8.4.026 – Day 6 – The Girls International Whirlwind Restaurant Tour. Jan. 2026: Manila.

Awoke after a couple of hours sleep and Bron and I headed down to check out hotel breaky. We don’t have breaky included so we looked it over and went for a walk across the road to the Shopping Precinct- Greenbelt. There were a range of cafes and restaurants to choose from. Returned to hotel and collected Suzie and Hayley for breaky at Wild Flour.
I’m still queasy (thanks Bali Belly) so enjoyed some warm baguette with butter.

After speaking with the concierge and doing our own research we arranged a half day city tour with Baron Tours via the Concierge.
At 2pm we headed off with our guide Nori and driver Brian. We
went everywhere and had our brains filled with information and learning about the place.

So many facts about Manila. Not a lot of photos that are any good as we were in the van.

Random things I can recall (and there is a LOT that was lost in translation or I just couldn’t retain/ retrieve.
Manila has had three major colonisers starting with the Spanish centuries ago, then invaded and occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War, in 1945 US Troops liberated Manila and Phillipines. The Japanese atrocities were carried out here too.
Manila is actually Metro Manila – with 16 cities, including Manyla, private cities of Makati, BGC, Pasay, Pasig and many others.
Makati where we are staying is one of them – owned by the Ayala family it is the finance and business district.
We drove through Forbes Park, the exclusive area (likened to Beverly Hills) which is only open to certain vehicles and only because the residents agreed to assist the government by opening their road to ease traffic congestion. There were a number of residences of Ambassadors through here. All high fences and security as you would expect.
We learnt about high rollers who have set up business and huge buildings here in Phillipines – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, plus other businesses including Amazon, IKEA (now the largest IKEA in the world)

A visit to the Manila American Cemetery – with over 17 000 graves marked with crosses and a memorial to over 36000 Americans lost in the battle – most missing in action.
The small chapel and Altar was quite beautiful too.

All so well manicured, neat and tidy, as war cemeteries are. Sadly the Filipino people are not allowed to visit unless accompanying a foreigner or they have a family member listed in the cemetery. This didn’t feel right to me.
The toll that World War 2 took on the Phillipines was huge. We were shown a statue in memory of the 100,000 men, women, children and infants lost. The story is quite horrific.

Nori had so many stories. He seemed very proud of their convention centre and the fact that the Phillipines has won Miss World 3 times, and also have Miss Universe, Miss World and Miss Earth – including a Filipino/Australian winner and the infamous winner who was crowned after the first announcement was a mistake. (I vaguely recall this happening but TBH Miss World does not rate highly in things I care about)
We also passed through the Bay Area and the SM shopping Mall – which is the largest Mall in the Asian region – so big and continues to expand.

In the Bay Area they are constructing a pure white beach – that you can’t swim at as the water is contaminated!
Only Vatican City and Phillipines have no divorce.

We saw two weddings – pretty full on. The first one at St Agustin’s Church – the oldest stone church in the Phillipines and a UNESCO site, within the walked old city of Intramuros. The bridesmaids, of which there were many, wore silver as were many of the guests – a tradition evidently. A whole contingent of photographers, videographers and others with headsets and mics having a battle with the tourist throng.

The second wedding was at The Manila Cathedral.

Tomorrow the Catholics celebrate Black Nazarene – Nori told us that this statue of Jesus was burned and charred hence the name Black Nazarene. I read that in 2024 the Archbishop decreed it should be known as Jesus Nazarene, to “further focus the people on the holy name of our Lord than a color or attribute”. It is also believed that the statue has great healing powers and touching the statue results in miracle cures (explains all the wheelchair users at the airport) There is a huge procession taking place tomorrow – good timing for us as it would have blocked our tour.

There was a Japanese owned monstrous GOLD building that is a hotel to rival the Bellagio – with fountains, casino, shopping centre etc. massive and oh so gold.

Nori also showed us some abandoned building site that had many, many containers lined up full of tools and materials. All the cranes from the sites were gathered and stand still. Why? The Filipino workforce has been identified as valuable and the UAE have taken them all to work in Dubai etc (which come to think of it when we were in Dubai we could see a lot of Asian workers in the sites around our hotel.) a lot of things are now awaiting a Chinese workforce to descend to get things built. 

The Old Walled City of Intramuros was interesting, much of the wall remains and we visited Fort Santiago that used to house munitions and war vehicles – but during the pandemic was converted to a park for wedding parties to hold activities evidently. There was also a museum which had photos and some pretty tacky models of the torture and atrocities carried out by the Japanese.

There was so much more and I will just caption the photos now as I sort through.

We returned to hotel at 7 for dinner at the People’s Palace – just opposite the hotel and great recommendation from a workmate of Hayley’s. Great Thai food all around.

Home to bed.