Sunday 12th October
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| Bamboo bikes - how cool are they?? |
So…the next time
anybody says to us, Don’t go to Manila,
or, There is nothing to see in Manila
– I am going to unfurl a whole lot of photos on my computer and I will bore
them to death about how WRONG they are!
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| Rex & Pete at Church of St Augustine |
We had a wonderful
day yesterday being mightily impressed.
We booked into a tour and were very lucky to get a comfy car and a
lovely guide, Rex, all to ourselves.
There was supposed to be a vanload but…there was a complication with our
late booking so the van left without us and we had seven seats and Rex and
nobody to share him with.
It was also
fortunate that it was Saturday, when the traffic is not quite as dire. We went through Makati City, where we are
staying at our Tune Hotel, and then into Manila City, which has all been
rebuilt in since 2000 (-ish…) when the Americans left. It is all whizzbang and VERY modern.
The American war
memorial site is the biggest US cemetery outside the US. More than 17,000 crosses for those who died
in World War II – not only Americans…
and a marble
walkway with 36,000 names those missing in action. Quite awe-inspiring.
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| Benigno Akino is remembered very fondly and they sill love Corazon. Not so much the Marcoses, especially Imelda... |
The history of the
Philippines has been one of upheaval from way back. Not only are the islands on the Pacific Ring
of Fire and therefore subject to volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, typhoons, but
they have also been bought, sold, invaded, colonised and BOMBED.
The Spanish built
an immense fortress wall, reinforced with a moat, and during the war the
Japanese bombed the Intramuros (the old city within the wall) to smithereens. The only building left standing is the 500
year old church of St Augustine. When
the Americans took over they drained the moat, fearing malaria, and turned the
land into…an 18 hole golf course. Of
course! The Intramuros area has all been
rebuilt, in the Spanish style, so it is all very pretty. But…not authentic…
Rex asked us if we
would like to see “a cemetery where people live.” Well yes –why not?? The cemetery was pretty, and a bit
ramshackle.
And…to our
astonishment, it was obviously heavily inhabited by cheery people. There are a few little shops
washing hanging
everywhere
a darling baby
swinging in a cradle with a large marble sarcophagus, probably used as the
family dining table, behind him.
After that we
drove through a large area of very poor housing, with people living very much
on the streets.
And then back into
SkyscraperWorld.
We had never heard
of José Rizal but we soon discovered that he is the much-loved Hero of the
Philippines. His only crime was that a
novel he wrote on Berlin – a love story which might have been an allegory of
the Spanish occupation of the Philippines – was seen as being seditious. They have commemorated his last walk to his
place of execution…
José
Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino
nationalist, novelist, poet, ophthalmologist,
journalist, and revolutionary.
He is widely considered as one of the greatest heroes
of the Philippines.[ He was the author of Noli Me Tángere,[
El Filibusterismo, an
d a number of poems and
essays. He was executed on December 30,
1896 by a squad of Filipino soldiers of the Spanish Army. (from
Wikipedia.)
The history of the Philippines is full of bloodshed,
mayhem and injustice.
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| A dungeon in which 600 hapless souls were drowned... |
When Rex left us
at midday he asked what we wanted to do.
Well I wanted to go and sit in a cool movie theatre…but Pete is made of
sterner stuff. So Rex suggested that we
should go to the Ayala Museum, and he left us there with a trail of breadcrumbs
showing the way back to the Tune Hotel.
It was a great
choice – the Ayala Museum is wonderful!
There was a floor
full of gold. Such beautiful
things! The early inhabitants of the
Philippines wrought marvelous gold jewellery, bowls, death masks, THINGS. I just loved these earrings
and this bowl
There is a series
of paintings, probably by a Chinese artist, which date way back into the early
1500s, which show how the local people adorned themselves with gold. The Spaniards must have found these small,
gentle-looking, slightly plump people with their beautiful gold ornamentation
to be and irresistible target!
Another floor of
the museum was devoted to the oeuvre of Fernando Zobel, a VERY famous artist we
had never heard of.
We loved his work
and I snapped away a few photos before a very meek and polite custodian came
over and whispered that maybe I should put my camera away…photos are allowed on
the other floors, but NOT in the Zobel exhibition.
The ground floor
is devoted to dioramas, along a timeline of Philippines history. They were very charming and we enjoyed them
very much even when we realised there were more…and more… In fact there were
sixty of them, all done with great attention to detail. What fun it must have been, working on this
project! “We need seventeen men writing
in agony from sword wounds! Another
thirty three dying of bullet wounds! A
few hundred dusky maidens! Some nuns!
Some sleeping dogs and tethered pigs!”
As we were leaving
Pete noticed a section devoted to Mexican artists and he dived in. I had to sit on a little bench and take a few
deep breaths and a few big slugs from my water bottle…Museums are very exhausting!
Today we have to
leave the Tune Hotel at 11am to get to the airport in good time for our 4.30
flight to KL…
But we will look
forward to coming back for another few days in Manila in January!
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