Visit with my brother then on to Portals of Manila

Phillip and I spent a very nice five days in Bareto, Philippines, visiting my brother, Burt, and his wife, Connie. Burt is eight years older than me and is my half-brother.  He calls me "little sister" and refers to our sister, Margo, as "baby sister." That description explains the writing on the birthday cake that Burt and Connie bought.  My birthday is in less than a week, and they started my celebration early. 

Another photo that shows how much shorter Connie is than Burt. She fusses at Burt in a loving way and they get along very well. She takes great care of him.

One day during our visit, Burt and Connie walked to our hotel to join us for lunch at the hotel's restaurant/bar, on the patio between our room and the beach. We all ate some tasty chicken curry and enjoyed the overcast, not-so-hot day!

The last two days of our time in Bareto, rain bands from a tropical storm that moved north of Luzon (the large island we were on) passed over us. We had occasional but not constant rain, so we would wait for a dry time to walk to Burt's house or back to our hotel room.

During our last evening, we left Burt and Connie's while it was not raining; however, enough rain had already fallen that their street flooded during our visit. Connie said that construction on the beach side of their road had really messed up the drainage. She had plastic pants with feet that she gave us to wear to wade thru the flooded street. It was standing water, not flowing water, so we wore the pants. Phillip's pair worked well, but I did get wet feet. My sandals were still wet to pack the next morning, but I had plastic bags for wet items. 

Phillip wearing blue rain pants, walking 
in the flooded street

During our drive to Manila on Thursday, we were in rain for about 30 minutes, then the driver drove south enough for us to be out of it. We are in the BGC area of Manila, the most modern and fanciest area of town. We're in a serviced apartment on the 19th floor of a 35-floor apartment building and have a washer/dryer combo unit and a small kitchen. It's a great way to end our travels as we have things to see in BGC but also are comfortable when we return "home." 

kitchen in our apartment

I noted "portals" in the title of this blog. The first portal, and it is called a portal, is at the beginning of BGC High Street. High Street is a wide pedestrian walkway lined with shops and restaurants and is full of public art and landscaping. The portal is connected to five other portals around the world and broadcasts and receives live video streams to and from them, changing the feed location every three minutes.  I remember seeing a portal before. Looking at the list of cities with portals, it was probably in Dublin, Ireland. 

We could only stand and wave to people in Europe (I think this particular feed image was from England) for a few minutes, so we moved on down High Street. And we came to a large dragon's head.... It was a huge display advertising HBO's "House of the Dragon" show. People took turns taking photos in front of it. 

We saw an interesting water sculpture that I really liked. Phillip called it a wet rock with legs. 

Today, we found another portal. I noted earlier that BGC was modern and fancy. It is nothing like regular Manila. BGC has no jeepneys, motorcycle taxis or street vendor stalls. BGC is expensive compared to regular Manila, so its service workers don't live or eat here. There are buildings and walls to separate BGC from the rest of Manila. If they don't come in via the major roads, how do the workers get here? Phillip saw the answer on a vlogger's post and we checked it out. There is an almost hidden walkway called Butas, which translates to "hole" in English. This is the wall that covers the walkway entrance.

There's about a 12-foot opening in the wall, a portal, with a walkway that turns 180 degrees from the sidewalk we just walked on. 

The walkway runs directly along the other side of the patterned wall for about 40 feet, then makes a right turn to this, the Manila that is not BGC. 

This is what is immediately on the other side of the patterned wall, a totally different Manila, the one with street vendors and motorcycle taxis and worker housing. And cheaper prices! We bought pandasal (a Filipino cheese-filled breakfast roll) for 5 pesos each (8 cents US) here from a street vendor and a container of roasted peanuts for 40 pesos that would have been over 250 pesos in a BGC grocery store. It was raining and a Saturday morning, so not all the food vendors were working. We walked back thru the portal and continued our exploration of BGC. 

Electric scooters for rent are parked around BGC. We passed this cluster, but one scooter was already in use as a bed. Stray cats are neutered, fed, and microchipped by an organization that takes care of them here, according to signs in the area. 

Phillip and I went into a mall for a few minutes of air conditioning and came across a Suzuki media event. Suzuki was unveiling a new 150cc maxi scooter, the Burgman 15. 

Dancers put on a performance on stage before the Japanese Suzuki executive uncovered the new motorcycle. 

Phillip checked out the Burgman 15 after the ceremony was over. It's a good size for the Philippines, had plenty of storage compartments, and was reasonably priced here at 165,000 pesos (about $2700). It would cost much more if sold in the US. We walked away without buying one and came back to our room until later because the sun is out and it is hot outside now.