Long, long ago I lived in Japan and each August due to Obon (festival of the dead) the country basically stops functioning. Japan during August is unbearably humid. Leather items grow the richest, greenest mold you will ever see. Rigorous cleaning and putting all your personal belongings in the sunshine is the only remedy to this mold invasion. But what do human beings do to escape? They leave the country!!! And that is what my girlfriend, Debbie, and I did for 10 days. And off we went to inexpensive (compared to Tokyo) Philippines.
Immediately upon arriving at the Manila Airport (now known as the Ninoy Aquino International Airport) we had cultural shock. Japan runs so efficiently, everyone seems to hustle about with such purpose. In the Philippines it was a 180 degrees shift to people just "hanging out" and watching. We never did figure out what people were waiting for...But we assumed it was nefarious.
Off into the night we sped towards the Manila Hotel - the most beautiful (well, in 1980 it was - maybe that has changed) hotel in all of the Philippines. It also was where General MacArthur used as his headquarters during World War II, or was it the Korean War? A picture says a thousand words so check out the photo of the entrance to the lobby!
We had journeyed from humid confined Tokyo to tropical (albeit hot and humid) Manila. We checked into our room, basically tossed our bags into the room and rushed downstairs to listen and dance to the most incredible band we had heard in a long, long time. We stayed late and ended up having breakfast at 4:00 AM with couple of people we met at the bar. Came back to our room and collapsed.
Next morning we went to check out and voila! discovered that we had been robbed. Not everything, but most of our traveler's checks, cash; but not jewelry, passports, or cameras. Clearly this was an inside job because we had just arrived. We reported the theft and hotel security told us that we were lying and just did not arrive in the Philippines with enough cash. The rest of the day was sitting in a police station (with lots of people just hanging out - were they on the payroll?) all day filling out paperwork so we could get our money back from those stolen traveler's checks (the paperwork was still in Japan, so we weren't going to get that cash for the 10 day trip.)
We had some cash, a few traveler's checks, and one credit card and this was how we were going to travel for the next 9 days in the Philippines. On a tight, tight budget. So we took things like the gaudy jeepney (photo above) which cost about 4 pesos per ride. Our thrills did not end with the robbery (and we did eventually recover financially from the theft) but at one point on the trip we thought we would be murdered. But that is for another posting.
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