Photos from a Sunday morning walk around Quezon and the Quezon Circle.
Before I got to the circle proper, I took this photo of discarded ballot boxes ...
... by sticking my camera through a hole in a fence. On Sunday morning the circle is full of people (and animals!) taking part in various recreational activities...
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There's a lot of jogging and stretching and martial arts.
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As well as the monument, plenty of trees and a butterfly garden...
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Some photos of the condotel and surrounding streets for those of you wondering where I'm staying.
Below is the condo shrine to St Francis of the Mezzanine, the patron saint of roaches.
After passing St Francis on the left, you cross the balcony into the restaurant and videoke bar areas. To the enormous disappointment of the girls working there I've so far managed to forget to visit the bar in the evenings. Videoke indeed. Bah Humbug.
The view below is the front of the condotel seen from across the street - the balcony and restaurant are visible above the blue parasols. This photo gives you a good idea of the sort of vegetation you see at the side of streets. There's also a view in the same direction from about a hundred yards away from the junction, beyond a small stall selling sweets and tobacco.
Turning around to walk directly away from the hotel here's a view up the street opposite. More lush roadside vegetation and big shiny 4x4s. Not a poor area! The apartments visible at the end are also to rent but for longer periods, typically 6 month minimum lets.
Here's a typical house in the neighbourhood with beautiful manicured garden. Two girls were sweeping the lawn free of leaves when I arrived but made themselves very scarce on seeing the camera!
Walking up to the apartments and turning left takes you towards the main high street in this part of Quezon. The taller trees at the end of the view mark the junction with the high street and under these the taxicle drivers shelter during the day waiting for customers. Taxicle = taxi tricycle. The taxicles are all colour coded so that the regulatory authorities can easily spot a driver straying out of his or her designated area. They're white in this part of the city but yellow further across near Ali Mall.
On the right of the junction there's a small corner shop where I buy among other things camera batteries.
Walking to the taxicle stop and turning right, up the high street here's a view looking back down towards the taxicle stand. I love the spreading tree. Towards the bottom of the hill on the right you can see the empty concrete shell of what was supposed to become the new city hall. This has been in this state for some years now and the project is under investigation for corruption... Presumably someone got paid for the concrete though!
Continuing downhill there's the Kowloon (pronounced distressingly by the locals as 'colon') House on the left. This is a massive Chinese restaurant and they have a counter which opens late for soup and noodles if you like that kind of thing. Which I do. You can also get Sausage Pao and a Royal In Can. I didn't try the 'Assorted Cold Cuts'. Sounded too much like 'Curry Of Meat' to me. There's absolutely no 'Sweat and Sore ball of Pig' though.
Past Kowloon House and turning left by the KFC opposite the city hall building I snapped the sleeping guy... Doubtless waiting for his next helping of (allegedly delicious) fried Chicken.
This takes you back to the Mocha Blends coffee shop and the condotel - here's the view along past the condotel.
Last night I discovered there's a family of yellow lizards living under my sink. In contrast to my irrational loathing of roaches, I don't mind these. They come out and run about the floor in the evenings which is quite cute. They're timid and I'm assured entirely harmless - they may even eat the roaches for all I know which would be another benefit.
Spent the weekend malling. I had no idea 'mall' was a verb until recently, now I'm a maller. Managed to avoid indulging in a complete frenzy of consumerism (having no money is always a good way to avoid this I find) but enjoyed watching other people do so. This provided the opportunity to see a couple of films - the latest Harry Potter (low key but suitable for that point in the saga I guess) as well as Die Hard 4 (completely ridiculous but that's the whole point of Bruce Willis so therefore a rip-roaring success) and sample some junk food in the food halls near the cinema.
Being in a cinema reminded me that the first His Dark Materials film is out soon. The posters look good. There also seems to be a version of the Susan Cooper The Dark Is Rising on the way, although from the trailer it looks like they've amputated the atmosphere of the original books in favour of CGI. Hope I'm wrong there because the cast includes a certain Doctor!
Am now settled into a daily routine of commute by Jeepeny, coffee shop internet cafe for work and fried food for tea. Jeepeny names tickle... A wierd blend of humour and philosphy which reminds me a little bit of the names adopted by Culture ships. I rode 'Still Holding On' to work this morning and 'Poor Man's Pride' the day before. I really want to catch 'Seventh Heaven' or 'God's Mercy Upon Us' on the route home but I've not been lucky yet.
Here's a picture of 'Lucy' for the nieces:
Beer continues to fall in price. Discovered the excellent Shopwise in the Ali Mall complex selling ice cold San Miguel at PP17!
Wednesday, and I'm back in Manila to move into the condo unit I've booked for July. The idea was to find somewhere in a residential and business district, somewhere reasonably quiet with good access to WiFi-enabled coffee shops and similar resources. This may be a sad reflection of my background but is a necessary evil unless I want to take up an alternative profession.
The bulk of the journey back from Tagaytay is by coach and I have to admit I find it a little depressing. Probably this is the combination of the Beautiful People on the in-coach TV, all with their nose-jobs and perfect teeth, who jar profoundly with what I can see outside the window, for example the shanty towns on the rivers just outside Manila. Kids sifting through the rubbish drifting down to the sea and people collecting plastic bags from under the huge advertising hoardings which are pushing breast enhancement pills and anti-dandruff shampoo at the masses, including me, swinging past in air conditioned splendour on the freeway.
Quezon City (remember - a city is more like a district here) is definitely the poshest part of the country I've seen yet aside from some of the exclusive subdivisions set back from the road and occasionally glimpsed over the tops of the corrugated iron shacks lining the route. A 'subdivision' is just an area of land set aside for use by a developer. What we in the UK would call an 'estate' I guess.
Quezon is a bustling and thriving community and apart from hospitals and government offices has large malls including all the usual western brands, Starbucks to mention one, where I started this piece. Sitting in the window people watching is fun. Doing so brings home to me how stunningly diverse a population Philipinos are. There are some common threads but you see people who look mostly Spanish, Chinese or Indian in the same group walking by. I've no idea how one's ethnic inheritance affects social status or economic opportunity here but it's quite fascinating to look at.
After numerous un-answered e:mails and go-nowhere phone calls before coming here, I found a place near the new city hall in a district known as Fairview. Well; I say district but in fact I'm not sure if this is a road name or the name of a Barangay, to me it's just something you tell Jeepney drivers on the way back from the Ali Mall complex.
The condo unit is on the third floor of an older block and has a great view over yellow rooftops and palm trees. It's a little
This time, unlike in the Grand Boulevard, the roaches don't disappoint in terms of size or scuttle factor (yuck!!!), but are reasonably quickly dispatched and I'm pretty sure they won't be too much of a problem. Fingers crossed.
It'll be a bit grotty till I've scrubbed it but I'm actually seriously taken by it, especially the double doors off the bedroom onto the tiny balcony. Note to self: buy plants. Actually I'm understating again, I can see how it would be absolutely gorgeous with slightly nicer decor. From a house buyer's perspective, it has all the things that you can't change done right: loads of window space, a big square pillar in the main room which adds shape, a cute kitchen area and a bedroom which isn't a cubbyhole. It just needs a bit of care and attention. As well as a complete clean and a paint job!
On the lower levels of the condo there are as advertised a restaurant and coffee shop, laundry space and a karaoke bar. The coffee / food place is on a balcony surrounded by palms and other things in pots and looks very pleasant for evening meals but is open to the elements so will be too hot for working during the daytime. Just opposite the condo there's a small WiFi coffee shop called Mocha Blends.
This is way cool for a variety of reasons as will become apparent. They open officially at 8am but the owner seems happy for me to perch in the corner from 7:30 and the WiFi seems reliable. It's a little expensive at PP300 for 5 hours but there are fixed price deals on their web page which may help reduce this.
Another amusing thing about Quezon is the Korean community. There are enough of them here to spawn numerous restaurants and at least one PC-방 as well as (wouldn't you know it) language schools. One of which is on the 4th floor above Mocha Blends. I spotted a large group of Korean teenagers arriving while I finished writing this. The adults in tow seem to be a mixture of Philippino and Korean, I've no idea who's running the business and I wonder briefly how the economics work out.
According to the sign out the front of Mocha Blends there's live music on a Thursday evening between 9pm and midnight. This bodes well, especially since the coffee shop owner is currently showing exceedingly good taste by playing, of all things, a Jill Sobule CD on the sound system.
Which is an enormous advance on k-pop...
The grove is an area of land set aside as a kind of wilderness garden with a nature trail and a large area of sheltered picnic tables for which you pay PP150 to use for a lunchtime or evening meal.
People come here in quite large groups bringing copious quantities of food and grills or barbecues to cook with. I wonder along the nature trail and take photos of the view and the various plants that I don't recognise (i.e. most of them) and anything else which catches my eye.
The picnic grove tumbles away into rough ground towards the steep slope down to Lake Taal and there are some stunning views of boardwalks disappearing into the clouds.
Later in the evening a huge tropical storm blows in preceeded by eery thunder-less lightning making the whole of the Lake Taal basin visible in flashes of purple and blue.
While the storm lashes down, I'm sitting in a restaurant eating Pork Adobo (large chunks of fatty pork in soy sauce braised until caramelised) with a side helping of the usual chili dressing.
Chili is pronounced 'seely' round here. The sauce is something you make for yourself while you wait for your food to arrive. You'll be given a small bowl with four or five small limes and a couple of bird's eye chilis. The limes will have had their tops sliced off and you squeeze them, they're soft like large grapes, into the bowl and mash in the chillis.
Then use the pungent juice to season whatever you're eating!
The resturant doesn't do pudding but it is the local distribution point for Colette's Buko Pies. There's a pile of these, still warm, sitting on the serving hatch and locals are dropping in on their way home from work to pick them up.
Buko Pie is something of a local delicacy. It's a flaky pastry case filled with slices of young coconut (buko) which has a texture a little like cooked eating apple and nothing at all like the coconut meat I'm used to. Anyway, the pies are delicious and probably lethal in terms of calories...
On Saturday I do the Lake Taal tour, again in the company of the Jewish guy and his Filipina friend. Good examples of the Catholic background to everything here are the icons in the trike sidecar. The Madonna of the Tricicle?
The tour involves travel by trike down to the lake's edge, boat across to the largest of the islands and horse up to lip of the crater.
The journey down from the ridge on which Tagaytay sits is spectacular. We have a clear morning and the view across the lake is stunning. Most of my photos are taken by sticking the camera out of the sidecar and shooting roughly in the right direction.
It's a sunny day and I guess the shutter speed must be quite high because amazingly this technique gets me some pretty good shots. It's also good because you can catch people unaware (well, aware but before they've really reacted) as you speed by.
Much of what I'm seeing especially when on foot is imposible to photograph, or at least impossible without some actual talent as a photographer, or failing that some natural charm and a sense of timing.
The view is easy to catch though!
After the descent we arrive at the lake shore at a small resort known to our tour guide the trike driver. This is quite a posh little affair and has a number of gondolas moored ready to take people across the lake.
The trip across the lake is uneventful except for the views of the lake and surrounding mountains and the occasional dead dog.
We arrive at the island and haggle for horses. Actually you could easily walk it to the viewpoint if you have good footwear and enough water, but the locals refuse to tell you where the trail is unless you hire a horse so you're saddled (har har) with riding.
Considering I'm on holiday and they're essentially charging me a three quid for a couple of hours on a horse which in itself seems like an interesting experience, I don't particularly object to the obligatory nature of the hire. I'm in a minority on that one though and the more experienced tour members object vociferously to the forced deal so it takes us a while to bargain. The guy who claims to be the official tourist office is charging five times what we eventually pay, but finally we're off up the track.
This is my first time on a horse. Enough said. Black Beauty and I reach a mutually acceptible agreement whereby I don't dig my heels in if he doesn't whack my backside with the saddle too hard or wiggle too much.
The track winds out of the back of the viallage and up through tropical vegetation with mango, jackfruit, avocado and passion fruit all visible in the trees as well as the omnipresent coconut and banana. The island is no more than a mile or so long or wide and is cultivated pretty much all the way up to the crater. We get some splendid views across to other small beaches and back to the surrounding mountains.
The track is deeply rutted and sometimes the horse is walking in an narrow trench with my feet scraping the surface of the path on either side. I'm glad we didn't do this in the afternoon, I suspect the monsoon rain comes down here ferociously.
You can see the water in the crater lake bubbling in some areas and there are plenty of places where steam is pouring from the ground around the edge. All looks very 'active volcano' to me, but I'm not an expert.
Apparently there's an ongoing dispute between the local authorities and a bunch of enterprising (wouldn't you know it) Koreans who are building a restaurant/spa up here without planning permission. Planning permission? On the edge of an active volcano?
The chunk of rock in the middle of the crater amuses me in a nerdy sort of way: it's an island within a lake within a volcano on an island in a lake on an island in an ocean.
As always, the views are spectacular especially the sky. Yes, things really are that colour!
The journey back to the hotel is uneventful except for the trike which can't quite make it up the hill into Tagaytay fully laden, so we walk the last half mile or so.
Which actually isn't a bad thing since it allows us a last look at the view as the mist comes down in preparation for the afternoon monsoon downpour which hits just as we reach the hotel.
