amputee with no right arm and no right leg. He didn't have a cane or a wheelchair. His only way of moving was to crawl on the ground, face down. I didn't see him because a) he was crawling and just not in my field of vision and b) he was so dirty that his clothes matched the color of the asphalt. At a snail's pace he was slinking himself along while no one seemed to give a damn. The whole scene was soul-crushing. I thought of taking pictures of these displays of poverty - not so much for the blog but as a reminder for me of how fortunate I am. It just didn't seem right. Frankly, I have no desire to relive those moments once I get home. Living it once was enough.
Reason numero dos why I hated Manila is that the tourist center is right smack in the middle of the red light district. For a while I couldn't understand why the tourist hotels would situate themselves in that area. Then it dawned on me: I had the sequence backwards. The hotels came first, and since most of the "tourists" to Manila are looking for cheap sex, the hookers and pimps were not too far behind. I'm an opened-minded guy when it comes to prostitution (that is, other people doing it), but this was like something from another planet. Manila takes it to a whole new level. It's about as up front as you can possibly imagine it. No, let me change that - it's WAY more up front than you could ever imagine. In the roughly 10 square block area that makes up the main prostitution area (I say "main prostitution area" because the entire city is filled with prostitutes, as I found out quickly), roughly 90% of all women are looking to get paid. They politely call them "guest relation officers" at the strip clubs and bars, but they're hookers, plain and simple. Several things make the prostitution in Manila even more slimy than your run-of-the-mill street hookers. The people paying for the sex are largely older white guys from central and northern Europe and Australia. So all you see are old, fat, balding white guys walking around with tiny Filipino women. There's just something unpalatable about it, bordering on extreme exploitation. Much of the time it's not clear whether the hookers are minors or not. Second, the hookers are aggressive. Very aggressive. As a white guy walking the streets alone, both during the day and at night, they were on me like a fly on shit. Every five minutes or so I'd hear, "Hi handsome, you want to party?" or "You want to [insert bizarre sex act here] to me?" No, no I do not. And then there's the grabbing. I already have a thing about strangers touching me, so when prostitutes would come up to me and grab my arm or reach out to try to rub my neck or back, I was not shy at all about getting them off me. One women wouldn't stop harassing me. After 20 seconds of following me (around a corner, no less) she reached out and grabbed my shirt. I nearly lost it. I spun myself around while unleashing a torrent of curse words. I had to stop myself from throwing the hardest haymaker I could muster. And that was at 9:00 o'clock. In the morning. The rest of the day was downhill from there. Much of the time I felt like an undercover CIA agent in a spy novel trying to avoid being nabbed by the Russians. I would double back, quickly cross streets into oncoming traffic, duck into alleyways, walk into stores and exit out a back door, and hide in churches. Oh thank heaven for churches, one of the few places where a man can get away from hookers. (There was a certain oddness about that last point that was not lost on me. In a country that's 95% Catholic, but somehow open to prostitution, I was the rare Jew seeking solace in churches.) I realize that most of the Filipino women don't understand that a white guy traveling alone wouldn't want to pay for sex - I was an anomaly in Manila and they probably just can't get their heads wrapped around the concept. Kinda tells you something about the city. The whole situation was so repulsive that it actually made me not want to think about sex, at all. For the first time since puberty, I refused to let any sex thoughts, including the pleasant ones, invade my brain. That is truly remarkable.
Finally, there's the non-stop hassling. When women weren't looking to get paid, men were chasing after me for everything from taxi rides to drugs. (As to the drugs, I was repeatedly offered Cialis and Viagra. I was both humored and mildly insulted by this. Do I look that old? I hope not.) It's one thing to get asked for such things while walking down the street - it's commonplace in Southeast Asia as I've discovered - but here they don't give up after the first "no." Guys would follow me for blocks demanding that I buy whatever they were selling. Ignoring them only worked occasionally, and saying no just seemed to encourage them. Way too often I had to resort to throwing out such universally understood phrases as "Fuck off, asshole." Doing that for twelve to fourteen hours is, surprisingly, very tiring.
When you add these issues to the usual litany of problems associated with large Southeast Asian cities - noise, pollution, etc. - Manila just never had a chance.
Ok, that was depressing to read (and write). So here's some cute, cuddly kittens to liven up the mood:
Was there anything I liked about Manila? In fairness, yes. There were a few sights that were interesting and worthwhile.
But I'm only going to describe one of them because that's all I'm willing to do to salvage something positive about the city. The oldest church in town - built in the late 1500s - is beautifully decorated and well-maintained. It contains a lot of interesting Christian relics that were brought over by the Spanish in the seventeenth and eighteenth century centuries. The church also explains in excellent detail the efforts made by the Spanish to convert natives to Catholicism. 
The best part of the church is the ceiling. It's painted in a 3-D style that makes it look like there is all sorts of ridges and levels and adornments. There aren't any. The ceiling is flat as a pancake. It's just a bit of sixteenth century trickery. What's really weird is that it gets more dizzying, not less, as you climb stairs and get closer to the ceiling for further inspection. Alright, that's the only nice thing I'm saying about Manila. In fact, because I disliked the city so much, it caused me to chop off about five days on my planned trip. Before I arrived in the city, I had set out to explore regions north of Manila. But doing so would require returning to Manila, which was out of the question. So I headed south, where I could still explore 85% of the country.My first stop as I headed south was Tagaytay.
An otherwise completely unremarkable city 30 miles south of Manila, it boasts one thing that draws tourists in: Taal Volcano. (That's it in the far distance in the picture.) The volcano sits in the aptly-named Taal Lake, and there is also a lake inside the volcano. It makes for a pretty stunning sight. The volcano is only semi-active, so there's smoke but no fire. Getting to the top requires a boat ride to the base of the volcano and then an ascent to the top. The vast majority of people get to the top by riding mules because it's moderately steep and somewhat slippery and it was 95 degrees and blah blah blah. I grew a pair and climbed it. It's a fun hike that takes a few hours and the view from the top is undoubtedly much nicer when you're armed with the knowledge that you're not a wuss and you've accomplished something on your own. Once down the volcano, 
there's nothing else to do in the town except watch the sun set over the lake with a cold beer and fried chicken. (For reasons as yet unknown to me, fried chicken is big in the Philippines. I don't understand it, but I respect it.) So I sat there, beer in one hand, drumstick in the other, enjoying a peaceful night on the lake. The electricity cut out at 8pm due to a lightning storm. This was a good thing because it silenced some guy's radio that was blasting American pop music to the entire town. So it was me, a warm night, a cool breeze, some lightning, cheap eats, and cold San Miguel beer. Not a bad way to spend a night.Heading further south, in the direction of the beaches, required several more rides on public buses. One of them took me in the complete opposite direction for about two hours, and the other stopped every three minutes to pick people up and drop them off. Just an FYI if you ever make it to these parts: there are no formal bus stops. You get on and off wherever you please. Sounds nice, but in practice it's terrible if you're traveling long distance. I kid you not, there were times when the bus would stop to drop someone off, move twenty yards, pick someone up, move fifty yards, drop someone off, move thirty yards, and pick someone up. Reeee-diculous. This can pose several other problems besides pissing me off and causing me to be late. [Note: if you don't want to be grossed out, skip the rest of this paragraph.] So I'm on a bus and I've violated one of my two bus rules: always use the bathroom before getting on public buses. You just never know when the next chance comes. (The other rule is a natural corollary: always bring food and water.) The bus is running late and there's no bathroom on board. We're stuck on a highway, lots of traffic, no air conditioning, and I have to urinate real bad. As in "my bladder will explode if I don't empty the tank right now" bad. Without a bathroom on board, I'm desperate for options. I start looking around and I consider the following: a) the window, but rule it out because I have to stand and it's way too obvious; b) just going on the floor, but rule it out because, well, that's just not right; and c) a small door in the floor of the bus leading to the axle, but rule it out because my aim isn't that good and it was in the middle of the bus and therefore prone to being spotted. Then I realize: I have a half-empty bottle of Sprite in my bag. I gulp it down and then quickly focus on the task at hand. Now, you have to realize, this bus is going over a very bumpy road and I'm at the point where once I break the seal, there's no stopping it. So one slip of the hand and it's going to be very messy for me and for the bus. But with the steady hands of a surgeon (which I no doubt inherited from my father), I did my business in a soda bottle. In a public bus.
Next up on my journey was Puerto Galera, a small town on the northern edge of Mindoro, one of the major islands in the Philippines archipelago. The town has a sorry excuse for a beach but boasts of being the top diving spot in all of the Philippines. I've only scuba dived once in my life - usually I just stick to snorkeling - but there were so many dive shops in this small town that I figured there must be something special to draw so many people under the water.
There is. The coral around the island is amazing, truly amazing, and the fish are numerous, varied, and colorful. I took a day-long course to learn the basics and then went underwater for about an hour with my personal guide. It's so much better than snorkeling. Instead of just observing I felt like I was part of the action. My guide took me to a depth of 13 meters and we zigzagged our way across coral that had bold purples, bright pinks, and blinding yellows. Schools of fish swam next to me and around me. I ducked in and between some massive coral protrusions. I was the subject of some curious sea snakes. It was awesome. And all I have to show for it is this crappy certificate.Once the sun goes down on Puerto Galera, it's time for more drinking and in-your-face prostitution. The bars are filled with loads of middle-aged white guys holding hands with Filipino hookers. How sweet. I managed to escape most of this nonsense due to sheer luck. My neighbor at the small motel I stayed at was an American guy, 65 years old, who had just retired and moved to the Philippines. He was in search of a warm beach with no memory. He wanted nothing more than to live out the rest of his days without stress or strain. In addition to being recently retired, his wife had died a few years before, and he had no children. He had no ties to the U.S. and was content to never return. He was staying at this motel for a month before deciding where to permanently settle. For three straight nights we watched from our balcony as the sun said goodbye to the sky and to us. This was our view.
We'd shoot the shit for a few hours. Or we'd just sit and say nothing at all. We learned about each others' lives, we dispensed advice, and we relived glory days. After three nights, I felt like I had known the guy for years. And then, I left. Didn't say goodbye, didn't exchange contact info. I left at a time when he wasn't there, so that was that. It's funny, these encounters I have with other travelers. And it's odd when I think about who we all let into our little private lives and what we show each other. Whether I'm talking with someone for an hour or a day, I'm always shocked by how open and honest people are about themselves (or, at least, how open and honest they seem to be). Maybe it's because we all figure that we'll never see each other again, so there's no harm in telling strangers things that we might not even tell family and friends. (Although I have, a couple of times, bumped into people I met weeks earlier in a different country, so I guess not all meetings are one-offs.) Or maybe, people are just honest. But there's no doubt that I've been more open and forthcoming with other tourists than I have with former co-workers - people that I spent years with and saw every day. I guess that's how it goes. I'll meet someone, we'll be best friends for a brief moment of time, and then - nothing. We separate once again into our own lives carrying nothing but a memory that will fade over time. Every now and then I'll get an email address or a name to look up on Facebook before a parting of ways. More often than not, at the end of the day, it's "Good meeting you, enjoy the rest of your travels," and that's all she wrote. For example, my diving guide and I got along just swimmingly (oooh, great pun) because we were so alike. He was 30, from San Diego. He sat behind a desk for 8 years in the mortgage industry. Hated his job, loved to scuba dive, and in 2008, saw the writing on the wall about the housing market. He quit his job, got certified to be a scuba instructor, moved out of his apartment, put his stuff in storage (much of this was eerily familiar to me) and moved to the Philippines to work. He loves his job even though the pay is crap. After our hour-long dive, we got back to the boat that was gently rocking in this beautiful cove. He smiled and said, "Welcome to my office." I smiled back and asked, only half-jokingly, "You guys hiring?" Instead of going back to shore, we told the boat driver to wait a while so we could enjoy the view. We chatted for an hour, each describing the steps leading to our respective decisions to quit our job. We talked of the future, of the NFL, and of our past lives. We both concluded that our decisions to quit our jobs were the best decisions of our lives, and that we'd be suckers if we ever relapsed into the same b.s. routine. I'll probably never see him again. But for three hours, we were best pals. That's how it goes, and it's by far my favorite part of traveling. Some people have amazing stories about where they're going, where they've been, and why they're where they are. I love hearing every one of them, and people seem genuinely interested in what I've done. There's a small community of people who have eschewed the standard life - get a job and keep at it until retirement - and overcome the fear of not always having a steady income. And they're they happiest bunch of people I've ever met.Anyway, back to reality. Another draw of Purto Galera is that there are walking paths in the inland jungle that let visitors see how rural Filipinos actually live. It's not part of the standard tourist fare; it's not in the guidebook. Enough Westerners live in the area who enjoy exploring the jungles that, if you're lucky, they'll bring you along and give you a first-hand glimpse of how "real" Filipinos live. A few Norwegian girls that I met in town told me about an older guy they had spoken with who was going to take them on one of these walks. They suggested that I come along. There was one tiny problem. They failed to explain that this "walk" was really a hike. Everyone else (there were 12 of us in total) showed up at the designated meeting spot with hiking shoes and tons of water; I - presuming that this walk would be easy and relatively quick - came in flip-flops, carrying only a bottle of Sprite. It started out easy enough for the first 30 minutes and I was feeling ok about the situation. Then it got nasty: steep hills, slippery rocks; blazing hot sun. I was hungry, tired, and sore. So yeah, I was bitter and regretting every moment. By the time we finished I was severely dehydrated. I was actually in bad shape - by far the worst I've felt in the last three months. As we sat down to eat after the hike, five hours later, I began to see double. That was bad in and of itself. What made it worse was that the group was full of ugly people, so I was seeing double the amount of ugly people. I think the Norwegian girls were a little concerned, but I was trying to be macho and pretend like it was nothing. Fortunately our meal ended just in the nick of time because 15 minutes later I got to my motel room and passed out for three hours. Then I woke up feeling fine, but with a bizarre craving for a sundae. Weird.
So that's how the first week of the Philippines went. Let's see how the second week goes...
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