I’m setting down an account of my journey through this virus era. I’m piecing it together as I go through photos, a very few journal entries I made, and my wife, Jill, and my recollections. This story began in the May 7, 2021 post.
We found another apartment in Manila through Airbnb. It was in a complex of buildings with a gate and security guards. It looked fine on paper. We headed over there from Boracay on January 25, 2020. We had flown through Manila before. We had even slept in some airport hotel once for a free ticket voucher. We didn’t know anything about Manila. So, we went with the Airbnb behind a gate and security guards.
On Boracay, they were fighting this grassroots campaign against ride-hailing services and doing a pretty good job of it. In Manila, it was the best way to move around. The subway in Manila was nice and new but with limited routes and hundreds-of-people-long lines to get on. The bus system is made up of crazy looking jeepneys. They are a cross between a jeep and a school bus. They are open on the sides, painted daintily, and have impressive names and appeals to God written all over them. None of it helps, everyone is stinky, the jeepney is belching diesel exhaust on the passengers, and the stop-and-go traffic takes up the rest of the limited oxygen. We took a jeepney once for a couple blocks before Jill’s carsickness decided we should get out. Enter Grab cars, the local subsidiary of Lyft, comfy cars that pick you up where you want and take you where you need.
When we landed at the airport I bought a local SIM card for my phone and we were whisked away to our new apartment. It was bedtime. The apartment was in an older skyscraper. The guard at the front desk took our drivers’ licenses (Try to remember that) and up to bed we went. We found a narrow studio with stained wood grained built-in cabinets. It felt like a college dormitory but it had blazing fast wifi. It was a fitting place for Jill do school work.
