First impressions of the Philippines

Cebu from the hotel we stayed at my first night

The remarks here are after my first two weeks in the country, and I've only been in Cebu and Manila so far, so the big cities, which don't fully reflect the country's culture. I still want to record these first impressions before they become normal and I won't notice them anymore.

Yarn bombing happens in Cebu, too

First, an admission: I didn't know much about the Philippines before coming here, and I didn't have time to research much beforehand, either, other than the necessary formalities, like tourist visa requirements. I was in for a bit of culture shock - I knew it was a poor country, but I've been to poor countries before: Vietnam, Nepal, or Rarotonga are not known for the luxurious lifestyle of their citizens, either. However, I was not prepared for the vastness of inequality screaming at you here wherever you go. You see people sleeping in shacks made of cardboard, homeless dogs, and begging children among brand new shiny SUVs driving from an air-conditioned apartment building with a swimming pool and a gym, to the air-conditioned office, and to the fancy shopping mall full of global brand names, bowling lanes, and multiplex cinemas. There was even an ice-skating rink in one of them! 

I caught a cultural dance show in one of the shopping malls

There are security guards everywhere - at the entrance to office buildings, shopping malls (including a metal detector), and apartment buildings. Most of them are just standing or sitting there, hardly looking at you when you come in, but entering through a metal detector to a shopping mall is like going through an invisible barrier, where you leave the noise, dirt, and poverty behind you, and enter the air-conditioned temple of commerce. 

The peaceful courtyard of Ayala Shopping Mall

It's hard to tell how much things should cost. It's almost like you have to ask yourself "what is real?" every day. We have spent over 2,000 pesos on lunch one day, and we have spent 260 pesos on lunch on another day. If we were to buy something from a street vendor, it would probably be another order of magnitude cheaper. We haven't braved it (yet?), because it doesn't look very safe (we loved eating street food in Vietnam, Thailand, or China, but here food safety doesn't seem to be on the same level). 

It seems that restaurants come in one of two versions: either they take you to your table, give you the menus, and abandon you until you manage to get their attention again (while 3-4 wait staff are idling around, not busy), or the person who seated you stands expectantly next to your table, pen in hand, ready to take your order as soon as you sat down, even though the menu is several pages long, and you've never been there before. Appetisers and mains, even though listed as such on the menu, come all at the same time, and if you only ordered mains, there's no guarantee they'll come at the same time. More often than not, not everything from the menu is available, and you only find out when you order (sometimes after the order has been taken). One time Jon ordered a beer that turned out to be out, and the waiter almost turned to walk away after telling us this, before Jon stopped him, and ask him to bring him the menu again so that he could order a different beer. 

What is the food like? Full of meat. It would be nearly impossible to be a vegetarian here because even then salads often have meat in them. There's glorious lechon, which is roast pig, and the Cebu lechon is "the best pig in the world" according to Anthony Burdain. There's fried chicken in many different variations. There's a big selection of fish and seafood, often grilled, so a slightly more healthy alternative, and then there's garlic rice. It's the only way to have rice, I swear. I don't know how it's not the main food export of the Philippines cuisine (not that I've ever seen a Filipino restaurant outside the Philippines, I guess). While I love these flavours, and they appeal to my Polish palate quite well, I am craving vegetables big time. We try to order a salad whenever it's available, but it doesn't seem like enough. The Airbnb we're staying in doesn't really have a kitchen you can cook in, all we've done is buy some cereal and milk for breakfast to skip at least one meal out. 

This was a Hawaiian restaurant 

Yes, I ordered eggs Benedict, and they were great. That cafe also has the best flat whites, comparable to the best of Wellington

I think there was fish wrapped in the leaves

Grilled chicken from a little booth by the side of the road in Cordova Village, delicious! 

Seafood in a Swiss-German restaurant in Cordova Village

Obligatory San Miguel beer with most meals

Amazing pizza next door to Jon's office

Sizzling sisig - pork head and liver (as I learned after I ate it)

Grilled fish and mussels 

Delicious ripe mango for breakfast almost every day

Probably the least appetising looking meal, but the brown mess were delicious beans. Top left is liempo (pork), and top right is marinated carrots and radishes

Paella in Manila

Beautiful grilled fish and oysters

Squid at El Taquería, our local Mexican restaurant

Fried chicken can come in a fancy variety...

...or very much non-fancy.

The traffic here has been described many times, and it's as atrocious as people say. Again, to compare it to Vietnam, it's heavier, and less friendly. In Vietnam, I have no trouble crossing the street in the flow of cars and motorcycles because I know they will drive around me if I walk at a steady pace. Here, they mostly don't even slow down, even at a cross walk, and you have to wait for a big gap in traffic, push your way through regardless, or wait for the cars to come to a standstill and just walk around them, which is the best option, and usually the fastest. We both like walking everywhere, but this place might just defeat us. There are hardly any footpaths to speak of, the noise of the constant traffic is quite stressful, and the heat is oppressive. If you have any kind of money, especially as a Western tourist, you're expected to take taxis or Grab (the Asian version of Uber) everywhere, even to places 1-2km away, even if it's faster to walk because of the traffic, otherwise you're a weirdo. It's also not very safe to walk in some neighbourhoods, and I definitely wouldn't walk anywhere after dark. Restaurants with outdoor seating warn you about not leaving your possessions where they could be snatched off the chair next to you. 

Road leading to our apartment building. Unusually empty, must have been a weekend

To finish on a more positive note: very few people smoke here, and there are no smoking signs everywhere - at shopping malls, office buildings, restaurants, and all over Intramuros, Manila's old town.