Manila and my first impressions

Like some of you already know, me and Tipsy will blog on each other’s blog for 10 days. I’m from here in Asia and Tipsy from Europe.

First of all, I would love to introduce myself properly. My name is Marcela Faé, I’m a Brazilian/Italian photographer based in Berlin and I have Fotostrasse with my husband over there in Germany. The style of this posts will be more like the posts over my blog than like what you’re usually are used to it. Hope it is fine for my new audience. =D

Manila definitely has something on its favor but has lots of things that really bothered me, but lets focus on the good side first, ok?

The good side of Manila, is for sure how welcoming the people are, it is really similar to how Brazilian people behave and it was definitely a refreshing good vibe after 3 years of Germany. Ponggo was amazing and crucial for me here for the my first 24hours in Manila, he helped me with more than any person would and it was a sweet heart in every aspect! Chichi, from Happy Tummy Travel was another sweet heart that I’ve met here. She and her friends helped me sorted it out basic things like “how to add credit to a prepaid phone” and took me to the most amazing food market I’ve ever been. Which brings me to the second thing: the food! Manila has amazing food! And cheap food if we’re talking about European/Brazilian standards. A meal here can go from 300 to 800 pesos and that means that floats btw 5 to 15 euros. Which is not bad if you’re talking with somebody from London or Paris, but for a girl from Berlin, it’s the same as Berlin and sometimes a little more.

The down side of Manila is the amount of poverty and misery I’ve seen on the streets. It really got to me all those young girls carrying new born babies and begging for money, the poor animals on the street, the animal abused caused by the lack of education and the need for money, the kids running around on highways, the slums, blablabla… It is definitely a big problem that it must be fixed asap! Manila reminded me of the poor part of Brazil a few years ago ago before all the social programs that helped a lot the out looks of it all, it was sad to see this again. Bad vibe all the way.

The second item on my list, most of you already expect that, is the traffic! OMG WHAT A NIGHTMARE! In Manila everybody has a car, there is (almost) no public transportation and the caos takes over every time you need to go from point A to B.

But enough about this and let me tell you what I did while in Manila for the first time. Ponggo took me to the historical side of Manila and you can check all the photos on Fotostrasse’s album entitled “Manila”

We visited the churches and this cute and amazing park next to it.

This tiny and cute horse was my bff for the day, felt bad for him, though… Stand on the heat all day and carry this much weight with his tiny body. Not cool. And you see how full of love this amazing creature was by the amount of little kisses and “pet me! pet me” I’ve got from him just for standing next to him for 10 minutes. A sweet heart for sure!

Later that day, after the go kart racing Ponggo took me, I met ChiChi and her friend and we headed to the food market/halloween party! It was by far my favorite part of the day! I tried sooo many delicious (and weird) Filipino food…mmmmmmm delicious!

I even met a Filipino/German and we had a brief talk in German hahaha! Great!

So people, this was my 24hrs in Manila! I hope I can post again (this next time with the photos here!) soon but good internet is rare for a tourist girl traveling around the Philippines.

I’m heading to Cebu now, so expect happy posts from a happy girl in the beach hohoho

Manila, I loved you, but you gotta work on your shit =D

 Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post are do not reflect the opinions of the blog owners.