Photos et lettres des Philippines, de France et d'ailleurs

February 21 had finally arrived and it was time because I was starting to become indolent by the fireplace during this cold month with no polar temperatures, as the media said but quite normal for February even at 14°C below zero.

My son Fabrice sent me off at the Paris airport and at 11am, I boarded the Singapore Airlines Airbus A380, which I regard as one of the best companies in the world.

www.singaporeair.com/

I do not really choose the airlines but I book my flight at Eliza, les Ailes du voyage, a travel agency located not far from the Philippines embassy in Paris and specialized in this destination.

http://www.visit-philippines.fr/philippines/?lien=qui&Lang=EN

 I therefore select the best quality/price ratio, and until now, it was Singapore Airlines. However, with my wife, we have already booked for September and then it will be Cathay Pacific. I took before this company also very good and with a flight at least two hours shorter than with Singapore Airlines both ways but that was more expensive for several years.

www.cathaypacific.com/

I arrived, then, in Manila on 22 February at 1: 15 pm with a temperature of 31 ° C that was 36 ° more than from my house in near Pontoise.

To go to the hotel in the District of Ermita where I had booked a room, I took a yellow taxi from the airport, while a little more expensive but supposed be safe and honest because our name and destination are noted at the outset. At the meter due the reflection of light, I only saw the eight digits and when arrived at destination the driver askedme about 3 Euros more be the price usually paid of 6 Euros. Tired I did not bother to complain and I just did not give any tip.

I discovered the Best Western Hotel la Corona last December 1st where I had appreciated the quality and abundance of the breakfast buffet for 4.50 Euros. At 46 Euros, a night it is 16 Euros more expensive than the Rothmans hotel where I was usually a guest in Manila but with breakfast and Wi-Fi included then the difference less for a better quality and even greater service.

www.bestwesternhotelmanila.com/

By booking on the Internet, I knew that the elevator was out of service due to renovation but I did not know that my room was on the fifth floor, in fact on the fourth for French because here the ground floor accounts for the first floor. Too bad for my knees arthritis but they had to accommodate to that.

I spent this first afternoon acclimatizing myself and inquiring with the Money Changers about the Euro exchange rate since this currency had been in turmoil these last months.

It was due to this weak change that instead of making a bank-to-bank transfer, I had taken the risk of travelling with cash money to avoid financial costs and still a lower exchange rate.

Ermita is the tourist district of Manila and all that goes with it. Plethora of hotels, Money Changers, vendors in the street, bikinis bars, prostitutes males and female pickpocket etc. There we have to be cautious when carrying money. Furthermore, some Money Changers are conspiring with thieves or swindlers.

Generally, good changers do not take a commission higher than 0.50 peso per euro compared with interbank rate and are mostly Muslim Filipinos.

I was even more careful that 575 Euros did not belong to me and came from the fundraising made by my wife from our friends to help victims of the devastating typhoon of December 17.

Finally on 23 February in the morning everything went well, I changed the money and deposited it immediately in a nearby bank.

That day I had still one important thing to do. Since November 29 I had sent my home theater processor in Manila to be repaired hoping to get it back fixed three months later. Actually, at the store in Mandaluyong Shangri-la Mall, they told me that I still had to wait two more weeks. I guess that spare parts from the Rotel brand have to come from Japan swimming to Manila. By the way, I will never buy Rotel again. Last time it took eight months to a new remote control to arrive.

The next day 24, I went for some sightseeing again and I went to Rizal Park where 32 years ago I was going on Sunday afternoon to listen to the concert of classical music in the open air.

(Rizal Park)

This is where I met a Filipino tourist guide of a rather surprising culture for his age of about 30.

(View on the Manila hotel)

He told me about our French President and then seeing the Manila hotel, of General Douglas MacArthur who had his apartments there and finally something more surprising, asking my opinion regarding the State of Israel and its creation. It must be said that although 95 % Christians, Filipinos are unaware of anti-Semitism.

This is a subject, which fell rather well for me because after 30 years I was rediscovering the book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, O Jerusalem, which is a journalistic work relatively objective on this epic and dramatic subject. Indeed 64 years later, both sides say too much nonsense on this topic. You can also read the excellent book of Leo Uris, Exodus. Written by an American Jew, he is necessarily less objective. Nevertheless, it had the merit to make me discover how was the sad life of the Jews in the South of Russia late 19th and early 20th century. It was then that my grandfather fled the pogroms in Kishinev by going in France to finally be arrested by the Vichy police in July 1944 at Lyon and later exterminated by the Nazis in Auschwitz. While his brother, my great-uncle, chose as the heroes of Leo Uris, to reach Palestine on foot. Eventually he got there because, according to my mother, before the First World War my grandfather left France with his family to join him in Palestine. However, he did not stay there discouraged that he was by the bitterness of the life of the early Zionist pioneers and returned to France.

In 1948, one of the heroes of the Independence war of Israel was Mishka Rabinovitch, indeed a very common name but also my great uncle's name. Who knows?

(The receipt of the few belongings of my grandfather imprisoned in the Drancy camp before being sent to Auschwitz)

(His name on the Shoah memorial wall)

Monsieur Sébastien RABINOWITCH né le 08/10/1883 à KICHINEFF. Déporté à Auschwitz par le convoi n° 77 au départ de Drancy le 31/07/1944.

Habitait au 43, rue Champonay à LYON. (France)

After Rizal Park, the old city Intra-muros and Fort Santiago where the national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, was imprisoned before execution not far from there in the park that bears his name, I left my guide leaving him a tip for his good company and conversation though I had not hired his services.

(Filipinos tourists in front of the last words written by Jose Rizal: Mi Ultimo Adios)

(Open air theater at Fort Santiago)

I then took a taxi to go back at the hotel and having lunch.

The evening at 7: 30 pm I went back to the Robinson Place mall to eat Chinese in the restaurant Mr. Choy Kitchen where the food is as good as it was at the City Tang restaurant now closed. It takes ten minutes on foot between my hotel and the Mall along streets very frequented at that time.

It is in when walking this crowded street that two boys and a girl of anout 10 years old suddenly approached me and asked me money to eat. With my refusal, they tried to dig into my pocket and managed to open the zipper of my small bag. I tried to keep them at bay without hitting but a Filipino storekeeper had little of my scruples and witnessing all the event, he came out with a stick and stroke the kids a few blows to make them flee.

The Ermita district that is the Manila tourist belt is really a place to be wary of everything including children.

What will be the future of these street urchins?  But who cares anyway?.

The next day February 25 I boarded the Cebu Pacific flight bound to Dumaguete. After one hour flight I was finally there meeting a friend Michel who was waiting for me with Cecile to drive me home.

http://www.cebupacificair.com/

I was happy to have arrived and found my house again, Nora and Dodong my housekeeper couple, Zarah my dog my faithful female dog and Gordon my turbulent Doberman puppy now 5 ½ months old and who had grown up a lot in three months.

(Gordon now 5 1/2 months old)

Of course also waiting for my return was a lot of bills to pay and many tasks related to maintaining a tropical beachfront residential house.
Luckily the typhoon Sendong of December 17 and the earthquake of February 7, had spared it.

However, it is now amazing to see how the elements unbridled by the typhoon altered the appearance of the coast and the beach. In front of our house at high tide the beach is now about 5 meters wider. According to Dodong who was present, the torrential waters rushed from the nearby creek that carried quantities of rocks of the mountain and built a natural breakwater.