Manila: A Past Unknown 0
There is no better place to start your Philippine journey than in Manila. It offers the best introduction to the variety of cultures and experiences that await you in the islands.
Like any developing city, Manila’s rapid growth does not come without the typical urban issues of pollution, overpopulation, and traffic congestion. But even in a traffic snarl, something amusing can divert your mind away. Colorful jeepneys, a Philippine trademark, honk and race for a square meter of space to pick up passengers. Some, for practical reasons, have switched to rust-resistant chrome bodies. Left by the thousands by the American GIs after World War II, Filipino ingenuity has refashioned the former military 4x4s into a rickety but dependable stretch limos with bench seats for the common man. It is the popular public ride not only in Manila but in the whole of the archipelago.
Filipinos have a knack to learn and adapt things even without formal instructions. The Spaniards saw it among the natives and called it oido, to “play by ear.” Until an American-styled education, properly taught in the English language, was introduced. The training comes with lessons in social manners so that any American will feel at home in the Philippines today.
Soon, a highly-skilled English-speaking workforce is produced that is now widely demanded in many jobs abroad. Not less than 10 percent of the Philippine population works overseas. The paychecks they send home keep the economy supplied of its crucial dollar reserves and a sizable portion of the populace from collapsing into poverty that the government cannot arrest.
Working overseas is not entirely a 20th century phenomenon. When the first Manila galleon sailed for Mexico in 1565, Filipino labor gangs had constructed the big four-masted ships, Filipino crews manned the decks, and Filipino marines battled the pirates, keeping the Pacific a Spanish Lake over the next 250 years. Filipinos today, however, only see the spectacular sunset when they look out to Manila Bay. They cannot see the adventurous and romantic voyages of the Manila galleons that once captivated the imagination of the world. Or the naval power that the Philippines has been.
In the Philippines, the sunset takes down every history of the day with it so that Filipinos wake up in an ever present. History and the many great Filipino moments get trundled under a too American-styled education. Philippine history textbooks are thick with naïve nationalism but impoverished of the rich, but no less than touchy details, that even professional historians avoid handling.
Only travelers with budget to travel can see what every Filipino ought to see. The 2,000 year-old Cordillera rice terraces stand as proof to the antiquity of the Filipino civilization. The lowlands and coastal towns distant from Manila are the complex progenies of the complex Spanish colonizers.
Our cities are like metaphysical circles whose center is nowhere and its radius everywhere. The Visayan islands are lessons of the Mother Nature that Filipinos have spurned but still, it occasionally administers its wrath and grace. And Mindanao, particularly Muslim Mindanao, is a dark mysterious land that still awaits comprehension before its fulfillment is realized.
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