Hello Manilla.

I'm declaring the first day a do over, because I have forgotten how to travel outside of a Chinese country. First, I arrived at 3:30am. The flight was only about 2 hours, and I managed to sleep for about an hour of it. I thought it was silly to waste money on a hotel the first night, so I slept in the airport. Surprisingly well, on a concrete window sill. Normally I'd think this was weird, that people could see a sleeping guy in the window when coming to the airport. But it was the only sill NOT occupied by some weary traveler. If anything, it'd be more weird not to.

With maybe 2 hours more sleep, I set out at 7am. I got approached by a flood of taxi drivers outside the airport. Love it! I went for the bus and connected to the metro. Manila's metro is crazy. It's like the stations are flowing rivers of people, and you have to find the correct stream. It you don't, god help you. Shoulder to shoulder shuffling is the name of the game. I had no destination in mind, so I thought it would be funny to start in Chinatown.

Chinatown is not lively at 8am, so I want to go back. But it gave me my first taste of Manila - more on that later. Also, none of the ATMs would accept my card. It was fine at first, but then that turned to worry. I only had about $80 US that I converted from Taiwan to Pesos. Eventually, much later that evening, I found an ATM that worked with my American card, not Taiwanese. That's a bit annoying, and I'll have to solve that before my trip to Thailand.

So after exploring Chinatown I went to the Intramuros, or old walled city. A group of girls asked me to take their picture. It turns out they're from Guangzhou. I spoke to them in Chinese, which was a surprise. We went around the city together, looking at some old ruins and churches. Seriously, why do I meet up with Chinese tourists whenever I travel?

I stopped in a park, and running on fumes, decided to take a nap in the shade. I woke up maybe 30 minutes later and a girl in rags was standing in front of me. Quite startled, I sat up, and it turns out there were about 7 "slum kids", for lack of a better word, around. They started giggling and poking me saying "Money, money!" I went into full-on defense mode. I grabbed my bag, and raised my fist - if I had to push down a kid I would. But instead the groundskeeper ran up, yelled something and they scattered.

Continuing along, I went through a very large park, and went into the National Museum. This place was kind of depressing, because only about half the exhibits were open. And the ones that were seemed kind of half assed? I don't know how to describe it, but it seems a lot of the country is half assing things. I hesitate to make a comparison to North Korea, because, well, let's get real - nothing's that bad. But instead of a ticket, I got a scrap of paper with some scribbles on it. I'm not saying it doesn't work, or is inconvenient, but... I dunno. Anyway I had lunch at Jolibee, which is basically McDonald's. The story, as I heard it from someone at the hostel is, some guy originally opened a McDonalds. Then McDonald's changed their franchise rules, and the guy didn't want to pay. So he said "I'm going to make my own McDonald's. And our combos will come with ice cream!" So he rebranded, and now they're on every corner in Manila. I got a combo, with ice cream, for $2 US. The taste was alright. Pretty generic fast food to be honest, but I'm glad I had the experience.

After that it was onto the hostel to check in. Easy enough process, and on the way I passed a lot of street food. Some deep fried skewer caught my attention, and I asked what is it and how much. It was chicken. For 5 pesos. 40 pesos is 1 US. Each skewer had about 4 chicken nuggets on them. After 3 and a 20 peso corn, I was stuffed and less than a dollar poorer.

Back in the hostel, I had a few beers with some foreigners also travelling through. Its a nice hostel, albeit simple. I have a lot of thoughts about Manila, but that may be its own entry. For now, good night!