The Perfect Storm In Manila Philippines

Our time here in Manila has been an onslaught of discomfort and inconvenience. Some of this we expected, but much of it caught us completely off guard. On a walk around the complex, Jill and I were talking about the things that make this place hard. We came to the conclusion it is a perfect storm of contributing factors that are working in combination to force multiply the issue. The main issue being that we are effectively trapped in our condo complex and can’t branch out; particularly on foot, like we are used to.

Traffic

To say there’s bad traffic here is like describing Mount Everest as a big mountain. With Manila being the most densely populated city in the world, we knew that traffic was going to be bad. However, had we researched it deeper we would have found that Manila traffic isn’t just bad, it is the city with the worst traffic in the world. We are shocked by the driving conditions every time we ride in it or walk through it.

The traffic could still be tolerable if we got lucky with our condo location. Maybe ending up in a calmer pocket of Manila. The first realization we didn’t get lucky in that way was when we tried and failed to get a Grab ride to our condo from BGC (the nice part of the city). This is because our condo is on Ortigas Avenue. This is the street with the worst traffic, in the city that has the worst traffic in the world.

Taking this one zoom level further, we are in the most densely populated condo complex on Ortigas Avenue. In a nutshell, we are at ground zero for the worst traffic in the world. Edging out places like Lagos Nigeria and Mumbai India.

Christmas Multiplier

We unknowingly picked a particularly bad time to visit traffic ground zero. Christmas here is a HUGE thing, and they start celebrating in September. Our disco taxi driver told us that traffic is even more of a nightmare from now until after the New Year. I’m not sure there’s ever a good time for traffic in this area, but now is certainly the worst possible timing.

What this means for us is that we can leave to go to other parts of Manila, but making it back is another story. It requires bribery of a driver with elite mastery of the Ortigas Ave area, and one who doesn’t care about the safety of his own vehicle. Grab drivers will flat out refuse the ride, at least through the app. It’s not worth it for them to make that trip for the price Grab has set, let alone their portion of that Grab fare.

Unfortunately Grab doesn’t have a bribe feature, so it requires finding and bribing a driver the old fashioned way. The driver could be a Grab driver working outside of the app, or a Taxi driver that doesn’t run the meter. In both cases they can pocket the entire inflated price. This hassle has drastically reduced our willingness to leave the area, particularly with kids along.

Tiny Living Quarters

Being trapped in an area isn’t great, but it can be made better or worse depending on your lodging. If we were trapped in our sprawling Guam condo, the picture would be completely different. We would all be getting in full workouts, Alexis would be raptor running, and we would lose track of where each-other are in the condo. We don’t have any of those luxuries here in our RV sized condo. As an example, this 2023 Prime Time Sanibel 3802WB has more room to stretch out.

Walkability Or Inability

Those of you who know us well know we like to walk, A LOT. Our steps have been severely limited because of the issues mentioned above, but by another factor as well. Here we can’t just walk out of the condo complex and continue indefinitely down the road like we have everywhere else. There really are no sidewalks, and even the roadside ends regularly, requiring you to merge on foot into traffic until the roadside reappears. You can see some of that in the traffic pictures above. It just isn’t walkable and clearly wasn’t intended to be. That limits our walking to a couple options.

The condo complex has one feature that has been salvaging some of our step count, which is the common grounds area. It has basketball courts, a playground, and a pond with a quarter mile path. We end up getting steps here whenever we can, but it’s not always practical. Sometimes it’s too busy and we have to dodge too many people, or it might be raining, or we’re drawing an uncomfortable amount of attention. With the boxed in feeling, we have started to refer to this as time on the yard.

The other way we get steps is by going to the SM East Mall to walk there. Despite the act of faith that is crossing Ortigas Avenue on foot, we still do this out of desperation for a bigger space to roam. Once there, it’s an incredible oasis of clean cool air and large walkways that we love to take advantage of.

Worth The Experience

Despite the discomfort, inconvenience, and irritations experienced here, this is still an experience worth having. If we time-machined back to Guam, I wouldn’t hesitate to book this exact same leg of our journey again. Even knowing what I know now. This may not be marveling at the wonders of Japan, or the supernatural beauty of Costa Rica, but peak human density is an awesome phenomenon of its own.

Like any hard thing, the reason this hard thing is worth doing is the same. It’s rewarding when it reaches a successful conclusion. We are going to be primed with fresh tolerance levels and a lower bar for comfort as we leave here. Ho Chi Minh City might just seem like paradise to us.