It’s been a looooooong day. Yesterday, we woke up, puttered around the apartment, and got on a train to Shanghai. Shanghai - a sprawling mass of excitement, culture, and constant activity, featuring both extreme beauty and extreme ugliness, the best and worst of China packed into one throbbing metropolitan headrush.
We arrived in Shanghai, ate at Burger King, stopped by Starbucks, watched movies in the hotel room, ventured out for curry, bought beer at a convenience store, and watched more movies in the hotel room. Oops. It actually felt really liberating, and it was strategic - Shanghai, for all its allure, is damned expensive, and we’re trying to be financially responsible. This meant that while in Shanghai the best thing for us to do was park ourselves in the hotel room and be worthless.
So we woke up at seven fifteen, took line 2 from Nanjing Xi Lu to Longyang Lu, and jumped on the maglev. The maglev, incidentally, is still awesome. Every time I take it, it’s like taking a seven and a half vacation to the future. We made it to the airport and checked in. Then we changed over some money to pesos, confusing the poor girl at the currency exchange counter and encountering a dose of Chinese beaurocracy that put a wrench in our plans for having all the cash we’d need for the trip in hand. Maybe there’s something I’m just not getting going on, but every time I’ve gone to a bank in China, it’s required at least five employees to help me, and a lot of frantic gesturing, yelling, desperate shuffling of paper, and more red stamps than most of you have probably ever seen in your life. I’m in a good China period right now, but like any relationship, sometimes enough is enough and you need to get some space. At the currency exchange counter, I realized that I was quite happy to be getting away from China for a little bit.
I slept through most of the plane ride, and woke up in time to take off my sweater and shake off the grogginess before we landed in Manila. I was extremely nervous about this part of the trip - last time, we found ourselves stranded in a deserted airport at midnight, unable to find a taxi or a way to get money. It ended in The Worst Hotel in the World, after we’d been extremely thoroughly fleeced by every person we encountered. We were fine last time, and it wound up being about the best vacation ever, but I still wasn’t in a hurry to relive it. This time, we walked off the plane, breezed through immigration, grabbed our bag, finished changing our money without any fuss, and met the hotel’s driver, who was waiting for us outside. EASY.
So we checked in at Duck Inn, which Chris described as the Manila version of Blue Sky (which makes sense to other Nanjingers), and he was completely right. Beer, pool tables, white guys. Emphasis on GUYS. I’ve seen all kinds of foreigners around, but I swear it feels like I’m the only foreign female in Manila. I’m sure that’s not true, but I still feel like I REALLY stick out. Chris also commented that Manila didn’t seem to be the sort of place you bring your girlfriend while we were watching dumbstruck as a completely idiotic drunken lout enjoyed the attentions of not one, not two, but THREE GROs (Guest Relations Officer - on our last visit, a travel agent explained that these were the people who “do the sexy dance”) who were giggling, massaging, and dry humping the guy. We ate lunch at what was supposed to be a nice, quiet, outdoor area, but in which I was DEFINITELY the only female in the place who wasn’t being paid to show interest in her male companion.
I have no idea what to think about Manila. It left a really bad taste in my mouth last year, and now I’ve only got extremely cursory experience with it, so you really can’t use my opinion on it for anything.But here’s my opinion anyway. It’s a lot like what would happen if New Orleans, Miami, and Tortuga circa 1650 had a baby and fed it a lot of beer and mangos, then set it in the middle of an eternal summer afternoon block party. Which sounds great, right? It is CHILL here - everybody’s outside drinking beer or cokes, playing cards, blasting music from storefronts and car stereos, and smiling a lot. Everything’s incredibly friendly and relaxed. On the other hand, oh my god the prostitutes! Or GROs or whatever you want to call them. Our hotel actually has a sign hung outside it that says, “no unescorted young ladies allowed,” which under normal circumstances would really piss me off, but which here is a blessed relief. Our hotel’s house rules sheet also says that “firearms must be deposited with reception. They will be returned at checkout.” Hookers and guns oh my!
I don’t feel unsafe or anything, though, and I’m not freaked out - last time I was scared for my life. It’s just an extremely different city from anything I’ve ever been used to. It’s as different from China as China is from the US, at least, and that’s an intense thing to deal with in one night. However, I think this is probably an incredibly fun city if you can stick around long enough to figure out how to maneuver inside it. We went for a walk around the hotel neighborhood, and as soon as we walked outside we heard a really loud church bell ringing over and over again, and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a parade (I think it had something to do with Sinulog or Ati-Atihan?). People were waving Virgin Mary/Assorted Saints icons and figurines around while they processed into a church, and there were troupes of kids dressed up in full-on island getup performing a dance. It just looked like so much more FUN than the Catholicism I know. Nobody looked bored or uncomfortable or guilty - the kids were just running and jumping and yelling and screaming to the drums, and it was AWESOME to watch.
Anyway, to wrap this up since I need to get to the airport by seven tomorrow morning, I’m fine to be leaving Manila tomorrow, but I’d like to be able to want to stay here. At least in my experience, it’s a mixed bag, much like the combo business we saw earlier today - “Dental Clinic / Pool Hall.”
Yet again, if you’d told me three years ago that I’d wake up in Shanghai and go to bed in Manila one day, I probably would have been really angry with you for mocking me and the travel lust I thought I’d sacrificed to inertia. So Bohol tomorrow! I won’t have internet for the next three or four days, but I should be back on Thursday or Friday.
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