Manila, My Manila

So we made it here on Wed. Jan. 2. We didn't have to put $5 in our passports like Grandma always does to grease the wheels. After we landed, it wasn't the melee I remember from 1997. Everything is much calmer -- they only allow airport personnel in arrival, so nobody is grabbing your bags screaming "Ma'am, Ma'am!" Official bag helpers in uniform stand there and only help if you ask. It was actually kind of quiet and boring -- SFO is even crazier. It was kind of a jarring reminder of who we were in the global economy to stand in the OFW/Balikbayan/Filipino Resident line (see pic). We checked into the luxurious Makati Shangri-La Hotel, this absolutely amazing place that has now forever spoiled us on anywhere else we could possibly stay. After hanging out for a minute and taking photos of the place before we made it messy, Jesse's mom and a driver picked us up to take the balikbayan boxes to her house in Marikina.
Honestly this room was so over the top, the service so unbelievable, the breakfast buffet so incredible, that we didn't want to leave. We had to, of course, to leave for Cebu. Breakfast buffet @ the Shang was more than words can even describe, and Jesse and I still think it's the best meal we've had so far. Imagine the Bellagio brunch buffet...and it's twenty times better and it's all Filipino. I ate bangus with garlic rice and egg, pan de sal, corned beef, potatoes, ube ensaymada, a tiny square of sweet biko with a complex salty sweet latik topping, juicy kuchinta and fresh mangoes...We actually called and took the later flight to Cebu on Friday just so we could eat there again.

The thing is, I'm beginning to really love this city and hate it the way people do who really care about a place. In 1997, we stayed not more than a minute, and connected immediately to Cebu. But this time, I'm experiencing the city as an adult -- without the neo-indigenous cultural nationalist pretensions of my 20s, and on my own schedule, and I feel like I see it with new eyes. Instead of deriding the malls, we've been having fun exploring all of them, especially Glorietta, Greenbelt, Market!Market! and Megamall (which is just hella, hella, big...so big for us today that we were just completely overwhelmed). It's this horrible, ugly, tragic, disgusting, beautiful, historic, and incredibly rich place that crackles with electricity. I have a completely new appreciation for this place and our people. Have you ever watched a barefoot toddler navigate traffic? Or watch six year olds push carts of bananas twenty times their weight? Or stood where Rajah Soliman once presided over a bamboo hut settlement 500 years ago? Or be surrounded by millions of people swirling all around you under flashing parols in the middle of a mall? Tatay said after his visit in 1999 that Manila should be carpet bombed back to antiquity and planners should start over, because the sprawl was horrible. Yes, I do see what he meant -- yet there is beauty in this here city all the same. Jesse's Manila has changed so much he's visiting a whole new city -- and realizing how American he really is. Now I'm here at 35, humbler, here to observe and learn more than judge, and feeling so at home here yet completely out of place.