Manila

So, I'm finally getting around to writing about my recent trip to the Philippines.  First of all, the Philippines in general was really awesome.  I think this is mostly because being in the Philippines didn't feel like being in Asia anymore, it really felt more like being in Central/South America.  A refreshing change!

The entire trip consisted of several days in Manila for a conference with all the other Southeast Asia Fulbrighters, then a quick hop down to the island of Cebu for some island vacationing with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter Clayton.  Because I know you'll all (all five or so of you) be waiting on the edge of your seats to hear about the trip, I'm going to split it up into two parts just to up the suspense factor.

First, Manila.  This city is crazy.  Metro Manila actually consists of 16 cities - it's huge!  The first thing I experience about Manila is the traffic.  Often, taxi rides of 10km take up to 1.5 hours!  Remember those pictures of motorbike traffic from Vietnam?  Well, the traffic in Manila is similar, except all the motorbikes are replaced with cars, jeepneys, and buses.  What are jeepneys, you ask? Well...

 Jeepneys were adapted from American army jeeps and are one of the more common methods of public transportation in Manila.  They are always brightly and individually decorated!

The conference was held in a branch of the ShangriLa Hotel.  This was by far the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in.  The most remarkable thing about the hotel was the breakfast/lunch buffet at the hotel restaurant.  It was HUGE!  Every type of food you could want - Indian food for breakfast, an entire roasted pig for lunch, handmade sushi, and (I was particularly excited about this one) an excellent salad bar!  The dessert area was completely out of control - after surveying an entire area of delicious looking Western desserts and selecting a few, I turned around to find an equally large area of Filipino desserts!

I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet all the other Fulbrighters - everyone in the group was really interesting and accomplished (besides the Fulbright, I mean).  Seriously, compared to some of the people there, I felt quite boring!  Everyone was asked to give a short presentation about their grant research/work and these turned out to be way more interesting than I expected.  Not to be a science snob, but at the beginning of the conference I wasn't super excited to listen to two days of presentations about humanities/social sciences research.  But here I was pleasantly surprised, because I found many of the topics to be very interesting.  Random examples include studies of female Muai Thai fighters, traditional Khmer dance, and reporting and ethics on the Thai/Burma border. 

On Friday afternoon, a couple others and I skipped the scheduled cultural activity (museum trip) and headed out on our own to visit Intramuros, one of the cities within Metro Manila.  Intramuros was the headquarters of the old Spanish colonial government and the site of the ruins of the Spanish fort.  First, we visited the San Augustin Church, built in 1607.  It's survived various earthquakes as well as WWII (no small feat, considering that Manila was the second-most bombed city in WWII).

Next we visited the Manila Cathedral; this church is not as exciting since it's been destroyed and rebuilt several times.  The most recent version was built after WWII.

At the cathedral, we sampled some Manila street food: fried bananas on a stick.  I think they had also been coating in sugar.  They were kind of delicious.  Then I spotted on of the guards at Fort Santiago, and had to take a picture of him.

The strange part was that he seemed confused about why I wanted to take his picture - surely this must happen pretty often?!?  We then headed to the fort.  Here's the entrance archway.

Over the arch is a wooden carving of Santiago Matamoros, the patron saint of Spain.  In case you're wondering what "Matamoros" means, it literally means "kill Moros" (Moros is the traditional Spanish word for Muslims, or more specifically North African Muslims).  Very cheery art.  The park outside the fort was quite nice, though.

The conference ended on Friday evening with a reception featuring native Filipino music played by a very cheery and skillful group.  They played xylophone-like instruments as well as big Pan pipes.  They also danced around while playing said instruments.  It was impressive.  However, I headed to bed early since our flight to Cebu was leaving at 4:30 AM the next morning!