Wake early, when the sky’s still a deep blue. Walk along the typhoon-battered Roxas Boulevard sidewalk overlooking the ocean. Watch the sunrise set Manila Bay on gorgeous pink fire. Want breakfast.
Certain guidebooks will call Filipino food “the most vilified cuisine in Asia.” 1. Forget that. 2. Chuck those guidebooks.
Notice a vendor carrying two buckets hanging from a pole on his back, calling out something sad-sounding. Order isang taho. If he asks for more than ten pesos, give him a look, but then give him more pesos. Accept it as your dayuhan (foreigner) tax. Drink warm, sweet soy out of the thin plastic cup he hands you.
Walk to Rizal Park. Watch the old folks doing tai chi, or join them. Read the violent fates on the busts of stern-looking Filipino revolutionaries. See the tall, pointed monument to José Rizal, the novelist-doctor turned national saint, shot by Spaniards here in 1896.
Get hungry. Flag a horse-driven kalesa. Tell your driver, “Sa Aristocrat, po.” Give him a good tip. Order tapsilog, strips of marinated beef with garlic rice and two fried eggs.
Or skip Aristocrat and sit at any open-air stall selling arroz caldo or goto to policemen and construction workers. Say “magandang umaga” and watch them grin. Wash your rice porridge down with cold coconut juice from a rolling cart.
Take a jeepney to Quiapo Church. Cross yourself. Touch the Black Nazarene. Buy a string of sampaguita flowers from a barefoot child vendor. Watch a blind musician play her guitar.
Decide you’re ready to feel fancy. Cab it to Ayala Museum in moneyed Makati. Let the pre-colonial gold exhibit inspire the greed in you.
Walk to Greenbelt, the fanciest mall in Mall-nila. Observe the 1% deciding on loot from Hermes and Massimo Dutti. Join them for a white tablecloth, Filipino-fusion lunch at Felix in Greenbelt 5. Or forget the aristocracy; eat fried chicken, spaghetti, and deep-fried peach mango pie at Jollibee, the Philippines’ patriotic answer to McDonald’s.
Take a taxi to Intramuros for “If These Walls Could Talk,” a 3pm walking tour with Carlos Celdran: Experimental theater performer+political rabble-rouser+and visual artist=the liveliest, most subversive guide to Manila.
Head to The Collective, a clutch of indie boutiques, galleries, and restaurants tucked in an old warehouse. Grab a sack of hand-collected Philippine sea salt from Ritual, and press a bottle of their organic Robusta coffee to your forehead before you drink the cold jolt of it down.
Brave rush-hour traffic to eat a late dinner in Quezon City, the section of Metro Manila most residents call home. Eat pork sisig at Trellis. Eat heritage pork adobo at Adarna. Eat pork lechon at Lydia’s.
What? You don’t eat pork? Ano ba? Who are you? Fine. Go to the Farmers Market Dampa in Cubao, pick out two kilos of live crabs, then carry them to the nearby kitchens to simmer in coconut milk. Grab a whole tilapia, too, while you’re at it, and tell them to grill it. Use your hands, dammit: squeeze some lime-like calamansi over that fish, and finish your rice.
Roll over to Cubao X nearby. Rifle some tomes at Sputnik. Dance to an indie band: Taken By Cars, maybe, or Radioactive Sago Project.
Make eyes at the hot Filipino hipsters and their sosyal asymmetrical haircuts. Talk film and books with them. Talk international relations with them. Make out with one of them.
All this dancing and eating and kissing is making you sleepy. Wait, no it’s not. Why are you sleepy? This is the Philippines, and it’s past midnight, so it’s time to sing. Go to Music Bank on Tomas Morato. It’s open til 5am, so you have no excuse.
Order a bucket of San Miguel beers. Don’t be a jerk and choose “My Way” because you read about it in that one New York Times article. Sing Madonna. Drink. Sing Weezer. Drink. Sing Dahil Sa Iyo. Drink. Sing. Sing. Sing until another of those famed Manila sunrises sees you stumbling to your morning cup of taho.