Manila - first impressions

Wonderful climate. Too much traffic. Fantastic people. Too many shopping malls. Beautiful surroundings. Too "american". Great to be able to communicate in English. Too many armed gards. Western style super markets. The list of pros and cons is already long, but without doubt it will be possible to live a comfortable life over there, and as I belong to the - possibly stupid - category of people who thinks it is (partly at least) possible to decide yourself whether you are going to like and enjoy a place - or not, I am convinced I will both like and enjoy life in Manila. Although I also know that the first six months in a new country is rarely the best time of your life.

Here, a few things we did during our first weeks in the city - or cities, as Manila is actually a big messy chaos of about 14 cities that just grew together into what is today referred to as "Metro Manila", where twenty-something million people crowd together, trying to make a living as good as they can. It isnt exactly the centre of equality and differences between rich and poor are pretty striking, to say the least.

Happy to see daddy again!

And we did spend some time watching TV in our giant living room in our temporary apartment.

Or in the pool. Until they closed it for maintenance. Then we watched TV again.

The view from the 31st floor. Makati City business district. Or if it was Fort Bonifacio Global Village. Or something else. I dont remember. And I never seemed to get the directions right

We also spent some time in a small playground area close to the hotel, where kids quickly made a bunch of new friends, Japanese, Filipino and others.

Every day we passed the tiny Ayala triangle garden, about the only accessible green space in the city it seemed...
One day we made an excursion to the actual old "Manila City" to visit a childrens museum and leart about mangrove forests, how to drive a helicopter and much more.

I also went on a couple of house hunting tours and saw many giant and ugly houses. In June I will have to do much more of that - and hopefully find something we like - to a price we like... We also checked out a couple of schools for the kids, and more or less made our decision. It will be a big difference for them.

Didnt try the street food though. Food is definitely much better in Hanoi...

We also celebrated Earth Hour and concluded we will try to make an effort to be at least a tiny bit environmentally aware in Manila - needed everywhere but extremely obvious in places like this...