A Trip to Manila, Philippines - 5th-9th July 2004

A pre-sales presentation is required in Manila, to show off the products of Nosher's employer, Trigenix. Nosher gets sent along too, as part of the presentation involves an introduction to one of the products he uses and is familiar with, a mobile UI design tool called Trigbuilder. Brilliant!

So we (Nosher plus colleague and chum Julian) set off on an 18-hour journey via Hong Kong to the Philippines. Although most of the four days is taken up with work-related activity, there's still the afternoon we arrive to have a look around, as well as the morning of the day we leave again.

Hot and humid, Manila re-defined Nosher's concept of "seething humanity": it has vast sprawls of shanty town, surrounding most of the city and all round the airport. Brief and fascinating glimpses of life within these is caught as we drive around: narrow alleyways packed with small shacks out of which spill washing lines, children and all manner of collected stuff which makes it look vaguely like a scrapyard. Around the city chug smoke-belching Jeepneys - a type of stretch Willys jeep made into a sort of bus-cum-taxi. The pollution is sometimes staggering - much of the population gets around with bandanas or handkerchiefs covering mouths and noses and a perpetual layer of smog can be seen hanging over the city when seen from a distance. Cars and taxis crawl and jostle for gaps in the almost-permanent queues: there's plenty of horn action, but it seems mostly as a "I'm beside you so don't move or you'll hit me" kind of pre-emptive strike.

For all that, it was a fascinating place to visit, and it was certainly refreshing to be somewhere were there was almost no westerners around. Nosher's bright dyed-red hair certainly seemed to cause a stir though - apparently it's highly unusual in Manila, and all the time it seemed to cause curiosity, stares and the occasional (luckily positive) comment. It was a very unusual experience being considered "interesting" or at least "out of the ordinary" for a change.

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These are cropped thumbnails. Click on an image to view the full photograph.

Take-off from Heathrow, and the new Terminal Five is being built

The M25 - normally known as "The World's Largest Car-park"

The flight takes us out over territory familiar to Nosher - this is part of Suffolk, showing Felixstowe middle-centre and the River Orwell snaking away to the bottom-right towards Ipswich

In Manila, in the old quarter known as Intramuros, a smelly (on account of the heat) pony-and-trap takes tourists around

Part of Fort Santiago, the oldest buildings in Manila dating from the Spanish colonisation in the 16th century

There were loads of seemingly half-feral cats hanging around not doing very much

Julian, fellow Trigenixer, looks out of the battlements

More ponies

One of the fort's former administrative buildings, covered in holes caused by munitions impacts from the Battle of Manila fought during World War Two to liberate the Philippines