{"id":653,"date":"2008-01-28T11:16:26","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T11:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/archives\/2008\/01\/28\/manila\/"},"modified":"2008-01-28T11:19:26","modified_gmt":"2008-01-28T11:19:26","slug":"manila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/archives\/2008\/01\/28\/manila\/","title":{"rendered":"Manila"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The flight to Manila was uneventful and boring.  Qantas seem to still be catching up with entertainment technology; we all had to watch the same films on a large projector screen, very quaint.  The films were good though: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0445922\/\">&#8220;Across the Universe&#8221;<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0903644\/\">&#8220;September&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m staying at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.friendlysguesthouse.com\/\">Friendly&#8217;s Guesthouse<\/a> in the Malate area of Manila.  It&#8217;s quite busy but in a good location for local bars and restaurants.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday I wandered around town a bit, visiting Rizal Park (a memorial to the Philippines <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jose_Rizal\">national hero<\/a>), Intramuros and Fort Santiago.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/RizalMonument_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/RizalMonument_t.jpg\" title=\"Rizal monument in Rizal Park, Manila.\" alt=\"A tall monument in a park, surrounded by Philippines flags.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/FortSantiago_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/FortSantiago_t.jpg\" title=\"Entrance to Fort Santiago, Manila.\" alt=\"A stone gateway seen over a lily-pad covered moat.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It was interesting to note that on one side of the fort is a golf course that follows the old walls, on the other small boys were paddling rafts cobbled together out of scrap polystyrene foam up the river as they gathered rubbish.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/IntramurosGolf_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/IntramurosGolf_t.jpg\" title=\"Golf around the old walls, Intramuros, Manila.\" alt=\"Golfers playing between old stone walls.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/KidOnRiver_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Manila\/KidOnRiver_t.jpg\" title=\"Kid on a lashed-up raft scavenging rubbish on the river below Fort Santiago, Manila.\" alt=\"A muddy river with lumps of vegetation floating downstream.  On a dodgy-looking raft sits a small boy, paddling with flip-flops on his hands.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been enjoying local food, there&#8217;s an interesting article about <a href=\"http:\/\/strawberryfieldsforever.wordpress.com\/2007\/07\/21\/matter-of-taste-the-filipino-culture-from-a-foreigners-perspective\/\">filipino food<\/a> which also mentions the fondness for &#8220;doorbell names&#8221; (I saw a poster for a film starring someone called Ding-Dong today).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The flight to Manila was uneventful and boring. Qantas seem to still be catching up with entertainment technology; we all had to watch the same films on a large projector screen, very quaint. The films were good though: &#8220;Across the Universe&#8221; and &#8220;September&#8221;. I&#8217;m staying at Friendly&#8217;s Guesthouse in the Malate area of Manila. It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philippines","category-rtw","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}