Everyone Warned Us About Manila (we went anyway)

Mabuhay! I'm Oscar and I'm Dan and today we're in Manila, Philippines! We visited the Philippines for the first time last year in August of 2022. We had an amazing time and fell in love with the warm and friendly people and the beautiful nature of Cebu. But we never made it to the country's capital until recently when we had a stopover in Manila. My brain is like you are in Latin America and I'm like no I am in Southeast Asia. And our visit sure was an experience from beginning to end for better and for worse. Okay what is going on? Dan is trying to convince me that this is the better seat. It is! He's like yeah no you should totally fit in this seat instead in the middle. It's so much better. Tell me it's not better. There's three seats there and those people will never disturb him to walk by. It's fine you can take the seat you want. Meanwhile here these people look at out over here. A short nighttime flight later we landed in Manila. Mabuhay! We're back in the Philippines! We were honestly a bit scared about arriving at Manila airport because we've heard so much trash talk about it but so far it's been really smooth. They didn't really have a lot of immigration booths but they were very efficient with the ones they had. This is the queen of suitcase. My bag isn't quite the squeeze. There's the terminal. I'm here. It's Oscar. We're so tired like I'm about to just fall down on the ground and sleep right now. Oh it's our first minute out in Manila and it is so hot. We're So we're in this mall and they even have Marks and Spencer's. This is a very different feeling from our trip to Cebu already. What's that? Hydro box. We're definitely in a pretty rich part of Manila. This is really the way to survive in Southeast Asia. You walk from one mall into the next mall and you only get about 10 seconds outside which is the way to do it. We're heading down to the supermarket. Brandon's excited but it seems like it's more of a food court. There's like tons of restaurants. Choose your type of banana. Every single thing is packed in plastic. Yeah I mean terrible for the environment but how beautiful is this presentation? This is giving Japanese grocery stores a run for their money. I love this presentation of the green beans. It looks like a giant brain. Also we're obsessed with these tiny limes. Look Swedish style balls. Oh my god. They have bulgogi. Oh look they have all these actually filipino type of products. But the prices are insane like this is much more than it would be in Sweden or anywhere else in the west. One thing I just have to point out is that in the grocery store there were so many workers just standing around like no one really had anything to do and it's just really crazy how much of a surplus of labor or people there is here in the Philippines which is why there are so many Filipinos who work abroad because there's just not enough jobs here in the Philippines. We read this article a while back that essentially compared Thailand and the Philippines and their population growth and talked about how Thailand is in a much better economical position right now than the Philippines largely just because of the promotion of contraceptives whereas here in the Philippines which is a largely Catholic country because of Spanish colonization the public has generally been more opposed to contraception so for that reason the population growth has been a lot bigger here. I am just desperate to go to the toilet and get out of the heat it's just really just need to go and then they're like where's the button to cross the street it's hidden here I'm having a breakdown. For lunch and it's just coconut water. It was a bit awkward to record in there because it was just us and two other people so uh yeah hence we didn't really talk about the food but we tried a local dish adobo that we haven't tried before. It felt so lame for our little Filipino food we had last time we were here because we were mainly in Malboa and there wasn't really much vegan Filipino food there so we're so happy we could finally try it because the adobo was amazing. It's pretty crazy how much it varies here in Southeast Asia how vegan friendly like naturally the food is. Here in the Philippines it's very meat heavy like every single dish and so finding you know vegan renditions of it can be a little tricky but now we managed to find some This bus is literally moving as people are getting on. What? After a quick stop back at the hotel we decided to visit a recommendation from some of you guys a food market called Good Food Sundays. A decision that ended up leading to one of the highlights of our Manila stopover. We'll show you why in a second. This market was a recommendation by one of you guys and supposedly there should be a lot of vegan options there which is great and to get there we are also using one of the recommendations we got from you guys which is that we should eat crabs everywhere and not even bother with public transport. Actually the number one recommendation we got from Manila from you guys was don't which I think is pretty sad. All right we made it to the market. It looks a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be but at least it's in the shade. This is like tiny. Not this being like our excursion of the day and it's like five stands. What? You didn't tell me this was some like vegan. Did you see that stand too? I didn't know everything was. I knew there was going to be a lot of them but I love this. This is what's so cool about the Philippines. A vegan market is something you'd expect in Bali not a Southeast Asian capital. All right we are about to dig in. To be honest eating fried food in weather this hot is like kind of a nightmare but this looks super good. It's so funny there's a cooler next to us. It's not cool. I don't know why we're so shocked by the temperature. We got one ube empanada, one classic which is like mixed vegetables and some soy meat and one vegan chicken one. So I'm breaking them all up to show you guys. Wow it's really good. This is not what I expected from Manila. I think this place really shows the difference in social classes in Manila and in the Philippines in general because this place is kind of bougie. It's ice cream time and this year last year our food was eggplant. Our new discovery this year our food is corn and this is corn ice cream. Everything is good with corn. You really you like it? I'm very intrigued. It's not yellow. I thought it was going to be yellow in color. That's vanilla. Oh can I try the corn? The vanilla is good though. I mean corn is really sweet so it goes well with dessert. Like I don't know why it's not more commonly used in dessert. So we're just sitting here in this market googling random things. One thing we realized is that Manila proper is the most densely populated city. What? Manila is the most densely populated city proper in the world. We're trying to figure out exactly what that means. That was so crazy. We were just about to leave this place. I was just going to place the order for the grab and this woman comes up to us and she's like hi my name is Lo. I would like to invite you to our art therapy session. It's for free. Just come upstairs and join us. So we're checking it out. For the next hour we got to share some of our toughest struggles and deepest fears with a group of complete strangers and it was one of the most beautiful and cathartic experiences we've had in a long time. One of the participants was an ex-convict who was going through a rehabilitation program and we got to speak with locals from all walks of life. Okay a hundred countries later I don't know how many years of full-time travel at this point and that is the first time something like that has ever happened for us. I mean we love those types of things and the fact it happened on our first day out in Manila is insane. What an amazing experience that was and it was so impromptu, so unexpected and I think that speaks a lot to just Filipino culture but also I mean so many people here speak English which makes everything a lot more accessible to us of course as tourists. But then secondly Filipino culture is just so open and kind and warm and you know everyone is just like invited everywhere I feel which is just amazing. Good morning guys it's another day in Manila we're in a different part of the city today. I feel like you just have to embrace the heat like we have not traveled in Southeast Asia for six months and that is very noticeable. Why are we walking in the middle of road Oscar? So we have two options, squeeze through there or just the middle of the street. Today is our real touristing day gonna go out and explore as much as we can of old Manila and the surrounding areas. Yeah the signs, the zebra crossings don't really mean much here. That was so interesting so the Philippines obviously has a bit of a crisis with lack of jobs given the huge huge population. That huge crowd we just walked by was some sort of makeshift work fair because there were a bunch of people holding different signs like urgent, need a shipping person, this or that. So maybe that's like a hot spot where people come super interesting. But we just entered Rizal Park and I hope to have a swimming pool. Expected Chinese garden here in the park so we're checking it out it's free. But we've now made it to the old walled city Intramuros which is from the Spanish colonial times but we're trying to figure out where to enter because there's just like another wall outside of the old wall it's kind of blocking the access. Perfect okay you don't even want to see here and down. This is the reality of being a tourist in Manila let's not even speak about it. To be honest this kind of reminds us of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. That's a very similar vibe except the people are very different. Just trying to imagine what type of tree was growing here before they cut it down. That's insane. Also I wish we were wherever all these AC units lead. When I was younger I never used to sweat on my face at all like my body could be drenched but my face was completely dry. It's changed a bit as we got older but when I took Accutane for the second time from 2021 to 2022 it was like some button was switched on and suddenly I can now be like not sweating anywhere but my face. It's like something just activated that my face is now the worst part which is so inconvenient. I just cannot wrap my mind around what this place is because my brain is like you are in Latin America and I'm like no I am in Southeast Asia. We went into Starbucks for a second just to take shelter from the heat but it's not even cold in here so there's no respite whatsoever. On our phone it says it feels like 42 degrees outside so it's not kidding around. We usually get everything light ice today we ordered extra ice. All right we are going back outside after 20 minutes of cooling down although that's probably the warmest indoor cafe we've ever been to which I guess is good because the contrast isn't too big when you go outside. Next up Fort Santiago the main stronghold of the Spanish when So Spanish colonization of the Philippines started in the 1500s and they were here for almost 250 years until the Americans liberated the Philippines but it quickly got pretty clear that the Americans did not have the Filipino people's best interest at heart and then the Japanese were here for a few years during World War II but the longest lasting influence of the Philippines is of course the Spanish influence and it's really quite insane because between one-fourth and one-third of all words in Tagalog the national language of the Philippines are lone words in Spanish up to one-third. And the table I was sitting at to record that history lesson was covered in like those fire ants or like the golden ants so I was very paranoid that I was going to get bitten the whole time. It's terrifying to walk here in Fort Santiago because there's mango trees all above us and we just see all these mangoes that have fallen down don't want to hit you in the head. So we originally wanted to walk across the river and into Chinatown the middle of Chinatown which is the oldest Chinatown in the world allegedly but it's it's just too hot like we can't do it I hate to go on and on about the heat. I can literally feel my organs like there's pain in my chest and I feel like they're not working as they should. It's kind of scary. Yeah so we're gonna go back to the hotel now and try to decompress a little bit I think. This is what doing laundry on the road looks like. All right today it's time to head onward we just spent the day walking around Landmark Mall because we were told they have cheap stuff. To be honest not a lot of great stuff and not super cheap not gonna lie we're excited to fly somewhere a little bit colder. And we're excited to see if the departures experience at Manila airport is as bad as they say. As you saw our arrival was a lot smoother than we would have thought so maybe we'll be surprised again. Well first up there's a pretty long line to even get into the airport so that's the first hurdle. Okay security passport control and check-in all went pretty smooth I'd say It's so hot inside like there's no AC whatsoever. Yeah there is. I feel like there isn't. We took refuge in the lounge which was thankfully quite a bit cooler so we weren't sweating the whole time. And on that note guys our short stopover in Manila was over. Thank you for watching the whole video and stay tuned for our next one which will be a really really exciting adventure. And until you hear from us again in that video as always see you around the world. I'm Oscar and I'm Dan and we're on a mission to see as much of the world as possible during our youth. So far we've traveled to a hundred countries to show that anyone can travel off the beaten path regardless of who they are. However we realized that constantly chasing new countries isn't necessarily the most fulfilling way to live life so now we're finding a balance by exploring more of our favorite countries and seeing new places at a more sustainable pace. We'd love for you to come along for the ride. See you around the world.