Manila, The Philippines
Today is Tuesday, March 6th. This is our second of three consecutive full days at sea as we cruise the East China Sea on our way from Manila to Shanghai. Earlier today Taiwan could be seen in the distance on our port side.
This last Sunday we enjoyed a very enjoyable 1-day visit to Manila. I opened our curtain at about 5:45 a.m., saw some beautiful first-light scenery suggesting we were making our way into Manila Harbor, and hustled to throw some clothes on and get myself up to the Explorer Lounge deck at the bow of the ship to watch our arrival as the sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon. (Remember, you can enlarge any photo by clicking on it.) Moments before the sun peaked through, the skyline looked like this:
I took several skyline photos as the sun rose and can't resist sharing at least one other of those (I'll spare you the rest). I'm also including one I severely cropped in order to greatly enlarge the image of a racing shell and crew in the water way off in the distance (with exaggerated rays of reflected sunlight because of the enlargement).
And then, as it got brighter, I noticed this solitary fisherman way out there (again severely cropped so he can be seen):
Soon we were at full light and much closer in making it easier to see details of the large and active port (including several Philippine navy vessels and a very modern U.S. destroyer) and the usual tugs overseeing the docking of the ship.
Already on the dock even before we tied up was a welcoming party of musicians and dancers.
Manila itself, the capital of the Philippines and its second largest city (Quezon City is bigger), is said to be the most densely populated city on earth. While the population of the entire country (an archipelago consisting of 7,600 islands) is 106 million (2017), the populatiion of Metro Manila (consisting of 6 cities and 12 towns) is 13.5 million (2018).
Before I go on to describe our day in Manila, I have to describe something that speaks volumes about how Viking treats its employees. This ship has a guest passenger capacity of 930, based on double occupancy. Because several people on this cruise are traveling alone and also because Viking has had to reserve to itself some extra staterooms in order to accommodate the large number of resident scholars and entertainers who are brought onboard for from a few days to six weeks at a time, only 868 guests were able to book this cruise. In addition, there are 459 resident crew members (including 105 chefs, 100+ servers/waitstaff, engineers, officers, musicians, singers, medical staff, spa people, retail shop people, tech people, repair people of all sorts, etc.). The largest contingent of crew is from the Philippines. Viking granted shore leave for the day to all of its Philippino crew and booked an entire hotel (including all of its rooms) near the port for them and their visiting families and significant others to use. In addition, some 350 family members were brought onboard for tours of the ship and lunch. I can't begin to adequately convey the excitement of these crew members as the ship was pulling into port. Many of them are married and have young children whom they haven't seen in at least 3 months. Our two cabin stewards are Philippino. One of them is single and spent the day with a nephew who lives in the area. (His immediate family lives too far away to have been able to travel to Manila.) The other was met at the dock by his wife and two boys who drove 3 1/2 hours from their home to arrive here by 8 a.m. He last saw them 6 months ago. Both reported having spent a wonderful day with family. We heard similar stories from so many others yesterday. Hats off to Viking! This was the sign that greeted family members dockside:
Of course, as we disembarked the ship for our scheduled excursion we were met with the usual welcome.
On our way to our first stop we passed The Manila Hotel where several U.S. presidents have stayed and which served as General MacArthur's headquarters in the Philippines during WWII.
Our first stop was the Jose Rizal National Monument. Rizal, the country's most revered national hero, fought not with arms but with his eloquent tongue against the Spanish occupation. He was convincted of treason and executed by a Philippino firing squad on the orders of the Spanish occupiers.
We were next driven to Fort Santiago, which is right in the heart of the city and full of history. Much of it has been restored in the years following WWII.
From there we went to Old Intramuros, the Spanish Old Town where the elite lived during the Spanish colonial era. We toured a preserved home, now a museum, that our guide described as typical of that era. Quite beautiful.
In a space adjacent to this museum home is a restaurant called Barbara's. It looked inviting and probably worth going to if time allowed, which it didn't.
Our last stop in the city before being wisked by bus through several other areas of town on our way back to the ship was at the San Agustin Church, the oldest stone church in Manila and one where the pope always holds mass when in the Philippines. We weren't able to go inside because a service was underway, but we did take some photos in the courtyard. It looked like a wedding was about to take place. We didn't see the bride and groom but I did take photos of a beautifully dressed woman and of a family who seemed connected with it. The children looked like they were probably in the wedding party.
When we returned to the ship, Janis and I had a quick lunch and then headed back out since the ship wasn't leaving until 10:30 p.m. Viking typically arranges for a continuously running shuttle service between the host port and either the center of town or, as here, the mall. The shuttle was running to the mall. We decided to go there thinking we could run a few errands and also update all our electronic devices which we can't do on the ship because of its painfully slow internet connection. Well, this is no ordinary mall. It's called The Mall of Asia and opened in 2009. It contains 600+ shops, including 217 places where you can get food. There are 16 anchor stores, 4,380,500 square feet of retail floor area, 8,000 parking spaces, several kinds of movie complexes (iMax, etc.), an olympic size skating rink and an open-air music hall facing the sea. Janis and I went our separate ways on arrival since we had different goals. The place was absolutely packed. My plan to sit quietly in a corner of a restaurant, maybe a Starbucks, and update our stuff, didn't work out. In most restaurants there wasn't a seat to be had (usually long lines waiting to get in) and many didn't have wifi (probably quite deliberately in order to discourage people like me from taking up space for long periods of time). I walked up and down and around for well over an hour and never managed to cover the whole thing.
Needless to say, many of the store names were familiar because they are not only national names we know from home but internationally known names as well. That said, I couldn't have been more surprised when I saw this on one storefront. I certainly didn't expect to encounter something quite so familiar.
As we were leaving the mall to catch the shuttle back to the ship, this was the view.
As beautiful as was the sunrise, so too was the moonrise that night, as viewed from our veranda.
The last treat of the day, before, sailaway, was a performance onboard by Bayanihan, the National Folk Dance Company of the Philippines. What a magnificent performance. (My photos don't begin to do it justice because I couldn't satisfy the competing need for light in a low-light, no-flash environment and a fast shutter speed to freeze movement. Resulting high ISO makes for noisy photos.)
We are scheduled to arrive in Shanghai early Thursday morning for a two day stay. In addition to all that Shanghai offers, while there we will be attending the christening of this ship and a gala dinner thereafter in some facility on land, all compliments of Viking. More about that later.
This last Sunday we enjoyed a very enjoyable 1-day visit to Manila. I opened our curtain at about 5:45 a.m., saw some beautiful first-light scenery suggesting we were making our way into Manila Harbor, and hustled to throw some clothes on and get myself up to the Explorer Lounge deck at the bow of the ship to watch our arrival as the sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon. (Remember, you can enlarge any photo by clicking on it.) Moments before the sun peaked through, the skyline looked like this:
I took several skyline photos as the sun rose and can't resist sharing at least one other of those (I'll spare you the rest). I'm also including one I severely cropped in order to greatly enlarge the image of a racing shell and crew in the water way off in the distance (with exaggerated rays of reflected sunlight because of the enlargement).
And then, as it got brighter, I noticed this solitary fisherman way out there (again severely cropped so he can be seen):
Soon we were at full light and much closer in making it easier to see details of the large and active port (including several Philippine navy vessels and a very modern U.S. destroyer) and the usual tugs overseeing the docking of the ship.
Already on the dock even before we tied up was a welcoming party of musicians and dancers.
Manila itself, the capital of the Philippines and its second largest city (Quezon City is bigger), is said to be the most densely populated city on earth. While the population of the entire country (an archipelago consisting of 7,600 islands) is 106 million (2017), the populatiion of Metro Manila (consisting of 6 cities and 12 towns) is 13.5 million (2018).
Before I go on to describe our day in Manila, I have to describe something that speaks volumes about how Viking treats its employees. This ship has a guest passenger capacity of 930, based on double occupancy. Because several people on this cruise are traveling alone and also because Viking has had to reserve to itself some extra staterooms in order to accommodate the large number of resident scholars and entertainers who are brought onboard for from a few days to six weeks at a time, only 868 guests were able to book this cruise. In addition, there are 459 resident crew members (including 105 chefs, 100+ servers/waitstaff, engineers, officers, musicians, singers, medical staff, spa people, retail shop people, tech people, repair people of all sorts, etc.). The largest contingent of crew is from the Philippines. Viking granted shore leave for the day to all of its Philippino crew and booked an entire hotel (including all of its rooms) near the port for them and their visiting families and significant others to use. In addition, some 350 family members were brought onboard for tours of the ship and lunch. I can't begin to adequately convey the excitement of these crew members as the ship was pulling into port. Many of them are married and have young children whom they haven't seen in at least 3 months. Our two cabin stewards are Philippino. One of them is single and spent the day with a nephew who lives in the area. (His immediate family lives too far away to have been able to travel to Manila.) The other was met at the dock by his wife and two boys who drove 3 1/2 hours from their home to arrive here by 8 a.m. He last saw them 6 months ago. Both reported having spent a wonderful day with family. We heard similar stories from so many others yesterday. Hats off to Viking! This was the sign that greeted family members dockside:
Of course, as we disembarked the ship for our scheduled excursion we were met with the usual welcome.
On our way to our first stop we passed The Manila Hotel where several U.S. presidents have stayed and which served as General MacArthur's headquarters in the Philippines during WWII.
Our first stop was the Jose Rizal National Monument. Rizal, the country's most revered national hero, fought not with arms but with his eloquent tongue against the Spanish occupation. He was convincted of treason and executed by a Philippino firing squad on the orders of the Spanish occupiers.
We were next driven to Fort Santiago, which is right in the heart of the city and full of history. Much of it has been restored in the years following WWII.
From there we went to Old Intramuros, the Spanish Old Town where the elite lived during the Spanish colonial era. We toured a preserved home, now a museum, that our guide described as typical of that era. Quite beautiful.
In a space adjacent to this museum home is a restaurant called Barbara's. It looked inviting and probably worth going to if time allowed, which it didn't.
Our last stop in the city before being wisked by bus through several other areas of town on our way back to the ship was at the San Agustin Church, the oldest stone church in Manila and one where the pope always holds mass when in the Philippines. We weren't able to go inside because a service was underway, but we did take some photos in the courtyard. It looked like a wedding was about to take place. We didn't see the bride and groom but I did take photos of a beautifully dressed woman and of a family who seemed connected with it. The children looked like they were probably in the wedding party.
When we returned to the ship, Janis and I had a quick lunch and then headed back out since the ship wasn't leaving until 10:30 p.m. Viking typically arranges for a continuously running shuttle service between the host port and either the center of town or, as here, the mall. The shuttle was running to the mall. We decided to go there thinking we could run a few errands and also update all our electronic devices which we can't do on the ship because of its painfully slow internet connection. Well, this is no ordinary mall. It's called The Mall of Asia and opened in 2009. It contains 600+ shops, including 217 places where you can get food. There are 16 anchor stores, 4,380,500 square feet of retail floor area, 8,000 parking spaces, several kinds of movie complexes (iMax, etc.), an olympic size skating rink and an open-air music hall facing the sea. Janis and I went our separate ways on arrival since we had different goals. The place was absolutely packed. My plan to sit quietly in a corner of a restaurant, maybe a Starbucks, and update our stuff, didn't work out. In most restaurants there wasn't a seat to be had (usually long lines waiting to get in) and many didn't have wifi (probably quite deliberately in order to discourage people like me from taking up space for long periods of time). I walked up and down and around for well over an hour and never managed to cover the whole thing.
Needless to say, many of the store names were familiar because they are not only national names we know from home but internationally known names as well. That said, I couldn't have been more surprised when I saw this on one storefront. I certainly didn't expect to encounter something quite so familiar.
As we were leaving the mall to catch the shuttle back to the ship, this was the view.
As beautiful as was the sunrise, so too was the moonrise that night, as viewed from our veranda.
The last treat of the day, before, sailaway, was a performance onboard by Bayanihan, the National Folk Dance Company of the Philippines. What a magnificent performance. (My photos don't begin to do it justice because I couldn't satisfy the competing need for light in a low-light, no-flash environment and a fast shutter speed to freeze movement. Resulting high ISO makes for noisy photos.)
We are scheduled to arrive in Shanghai early Thursday morning for a two day stay. In addition to all that Shanghai offers, while there we will be attending the christening of this ship and a gala dinner thereafter in some facility on land, all compliments of Viking. More about that later.
Beautiful photos! What a fabulous trip & adventure!
ReplyDeleteThanks for inviting me to your blog. I am most impressed with your writing and photos. So well done!! Bob
ReplyDeleteTwo comments. The moon rise photo was spectacular.
ReplyDeleteWe have consistently found the Philippino employees (who generally outnumber all others on cruise ship staffs) to be incredibly good-natured and hardworking people. Must be a cultural characteristic and a big reason why the cruise companies favor them. Sure, low wages in a relatively poor country are another reason, but there are many other countries that have those qualities yet do not contribute such excellent employees. Very nice of Viking to acknowledge this and provide the well-deserved benefit you described. John