We headed off for a short family sojourn in the Philippines before the start of the academic year. Issy and I had honeymooned there way back in 1989 and hadnt been back since. We relied on our ever reliable travel agent, Family Affair Travel, to make all the arrangements. We hoped theyd done a better job than Thomas Cook, whod arranged the honeymoon. When us newlyweds went to check in at the Manila hotel theyd booked for us it seems theyd decided in their infinite wisdom that we should be in separate rooms. Each to his own I suppose, but this wasnt quite the sort of honeymoon Id been looking forward to. I think I remember reading about the collapse of Thomas Cook about a year ago. If they were relying on honeymooners for a lot of their business Im a bit surprised they managed to survive that long.
We did eventually manage to convince the hotel that we were genuinely married and they kindly agreed to let us share a room. It even had a double bed. Other than that we found 1989 Manila a bit depressing. We visited a clearly ridiculously wealthy neighbourhood where all the mansions hid
behind massive high fences and locked gates, and employed their own teams of security guards. The vast majority of the populace however looked like they were living in abject poverty, and there didnt really seem to be any middle class. The drive in the from the airport was particularly forgettable for the numbers of families seemingly living under sheets of corrugated iron on the roadside. The 2014 version looked quite a bit more prosperous, although we hoped this wasnt just because theyd got a bit better at hiding the poor from the tourists.
Manila certainly hadnt got any smaller since 1989. The ever reliable Wikipedia claims its the worlds most densely populated city, and you didnt have to twist our arms to believe it. Our hotel was next to a massive shopping mall whose supermarket had 130 separate checkouts. Issy and I got lost in it, and it seems we werent the only ones. As we wandered aimlessly in search of the right exit we heard an announcement over the PA system requesting the parents of Troy Sheehan to collect him from the Lost Childrens Room. Now Troy was seventeen at the time, but probably looked a fair bit
younger. He told us that he was strolling around, probably looking more than a little lost, when a group of teenage girls decided theyd to his rescue. Were still not quite sure why, although a lot of Filipinos told us that he bore quite a resemblance to One Directions Harry Stiles, and we reckoned this probably had something to do with it. He told us the girls wouldnt let him leave the Lost Childrens Room until we came to get him.
We spent a day doing the shooting the rapids at Pagsanjan Falls, a couple of hours drive south east of the capital. Issy and I had done this in 1989. Some of the later scenes from the movie Apocalypse Now (of I love the smell of napalm in the morning fame) were shot there. Shooting the rapids probably doesnt paint a particularly accurate picture of what goes on there. We were given life jackets and construction hard hats, and loaded into a couple of fibre glass canoes with our guides. These guys really earn their money.
The river wasnt all that high, so rather than paddling they spent a fair bit of their time carrying our canoes, with us in them, upstream over the rocks. The gorge was spectacular, with massive vertical jungle clad cliffs on either side. The ride ended at the falls themselves. Apparently only one of its three drops is visible from the base, but this was a spectacular vertical cascade which looked like it was probably around thirty metres high. But the fun wasnt over yet. Next step was to load us onto some flimsy looking rafts made of a few bits of bamboo lashed together with some string, for a very soggy trip into Devils Cave behind the falls. Our guides had a slightly easier time on the way back downriver, although only slightly.
