Day Four, Monday 4th June - Sightseeing in Manila

Monday was sightseeing day for us and Ate Fe, Ate Mai and Ate Jenie, along with a member of the church called Tony, took us out to see the old Spanish capital called Intramuros in the centre of Manila. It took quite a while to get into the centre as we are on the outskirts but we were entertained by Tony who acted as our guide and told us all about the history of the Philippines. The old capital is not much to see as a lot of it was destroyed in the Second World War and only a few ruins remain. It was built in the 1570's and is really a city within a city, seperated from the rest of Manila by its crumbling walls. You can walk from one end to the other in a few minutes.

Within Intramuros there is Fort Santiago, seat of the colonial powers of both Spain and the US as well as being used as a prison and torture chamber under the spanish regime and the scene of countless military-police atrocities during the Japanese occupation in Wordld war Two. At the far end of the fort there is the infamous dungeon overlooking the river where American and Filippino POWS were incarcerated and left to drown by the rising tide. There is a memorial to them there. We took lots of pictures and were rushed round by Tony as the heat was quite intense and there was no shade to realistically stay in one place for a long time.

The other place inside Intramuros which was of some interest was the Rizal Shrine Museum. Revolutionary Jose Rizal is the Philippine national hero. He was a lawyer and a writer who studied abroad and became anti colonial and started up a reform movement in the Philippines. Other groups practised violence for which he was blamed and thrown into prison and eventually executed. The museum holds some of his works, his clothes and other items and even oddly a small bone of his. They have statues outside dedicated to him and you can trace his last footsteps through Intramuros. It only cost 15 peso's to get. in At the moment the exchange rate is around 96 pesos to a pound so that comes to around 15p. Everything here is very cheap. They have many gardens within the walls where people come in the evenings to relax. The guards are dressed up in the old spanish uniforms for additional effect.

Once we had finished walking around Intramorous we stopped for lunch and the house mothers (much to our surprise) had brought with them a huge spread of shrimps, noodles, rice, potato & corned beef, chicken and ice tea. It was so scrummy that we ended up with a huge litter of miaowing cats under our feet , begging for scraps. After we had finished lunch we were treated to coconut juice outside the city wall. A man with a stall would hack away at a green coconut to remove the skin and then make a hole at the top from which you could drink from. Whilst Richard was told to drink it straight from the hole, Becci & I used the more delicate method of straws. And once we were finished our coconuts were halved and we were able to eat some of the coconut itself. After that we went into a little gift shop. Again very cheap prices as Becci was able to get three pairs of earnings for 100 pesos which is about a pound.

We then drove on to San Agustin Church and the Augustinian monastery. Over 90% of the population in the Philippines are Catholic, courtesy of their previous spanish rulers. So there are many churches dotted all over the place. But this church was different because it is the oldest stone church in the Philippines (built in 1587) and was the only building to survive the bombings of World War Two. To get an idea of how much Manila was bombed by both the Japanese and American in the war, note this: apparently only Warsaw suffered more damage. A lot of you might not think much happened in the Philippines during the war as its so far out but its actually quite a strategic place. The americans have very two big cases. It was occuiped by the Japanese for two years when they kicked the Americans out. The Americans regained it with local Filippino help later on in the Battle of Manila in in 1945.

Anyway so the church and monastery - The architecture inside the church is of a magnificant baroque style and worth a visit for that alone. It's very grand with a vaulted ceiling and dome. It also contains the tomb of the founder of Manila - a man called Legazpi. Within the monastery there a museum of icons and artefacts ranging from an 18th centry spanish pipe organ, lots of paintings, models and pots. Within the monastery there is Father Blanco' Garden, a lovely neat little area of tropical greenery and stone paths, fountains, and plants. The gardens are so nice that they are hired out for wedding receptions I'm told. It was rather sad to see all the idols they had in place which obviously cost a lot of money to make and upon which they all seem to rely on. The monks used to make medicines to help the poor, through cultivating certain plants in the garden. Again a very interesting visit. After that the heat had got to us and we couldn't really take any more sightseeing. So we piled aboard the minibus to head back.

After we dropped Richard & Tony back at the church the house mothers then took Becci & I to see some model shoes. It may sound bizzare I know but it was a real shoe made of leather for a person 125 ft tall. It is displayed in some of the local shoe shops and can apparently fit 30 people in side and took 1,000 m of thread to make. It could make 250 pairs of normal size shoes. We have the pictures to prove it. There was also another similar sized high heel shoe on display in the river. This was all in memory of one of their First Ladies called Imelda who had a thing about shoes. When her house was raided one time she was found to have 3,000 pairs which she claimed she had in order to promote the Filipino shoe industry abroad. She was a bit of a mad spender. A very amusing story.

Whilst we were on the river bank another interesting incident happened with a rat. A man had caught a rat (probably disease ridden) in a cage and decided to drown it in front of us. And when that apparently didn't completely work he then squashed it. A bit inhumane I thought! Sounds very familiar though! Anyway once we were done there we were taken to a cafe to try a traditional Philippine desert called halo-halo. Its hard to describe so i'll use the rough guides definition "sweet concoction made from ice cream, shaved ice, jelly, beans and tinned milk. The name literally means mix-mix". You had to pulverise it into a mush and then eat it. After that we headed back home, and were treated to another traditional Filipino dish called adobo which is chicken summered in soy sauce and vinegar with pepper and garlice. It was yum! In the evening Heather did a devotion for the children which we sat in on (she had a translator). And then afterwards all the girls sang us a welcome song which was really sweet. We just wished we had our cameras to capture it but we are told there will be another occasion.

We were then given our schedule for the next few days. We have been asked to lead a number of devotions for the different groups of children, both on Tuesday, Friday and the tuesday after. We have decided to give our testimonies on the first occasion, then Richard may lead the Friday devotion and I will then probably do the next one. This hasn't really been discussed between us. However please pray for us as we speak to the children as quite a few of them aren't christians (and they openly admit it to us when they ask us when we became Christians). However they attend a good church and know the truth from the preaching of God's word. Pray that God will break into their lives and save them from their sins. They listen very attentively but its hard to know how much they take in or whether they just switch off. Obviously a lot of them have had hard backgrounds with being abandoned by parents or abused or living on the streets. We will update the blog again to let you know how the first devotion goes. As well as devotions we are going to spend most Mondays and Tuesdays at the homes and the other days at Cubao which is CCM headquarters. Wednesday night is the prayer meeting and Thursday we will help with the drop in centre for homeless people. They also hopefully will take us to see a squatter settlement sometime this week. Lots of things to keep us busy and it all sounds really interesting.

So we headed to bed for a second night of hot murky weather as there was no rain. But we had an extra fan so all is well. And at least we don't have to get up as early as the children who went back to school today. The children have to leave by 6 so some of them are up as early as 4 to start the cooking. We get up around 6 for breakfast at 7.

I promise we will get Richard to write the next thing on the blog. He is here and well I assure you, he just hasn't been around when we've had the opportunity to work on the blog.

Take care and God Bless
Sarah