Traveling with kids: Manila

An actual travel tip, for once. Actually, here are a couple:

We have family in the Manila area, but usually it's simpler for us to stay in a hotel, even if we're only there for the weekend. After trying quite a few of the major hotels in Makati, the business district, I've found THE one that hands-down, is the best with kids: The New World Hotel in Makati, also sometimes known as the Renaissance. The hotel itself is fine - in general, it's on par with the Mandarin or the Peninsula and maybe even the Shangri-La. But it's the location that's key--on the Makati Greenbelt, with gobs and gobs of cafes, restaurants, shops, and little gardens, most of which is actually stroller friendly and walkable (and if you've ever spent a lot of time in Manila/Makati, you know how uncommon that is!). Use hotelscombined.com to get an aggregator rate, then compare it with what they are offering on the site to get the best deal.

Matias and I flew to Manila from Singapore on discount carrier JetStar. The seats, unsurprisingly, were tiiiiiny, not much fun when holding a lap child for a 3.5 hour flight. But not many people know that you can get one of the "extra leg room" seats for only $20-30 more--you can actually book it ahead of time on their website, which I did for the Singapore-Jakarta leg of our recent trip to Indonesia. They have the first row marked as an exit row, which normally you can't occupy when holding or traveling with a child-- ignore that. Most of their Asian fleet are A-330s, on which the first row is actually a regular bulkhead row and not an exit row. On our trip to Manila, I hadn't booked ahead of time, but those seats were empty so I was able to move and paid the $30 on the spot. A no-brainer!

Third tip is the little contraption clipped to the top of Matias' stroller in the picture above. A stroller fan with foam blades - it runs on two AA batteries, and has made a huge difference in Matias' comfort when out and about in the heat of the tropics. And because the blades are made of foam, I can clip it close to him with no worries about his little fingers or toes. There are more expensive ones around, but I bought this one for 6.95 SGD at Mothercare in Singapore, and have seen similar ones for sale at Watson's as well.

So that's my contribution to the world of usefulness for today.

The Lolo Upstairs

In the few hours we spent in Manila on the way back to Beijing from Bohol, we "swung by" my grandmother's house to say a quick hello. Unfortunately, in Manila, traffic, even on a Saturday afternoon, is absolutely beastly and it took us almost an hour to travel 17 km to see Lola. My only living grandparent, Lola Ine, will be 88 this December, and is in fantastic health and spirits. Bella is her first, and so far only, great-grandchild, and she is a lucky kid, to be able to get to know her great-grandmother.

Since Lola's relocated to the first floor of the house because of her hip, the second floor of the house is mostly unoccupied these days, except for an occasional distant cousin who might be hard up for a place to live while he goes to school. It's a dusty place, the second floor, full of must and decay and exposed electrical wiring, but somehow is still reminiscent of the times I remember as a kid, when my dad's brothers, cousins, and sister all still lived there and painted, drew, sketched, invented, made, and built all kinds of cool but ultimately useless stuff.

Creative as they all were, by the time I came around, only my Papa was still actively playing a musical instrument, and by the time I was 7 or 8, the family musical ensemble was just me, my dad and my grandfather, playing, respectively, the violin, the violin, and the cello. We played intermittently for a few years, and then at some point a cousin named Amparo (WHY do I remember that?) dropped and broke the cello, and Lolo went back to his main instrument, the violin, and our little family trio went on permanent intermission.

Lolo passed away in 2003, and it was clear when he died that it was the end of a very long and happy life that he and Lola had had together. It's tempting, and would be easy, to over-romanticize their story. But I'll mention: he had been a Japanese prisoner of war in WWII, and to this day, reading his memoirs from the Death March and the concentration camp moves me to tears. When he was imprisoned, he would write to his fiancee, my Lola, love letters on the wrappers of the native brown cigarettes, which somehow could be smuggled out of the prison and got to her. I've heard that she still has those cigarette notes, but have never managed to personally see them.

I know that there are skeptics even within my family, but both the night nurse and the maid say that on Lola's birthday last year, or maybe the year before, on Christmas Eve, they clearly heard violin music coming from the second floor of the house. Oddly enough, I of can-no-longer-watch-the-Lifetime-channel-because-they-have-too-many-talking-to-dead-people-shows fame, have never been particularly bothered by this. I just wanted to know WHAT he was playing for her. If true, what a romantic gesture, right? If Mik dies before me, I would be PSYCHED to hear some ethereal Led Zep and then some Tuvan throat singing on my birfday.

So. I loved my grandfather, and don't think I would be afraid of him if I were to encounter him in any form, but imagine my freaked-outedness when Bella, little Bella who has no idea of any of this, no idea of what would or could be upstairs, says, within 15 minutes of arriving at the house, turns to Mik and says, "Let's go upstairs, go see Lolo."

Magic Ironing Fairies

The morning of my cousin's wedding, I went in to the hotel room that Gabriela was sharing with my mom to get my new dress, which I had hung in their closet when we first arrived. I'm not usually the type to hang clothes up, so the fact that it was on a hanger at all was amazing in itself. I thought that the heaviness of the hem and the drape of the fabric was all ingeniously designed to keep it looking wrinkle-free, and I remarked on it to Mama: "Wow, what a great dress! I just hung it up overnight, and look, no wrinkles!" Amazement that faded into embarrassment once I saw the look on her face, and noticed the ironing board set up in the room. I'm sure it was more or less the same look I got when I was little, and when told that "Mama doesn't have the money to buy you that toy," I had apparently said, "That's easy, let's just go to the bank and get some, then."

Thrilla in Manila

Just back earlier this week from 5 days in Manila. My cousin was getting married, and Bella was to be the littlest flower girl. The wedding was at Nuestra Señora de Gracia, a beautiful old church originally built in 1620(!). We got to the church early, and she ended up playing with the flower girls from the previous wedding, which of course was running late. She was so caught up with her new friends that she ended up joining in when they were taking the wedding photos. That poor couple is probably looking at their proofs right now, wondering who the heck that kid is, and whether they can have her airbrushed out.