in between vietnam and the philippines, we were back in bangkok for a day and a half...this time we stayed in an area near lumbini park, instead of the usual tourist haunt of khao san road...even though it took us a while to find our guesthouse, it ended up being a lot better than previous visits...the food at nearby street stalls was better, as were prices...also, the foreigners we saw were those who actually live in bangkok, not those who are just visiting...while walking around i saw several HUGE malls, with brand names in them...it was very hard to walk away from the baskin robbins store, i was sooooo tempted...i did see one new sight, the golden mount...it's a wat on top of a hill...the wat itself isn't any great shakes, but it was the first time i was able to look out over the city, and that was neat...
from bangkok we flew to manila, the capital of the philippines...a very western city...HUGE malls all over the place, lots of english spoken, restaurants everywhere...it's almost like being back in the states in many ways...i first visited manila 5 years ago, when my sister was living in the philippines for a year...being back brought back a lot of memories, to say the least...it was nice to be in a place where i sortof had an idea where i knew what i was doing...
the last time i was in manila, i was guided around by my sister, which meant i payed absolutely no attention how we got anywhere...and we didn't walk much...this time, layna and i both walked...and i realized that it's easy to walk around manila...this does not howeva mean that filipinos do any walking...if at all possible, they take transport...whether that's a taxi, a jeepney, a tricycle, or the LRT/MRT...i saw very few people out just walking, and the tricycle drivers all told me i was nuts/dumb for walking...traffic is not very clean, and i didn't enjoy all the black clouds being belched out of the vehicles, but oh well...i walked through intramuros, quiapo, chinatown, and malate, which are all areas of manila...intramuros still retains some of it's spanish roots, and the manila cathedral is in that area...it was originally built quite a while ago, but has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times...(fires, earthquakes, etc knocked it down...the philippines is home to many natural disasters each year)...
just like saigon, manila isn't all that aesthetically appealing...there are only a few actual sights, and most people don't spend much time there...traffic is crazy, and surprisingly, it's not from personal vehicles...there are just so many taxis, jeepneys, tricycles, buses, etc on the road that things get clogged up...and filipino drivers usually ignore lane lines...still layna and i both really like the city...
one of the sights is rizal park...it's still called luneta by a lot of locals, even though the name was changed in the 50s, i think...jose rizal is one of many philippine national heroes...i think he stood up to the spanish with words? they've got his farewell poem translated into several different languages...it's actually pretty moving...in one area of the park you can see the cement footprints of the steps he supposedly took, leading to the spot where he was executed...at one end of the park is a statue of rizal, guarded by two members of the filipino military in dress uniform...toward the other end of the park is a statue of lapu lapu, who was the leader of one of many tribes way back when...he's known because he won the battle with ferdinand magellan when the later first landed on the philippines in the 1500s...magellan didn't last long after landing, and that defeat set back spanish colonialization by about 100 years...at the far end of the park is a map of the philippines...made of cement, in water, so you get an idea of what the whole country looks like...the best view would have been from the LRT line closeby, but i couldn't figure out a way to get up to that spot...(it wasn't a stop, so there wouldn't have been anywhere to stand)...all along the sidewalks in the park are busts of other filipino heroes...they've got a lot of them!!!
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