Earlier in the week, I posted a note on facebook (tagging anyone I knew in the Philippines) about my wanting to do a touch of sightseeing before the main event. Naturally, there were a few people who wanted to know why I didn’t want to do it after the event, so they wouldn’t have to miss the GP Trials. The Filipino people are nothing if not extraordinarily helpful and accommodating hosts, so finally it was agreed on that I would be up early to sightsee, so the players could then get on with their grinding.
Ceasar Asahan and Raffy Sarto (Top 8 GP Kuala Lumpur earlier this year) were waiting for me in the hotel lobby at 8am, which wasn’t dreadfully early for me – Australian time being 10am. We bundled into a taxi and headed for Rizal Park. I made promises to pay for the cab fare, but once they spied my wad of 500 Peso notes, they laughed and said there was no way I could pay with that.
You see, I hadn’t really paid much attention to what the exchange rate was. Why bother, right? I knew I needed some Philippine Pesos, so I just forked over $200 at Sydney airport and took what they gave me, which was around $6500pp. The arrival documentation, like most countries, asked you to declare if you’re bringing in the equivalent of $10,000.00 US Dollars, which I clearly wasn’t, but it also had a tick box for if you were bringing in $10,000.00 Philippine Pesos, which I was closing in on doing so. I guess that should have been my first warning.
While the trip to Rizal Park wasn’t exactly far, it came in at under 100 Pesos, which was roughly $3 Australian. As soon as we alighted from the taxi, people were trying to sell us bottles of water, which Ceasar and Raffy automatically waved away. I asked if it was the kind of water you should avoid buying, but they replied it was fine, just I should probably not bother because they would have been charging around 10 Pesos, and probably wouldn’t have change for one of my 500s.
Rizal Park was much more colourful than I expected, with stalls selling odds and ends here and there, and various memorials and displays to Jose Rizal. I had no idea who he was, so the guys entertained me with the tale of a man in the late 19th Century, who desired equality in a time of oppression and was executed for his writings, which allegedly incited rebellion. Other than the usual statues up on high, there was a larger than life diorama of a row of Spanish soldiers shooting Jose Rizal in the back at the very spot he was executed. The 8 foot tall figure of Rizal taking Spanish gunfire between the shoulder blades was facing a semi-circle of stone blocks arranged as if an amphitheatre to his execution. I assume there wasn’t an audience for this, or Rizal probably wouldn’t have been the only one shot that day.
Monument to Jose Rizal
It was at this point where I discovered that the new lens I had bought for lower lightning situations and was trying out, forces me to stand quite far back from the subject to try and fit it in. I should have brought my old lens with me as well, but foresight had eluded me that morning, so once again, I was not happy with how my pictures turned out.
Inside the Walls of Intramuros (that's a pun, because Intramuros is "Inside the Walls" in Spanish. Ha ha)
From there we headed on foot into Intramuros. Ceasar asked if I had seen any pictures of the area, which made me realise I had not. The representation I carried around in my head of the oldest part of Manila was entirely from the writings of Neal Stephenson. The walls certainly did not disappoint, being as old and magnificent as described. The old moat that surrounds the district had been an abandoned belt of green turf when Stephenson had written about it, but was now a golf course. Ceasar seemed a little embarrassed about how corny this seemed, but I thought it was a reasonable and practical use of the space. It looked tidier than a random stretch of grass, and could generate revenue for the area.
Raffy and Ceasar looking out over the golf course/moat
The streets and buildings had apparently been decimated during World War II, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Stephenson described barren stretches of scrub and rubbish, but either I missed that, or they’ve built over it in the last ten years. We made our way through Intramuros to Fort Santiago, where I tried to make up for not paying the cab fare by paying the entry fee for the guys. I’m pretty sure I still owe them lunch as well, but it seems like that will have to wait until after the event, at this rate. Inside, I successfully emulated one of the main characters of Cryptonomicon by repeatedly turning down horse-drawn taxis. The gardens were tropical and picturesque, and the overhanging palm fronds afforded me the shade I required to not pass out from heat-related exhaustion and thirst.
After we’d walked around the Fort and checked out the old prison cells that are cut into the stone below the tide-line (yes, apparently long term prisoner retention was not an issue in those days) I realised I might be risking serious sunburn if I stayed outside any longer, so we checked out the Jose Rizal displays inside the Fort before calling it a day.