drain bamage: April 2006

THE FLIGHT - to and from Manila, the plane ride was basically the same - a bit of turbulence here and there, but the big difference was the arriving plane was jam-packed (full-house), with long lines to the teeny-tiny bathroom behind us. The departing plane was maybe only half-capacity, and I was able to relocate to the row behind mom and auntie nette and have space of my own. No long lines to the bathroom then.

AIRPORT - when we arrived, HOT and crowded. People want to give you luggage trolleys for money. We just said NO. Our luggage had wheels already. Guam Medical Referral Office (GMRO) was excellent - we didn't have to search for them beyond the directions given to us. They were there, ready for us.

When we were departing, HOT and crowded. Lots of security points. We had to take off our shoes for them. A lady patted me down. Emptied all my pockets twice at two different points. They had small food stalls, but no place to eat, just seats. Until a lady approached my mom and told her of The Sampaguita Lounge - an exclusive resting and waiting area seperate from the regular waiting areas near the gates. This place was a haven - but for a price - 8 US dollars per person - and it had finger foods, drinks, and nice "comfort rooms" a.k.a. "CR", known to us americans as "restroom/bathroom". We paid for such luxury and loved it. I recommend anybody waiting for a departing flight in that airport to stay in this beautiful lounge - it is relaxing - just what you need before going through more security and boarding your plane.

THE ROADS - bumpy. And traffic at most times of the day. The worst traffic days are Fridays and weekends. Driving in Manila is truly an experience. I wasn't driving, but the way everyone drives - reminded me of the way I drive my video game cars - weaving through traffic, and overtaking. The lanes for each car - narrow - drivers often straddle lanes. Often, a 3 lane road becomes a 4 or 5 lane road. There are many one-way streets to help with the flow of traffic, so you often have to work your way around to your destination. Few traffic lights. Sometimes there are traffic police at intersections - but this is mainly seen in Makati (the fancy shopping and business district). Some schools put out traffic guards to help the students cross the street. Majority of the cars are manual (standard/stick-shift). Air-con cars are a must. Drivers follow "color-coding" law for their cars. Depending on what number your license plate ends with, driving days are restricted (to help alleviate traffic). For example, if my license number ended with a "1" or a "2", I am not allowed to drive on Mondays. Weekends are free-for-all driving days. Thus, heavy traffic, still. Horns galore - when you hear a horn honking, it means "MOVE! I'M COMING WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT - GET OUT OF MY WAY". People drive on the "right hand side" of the road, like the US.

HOTEL - the room was smaller than I expected it to be. Mom and I shared a queen size bed, and a thick futon was provided last-minute for auntie nette. The room had a small kitchenette, 3-chair dining with table, small lounge chair, small coffee table, small TV, decent sized bathroom. It was a condo studio-apartment type of room, used for hotel purposes - the name it was called - condotel. We were on the 21st floor of this 22 story condo (Garden Heights Condo). We were down the street from St. Luke's hospital. The view from our room was fabulous. "City" living was definitely a change from the quiet Guam life I'm used to. At all hours of the day, you hear honking cars. Using the elevator in this place was annoying at times - too many stops, people packing in for the ride to the point where we are invading personal spaces. The wait time for the elevator was bad too. But, I guess that can be attributed to us being all the way near the top of the building. The staff were nice and helpful. There were two small restaurants at the ground level that delivered food. The condo also had an internet cafe within it, two dental offices, a salon/beauty parlor. A supermarket was just next door to us. Many restaurants were along the street towards the hospital. Many other small shops were available too. A laundry service was a short walk away from us - and they delivered our clothes back to us. It was wonderful.

SMALL - let's talk about small. Food portions and sizes are small. Buildings and rooms are small. Furniture are small. Personal space is non-existant, due to lack of space. Elevators are not for claustrophobic people. Toilet tissue (if any are available), are small travel-size kleenex sizes, and they are about a quarter ply thick - meaning see-through. Mom, auntie nette and I felt like big fat americans in the land of skinny and petite people.

WALK - if you don't drive, or ride a bike (motorized or human-powered), you walk. Or you take a taxi or jeepney or bus. But, sidewalks are in bad shape, with broken sections, holes, and loose concrete covers over holes. You have to watch your step. When crossing the street, you are chancing death or injury - even at crosswalks (the very few of them). Sometimes the sidewalk is crowded with people, and they walk how they drive - overtaking and weaving - but no horns.

FOG/SMOG/HAZE - our view in the hotel would've been even more fabulous had it not been for the smog. It's a weird mix of diesel and bar-b-que smoke, and industrial smoke. It's in the air, everywhere. It's just outside our hotel room door - in the halls. It's everywhere you walk - and worse when cars drive close to the sidewalk and exhaust releases near you. I tried to smell good and "pao-pao" despite this ever-present odor. It made us sick a bit - I had some allergic rhinitis towards the end of our trip. It made mom and auntie nette have sore throats and coughs.

HEAT - we visited Manila at the beginning of its dry season. It's hella-hot. And there's pretty much NO WIND to help. The heat not only comes from the sun, it comes off of the car and truck engines - especially when they drive near you when you are walking on the sidewalk. Most places of business (that I've been to) do not have air-conditioned halls or lobbies. Elevators do not have air-con either. Our condo elevator was like a sauna. The only place with air-con - MALLS. Everyone flocks to them just to be in the air-con. They may not be shopping, but they hang out in the malls to stay out of the heat. Thus, the malls are jam-packed, and traffic getting to them is bad.

FOOD - different menu choices can be found at our US-brand franchises - to cater to the culture (like rice on the menu). There's lots of little food stands on the side of the streets for very cheap food. Your US dollar goes a long way, with regards to eating out and buying food. Even the mall food-court food is cheaper than what we are used to paying in the US. We loved eating out. Our favorite restaurants there - Shakey's, Pizza Hut Bistro, Itallianos, Yellow Cab Pizza Co, Pancake House, Starbucks, and the little in-house condo restaurant on the ground floor - they made the best tocilog I've ever tasted.

TELEVISION - There's probably 70 channels total - but they have a good variety of foreign channels (even my beloved NHK is there) and there's 3 different Japanese Anime channels - my dream come true! If only the anime wasn't tagalog-dubbed. Only one of those anime channels showed the anime english-dubbed. The rest spoke tagalog. But I still watched anyway. There's a sports channel that often played Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) - something that's never done here in Guam. I watched this often. There's a crime/suspense channel solely devoted to that genre, and always played Law and Order (the different types), Profiler, CSI, etc. That was mom and auntie nette's favorite channel.

CELL PHONES - Text, text, text!!! Everyone has some kind of phone with text capability. Everyone sends text messages - even the old ladies! Me and auntie nette communicated often with text messages, as it was cheaper. Buying a "load" or money/minutes for our phones was easy - many street-side vendors sold the pre-paid load cards and a slight discount price.

HOSPITAL - There's doctors offices in a seperate building, and healthcare offices in another, and then there's the main hospital building for patients. I went to all three of them at one point or another. Both office buildings do not have air conditioned halls or waiting areas. The furniture at the doctor's building was old-school - circa 1960's or 1970's. It's always crowded. The hospital halls are also not airconditioned, except for when you start going into the inpatient areas.

The admission process was straight forward, with a little bit of a wait time. My hospital room was excellent. It was a private room, complete with my own bathroom, TV, phone and furniture. St. Luke's was big on personalizing everything with their logo. Even the shower curtain reminded me of where I was at.

Nurses were not consistent in checking on me. One night, pretty much nobody woke me to take my blood pressure. Then the next day, everyone wants to take my blood pressure - like 3 or 4 nurses. And I never knew my nurses names! Some of them didn't even address themselves as being my nurse, they just assumed I knew who they were. And I was seen by several doctors - I'm not sure what for, but they came in and saw me anyway, and asked me about my health history, and why I was being admitted into the hospital. Only one of them gave me a quick physical exam by listening to my breath sounds and palpating my neck for my thyroid. Everyone else just wanted to talk to me.

And talk they did - in Tagalog. I guess because my name is CRUZ, they assumed I'm filipino, and they all spoke to me in Tagalog. I didn't know what to do whenever it happened, because I was amused, and all I did was smile and say "Okay". So, whenever they got down to the real questions that they expected answers to, they found out that I didn't speak. And only then english was spoken.

My hospital stay would've been fine had it not been for the awful food served to me. I swear, I can eat GMH's food any time, but not St. Luke's. It was just bad, completely. And it never failed to give me the runs. They must've been cooking with plain old tap water, 'cause my tummy ached pretty much the whole time I was there. I was turning into a big old baby on day two - nearly begging my mom and auntie to either break me out or sneak food in, 'cause I was thoroughly disgusted with the food that I pretty much stopped eating it - and starved myself. I was also miserable because my allergic rhinitis was full-blown while being admitted. So, with sinus pressure headaches, runny nose and sneezing, also itchy, watery eyes, I was not a happy camper. One nurse asked me if I was alright, 'cause she saw me "crying" - but I told her it was just my allergies making me eyes so watery.

On day 2, I was so excited leave, but I had to wait for somebody from nuclear medicine to come over and count my radioactiveness. I was supposed to be counted in the morning, so that when the doc saw me in the afternoon, I'd be ready to go. But I had to wait and wait, and keep asking the nurses to check on the person, 'cause he never came. The doctor came twice to see me, and he still hadn't counted me - and I was so impatient by that time, 'cause I was weak from lack of food, and still sniffling like hell. So, the doc dialed the number to nuclear med for me, and he told me to tell them to come over and count. So I did. I had to call this person myself to get his ass over - and sure enough, five minutes later, some guy comes over and points a little gun thing at me and says "okay". I waited all day for that "okay", and it only comes after I summon it - I wondered what the hell the nurses were doing, if they couldn't get that guy over, and I could.

I left the hospital a bit light-headed and dizzy, and exited the building to the welcoming scent of the streets - the gas and smoke. It made me even more sick to my already churning stomach, but I somehow found some energy to walk back to the condo fast. I headed straight for the ground floor condo restaurant to eat some real food.

GETTING AROUND - you gotta find a trust-worthy guide or driver to help you get around manila. We were fortunate to have Edwin - a cousin of my coworker, Lucille, and he was a taxi driver in manila, so he knew his way around the streets. He's a bad-ass driver. I mean, you gotta have a strong constitution to drive in a place like manila. You can't hesitate, and you have to take chances. He got us to places in good time, even with the bad traffic. He also got down and shopped with us, and gave us little tours whenever possible. We felt safe with him, as he would always watch over us and he was a perfect gentleman, always carrying our bags for us. He was also our bargain dealer in places like Divisoria, since we couldn't speak tagalog. He was a great help and great company for us first-timers, and mom and auntie nette absolutely loved him.

On the days that Edwin couldn't take us, we found a driver just outside our condo who was for hire for the whole day for a flat rate - his name is Boyet. We also asked the security to hail us a taxi off the street, only after he checked it and were lucky to have found a good one, who used the meter (you gotta make sure they use the meter). Boyet was a good driver, but unlike Edwin, he didn't get down to shop with us. He dropped us at an entrance of the shopping building and then waited in the parking lot. I guess that's what they're supposed to do, but Edwin, since he was really more of a friend, went above and beyond that.

There are other modes of transportation, but I don't recommend that foreigners take them. There's the ever-noisy and gassy Jeepneys that locals take - these pseudo-buses go around in a circuit all day, so they stop frequently to pick up and drop off people. I never understood how the locals knew exactly where these Jeepneys were taking them - 'cause it seemed like they just hopped on without looking for or asking about the destination of the Jeepney. There's also bicycle-cabs (the human powered kind), and motor-bike cabs (the human driven kind) - but those things look too scary to ride in. In one place, we actually saw horse-carriages - those looked fun - and I think we might have to try one the next time we go back. There's also trains and buses, but we didn't need to ride those, and they looked super-crowded.

SHOPPING - shopping is cheap when you go to the flea-market type places such as Greenhills (in-door mall of flea-market booths - mostly air-con). Divisoria is even cheaper than greenhills, but it's outdoor in the streets with little shops in buildings just off the streets - and it is super-crowded, super-hot, super-stinky. At Divisoria, you will see something you don't see on Guam - poor people and trash mixed into this flea-market atmosphere. Meat and fish are out in the open (no refrigeration). You can smell the stink of human excretions also, and animal smells as well - I swear I smelled "babui".
Don't go there if you can't take such a scene - it will make you sick. But - if you are brave enough, the divisoria is THE place to get all kinds of small knick-knacks for party give-aways. And again, it's cheap. The most expensive shopping is done at malls such as SM (shoe mart), Glorietta, SM Mega Mall, Robinson's, etc. Those places are fully air-con, but fully-crowded as well. When you park in any mall-type establishment, you pay parking fees.

We loved shopping at greenhills for the *ahem* "cheap" bags with famous logos on them. They're about $10 US dollars usually, unless you bargain them down. And the vendors there do something with your money after you buy a bag from them. They fan out the bills in their hands, and whack their bag displays with your money - kind of like blessing the other merchandise for someone to buy them. We did a lot of shopping, but we still didn't get around to the SM Mega Mall. And we didn't cover all of the Glorietta. There's just not enough time. Unless you plan on overnighting inside the mall in order to see everything, repeat trips are necessary.

TOILETS - a.k.a. "Comfort Room" or "CR". In places such as greenhills and SM, the bathrooms were always crowded. Toilet paper is NOT supplied, and sometimes there's no toilet seat - only the bowl. I repeat, no TP and no toilet seat. That just freaked me out completely. In the Glorietta (upscale mall), they have different types of bathrooms - one you wait in line forever to use like what I described above (without TP also), or the one you pay 10 pesos to use, which is less crowded and guaranteed to have TP and a toilet seat. Whenever possible, we chose the latter, which was often called "Lounge" instead of "CR". In Divisoria, don't even think about asking about a bathroom. There is none. You just have to make sure your bladder is empty prior to being there. In restaurants, some have toilet tissue, but it's more like the travel-size quarter-ply kleenex tissues - not a regular roll of tissue. Some restaurants also have bathrooms without toilet seats.
My advice - use all bathrooms with caution, patience, and have your own TP on hand. If you can find the nicer lounge bathrooms, PAY AND USE THEM.

OVERALL THOUGHTS - Manila was quite a change from good 'ol Guam. It was fun to be in a different place. It was nice to visit, but I can't see myself as living there. I was interested in the new and upcoming developments - condo buildings. It seems like a good idea to have a condo for vacationing - especially one near all the shopping malls. So, if I can afford to have one in the future, I'd like to own a condo, and just go back every now and then to shop in Manila. But, I'm also interested in venturing out into the provinces, like Baguio. Well, we'll see. But my hospitalization was the focus of this trip, and having that accomplished, I hope future trips will just be about shopping or sight-seeing and having fun.

PICS TO FOLLOW LATER....

drain bamage

where ronnie gets to rant about $hit and $tuff. come along!

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Production is slow...

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Manila, Philippines - the Aftermath

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