My own meandering experience

What can I say? Manila was steaming hot, crowded, chaotic and... intriguing.

Again, I will make the disclaimer about time. I stayed in Manila for a whooping 40 hours, so there's not a lot I can say that is built on anything but something remotely resembling experience.

Still, I liked Manila. True, I tend to like most things, at least most places as long as they're different from back home. And Manila's a whole lot different. First, the temperature... If this had been our first destination on our trip I doubt I'd have liked it any much at all. It's hot, it's humid, there's fog and there's smog. All in all, pretty intense for a fur-skinned northerner, but having stayed in the philippines for ten days or so already, it was easily bearable.

We arrived in the afternoon, and after getting our bags to the hotel I wanted to go for a little expedition. Having heard a lot of different stuff about Manila, my friends opted not to go, but I promised to be careful and went out by myself. I mean, people are people everywhere. I'll take the risk of a light robbery in stead of living in fake paranoia or judging an entire city by the few headline crimes we've read about. Also, as I tried to explain to my co-travellers, our hotel was in the financial district, Makati, hardly the toughest neighbourhood in town. I wandered about for some hours, doing the circle trick not to get lost, and finally ended up at some big mall I knew were close to our hotel. If I had but one thing to say about Manila it would be that it is a city of contrast, contrast unlike anything I've seen before.

I do enjoy that so much, just wandering in new places, gobbling on the atmosphere, looking at people totally different and completely like myself.

I went back to the hotel, but my friends still were sceptic and wanted to eat in the hotel restaurant and have an early night, and although I like to explore, I didn't think Manila a good place for me to head out alone on the first night. Maybe if I'd had the chance to learn a little bit about the lay of the land, but no...

The next day we went to see some place called the Intrasenjos, or Intramurjos or something. I gather whatever it was called it means inner city. The old city of Manila, where the spaniards I guess, first made their homes. Lots of old style villas, a gorgeous cathedral (unfortunately it was closed so we couldn't go in) and a college and whatnot. Real cultural. The best part for me was that it was a long way from our hotel, and to and fro the cad-drivers chose different routes, so we got to see a bit more of the city in that way.

Nothing much more of importance happened to us in our brief stay except I got two proposals to marriage One was at the taxi-counter (all taxis from the airport get logged) where there was a (gorgeous!) girl called Brianne working, and her older co-worked said that with her named Brianne and me Bjørn it was meant to be. She also got on to mention Briannes good qualities in some detail, at which point we both blushed... Anyway, I told her in all honesty that Brianne probably had time to wait for someone as beautiful as her, and I hope she finds him soon. Odd how much you can get to care for someone during a ten minute wait for a taxi, hehe. And the taxi-driver too asked me if I was single and if I would mind if we took a detour, wouldn't I like to meet his little sister. It's humbling at times the massive differences thoughout this small world, and I at least am sometimes at a complete loss as how to react to them.

All in all, I found Manila quite interesting. It's not a very nice city in terms of architecture, or effective in the way of traffic and getting around, but it's so massive... It's bound to be interesting. And I had a positive feeling about the people living there as well, the few of them we met.

Earlier on the philippines I got to know this one dude that used to live in Manila, and it would kick ass to have him around for an eventual return.

Not the first place I'd return to (Manila, not the philippines in general), but I've got nothing bad to say for it as that. Except maybe the smog.