Day 48

After breakfasting on fruit at the pension, we walked about 10 blocks to the San Andres market. The walk was the first area we have seen in Manila that resembles the rest of the country with its many bread shops, back alleys with people bathing in the open air, and other usual sights. We were astounded at the prices of some fruits compared to what we have been used to. For example, guayabano was P100 per kilo. We have never paid more than P30 in the past.

We decided to take the LRT to the end of the line to get an overhead glimpse of Manila and saw many Chinese temples and the famous Chinese cemetery north of the Pasig River. We then returned to the city center of Tondo and Binondo with their large Chinatown. Here we encountered three vegetarian Buddhist restaurants on just one street and enjoyed their 4 course (two vegetarian dishes, rice, and a drink) “budget meal” for P45. Another place we heard had vegetarian eateries is the food court of one of the chain malls so we visited the SM superstore next to city hall. This is an enormous air conditioned 5 level complex with hundreds of stores. The upper level is a ten theater cinema and we decided to see a US first run movie, “Eight Below”. (P90 each) Most of the ground floor is a huge food court and we did encounter Bodhi’s, a vegetarian and health food outlet with branches in most of the SM malls. They have a similar 4 course budget meal for P70. But we did not partake since we had already visited three other veggie restaurants earlier. We also came across a soy smoothie stall and got some more photos of these outlets for the article we plan on vegetarian eating in the Philippines.

We returned to the pension to get our things and enjoy some of the snacks we had purchased at the ve-G restaurants that morning (lumpia, veggie burger, and samosa) and the rest of our fruits. During this time we met two more pension residents at the table and passed on our guide book to one of them just before leaving for the airport. This pension is very popular among the expatriate crowd and includes many Peace Corps and other NGO visitors.

We had gotten instructions that morning on how to go to the airport via public transportation which requires two jeepneys as it can be difficult to get a taxi who won’t overcharge. We thought we had good instructions but ended up walking a fair amount to reach what we thought was our destination. However, we mistakenly went to the wrong terminal. The airport has no shuttle between terminals and this fact is exploited by the taxi services who charge many times the normal fare. We ended up simply walking to the second terminal, about 15 minutes away. Later we learned there are jeepneys that do this trip.

There we were informed that the flight was overbooked and they were soliciting volunteers to give up their seats. We accepted the deal, which gave us both free round trip tickets USA-Manila good for one year, confirmed booking on a flight twenty-four hours later, and $200 cash to pay for hotels and other expenses. We then returned to the pension where we checked back in, this time into a very quiet air-con room where we both had a very restful night. Coming back by jeepney also involved a modicum of walking as the jeepneys do not stop at the same place, probably because of ongoing road repairs. We both were lamenting the fact that the airport transportation issue is so dysfunctional in Manila and can create a poor first impression of the country. The ideal solution would be to simply extend the LRT to all the airport terminals which now stop a couple km short in Baclaran! We suspect this occurred to protect the interests of the taxi and jeepney drivers.