by Vanya Vetto
And Mikee not only has a lovely smile but underneath her loose shirt is a nice set of 'fun' bags.
Dr John has received two kisses on the cheek from her already.
Jose, Mikee’s boyfriend, owns a Vesper.
'Someone gave it to me, but I've spent a fortune restoring it back to it's 1963 mint condition.'
Jose was conned by a guy who says he lived in L.A.
'I gave him noodles,' he says. 'But he still wanted to work in my shop and pay off his meal.'
I said he would have stolen your fish and your hot girlfriend if you did and then asked for the bus fare home.
Jose isn't here for the lunch session with my dentist. I've just had another three teeth ground down I'm still feeling warm and gooey from the Novocaine.
After we finish up the noodles, Dr John excuses himself, saying he has a big titted Philipino and now a resident of Las Vegas to attend to in the clinic.
Dr John is all touchy touch with Mikee. She loves the attention. I wonder if he's so friendly when his cousin is around.
What a lovely uncle you have I say to Mikee who is all effervescent and fair complexioned.
In Asia, uncle usually means dirty old man, or least among the Chinese in Malaysia.
Do I get a hug, I asked.
‘I’ll give you one now,’ says Mikee.
I told her to hold on.
How about we go for the hug once I've got my new smile on at the end of the week.
She gives a lovely braces smile.
'Of course,' she says.
I think I better order some more Ramen tonight.
Garcia, the security guard/pimp/begger who wears the 'My Ramen’’ T-shirt is giving me the rates of the hostesses outside the girly bar next door.
'Only 2000 peso, can fuck all night.'
This is a colourful part of Manila. I'm told it's the equivalent of Bangkok's Patpong.
It's great to be part of the neighbourhood.
I’m waiting for that hug, I tell Dr John.
'Wait till you meet her architecture friend,' he says, pleading that this doesn't get back to Mikee.
I can keep a secret, I said.
I'm off to the Ramen shop. I'm hoping to get a glimpse of Mikee's braces. I might even ask her to open up her mouth so I can get a better look at Dr John's handiwork.
I think dentistry is becoming my second calling.
Carlos befriends me at a cheap restaurant.
His parents have kinda jived with me too.
Living next door on the pavement is a large family. In the alleyway around the corner are more poor families. The only furniture they have are cardboard boxes flattened down on the pavement.
Leo the seaman told me that Aron and Rachel feed them every day, 'providing drinking water too.'
He says Aron use to be a seaman, 'now rents out rooms to seaman and runs a busy little restaurant and helps the poor out.'
Leo says he's waiting for a gig on a ship bound for Bangladesh.
'I'll find work for them here in the restaurant between jobs,' says Aron, who is carrying a baby.
'She's our good luck charm.'
Bella was handed to the family by a stranger, says Aron 'and now she's part of our family.'
One request, I say, before I leave. It's Jason Derulo. Rachel has my favorite song on before I can finish my cheap coffee.
Leo excuses himself. He's given me enough information to work with.
The music has stopped.
Aron says that many of the homeless have houses in the provinces.
He says they come here because the money is bigger begging than working in the paddy fields in their hometown.
'And many of them are addicted to drugs.'
What about the new policy of killing drug dealers and users?
'They just don't care,' he says. 'They don't respect themselves enough to worry about things like that.'
Aron says, as a rule, he won't give food to drug addicts.
'They'll only stab you in the back once you cut them off,' he says.
He literally means stab in the back.
'These people are poor and resort to drastic means when they need their fix.'
He tells me of a recent snatching.
'They stole a Korean women's bag which had her passport in it.'
He says it just happened around the corner near the police station.
’It was early evening,' he says, and a dark spot, meaning, 'it wasn't lit up by street lights.'
He said she was lucky.
'They have been known to kill for less.'
And right in front of the coppers eyes?
'Yep.'
He won't leave his neighbourhood, and if he wants to go to the Mall or a restaurant, he'll usually drive his car.
He says many of the homeless not only beg but collect boxes and bottles to make money for their next fix.
'Then they'll come to me and beg for a feed.'
He won't have any part of that. Only the real needy get his charity.
'I'll feed the families outside my shop once we close shop at 8 pm,' he says. 'I just don't see the point of throwing out the leftovers in the garbage when it can feed a genuine family in need.'
All he asks in return is respect and to sweep outside his shop occasionally.
I tell Aron about the massage guys down at Manila Bay who fucked up my back.
I can't walk very far now without feeling like I'm going to collapse.
'You are very lucky,' he says, 'it might have just saved your life.'
I was roaming far and wide before that, I said. A few streets I went down seemed very home boyish.
'Doubly lucky,' he says, 'not advisable to walk the streets that are paved with the poor. It's a statistics game, eventually, they'll get you.'
It's time to file, I tell Aron and Leo.
'And hopefully lift hearts,' says Leo.
Though the streets of Manila may seem mean and uncaring, there are little oases of kindness and compassion.
But on a bigger note, it seems killing off drugs users and dealers isn't deterring crime one bit.
'The streets are still as dangerous as before, ' says Aron who is bolting up the door of his restaurant for the night.
'Once they are closed, they are not open until the morning.'
I have no idea what Dr. John is putting in that injection to numb my gums but I’m off my fucking tree.
I just spent an hour with Dr. John getting the last bottom quadrants filed down.
The molar was really playing up.
‘Another injection? he asks.
And is the pope fucking Catholic?.
He’s put a temporary guard on the filed down teeth.
It looks great.
‘Imagine what the end product will look like.’
I’m imagining and I’m loving it.
I filmed the whole process.
This is B grade at its best.
Dr. John is really good in front of the camera.
I couldn’t ask for a better performer.
‘It’s you being operated on,’ he reminds me.
The numbness has gone down.
He tells me I’m getting 16 crowns, not the twelve, a figure I had stuck in my head.
And I’m now negotiating the last four.
‘That molar is structurally unsound,’ he says.
A piece of a filling from a hatchet job by my Indonesian dentist has been pinching my gums.
Dr John extracts its.
‘No wonder it hurt,’ he says and shows me.
‘It’s as sharp as a dagger.’
He’s happy with the progress.
He’s never had a customer have all his teeth filed down in three sessions over a few days.
‘Very impressive.’
He’s promising me a new smile. And if I don’t get laid, he’ll refund me.
‘Right?’ I asked him on camera. He hammed it up.
I’ll be using the footage as an education footage and hopefully f
log his services back home.
I’d think there’s nothing better than to undermine the dentists back in my home country.
‘They order their ceramic teeth from our lab here in Manila,’ he says.
And charge ten times the price.
Dr. John has really got me thinking.
There’s some easy money to made.
Irrespective of what I’ve written, I’m still off my tree.
‘At the least the whores won’t be able to steal your money now,’ says Dr. John who is running with my craziness. ‘Tell them that your teeth are your money.’
It's money well spent, I say and just plain funny and accurate.
Outside a pub called 'D&M,' Pope Francis smiles benevolently down on the dirt poor of the world.
If the meek inherited the earth, Manila would be HQ.
It's a reminder we are in a Catholic country.
If I was the pope I'd be visiting the Philippines at every opportunity.
He'd be a pop star here.
Heck, is he is a pop star here.
He'd pull more chicks than Justin Bieber.
He'd get a good work out in the confessional boxes.
I'd even buy him a round of Viagra.
The pope smiles down at a beggar carrying cardboard boxes on his back.
That whore who just asked me for a massage on the street could even ask the pope for forgiveness and out of the generosity of her heart, give him a blow job.
He'd be the only Westerner who wouldn't have to pay for a banana boat ride.
He could propel his motor lips between their tits until the next coming of JC.
I poke my head inside the dingy lit bar. Posters of San Miguel beer adorn the walls.
The pope is still smiling down on us inside the bar that is creeping with whores.
He's in one group shot with models.
They are swooning for forgiveness.
The pope use to be a rock and roll star.
Here in Manila, blokes wearing frocks is the norm, if you happen to be the pope.
The bar looks like the set of the Chainsaw Cheerleaders.
'Hot Asian babe cheerleaders...shower scenes...locker room scenes...cat fights...and a demon vibrator that satisfies some,' writes one brave visitor of this bar.
I look at the sign flashing in red neon above the bar.
'Demon Vibrator.'
The night is young and I hear a chainsaw start up and a tune belt out of the speaker, 'One night in Manila...' If I don't leave now my wallet will be moaning to me for the next few lifetimes.
Think I'll strictly limit my entertainment to the dentist chair.
At least Dr. John provides a lasting service.
'The crowns will last a lifetime,' he says, advising me not to go to D&M, 'too many pickpocketers and the whores are ladyboys.'
They call me stumpy.
Twenty teeth drilled, I'm smiling plastic moulds.
I've got about two days before my new porcelain smile is laid in my mouth.
Even if it's a dodgy job, it will still look better than the patch jobs I've had over the last two years.
'Every dental appointment you have had is leading to this point,' says Dr. John.
Yes, that smile you keep on talking about.
I know Joanne from Las Vegas is coming back on Friday to get her crown in.
'Then you can take a better photo with her,' says Dr. John who is really happy that I'm mingling with his customers.
I took a shot of him with her. She was rubbing her big boobies against him. He took a photo of me with her, and I just looked fat. But boy she still looked fantastic.
'Why did you delete the photos?'
Cos I looked fat.
'Well you are fat. But soon you'll be a fat man with a winning smile.'
Dr. John knows I'm pissed off that Joanne didn't rub her boobs into me as intimate as she did with him.
'Soon they will,' he says, saying that looks can be really deceptive.
'They won't know you are a poor guy after the new crowns.'
But I will.
I keep on telling Dr. John that being a dentist isn't all misery and looking down the rotten mouths of customers.
Joanna is studying to be a lab nurse.
Dr. John is convinced she doesn't have silicon.
'They were too soft, ' adding, she's a chunky girl, 'and can support big natural tits.'
But he's convinced his last client that came in with her Korean boyfriend had silicon.
'Her body frame is too small to support such large tits.'
The Philippines is oozing with sex.
'His name is Stephen and she's his new accessory bag.'
Obviously Dr. John had done dental treatment on his last girlfriend.
‘How else would I know,’ he asked.
She's wearing a white shirt with Mickey Mouse on it.
Wasn't Mikee wearing a similar shirt the other day?
Even before I've had my novocaine injection I find myself singing and spelling out Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse theme song.
'Is that where you learned your spelling?’ asks Dr. John.
To be honest, Sesame Street played a big part in my formative years.
He's got the drill in his hand and gives it a buzz, micro water drops are cascading out of it.
'It's time,' he says.
It's the last four teeth.
Let's get it on, I say, putting on a brave face.
I hate dentists just like the next man. But I tell Dr. John he's ranking up there as the all-time best.
He's flattered.
And I'll drop the last payment off to you tomorrow.
He's doubly flattered now.
Gotta give it to dentists, they can do a song and dance before the altar of money like the best of them.
The Dark Angels descend on the streets of Manila.
'Only one chance.'
And if they don't stop dealing?
'It's a knock on the door again, and a bullet between the eyes.'
These are Manila's vigilantes.
Some call them death squads, other's call them the Dark Angels.
'Most of the extrajudicial killings are not by the police.'
But the police aren't complaining.
It's a copycat of Medellín drug cartel in Colombia, he says, 'when the government started targeting the dealers, the dealers started killing the informers.'
The question is who is going inform on who?
'The dealers couldn't risk the uncertainty of that.'
He says once the foot soldiers have been killed off, the police come in and kill the last man standing.
'But it's not like they were warned, stop dealing or die.'
He says when Duterte got into power and passed his zero drug tolerance program, the first to be arrested were four top generals in the army.
'He's targeting the big fish first and then netting the smaller dealers.'
He says now there are no more kidnappings.
'You don't hear of Abu Sayyaf kidnapping anymore?’ he asks.
The least the better I say.
Before Duterte got into power, he says the streets of Manila were controlled by violent gangs, many of them targeting tourists.
'With the incoming president, many of those drug pushers just disappeared,' he says. 'A few ended up floating in Manila Bay wrapped up in duct tape.'
Work of the vigilantes?
'Could be.'
Any police collusion?
'Could be.'
My source says the streets are safer.
'Four police tried to plant drugs on a tourist,' he says. 'But after following up a suggestion to file a complaint with the Crime Suppression Division the charges were dropped and the officers were stripped of their badges...'
And dumped in Manila Bay?
'Duterte says if officers don' track down criminals, then they'll pay for it.'
The police now get double pay, a deterrent from pulling small tricks, he says.
Duterte was a prosecutor in Davao City.
'There were stories of hardcore criminals being wrapped up in duct tape and taken for a ride in a helicopter and dumped out to sea for the fish to eat.'
He says the fear of Duterte has contributed to a safer Manila.
'Any cop caught doing bad things will usually get relocated to the insurgent troubled southern island of Mindanao. The president will wish the demoted copper good luck, saying, 'see you back in Manila either alive or in a coffin.''
Some love him, others are just plain shit scared of him.
'Duterte says to the foreign journalists, if you don't understand what's going in the Philipines, then come here and see it for yourself.'
I have.
'Seeing the end of Abu Sayyaf and nasty street criminals can't be a bad thing, can it?' he asks.
That's what it's all about.
Either they kill us, or we kill them, he says.
I know what I prefer.
'Have you been asked for any shabu on the streets?' he asks.
Nope, but I've been propositioned by a few whores.
'Well the policy is working then,' he says, 'before Duterte, you could score on every corner.'
So when you see the Dark Angels knocking on your door.
'There's one chance, then game over.'
Apparently what he told me is common knowledge on the streets of Manila.
'It's not a state secret,' he says. 'Just ask and we'll tell you, the Philippines is a democracy and we never suppress the truth.'
He's not the only one who has been forthcoming.
There might be tyranny on the streets, but the fear factor is low.
'If you don't use or deal in drugs, then you'll have nothing to fear.'
I show him a memo circulating around the banks of two foreigners who have been skimming ATM's.
'I don't envy them when they get caught,' he says.
They were both wearing baseball caps.
'But you can still see them, the print out is only low resolution but you can guarantee there's a higher resolution picture floating around.'
Don't use drugs or steal from the Filipinos he says, 'just that plain and simple.'
He pulls out a gun.
'I was scammed from the same ATM machine,' he says with a tone of menace.
Seriously, I say, he looks NOTHING LIKE ME.