unchartered manila

"I believe that Manila can be a reflection of your state of mind. Being a city of extreme contrasts it’s easy to see how it can become an intense personal experience. Manila can be chaotic and spiritual, dirty and divine, gritty and gorgeous all at once. If you don’t find beauty and poetry here, you will never find it anywhere."
(from the blog of Carlos Celdran)

It's funny... no, more tragic & embarrassing actually, that I spent the first 18 years of my life in Manila & haven't seen most of it. Far from it actually. Those extreme contrasts described in the first paragraph- absolutely true, & I believe that's the reason I've basically relegated my Manila experience to the Metro bubble that I've lived in all my life. There are so many invisible portions of Manila that many locals rarely see. So I thank heaven for the brilliant Carlos Celdran who runs walking tours of the city, thus taking it upon himself to open up Pinoys' eyes to this blind spot in their culture & help foreigners see beyond the glittering shopping malls of Makati into the real Manila, the most misunderstood city in the world.

The Philippines is an amalgamation of multiple cultures, & perhaps there's no better physical & societal illustration of that point than the district of Binondo-Chinatown-Quiapo.

Binondo, better known as Manila's Chinatown, was established in 1594 when the Spaniard colonizers gave the land to the Chinese settlers tax-free with limited self-governing privileges. This was to encourage them to be loyal to the colonial powers while keeping them culturally at a distance.

A little Spanish in Chinatown

The presence of the kalesa (horse and carriage) stems from the Philippines' days of living under Spanish rule. The Spaniards were the top of the food chain, while the Chinese were blue-collared workers. To escape discrimination, harness the executive prowess of the big fish & avoid deportation back to the homeland with a Communist emperor who would cramp their style, the Chinese were willing to shed all Chinese-ness & assimilate. They changed their names to sound more Spanish, interbred with locals & took up Catholicism, effectively blending into popular society.

But the Chinese & local customs couldn't be erased completely, & it's the norm to see traditional herbal & voodoo remedies sitting uncomfortably side-by-side along the Sto. Ninos & Virgin Marys in the many street market stalls. I picked up an anting-anting (mythological amulet) meant to protect me on traveling journeys (of course!) with the "Eye of Rome" on one side & 7 Christian guardian angels on the other.

Carlos held up one particularly nasty-looking concoction bottled with a black cross on its back, called "pampa-regla," or regulating medicine. Women drink it to regulate their menstrual cycles. Because when you miss your period, that's irregular, right? It also means you're pregnant, & the concoction is actually veiled poison used to self-abort. Abortion is illegal in the overwhelming Catholic country. Women can die or cause irreparable damage to their bodies from this, & it's all so unnecessary, if only they could get over the stigma of contraception & open dialogue about sex. Condoms & birth control are already the cheapest & most widely available as they've ever been in the country, but the risky behaviors continue. So if you need anymore justification for why health & sexual education is so important, look no further. This, sadly, is why I will always have a job in the field that I work in.

And if you suspect someone you know is a mananangal (or flying half-bodied monster that feeds on the flesh of little children), just wave these manta ray tails over the lower half of her severed body to kill her for good. Handy!

Then Carlos stopped & instructed us to pair up with a buddy. "Imagine yourself scuba-diving now & don't lose each other. Because you DO NOT want to get lost in Quiapo." We turned the corner & I almost gasped out loud. The crowd was almost impenetrable. But once you get the hang of it & position your purse in a solid deathlock, the shopping is to die for! I scored a beautiful decorative hanging lamp, intricately woven with shells, for a shocking P150. As in, US$4. I don't have a home to put it in & I don't know how I'm gonna fit it into my bursting luggage, but I don't care! It'll probably cost me 10 times as much to ship it back now. Me, practical? Never.

It was as hectic as I imagine China to be (I've only been to Hong Kong, but that's a bit different, huh?). "Be careful out there." I heard this a few times when I told people how I was spending my Thursday. Of what I wonder? Pickpockets, kidnappers, scam artists? Let's not forget that Manila is a city & like any other city, pickpockets can happen, but I probably have an equal chance of being kidnapped in the New York subway, & I am fully confident I can hold my own against scammers after surviving the Bangkok taxis. What are we so scared of anyway? When was the last time you've been to Binondo?

But yes, of course it was chaotic. I think all the white people on the tour had their eyes popping out of their heads, & the locals had their jaws dropping when they saw the parade of foreigners coming through their turf, snapping photos of them with their gargantuan Nikons. People everywhere, no sidewalks, vendor kiosks scattered haphazardly along the streets, cars & trucks sideswiping us by centimeters, kids in ragged clothes poking us & begging for money. I was really impressed by the way Carlos handled the crowds though, calming walking into traffic to let us pass, threatening to call the kids' mothers if they didn't back off, & getting the locals to chant "I love Philippines!" Hilarious. & really, amongst all the chaos & noise, I thought it was charming & beautiful.

As Carlos said, to improve the city of Manila, we have to first change the way we look at it & stop being afraid of its' grimier corners. I highly recommend visiting, even if only for the shopping. But if you're anything like me, I think you'll walk away with more than just some local handicrafts.