Philippines 2008

Welcome to my Philippines page, with pictures from my eight-day vacation in Manila and Tagaytay, 23–31 December 2008. My previous eleven trips had been to countries I’d visited at least once before, and though I loved each of those destinations and will return to them, I needed to see something different this Christmas, still preferring an Asian locale and wanting someplace warm.
So I chose the Philippines, metropolitan Manila specifically, for this short holiday. Metro Manila is made up of seventeen cities and municipalities, with a combined population of about fifteen million people, depending which reference you believe. I decided to stay in Makati City because of its deserved reputation as being the safest part of the entire urban area, for having the nicest hotels, and, fearing Manila’s notorious traffic, for being close to the airport, which would be handy for my late arrival Christmas Eve and early departure New Year’s Eve Day.
The highlight of the trip was all the nice natives I met, warm and happy people with easy, sincere smiles, who were glad to help and eager to chat. Lots of babies and toddlers in this eighty percent Catholic country—adorable in the way that’s unique to Asian children. The weather was great: 80–85 degrees everyday, no rain, and mostly sunny. An unexpected pleasure I got happened on both ends of the trip, with Northwest Airlines bumping me up to business class on the Minneapolis-to-Tokyo flight and then, on the return, from Manila to Tokyo and from Tokyo to Minneapolis.