Saturday 21 January 2012.
Here is a photo of the intrepid adventurers outside Fort Santiago inside Manila's famous walled city, Intramuros. This site has been variously used by the Spanish, British, Americans and Japanese when they invaded The Philippines. Inside the walls are a couple of churches including the famous Manila Cathedral. Could you believe we went to 2 churches in one day? The horse and buggy tour around Intramuros (means inside the wall) was very interesting. Horse and buggy travel s not the most comfortble over 16th century cobbles! The Manila Cathedral has been replaced 3 times from and old timber structure to the stone buiding of today. So far it has been destroyed by fire, earthuake and Japanese bombs during its 440 years of history.
Inside the cathedral was very ornate as can be seen by the ceremonial headdress that has more gold than the average Filipino could earn in several lifetimes.
The wall surrounding Intramuros is pockmarked with bullets from the Japanese invasion.
After our brief lesson in Filipino history it was onto the Manila Hotel on the shores of Manila Bay.
Very grand hotel with some pretty impressive chandeliers. Nice cold beer too, just took a while to get to the lips of the thirsty travellers.
Then it was back to Alabang, Muntinlupa City on the southern outskirts of Metro Manila. About 20km, so to us naive Brisbanites we thought about 20 to 30 minutes. Manila traffc soon had this at 100 minutes causing immense frustration to our poor driver Dindo.
More about the Philippines soon.
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