Successful Arrival: Manila and Samar (my mom)

We all made it successfully to our destinations. Phillip and I are in Manila for a few days  and my mother is with my brother on West Samar. I will say that the flights to get here were real a**kickers. We’re almost too old for this and I know that Mom was probably at her limit. A 14 hour flight to Tokyo, then a 5 hour flight to Manila. We do thank my brother-in-law, Terry, for taking us to the airport and procuring Filipino pesos for us before we left. For those of you who read my 2011 travel postings, notice that Phillip is again not wearing jeans at my request. Yes, we are all wearing the touristy cargo pants, but we accept that we can never blend in with the locals anyway, so why not be comfortable?

We finished our flights and got to our hotel rooms at about midnight last night. We then had to get up at 2:30 am to get Mom back to the airport for her 5:15 am flight to Burt’s island. None of us actually slept during those 2-1/2 hours. Our bodies thought it was noon, not midnight. Still, it

was wonderful to stretch out on the bed, even if we didn’t sleep. We got Mom to the airport via taxi and the nice folks at the airline counter got a staff member to escort Mom thru security and on to her gate, since I couldn’t do it. I took this picture right before she went thru security. Today is her birthday – it’s hard to believe this is a picture of a 91-year old woman who hadn’t slept for 36 hours! I spoke with Burt a few minutes ago and she made it to his house and is now resting.

Phillip and I came back to our hotel after we dropped off Mom and took a three-hour nap. We ate breakfast in our hotel and were amazed at how good the toast was – it was two slices of fairly dense, thick sweet bread. We only put butter on it, no jelly. This was plain toast, nothing fancy to which the restaurant did anything special, but it was delicious. It made up for the instant coffee we were served! After breakfast, we did go next door to Starbucks for real coffee.

We walked to Rizal Park, about a block away. It is a huge public park, with a monument to perhaps the most famous historical figure in the Philippines, Dr. Jose Rizal. He fought for Filipino independence and ended up being executed. This picture is of the bronze statutes, larger than life-size, of the firing squad. A lot of the other statues around Rizal Park were of martyrs who died in the various struggles over the years for Filipino independence.

As we walked thru the park, we noticed the absence of pigeons and pigeon droppings. We saw a few cats wandering around, looking for a handout, but they didn’t seem fat enough to have taken care of the pigeons. Then we saw the pigeon houses. Such a unique way to handle the inevitable pigeon problem! Instead of fighting them, the park provides a place for them, somewhere they’ll want to stay. We spoke with a lady at a food booth nearby and she said the attendants feed the pigeons in their home area. Maybe Fort Worth needs to do that with the grackles? Although the picture doesn’t show a lot of pigeons on the houses in the sun, pigeons covered the roofs of the houses in the shade.

When we started walking this morning, the weather was cloudy with a very light misty rain. When the sun came out, however, it became hot and humid really quickly. We headed back to the hotel so we wouldn’t become a puddle on the sidewalk. I needed to write this anyway… Tomorrow, we’ll head out in the morning for another historic area of Manila. The rest of Manila seems to be like any other major urban center – traffic, homeless areas, high rises, more traffic. I am impressed with the number of trash cans I see, much better than Bangkok. Consequently, the city, at least the area we’ve walked thru, seems cleaner, although it has a layer of grime from vehicle exhausts. More on traffic, I’m sure in a future post. (Note: Sorry one picture may be sideways, having some formatting issues!)