The Philippines

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006
Subject: Trumble - Philippines

Greetings! On Thursday night I arrived back home 31+ hours after leaving my hotel in Manila (Manila-Hong Kong-Tokyo Narita-Dallas-Colorado Springs). It was a good trip, but also long and tiring.

I arrived on Sunday and went to church with Noel, Compassion’s Country Director in the Philippines, and his family. The service was in English so I was able to understand. The prior Sunday I attended a service in Indonesia and was able to follow much less of the service (but that’s okay, God understands when His people praise Him in any language!). After church, Noel’s family and I walked to a mall and ate Chinese. If I’m not mistaken, I have now eaten Chinese in at least 8 different countries. Noel’s family has a young lady that lives with them and helps with the children and she joines us too. It is very common in the Philippines for families with the means to hire help like this. The cost would be something like US$500 per year plus room and board.

I won’t bore you with the finance stuff we discussed but let me hit some of the other highlights. On Monday, 17 July, I ate frog legs for the first time that I remember. It turns out that there are bones in them and you should eat the meat off like chicken (I guess). The first one I had I just ate, bones and all. It was okay.

Filipinos apparently enjoy shopping as evidenced by the many large malls in Manila. The biggest mall in Asia is located in Manila. I didn’t visit that one but my hotel was within walking distance of Megamall and I spent some time there. This is a mall that sits on two sides of the street with a “bridge” connecting the two. Traffic runs underneath the bridge while people merrily do their shopping in the floors above. The mall is something like six levels and is huge.

On Tuesday evening I visited some historic structures left over from the Spanish colonial times. Some of these areas were also used by the Japanese during World War II when they occupied the Philippines. Later we ate on a pier that extends into Manila Bay. The chop suey had some squid legs mixed in (and I may have had something that included a squid body and at least a couple of the legs). We ate tuna, too. It didn’t come from a can. Go figure. We saw German Moreno, the famous actor (at least in the Philippines…I’d never heard of him either). For more on Mr. Moreno, check out these sites: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1245343/ http://www.igma.tv/celeb.php?celebid=137

On Wednesday morning I was about to take a shower and had the water running into the tub (but hadn’t turned the shower on yet), when the room’s alarm clock started going off. I left the water running and went and dealt with the clock and then, when getting back into the tub I slipped and fell and really whacked my head on the tub. I also banged my shoulder and got a nice bruise on my hip out of the deal but I didn’t get knocked out or drown or anything like that so I guess that’s good. Later on Wednesday I had the opportunity to speak to the staff during their weekly chapel service. At dinner on Wednesday the people I was with were speaking but I commented that I could understand some of what they were saying. The language in the Philippines is Tagalog but what they were speaking was Taglish, a combination of Tagalog and English. See this site for more on Taglish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taglish

The U.S. influence is quite obvious in Manila. There are many McDonald’s and KFCs and lots of other stuff that is very familiar to an American. English is very commonly spoken (which is true of much of Asia and really, much of the world). For the most part prices are very attractive to an American (this was also very true in Indonesia). At a store in the Megamall, for about US$16, I purchased a 2-DVD set of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Episodes I and III of Star Wars (I didn’t see Ep. II), 2 Super Friends DVDs (hey I used to watch when I was a kid and I liked it), and a Tchaikovsky music CD.

Dan

Sign at office in Manila