by Vanya Vetto
I went back to 7-11 for a snack run. Mikee is still the professional. I profusely apologised and threw in a 'wasn't it fun.' She smiled and treated me like a customer.
Her boss, who was tinkering with the CCTV on a monitor, flashed me a smile. Had he seen the coffee incident? Did he really care?
Obviously not.
'She was the employee of the year,' he says, 'did you know that?'
Not until now.
If this had have happened on the night shift, the staff would have fed me to the zombies outside.
These guys love nothing better than a good old chat and getting money out of you.
They are a friendly bunch. They pit themselves against their rivals and wouldn’t think twice about shafting them.
But there’s always a logic in their reason.
‘The junkies will get you there,’ says Edward my new massage guy who has his position about halfway along the promenade facing Manila Bay.
My other massage guy Chris has his positioned about fifty meters from the junkies, many of them street urchins who sniff glue.
‘Two foreigners went missing after messing with them,’ he warns me. ‘A German and a Swiss guy, they were never found.’
I caught him out of the corner of my own eye. This particular stretch is dark, the lamps don’t light it up.
It's a perfect place for crims who want to stab a tourist and rob him, without ever being seen.
I moved on, vying away from the junky who probably robbed and killed the missing tourists. I’m sure he had a knife and was ready to plunge it into me and rob me.
He was very skinny.
'That's him,' says Edward. And I said he'd be running down the road with his junkie mates before anyone noticed me bleeding to death on the pavement.
I eventually managed to shake him off. It's not the first time I've looked behind me while walking forward.
‘You played it safe,’ said Edward who knew the junky well.
I got a foot and back massage off him. It was a small price to pay for his life-saving advice.
But while walking back to my hotel, he said don’t speak to anyone.
‘Once you let them in, there’s all kinds of strife they can commit.’
The tout wanted to show me a card, it was of a strip joint.
Sure hand it over. He wanted to take me there personally.
I don’t want to go to a strip club.
‘Do you want to take a lady back to your hotel?'
And get robbed, no thanks.
I only want to get back to my hotel safely and with cash in my pocket.
I was always told not to speak to strangers and now that I have, I can’t shake him off.
He lingered around while I spoke to the currency exchange folk. The tout was sure he had a fish and tried for his dear life to pull me out of the warm waters of Manila Bay.
He’d have to try harder.
And I broke the cardinal rule. At least the junkies didn’t get me. They were planning and conspiring, I could feel it in my bones.
‘Come down here and see the big fish,’ said the ringleader who was hanging around the rocks. I walked on and didn’t give him an inch. His buddy missed out on knifing me as I walked back. I can smell a 'rob a foreign tourist' plan a mile away.
One night in Manila, it’s as challenging as any other place.
There are angels and demons, the question is, which one can be trusted.
Chris the massage guy is being forceful.
'If you get drugged by a whore, they'll steal your stuff and you'll be living down here at Manilla Bay.'
Their choice of drugs is Ativan.
Chris lives with his wife and six-year-old daughter down at the Manilla Bay walkway where he does massages and his wife sells drinks. The daughter lives in the cart attached to the bicycle. The cart is covered by a flimsy canopy and doesn't keep the rain out.
Mosquitos are a constant problem, says Chris.
He's seen so many foreigners who have been ripped off.
'They have nowhere to go,' he says, 'so the walkway is the end of the line for most of them.'
He says with no passport or money, 'how can you go home? You can't.'
A man of African descent, maybe an American is berating one of the glue sniffers.
'He had all his cash and his passport stolen.'
It's not just empty threats. They are real. And Chris says I should be very careful.
'Just leave your valuables in your room,' he says as he finishes up my neck and shoulder massage.
He's not happy with the current president.
'Inflation is up and no one can afford to live in a house.'
My morning walk through downtown was a stark reminder of that. Families slept on cardboards. Families bathed on the street. Families die on them too.
'And if you get drugged and fleeced by a whore, you could end up on the streets of Manila too,' he says.
He's not drumming the point home.
'I'm only talking from experience.'
He says the rains will come next month.
'I'll take a shower outside with my daughter. It's a good time of the year to be on the walkway.'
But not a good time to stay dry.
'That's another challenge of sleeping outside.'
He's optimistic about it. His wife is moving individual cigarettes and coffee.
He's had one customer today.
'Things could be a lot worse,' he says. He smiles. But it's a tired smile.
'I was up all night waiting for a customer, no one.'
I was his first today. He's in better spirits. The competition is strict. There seems to be an enterprising massage set-up every ten metres along the one-kilometre walkway.
It's only a good reputation and someone who is prepared to go the long distance, meaning another free ten minutes of massage, that get the repeats. I've dumped Edward, he was lazy and his technique slack and he nearly twisted my bad knee back to 'limpville'.
'Many of them not trained,' says Chris who took a massage course.
He lives in hope of getting off the streets. His daughter goes back to Kindergarten in June.
'We can only live in hope,' he says. I noticed he wasn't holding his breath either.
His wife Rosie pulls out a photo of one of their foreign customers with a little note on the back saying, 'I'll miss the sunsets, massages, laughs, and your friendship.'
It was touching.
These are good folks.
But poverty is biting too hard for them to live in a secure environment that every family deserves.
The streets are tough and Manila doesn't hide that fact.
Manilla is a colourful place.
I'm playing over cautious.
It's a new role for me.
I keep on getting followed by Loonies.
Only yesterday I had to leg it, an old man trying to sell me Viagra was hot on my heels, and Carlos, from the Pony Express, was also humbugging me to take a tour of the old part of town.
They weren't separate issues, they were both confronting me at the same time.
You don't go to the slums in Manila, they come to you.
Watching people sleep on the side of the pavement has whiffs of the voyeuristic express.
A street urchin wanted me to buy her food, 'no give me money, buy me food.'
A five peso coin got rid of the beggar.
This place is full of scam city.
Keeping ahead of the game is a full-time job.
'You did well,' says Chris, 'that's another popular scam.'
It's the ones that are not popular that I'm worried about.
I wondered wide and far yesterday.
It was meet and greet my neighbourhood. One girl rested her head on a bottle of a coke, while her sister had her grubby foot on her face while mum was spread-eagled on the pavement.
The bright lights of Manila attract the moths from the provinces.
It's more humans stacked up together in a lump of
humanity on the sidewalk.
At least down at Manila Bay, you get an ocean breeze and can take a piss and a crap behind the wall, where the dirty waters of the bay at least offer an illusion of the great outdoors.
If you catch a shitty smell on the wind, you have most likely just walked past an open toilet.
To cap the day off, an old lady demanded coins.
I couldn't shake her off, I went down alleyways and back up them and all I could her was witchy shrieks, 'give me money.'
I ran into her one more time.
'Not you again,' I said.
It was a wrap. I decided to hibernate the rest of the evening in my hotel.
There was a risk of suffering sensory overload. And where's the fun in that?
When churches are attacked in Indonesia by Muslim extremists and priests stabbed to death, it only makes the nightly news.
When it happens in a Catholic-dominated country, they retaliate by bombing the shit out of the predominantly Muslim town.
'They were hacking away at our Saints in the churches,' says Rosie.
So the president ordered the army and bombed the shit out of the town. Some love and loathe him, but he's sending a message to the extremists, 'we'll bomb you to the stone age until you back off.'
Don't fuck with our Saints, is the message here in the Philippines.
This isn't Jogkjarkhta where the Muslim population nod their heads and say, 'they deserved it.'
This is the Philippines.
'My brother is in the army,' says Jose.
Jose's brother was on a mission to save a foreigner captured by Abu Sayyaf.
'All they found was a decapitated head,' he says.
When the bomb went off in the markets of Davao City, the president said he'd track those dogs down and see that justice was restored.
Marawi City is still under siege says Rosie, 'the army hasn't completely flushed out the insurgents.'
I'm told if I go down there, there's no security I'll get out alive.
It pays to listen to the locals.
They offer sound advice.
Some hot Muslims in hijabs are taking photos of a statue down at Manila Bay.
'They'll work in Saudi,' says Chris who gives an offbeat smile, 'many of them end up as housekeepers.'
It's that smile, a few of his teeth are missing, that suggested that there were more roles than just cleaning the house with a feather duster in a sexy maid's outfit.
Are you saying that Saudi Wahhabism is trying to secure a caliphate in the south of the Philippines, to secure their supply of sexy maids?
'No comment,' says Chris, who is still devastated by the assassination of Ninoy Aquino in 1983 by Ferdinand Marcos's thugs.
For a masseuse, and homeless to boot, Chris is really plugged in.
There's always an element of trust when walking one of Asia's most populated cities.
I concede to Manila, every time I walk it's street, that I'll be respectful if she is.
So far she hasn't bitten.
It's like nothing I've ever experienced before.
That's a lie. Jakarta, Pontianak or even Surabaya has elements of fear to the city.
But Manilla is just an eye-opener.
The further you get away from downtown, the more it seems to resemble a city where it's residents live in crowded hovels down narrow side streets that cut across to the next major street.
I easily get lost.
But for some reason, I manage to find my way out. The tall buildings act as landmarks and the Manila Bay makes finding your way out of a paper bag a lot easier.
I walked down to the zoo today.
I wasn't mugged.
Not been mugged.
I was expecting a mugging in Medan, but it never happened.
That's a rough and edgy city and I wasn't in tourist town either. I had the Mujahideens to contend with. But they had nothing on the Batak motorbike guy who would win the lion's share of my cash. He was just a pain in the neck. But his company wasn't bad. I paid through the nose for it and when I wasn't paying attention he'd get angry. He'd even get angry when I paid him after a hard day of doing nothing.
But that's another story and another city.
Manila is opening up. It's an ugly flower at first but it's grabbing me by the balls. (Flowers don't grab you by the balls, do they?)
The Seven Elevens serve fantastic food and give the Thai Seven Eleven's a run for their money. Fresh sandwiches, fresh coffee, sweet bananas, cute female staff - what more could you ask?
I walked back from a little eatery on the side of the street.
It's owned by a lovely couple and it's open 24 hours.
I went this way, that way. Oh, this looks rough. Not a tourist in sight. I kept on walking. No one bothered me. No one pulled out their knife. No one snatched my bag. And if they did, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. With a limp knee, running is out of the question.
Dear Manila, I'll caress and sing a sweet lullaby.
Please keep me safe.
Jose, who runs a little eatery on the side of the street carries a Magnum 44.
He's changing batteries and sims in his three phones.
'My Samsung was stolen recently,' he says. The other three Samsungs he has are the fake ones made in Vietnam.
'Two guys broke into my SUV,' he says, which was parked outside his shop.
Jose got access to CCTV footage from the building across the road and was able to track down the two petty thieves.
He's a bit chubby, loves nothing but a long chat and is your typical friendly Filipino who brags about being connected with police and top generals.
'I got a permit from the General to carry a gun,' he says, 'normally it takes time, psychological tests and training, but I got mine instantly.'
He carries a gun to protect his family.
'Just that simple,' he says.
Running a 24-hour business on the streets of Manila is dangerous. He'll usually sleep in his car during the evening shift, 'and if anything goes wrong, I'll be around to deal with it.'
During the day, he's a lab technician, taking samples of patients at their homes in the morning and analysing them at the lab.
He says those two thieves are off the streets now, 'for life.'
'The General thanked me for it, he says how long do you want them in jail, I had the option of short time or life. I said life. So the police planted drugs on the criminals and their usual two months for petty theft became an indefinite stay in jail.'
He says those two thieves had been targeting foreigners.
'And they denied they stole my phone at the police station. So the police put a bullet between their fingers and pressed hard. Still denied. So they turned off the lights of the interrogation cell and cocked the empty gun and fired a few times.That got the confession they were looking for.'
Jose says I can write about this, 'it's a true story, nothing most Filipinos don't know.'
He says the President has doubled the salary of police officers.
'You'll find less corruption these days,' he says, and even his wife who works in a government bank got a double pay rise this month. 'The teachers are next.'
He's hoping that will stop the brain drain of qualified teachers, many who work in Thailand.
Jose is a big supporter of Duterte and believes justice needs to be helped along.
'Hey, if I was a real assole, I could have had those crooks bumped off.'
He says the two thieves are in jail 'as long as president serves his term, only after that, they may get a pardon.'
I told him about how I was followed by a tout the other day.
'If I catch him, he'll be in jail for life too.'
He lets out a big belly laugh. He hates tourists being harassed. He gives cash to his children and they double time to Jollibee for a fast food fix.
Jose is a vigilante and a wonderful father. And he serves great and cheap food at his eatery and gives me generous portions.
&n
bsp; He's offered to take me to a cockfight in the provinces.
'Double blades,' he says. I'm almost cumming in my pants. And he knows it.
He's quiet now, and reflective.
'If I didn't put those crims in jail for life, they'd be back out on the streets, and I'd be their first victim, then my family. It's a tough call but sometimes you gotta do what is right. Twisting the law is inevitable sometimes.'
I'm following his logic. There's a desperation on the streets, and if Duterte shoot-to-kill policy is deterring the nastier elements, it really can't be a bad thing, can it?
'Better we kill them than they kill us,' says Jose.
The working logic of that makes perfect sense.
'Before I couldn't drive across Manila without being held up by a thug. These days, it's safe. The streets are getting safer.'
The streets are getting safer. I wasn't mugged today.
'And if you were, then call me,' says Jose, 'we'll remedy that problem quick smart.'
I said when I enter Muslim countries, I know that it's a death penalty for anyone who uses or deals in drugs. I even told him about my cavity search in Medan.
'It's the law,' he says, 'and the condition on entering the country, you must know that. If you don't like it, don't enter those countries.'
He says here in the Philipines it's more clear-cut.
'Instead of waiting on death row, we dispense of the problem quickly. If you haven't volunteered yourself for rehabilitation, the end of the road could be bleeding out on the streets.'
I nod.
'And if you don't agree with it,' he continues, ' don't come here. And if you come here and still don't agree with it, don't use drugs, or else we'll kill you. It's just that simple.'
I mentioned that the armed forces also had their salary doubled.
'That's right, how else do you prevent a coup, keep the military happy.'
Makes perfect sense in any coup-prone country.
While Edward and Chris slagged each other off, trying to get my patronage, the two of them over two days contributed to fucking up my neck.
Bang bang, pull pull, Edward smashed hard at my spine and nearly poked my feet to death with his sticks. Chris judo wrestled me until he cracked every bone in my back and neck.