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Manila -May 2012-
The beginnings are not the best:
- They try to open my backpack in a crosswalk, I look back and see a transvestite who is hiding by whistling.
- Hotels are ugly and expensive. In the end we find one that looks like a bargain: something bad has to have. And we discovered it at night: it was a kind of puti.
- The city is poor. Dirty. Damp
- The heat is oppressive, we are tired, we have been traveling for 8 months throughout Southeast Asia.
Traveling is beautiful but not everything is palm trees and white beaches.
Traveling is not going on vacation, traveling is tiring, it gets on your skin, in your nose, in your muscles, in your brain, in your dreams.
The Philippines catapults you into South America, or what we think is South America. The faces are similar to those on the other side of the pond, the noodles make room for meat dishes, the temples for the churches and the spirit of the people is warmer.
They are Latino. They are Latinos who like karaoke.
And the rooster fights.
The Philippines was Spanish. And looks. Especially in Manila.
It was there, in the capital, and under the gaze of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral that we saw them: a group of children who were talking very animatedly about something.
It seemed like something very important. Extremely important. They were children with bright, lively, rebellious eyes. They already showed a bit of rebellion: parked where they shouldn’t.
The entry THE PARKING REVOLUTION was first published in Backpacking around the World.
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