Manhattan meets the Far East

Richard Jinman experiences the stark contrast of Manila,full of malls and towers, and peaceful Bohol island. Our guide today is Carlos, a short, stocky man who speaksperfect American-accented English and wears a top hat in the jauntystyle of Jiminy Cricket. The portable stereo hung around his neckis blasting Glenn Miller's Chattanooga Choo Choo, an incongruouschoice considering we are walking through the cloisters of acathedral in Manila's historic Intramuros district. Oddly, no oneseems to mind, least of all the priests, who offer greetings andindulgent smiles as we pass. "If it brings people in, they don'tcare what I do," Carlos says with a wink. It's only when we enter a large crypt that he finally hits the"off" button on the stereo, hangs his hat on a convenient cheruband calls us together. He wants to talk about Manila's imageproblem - the way foreigners often refer to his home town as "thatugly city without a centre, without a soul". Advertisement: Story continues below Carlos doesn't seem to disagree with that assessment but hewants to make a plea for understanding; to explain how a beautifulcity dubbed the Pearl of the Orient in the early part of the thcentury was bombed flat at the end of the World War II and rebornas a giant shopping mall, whose most celebrated citizen is theshoe-obsessed wife of a disgraced former president. "I saw Imelda [Marcos] today, eating pizza at a supermarketcheckout in full national costume!" Carlos says, rolling his eyeswith a mixture of delight and horror. "She's still the first ladyin her head - it's kinda Miss Havisham." His history lesson kicks off in 1571 with Rosetta Stone Outlet the arrival of theConquistadors and describes a nation whose language, faith, cultureand identity were accreted by the Spanish, Chinese, British andAmericans. In 1898, the US bought the country from Spain for$US million and began turning Manila into the New York of the FarEast. It was the first Asian city to have cinemas, jazz clubs,radio stations, train lines and, perhaps more importantly, toiletpaper. This flowering lasted less than 50 years. In March, 1945,General Douglas MacArthur captured the city from the Japanese andended their three-year occupation of the Philippines. Itsliberation came at a terrible cost. A month of intensive bombingleft Manila in ruins - the second-most devastated city after Warsaw- and more than 100,000 Filipinos dead. After the war, theshattered European-style buildings were bulldozed and replaced bymodern American architecture, paving the way for today's congestedconglomeration of freeways, shopping malls, tower blocks and shantytowns. Carlos likes to compare the city to Casa Manila, a Spanishcolonial house in the Intramuros that was restored by Imelda Marcosin 1981 and now operates as a museum. The interiors are "decoratedto death" in a hotchpotch style that includes French doors, Italianchandeliers and English grandfather clocks. "Everything isexpensive but nothing matches," Carlos says. "But somehow, when youput it all together, it works - like the Philippines!" And work it does, in its own peculiar way.

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