My trip to Manila was mostly about food. My reason for going was originally because my resident visa for Taiwan was expiring. I had to leave and re-enter as a tourist if I wanted to stay a bit longer once classes ended last week. But then my priority quickly became food. Naturally.
I got to my hostel and realized that it was almost completely empty, so there were not really any friends to be made there (save for two Filipino girls in my room but they nearly slept through my whole stay). Also, it was hot and my shared room only had fans.
I stuck to the air-conditioned museums, cafes and restaurants in Makati. I really liked many of the paintings at the Yuchengo Museum and Ayala Museum. Yuchengo Museum actually had an exhibition in which there was an ipad set up in front of each piece of art and you could lift the ipad, point the camera at the piece so that you were viewing it on the screen, and once you found the right spot to focus on, the artwork would become animated on the screen and change in some way.
For the food part, photos work better than words. Churros with chocolate. Longanisa. Shrimp with coconut milk curry. Tomato and chorizo with a fried egg and arugula. Chicken sigsig tacos. Ensaymada. Chorizo burger. Salted caramel self-serving soft serve at Family Mart. Double chocolate gelato frappacino, the likes of which I have never seen before.
My only problem is that I always want to try everything but also I think it’s really terrible to waste food. In a group this is more of a good thing than a problem, but creates a dilemma when eating alone. So, every now and then, I end up with too much food but still retain my determination to wipe the plate clean.
And that’s exactly what happened with the sea salt chocolate cake at Wildflour.
I thought I’d ordered a reasonable amount: half a Reuben sandwich and a slice of chocolate cake. Not bad, right? Admittedly, the “half sandwich” ended up being the size of a normal whole one but it was tasty and original and I liked it.
Then this monstrosity came out:
I think the photo doesn’t do it justice. It was approximately the size of my head. I just gaped at it for a few seconds after the waiter set it down.
It didn’t take me long to get started – and it was delicious, sea-salty-chocolaty goodness – but as I was finishing the last half, I kind of felt like the chubby kid in Matilda who eats that massive chocolate cake in front of the whole school. When I finished, a little part of me wanted to raise the empty plate and cheer to the applause of everyone around. Instead, I just walked out to the Ayala triangle park and collapsed in the grass.
I eventually managed to straggle over to the air conditioned Greenbelt malls and kind of stretch my legs a bit, walking around. It was time to head back to the airport for my flight, but I didn’t have enough cash left to take a taxi to the airport, so I started meandering over to the buses. That is, until the sky parted and dumped an ocean’s worth of water over Manila. Then I was running, not walking. I managed to shelter my electronics but my poor self was like a 落汤鸡 (luo4tang1ji1) – a drenched chicken. I got onto a bus, perched precariously on the stairs overlooking the road, holding on the bars with a death grip as we hurtled down overpasses on a slick wet road.
Turns out, Manila’s airport has a total of four terminals and they’re not exactly all in the same place. My bus did not go to my terminal, so I was dropped off on the side of the road, and pointed in the right direction by the ticket collector. I walked along on the nearly non-existent sidewalk. I didn’t see anything resembling an airport around or any planes flying overhead. But a few people passing by confirmed the ticket collector’s directions, so I just continued.
Then a man in a red sports car pulled up and called out to me. I stopped walking and turned to face him, but didn’t move any closer and made sure to wear my what-the-hell-do-you-want-face (I forget sometimes and smile politely on automatic, which is possibly the worst thing to do). The man gave a sheepish laugh and paused, before asking, “What’s your name?”
I saw that coming, so I just said, “No,” and kept walking. I wonder how some men don’t realize how threatening it feels to have them pull up in a car alongside a woman walking alone (and not just in a place notorious for kidnappings like the Philippines, but almost anywhere, really).
I stopped to ask a couple cops how far Terminal 3 was (even though the cops there all carry guns out in the open and that kind of makes me nervous too). They exchanged looks before telling me to grab a cab, it was too far to walk. So I did, especially in light of what just happened.
I spent my last few hours in Manila drinking tea to sooth my poor overburdened stomach and reading Anna Karenina on my laptop (which I really, really like but only read bits and pieces every now and then so I haven’t finished yet and it’s been nearly a year since I started). I felt really gloomy on the flight back because going back marked the start of the end of my time in Taiwan.
I got another rough reminder of the Big Change coming when I got to customs and had to wait in the “Foreigner” line instead of the “Resident” line. I didn’t know what to fill out on the entrance form. Purpose of my visit: Packing up my stuff? Eating at my favorite noodle place one last time? Saying goodbye?
I marked “visiting the sites” to avoid confusing the immigration agent. A taxi driver honed in on me the second I stepped outside the restricted area. “Taipei?” he asked. It was 2 AM and the buses wouldn’t be in operation for a while yet. I really wanted to take a shower and sleep. I told him yes, but I only had NT$700 left on me, so I was going to need to split the ride with another passenger. We found a skinny guy with a wide-brimmed straw hat and set off.
The driver and I chatted a bit after dropping off the other passenger, he told me I needed to find a good job so that I could afford to pay for taxi rides on my own, and then we were there, I turned up the air con, took a hot shower and slept.
