Full Circle
Day 88: Saigon to Manila

You don't have to be long in the country to appreciate that the jeepney expresses the Filipino spirit: emotional, exuberant and celebratory, hearts ruling heads, endearing and unwary. We are following a truck marked 'Careful Movers', which lurches forward, its back door swinging wildly open.
On a stretch of reclaimed land along the curving sea front of Manila Bay are a series of portentous concrete pavilions built by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the 1970s to glorify the presidential family that headed a pitifully poor nation. The buildings were regarded as so extravagant by a visiting Pope that he refused to stay in one. Beneath the foundations of another are workmen, buried when their scaffolding collapsed onto them. Legend has it that Imelda Marcos refused to stop the work in order to rescue them. Concrete was poured in over the bodies.
Later I brave the traffic canyon of Roxas Boulevard and walk down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which I think must be the only Art Gallery in the world with the sign: 'Please Deposit Your Firearms Here' at the entrance desk.
I spend the rest of the day sleeping, eating (Lechon, roast suckling pig, seems to be the lone speciality of Philippine cooking) and trying to digest a fat dollop of culture shock.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 88
- Country/sea: Philippines
- Place: Manila Bay
- Book page no: 130
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