Saltwater, exhaust, dogs, cats, rats, geckos, palm trees, water buffalo, roosters, tricycles, jeepneys. Children living in the filth of the streets. Malls of dimensions that swallow up the outside. Beaches made for solitary encounters with the Pacific.

Sitting in a cold, South Korean apartment, the thirty-one days I spent in the Philippines are distant already; a prolonged hallucination. I expect to turn over my pillow to find beach sand, or have a coconut roll out from the fridge as proof that, no, it wasn't a dream, I really was there. You could trust these photos as evidence. They are all of Manila:























































I think of Manila as one of the many ageing drag queens she is home to. One who is equally repulsive and charming, has seen it all before, and will tell you about it while blowing smoke in your face. Decrepit and abandoned art deco buildings hint at some sort of heyday, elapsed but still visible in the smog of the past. Every surface has layers, all equally faded and chipped. It is all covered in soot, if you can call it that, though it is certainly something different altogether when you blow it into a handkerchief as some alien, malignant goo. On buildings the patina of pollution is pretty like Paris, and while it can be beautiful to look at, Manila can be difficult to be in, especially for tourists like me. Gridlocked in traffic, the air stings your eyes and lungs. On foot, the pavement is uneven, threatens to harm your ankles and send you sliding on something wet into a ditch or sewage trench. Even so, I am told that it is a safer place now, not what it used to be.

Though she hasn't revealed herself to me yet, I sense that there is a Manila deserving of all the mythologizing perpetrated by old Western men high on drugs, fumes, young flesh and seedy life in cockroach infested bars. In some water-damaged apartment the anecdotes are reality. I'll just have to visit again someday.

That's Manila. Of course, I did other things too.