wasting time filipino style

we arrived in manila absolutely exhausted, but had the day to waste before our overnight bus up to vigan (in ilocos sur) .unfortunately, we had all our luggage and the bus station was in a not-so-touristy / nice part of manila. manila, i must say, is gross. i can feel myself getting cancer as i walk down the road from all the fumes. thankfully, the people at the bus station let us drop our bags there (people are really very nice and helpful about this), so we wandered off to the “chinese cemetery” that was relatively nearby.

on the way we passed this:





why are these poor chicks dyed different colors? can you see the tie-dyed ones? and they were EVERYWHERE! maybe if it was near easter i could sort-of maybe see why it was being done, but this i am completely baffled by.

anyways, the cemetery was pretty interesting. definitely nice to get a touch of the chinese culture in the philippines as well (interesting that it’s such a mix of chinese, spanish, and american). wealthy Chinese-filipinos are buried here in huge mausoleums – some of them apparently with bathrooms, hot and cold running water, air-conditioning, everything.





[chandelier and reflection]


in the end, though, the best way to waste time in manila (or any major city for that matter) is to hit up the mall. have i already mentioned malls in this country? they are … amazing. the area of one floor is probably bigger than the entire area of any mall in the states, and they are often multiple stories. it is a huge part of filipino city culture – malls are air-conditioned, so people just wander around them for days. and it’s amazing how easy it is to do – most of the good restaurants have moved into the malls, there are movie theatres, more shops than you can possibly imagine, cafes, supermarkets, gyms, daycare centers. seriously, you could live in these things. to be honest, it’s … kind-of depressing, just that it is how people spend their time, but brad and i are definitely guilty of this – just wandering around aimlessly for most of the day. the malls are probably putting lots of more local sorts of places out of business too, which is sad.

but yes, so we spent the better part of the afternoon wandering around the mall before catching our bus up to vigan.