When I started this post, I was somewhere over Alaska, with still about 6 hours to go until Tokyo, the first stop on my journey to the Philippines.
That cover photo isn't mine. And the blog title has nothing to do with a destination wedding as it might suggest. I am just struck by the fact that I really never thought I would make it back to Micronesia, yet it somehow found its way into my recent travel plans. In two months when I complete my internship with WHO in Manila, I will head to Palau, a part of Micronesia I haven't explored yet. My final stop is the relatively familiar ground of Australia.
Preparing to go to Manila was just as challenging as preparing for Chuuk and Sydney, even though this time I will only be there for 2 1/2 months. The most difficult part is just trying to visualize the kind of city it will be and the kinds of people, things and work I will encounter. Pictures and well-traveled friends can only help so much. Until I am actually there, it remains a very distant place in many ways.
I am trying to consider how challenged I felt leaving for Chuuk especially, and how by the end I felt like it was just another home. But the other difficult thing is how distant those places become all over again once I leave. I have distinct memories of morning conversations with our cooks in the dining room of Xavier. It was just small talk in the most basic Chuukese, but now I have forgotten what little I knew of the language. Something that was once so much a part of my daily life is something I can hardly remember. Most of the memories feel like dreams or stories that happened to someone else, and I am just trying to guess how they must have felt and what they must have done. I guess this is true for everything in the past, but somehow it feels like it means more too lose the things you struggled with the most, and found the most rewarding.
My story in Manila might be similar. It's a stranger to me now. Soon it will be my home for a while, sometimes in ways that are frustrating or confronting, and sometimes in ways that are so intense and incredible it will feel like I've never lived anywhere else. Then, when I finally am just beginning to feel some sense of settling, I'll be swept up again to somewhere new, and it will become a stranger again.
A WHO driver picked me up and drove me what seemed like ages from the airport to the Tropicana hotel suites in Malate. My room is pretty impressive for a hotel room - nice big kitchen and sitting area. I have a decent sized TV and lockbox, but either I can't figure them out or they don't work. The internet is slow and intermittent, especially in my room, and I haven't yet seen the pool or fitness center. It was on my list of things to do today, but I'm still exhausted from my day+ of travel.
It also says on their website that breakfast is included, but this wasn't the case, and they looked really confused when I asked about it. Good thing I traveled with granola bars and snack packs, because I had no food or water in the hotel room. I boiled some water and froze it in a bottle when I arrived so I had something to drink this morning.
I took a short walk to the Robinson's Place mall which is probably the biggest I've ever been to, maybe besides Sydney's Pitt Street. If I was just going for a look around it probably would have been really interesting and even fun, but I was on the hunt for very specific items - a straightening iron, a regular iron, and a supermarket, and these tasks took me about two hours to complete. The supermarket was easy, but no such luck with the other two. After walking around aimlessly through department stores and various food courts, I finally found Starbucks, which gave me strength, but tastes a lot different from coffee at home. I was trying to jot down where stores of interest were located, but all I really had were floor numbers and other stores for reference - "chemist, floor 2, next to Cotton On." That won't help me next time I am trying to make my way through the labyrinth of chintzy local retailers. On floor 3, I came across a hardware and homegoods store where they brought me to the irons. The workers were so friendly it was almost suspicious. Usually I am annoyed when sales people talk to me in the stores, but I think that's because I'm usually feeling some kind of sales pressure. The homegoods guy was more interested that I picked the cheaper, but still sturdy brand, and took it out of the box to plug it in somewhere to show me how good it was. He went through every button and dial, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I know my way around an iron (kind of). He took all my stuff and carried it to the register for me, and stood with me until I was finished paying maybe because I look so foreign and confused. Hopefully not because he wanted a tip.
The same thing happened in the pharmacy where I found a straightening iron. They unplugged the florescent light above the makeup display case to show me how hot the irons got so I could compare them. To my dismay, they didn't let me test out any of the food in the supermarket. Maybe it's only for higher priced items. My flat iron came to about 2000php (about $65) while all my groceries came to about $40.
I also wanted to walk to the WHO office to see where it was - even though there is evidently a shuttle from my hotel that goes there in the morning. I took my life in my hands as a pedestrian. I would not say Manila is exactly "walker friendly" - the streets are small, intensely crowded, and there are no crosswalks or lights to be obeyed by the thousands of crazed motorists. Little trolley-like cars stuffed to the brim with people and rickshaw drivers are everywhere, battling for space with the venders that creep into their street space from the sidewalk. I couldn't shake the smell of the streets either. Sometimes it was the same smell as downtown Weno in Chuuk which made me think it was same kinds of foods being cooked in the street. Sometimes it was pollution, and overwhelmingly nauseating.
A lot of people stared at me, and some of them pointed. While I saw plenty of white people at immigration, and a fair few at Robinson's, I saw none on my walk down Taft Avenue to the WHO office - about 15 minutes away from my hotel. As a tall, pale American, I obviously stand out. I am trying to dress conservatively and look intimidating and properly urbanized when I walk instead of how I really feel, which is totally confused. I still can't decide what it means to dress appropriately here, and if it matters who you are and what part of the city you come from. Most people around my area seem to wear long pants or dresses, but the billboards and signs in Robinson's advertise miniskirts, and some younger girls inside were following suit.
Tomorrow is my first day at the office. I am going to try to start the day off right and get there without being hit by a motorbike.
For anyone interested, my address for the time being is
Tropicana Suites Hotel
1630 Luis Ma. Guerrero Street
Malate, Metro Manila, Philippines, 1004
No sim card yet, but always accepting emails and skypes :)
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