Old Manila Walks

Thanks for walking by!

2007-06-23T05:46:00.001-07:00

This the alternative site of OLD MANILA WALKS - a tour outfitter specializing in cultural walks around Manila. We now have a home, please walk by our new site for inquiries about tours or just about anything Manila. If that doesn't work out(the site that is), come back here and scroll down for the month's schedule. You may also drop us a note - oldmanilawalks@gmail.com - call or text us at +632-917-329-16-22. We'll get back to you in a jiff!

Old Manila Walks Series

A FEU Good Men!
Deco-dancing through the Far Eastern University Campus

It's now up and walking, best of all, its free! Lose yourself in art
and architecture in this artistically fabulous, UNESCO-award winning
campus....

When: Click HERE for our monthly schedules
Rate: Free (gratuities appreciated) - Slots Limited
Meet at FEU Gate 4 along Morayta (now Nicanor Reyes) Street
Details at www.oldmanilawalks.com

* As part of school campus security, names of EACH participants should
be submitted.

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Walls of THIS Content!
An Intramuros Walk

When: Click HERE for our monthly schedules
Meet at the Plaza Roma in front of the Manila Cathedral
Rates: P750.00/head (inclusive of museum entrances)
Details at www.oldmanilawalks.com

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The BIG Binondo Food WOK
Nibbling our way through Chinatown

When: Click HERE for our monthly schedules
Rates: P750.00/head (inclusive of tasting menu)
Meet at the lobby of the Binondo Church
Details at www.oldmanilawalks.com

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Power, Palace and a shot of Beer!
Poking around the old Palace neighborhood

When: Click HERE for our monthly schedules

Rates: P850.00/head (inclusive of fine-dine merienda at the Legarda Mansion/ La Cocina de Tita Moning)
Meet at the San Sebastian Church Steps
Details at www.oldmanilawalks.com

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Mounds, Magnates and Mausoleums
A Chinese Cemetery Walk

When: Click HERE for our monthly schedules
Rate: P500.00/head
Meet at the red temple (Chong Hock Tong) inside the Cemetery grounds
(Map available upon request)
Details at www.oldmanilawalks.com

2006-08-04T02:12:00.000-07:00

October ,2006

It's up and walking!

Yes, we're talking about our new home! Do drop by, we always love having visitors around...

(if the link doesnt work, you can always type our address www.oldmanilawalks.com)

Hear from you soon!

2002-02-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

April 21, 2005

A Warm Welcome.

Back from my sabbatical and as I stepped out of the airport onto our fair and noble city, what greeted me was a the warm and muggy breeze of Manila's scorching summer. This and a cheerfully-written article fromHong Kong's biggest English daily written over a month ago.

Whohoo!!!

Thanks you to Mr. Alan Robles.

Cultural steps
by Alan Robles

Published at South China Morning Post ; March 23, 2006

Ivan Dy advertised himself as a "streetwalker" for months. Then two giggling female American clients finally told him what the word meant. He was taken aback, then decided proudly to stick with the title, which he thinks is a quirky description of what he does - conduct walking tours of Manila.

While it's easy to find such tours abroad, they're a new and rare phenomenon in Manila. In fact, only two guides offer regular services, possibly because the job requires a lot of research, dedication, stamina and imagination.

Looking at the ground Mr Dy covers, residents might see nothing more than squalor, decay, congestion and pollution. But he sees a 16th century baroque church, its bell tower built like a stylised pagoda; a gracious colonial plaza bordered with water fountains that wouldn't look out of place in Rome; art-deco buildings constructed by the Americans in the 1930s; and calesas (two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriages) clip-clopping over cobblestone streets. What's amazing is that he makes his group see them, too.

His Old Manila Walks take small groups strolling through various parts of the city, but the one I took recently, the Chinatown tour, is close to his heart and identity. Mr Dy is a young Filipino-Chinese (Chinoy in the local slang) who grew up in the area.

Although comprising just 2 per cent of the country's population, Chinoys have played a major role in Philippine history. The main reason the Spaniards decided to stay here was their discovery that fleets of trading junks came over twice a year from the Chinese mainland. This led to the famous "Manila galleon" trade route, which exchanged Mexican silver for Chinese silk and porcelain.

It also led to large numbers of Chinese settling here and intermarrying. Many ostensibly Filipino families have at least one Chinese in their family tree (along with the occasional Spanish friar tangled in the branches). The Chinese settled in the Binondo quarter, which became the colony's financial and trading centre.

I thought I knew Binondo fairly well, but after a four-hour walk through its bustling streets and narrow alleys, I emerged determined to return. I want to revisit the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served the best dumplings I've ever tasted - it's run by a couple newly arrived from Xinjiang - and to dawdle at the newly restored plazas and fountains in the area.

Mr Dy, who studied industrial design, started his tours as a part-time hobby, but they've become a serious enterprise. He believes he's on a mission of advocacy: "I actually prefer to take local groups," he said. He is reacquainting Filipinos with the notion that they actually have a rich history. And he's doing it step by step.

2002-01-19T19:27:00.000-08:00

November 15, 2005

A FEU Good Men (the sequel)

Five years down and I'm still impressed!

Yes, it's been five years since I took my first walking tour of the fabulous Far Eastern University Campus conducted by the Heritage Conservation Society. I've been raving about it until recently. Well, I decided to check it out once more yesterday and joined a tour, this time by the Museum Foundation of the Philippines.

I'll have the pictures speak for themselves.

To start-off, a bird's eye view of the FEU Campus and the University belt of Manila in the University's spanking new 9-storey East Asia College Building...

Then it was off to the Administration building, a 1940's (?) Art-Deco structure which forms one face of the quadrangle. Streamlined Chic.

And the lobby, you just gotta love Deco-esque interplay of geometry and colors (official green and gold of course!) Very simple yet it works.

A frieze by Italian sculputor Monti depicting the Chinese arrival (followed by Spanish and American) to the country. Nice touch.

End of the line and up via the Deco elevators of the building.

Oh, and you do the speak the King's language do you? (Spell 'epol'....)

Out the quadrangle and this time and on to National Artist Vicente Manansala's sculptures. A rare treat indeed since the guy was a painter and rarely did sculptures.

The chapel main altar and this time to National Artist Botong Francisco's inspiring artworks...now that's class!

An outstanding mural rendition of the Catholic Stations of the Cross....wonderful! But needs cleaning though...

Back inside one one of the buildings. Climbing stairs = six-pack abs?? How inspiring!

In any case, even if it didnt deliver as promised, the stairs of FEU are a delight to climb....see? Art-Deco to the last detail!

The founder and builders really took a step further to imprint the Tamaraw pride to its students. This banister reads FEU!

With stairs such as these, who'd want to use the elevator???

Everything is a piece of sculpture!

My personal favorite!

This is the library. A funky mix of 1950's tables(in tropical hard woods no less!) and circa Y2K furnishings! Ahh...the joys of reading....

The fully-restored theater and its 'fools the eye' detail that, again, proclaims FEU!

My favorite mural at the entrance to the theater. It's called 'Empowering the Youth' and is a stunning stylized (Art-Deco of course!) representation that was meant to inspire the youth. Did it? I don't know but it certainly inspired me and some of the tour participants!

The grand finale...a sweeping view of the huge(and recently restored!) FEU quadrangle from the rostrum outside the theater!

A truly awesome way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon...my hat's off to the FEU management and personnel for sharing your jewel taking the Tamaraw pride to the next level!

That UNESCO Award was truly worth every bit!

2002-01-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

October 26 , 2005

Cemetery Musings

Ok, so it may not be everybody's ideal walking rendezvous but truth be told, I find cemeteries to be one of those eerily fascinating places to be. Let me cite the reasons:

1. A well-tended cemetery is always a peaceful haunt. Really.

2. Cemeteries are a class unto themselves. I mean the high class and the lower end.
You know when they say that death is life's great leveller? Well, scroll down and think again...

3. Cemeteries are oversized architectural story books. And this is the type that you'd appreciate when there's daylight as opposed to bedtime.

Now, a great city worth its salt has to have a famous cemetery. Think Paris and Pere la Chaise, Washington D.C. and Arlington, Prague and the Jewish Cemetery. Of course here in Manila, one would immediately think of the American Memorial Cemetery in Fort Bonifacio or her equally famous sister, the Chinese Cemetery in the district of Sta. Cruz.

One lazy Sunday, I had time to kill before starting Mounds, Magnates and Mausoluems! and found myself within the confines of La Loma Catholic cemetery,the oldest among the 3 in the area (the Chinese and the North) and probally in the whole of Manila too.

What a treasure trove! Now, if you fancy historic architecture (well,the funerary variety that is) in their original setting, then head towards the La Loma Catholic Cemetery.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The first big mausoleum that greets you, from the Cacho family (of publishers?) in the Art-Deco style. Can't miss that oversized gaurdian angel.

Bless this favorite piece! Cute and classic Deco in all sides, from the Barredo family.

Loco over Deco! The Mayorlago-Santos mausoleum, done no less by the premiere, Pre-War marble works company in the Philippines- Oriol builders- fancy!

The Kahn family mausoleum, gorgeous for its geometric and calligraphic simplicity. Also done by Oriol.

Deco in all its purity at the Gonzales-Mondragon plot. Note the stylized Egypitian column so typical an Art-Deco motif in the 1920's.

We are family.... The Araneta Deco sisters.

To cap off our Deco parade, this black-and-white streamlined plot!

Now, let's move on and do Neo-Gothic this time...I give you, the Lim family mausoleum.

Stylized gothic...courtesy of the Pamintuan Family.

Twin gothic (horror?) and shades of Paris' Pere Lachaise...?

The end of the line....alas, the dead are not spared from the perils of the 'leaving', this sign gives a stern warning to those who dare steal the dead's wordly goods - crosses or what have you- for they, their parents, family, wife or children will certainly be punished by the thunderous wrath of God (death!)

Now that's scary.

2002-01-16T22:33:00.000-08:00

September 2, 2005

Cheers!!! Cheers!!!

A FEU Good Men.

Word's just out that one of this streetwalker's favorite Manila campus has just won an honourable mention at the prestigious 2005 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards!

The Far-Eastern University (F.E.U.) campus, located in Manila's chaotic and overcrowded Univsersity Belt is the proverbial rose in a sea of thorns. Years of neglect, haphazard planning and just plain aesthetic apathy (among the residents and transients of this area no less) have led to this area falling into hard times. Hardly fit for a place that's supposed to inspire the minds of our country's future.

But then the F.E.U. administration decided it's had enough. It was now time to roll-up the sleeves and do something it.

In one swoop, it morphed itself from an uninviting, graffiti-infested , make-shift patchwork of classrooms, food-areas and dingy business stalls to a gleaming and conducive Art-Deco complex worthy of educating the best minds of the country.

This is the F.E.U. campus today, a touch of architectural class in a city that seems to have forgotten how beautiful she once were.

That the university's Nicanor Reyes Building (pictured) should face one of the most high-density and polluted stretches of the city- Quezon Boulevard - didnt deter F.E.U. from battling urban blight head on.

This is a view of its sidewalk.

But what particulary makes the F.E.U. campus noteworthy is that it proved to many how old buildings doesnt have to mean derelict and unfashionable.

In fact, it can be hip and as cool as a jammed-up baro't saya.

Built in a period between 1939 to the 1950's , the F.E.U. campus can lay claim to the fact that it is considered the single biggest Art-Deco complex anywhere in the city or even the country. Its structures shimmering with streamlined, Deco details from the...

facade...

to the gates...

and even the doors...

All crafted under the guidance of none other by National Artist for architecture Pablo Antonio

The university evengoing to as far making new structures look Deco so as to conform the existing architectural symmetry of the campus.

If youre lucky enough to enough to get (or sneak) in, as I did in 2001 when I joined a walking tour of the place, you'll find even more surprises. A well-proportioned quadrangle flanked by lush greens is a breather from jeepney fumes outside.

Paintings by National Artist Carols "Botong" Francisco adorn the chapel walls and Deco-inspired murals (pictured) extoll the youth in empowering themselves and helping build the country.

In its commendation, UNESCO sited " ..the context of its immediate neighborhood, the project has had a significant effect on raising historic awareness in the community. The project maintained a commendable balance between preserving original building design and use while accommodating the organization’s modern needs."

Indeed, F.E.U is facing its future with her feet firmly set to her architectural past, finally an award worthy of the Tamaraw's pride!

2002-01-15T05:07:00.000-08:00

August 19, 2005

Surprise! Surprise!

A Drop of Hope.

And you thought everything in the city is hopless. Well, guess again.

Standing on S.H. Loyola street in congested Sampaloc district would surely give no one an inclination of this place's historic quality. Not when you have a streetscape like this.

But lo and behold, across the street and you have this!

This is the Gota de Leche (meaning 'drop of milk') a feeding center for indigent children housed in a 'Pinoy neo-Renaissance' structure designed by Architect Arcadio Arellano in 1917.

Its a place oozing with character, refinement and dignity. A visual respite in a street marred by a web of tangled cables, unkempt buildings, jeepney pollution and urban blight.

It wasnt always the case. Up until its restoration in the 2003, Gota de Leche suffered the same fate of many-a-Manila heritage structures (need I say more?) but it was through the efforts of the building administrator together with heritage-architect Augusto Villalon and his well- guided team of restorers, engineer, artisans and landscape architect that this structure should be brought back to its original pristine condition from the paint job and kapis windows even down to the period lanscaping. Oh, did I mention that Gota de Leche also garnered an award at the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards? My salakot off to you guys!

On a personal note, this is one of the reason's on why - for all the seeming mediocrity- it's still a delight to walk around the inner-city (read: Old Manila)because once-a-while, beneath all the grime, you chance upon jewel-box surprises such as the Gota de Leche Building.

Who would have known doorways could be as proportioned and beautiful as this?

Yes Virginia, there might still be hope for mad Manila.

2002-01-12T20:28:00.000-08:00

July 22,2005

Woohoo! Another 5 seconds of fame!

Metro
Something about San Miguel
By: Julian Uycana

Published on Citiguide Metro Manila

(July-August 2005 issue)

It’s not too often that somebody becomes a traveler in ones own place. And in a place like Manila, a city not exactly known for her Parisian beauty or Bangkok-type exoticism, it takes a curious eye peel off the gritty crust and discover the delights within.

This is the personal mandate of ‘urban story teller’ and street walker Ivan ManDy. Through his walking tours, he takes the curious and adventurous visitors for a fun, two-hour, weekend exploration of three of Old Manila’s historic gems: Binondo (Chinatown), the Chinese Cemetery and San Miguel district.

The tour names hing at new things to discover. Aptly called ‘Palace, Power and a Shot of Beer’, the San Miguel walk is a stroll through one Manila’s most architecturally rich and oft unappreciated districts.

Donning a bright yellow Manila shirt and a traditional tabungao (an Ilokano upo-hat), it’s hard to miss your guide at the San Sebastian Church steps- truly a commanding way to start the walk. Far from taking the usual rote and academic way of presenting historic facts, Ivan flips out a colorfully laid out visual showing a period photo of the church when it was being built in 1891. “ Our country’s first all-steel, neo-gothic, Lego-type-of –a church,” he quips, “ cast, assembled, dissembled, packed in Belgium and shipped all the way to Manila- all 1,574 tons of it.”

The structure is indeed a magnificent architectural edifice with, as he points out, German-made stained glass windows (costing about P4,000.00 during the time it was shipped in), brushworks by Filipino painter Lorenzo Rocha and, because of the very nature of its structure, ‘a maintenance bill that’s enough to put a hole in the father’s vestments.’

Another visual lecture begins when we reach Mendiola street. Our guide calls it Manila’s version of ‘ 10 Downing street, Pennsylvania Avenue and Tian An Men square all rolled into one.” It is the site of several of our country’s most politicized events including the 1987 shooting of picketing farmers and the 2001 Labor Day riots, Mendiola today is a leafy, tree-lined street with barbed-fences always in anticipation for the next big protest rally.

Shielded away from the political action is the jewel-box San Beda church; who, with its neo-gothic details, handsome canvasses and quaint double-sided gardens undoubtedly makes this one of the city’s most stunning and rarely seen church interiors.

We then make our way towards San Miguel’s mansion row –Arlegui and San Rafael streets to admire the districts well-preserved antebellum mansions including ‘Corazon Aquino’s home-away-from home’. The 1930’s Arlegui Guest House where, as the story goes, she hid under her bed during one of the coup attempts in her administration.

Then it was off to San Miguel’s main attraction, the Malacañang Palace. Though entrance these days is generally off-limits (unless you have a written permit), a glimpse through her stately buildings and manicured lawns made for a perfect setting for a spiel on the Philippines’ most famous couple: Fedie the Strongman and Imelda the Iron Butterfly. This was where the group really started to participate with each giving an insight or two about the duo and their effects on our country. An added treat was an interactive game of identifying a host of famous personages who have stepped inside the Palace’s hollowed halls.

Finally, we were lead through yet another of San Miguel’s mansions- Solano Street- where we learned about San Miguel beer’s historic beginnings: ‘A Filipino icon more famous than out current president,” declares Ivan, the compelling tragedy that was the Battle of Manila (“100,000 civilians turned shish-kebab”), and admired more of the district’s aristocratic residences including Madame Imelda’s pleasure palaces: the Teus and Goldenberg Mansions.

Over two hundred years of history covered in two hours. Indeed, reliving our country’s past couldn’t be more entertaining than in such a regal setting. It’s amazing how much you can learn by simply going out for a walk.

2002-01-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

Lost and Found
Ramblings around the City

July 1, 2005 ; San Nicolas District: Grace Under Pressure

When people want to have their historical fix in Manila, the first thing that comes to mind is the walled city of Intramuros.

And rightly so, for Intramuros is Manila's innermost sanctum - the place where the beginnings of the city was established. However, it's not as old as what most people like to think.

Except for the San Agustin Church and parts of the walls, practically the whole of Intramuros is Post WWII Imeldific kitsch. If you want a glimpse (and smell!) of the real thing, check out San Nicolas district.

For the armchair-traveller, San Nicolas is a part of the third district of the city of Manila. Long overshadowed by her bigger and brasher big brother (Binondo aka 'Chinatown' ) , parts of San Nicolas is simply known to many as Divisoria- the biggest flea market in town.

Now, unlike the Manila's other districts, San Nicolas carries no national lore of epic proportions like those we equate with Intramuros (the old capital) and Binondo (the financial hub), instead it has slumbered in obscurity for ithe last 400 years of its existence.

To this walker's delight(!)

In San Nicolas we have what is probally Manila's single largest concentration of Period houses and mind you, not the 'old-new' (bagong-luma) wannabe architecture that characterizes much of Intramuros. This is as true as it can get.

On a personal note, I can honnestly say this district is special, not just for every true-blue, heritage-loving Manileño but personally for this walker who, as a child, spent his early years amidst these beautiful wooden houses, playing on the very streets while sucking in the atmosphere of commerce, dark esteros and the overpowering smell of onions.

These days, the historic properties are still there. Though diminished substantially, they still provide a backdrop of what old Manila looked, felt and smelled like in the days of our ancestors.
What revolutions, earthquakes and a world war didnt destroy, our 21st century cavalier attitude eventually will. It's a conststant battle between the old and new, commerce and culture, development and destruction, why can't we get these acts together?

It's only a matter of time before San Nicolas looses her special quality and turns into another concrete ,streamlined , homogenised Makati. Or Alabang. Or Whatever.

But before she does, let's give her a last look. In her last gasp.

click here.

2002-01-09T04:24:00.000-08:00

Lost and Found
Ramblings around the City

June 25, 2005 ; Santa Cruz --

You just gotta love Manila's downtown.

And by this I mean the historic old district of Santa Cruz and not the Makati CBD as what a lot of locals think.

Sure it's not snazzy and maybe a bit run-down on the edges but it has buzz ( the teeming masses!) , local color (kalesa traffic, anyone?), bargains and hidden architectural delights such as this mellow taupe Art-Deco beauty!

Mr. Webster defines the Art-Deco as " a decorative and architectural style of the period 1925-1940, characterized by geometric designs, bold colors, and the use of plastic and glass." Put simply, the Art-Deco was how people in the early part of the century perceived the future to be.

In Manila, the Art-Deco has always been associated with American-colonial architecture since we were under the US of A when this type of style flourished. Among the more celebrated Art-Deco buildings in the city include the Metropolitan Theater, the Perez-Samanillo Building at the Escolta and the ill-fated Jai-Alai Fronton along Taft Avenue (now demolished).

This corner building by the north end Dasmariñas Street is just one reason why it's worth the effort to sometimes brave the heat and the crowds just to walk aimlessly in Old Manila, you chance upon fantastic jewels such as this!

Now, apart from it being an Art-Deco structure, I have no other details as with regards to this building ( tried asking the name but people dont seem to know it). Of particular note is it's corner lot position where the architect (bless him!) ingeniously maximised the small space to turn what otherwise could have been another unassuming building - in an obscure lot no less- into something as architecturally-delightful as this.

I particulary like the imposing rounded turrets and the bas-reflief (pictured), it certainly gives the facade a touch of class. And really, it's such a small price to pay for having to look up and discover what makes this corner structure truly a gem of the Art-Deco.

2002-01-07T02:04:00.000-08:00

Wohoo! Another addition to my five seconds of fame..now I have ten! ;op Thank you Mr. Villalon!

Pride of Place
Culture for tourists, not for Filipinos
By Augusto Villalon

Inquirer News Service

Editor's Note: Published on page C1 of the June 6, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANY Filipinos and the local tourism industry remain boxed into the old "packaged tourism destination mode," an approach that herds tourists into buses, takes them from airport to beach resort, provides a few hours' visit to selected "tourism destinations" that are quick pops to cultural sites or monuments, leading to a dinner-show of "native" songs and dances.

Everything is packaged, from transportation, accommodation and Philippine culture.

The tourism "destination" approach crafted sites packaged with that "WOW" tourist appeal. The destinations follow a pattern. Places are decked out in fiesta atmosphere where open-air stages present cultural shows regularly and where a network of souvenir and food stalls packed along both sides of pedestrian streets compete for attention and sales.

Commercial and artificial, the destinations fail to express what is true in Filipino culture. Nor do they offer a realistic view of both Filipino history and way of life.

Nevertheless, the "tourist destination" image persists. Many Philippine locations try to concoct either their own versions or launch tourism events. A few have succeeded.

One of the most popular festivals in the country, the "Sinulog" of Cebu, based on a local religious ritual once little-known outside the city, was launched in the early 1980's to boost the city's tourism industry. Twenty years later, the festival has become such a success that people think it is a centuries-old tradition.

The province of Bohol, on the other hand, took stock of its natural and cultural assets-pristine rivers and beaches, whale and dolphin reserves, colonial towns, old churches with their treasures and religious traditions still intact, the internationally acclaimed Loboc Children's Choir, local craft and cuisine, and other resources.

The government-religious-private sector cooperation preserved the provincial heritage, promoting the uniqueness of Bohol as the basis for an extremely successful community-based tourism program.

To achieve the increased numbers of foreign arrivals has always been the government target, claiming to promote Philippines as a cultural tourism destination. Still lacking are more programs to document and preserve vanishing traditions and built heritage, for instance, to show that cultural revival and preservation is for the Filipino and not for tourism dollars.

Activities in the cultural area could learn from the Bohol cultural experience whose primary aim was to preserve the unique heritage of the province for the benefit of local residents. Tourism grew as a secondary benefit of the successful cultural preservation program.

The cultural sector has made up for the lack of cultural tourism activities with a number of creative, local-level programs aimed at establishing awareness that preserving cultural heritage should be primarily for improving the quality of life of Filipino communities and not just for tourist consumption.

Historically correct tours

Organizations such as the Committee on Monuments and Sites of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and KaiVigan have commissioned historically correct tour guide scripts and walking tour maps for Intramuros and Vigan. They have also trained locals as guides.

The Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage Council went a step beyond historical research. It actually mapped out a walking tour of Tagbilaran and environs.

The programs have paid off. Vigan and Bohol are popular destinations primarily visited by local tourists. Both have successful tourism programs based on the conservation of their heritage that are run by the local community.

An unexpected phenomenon in heritage-based cultural tourism grew out of a walking tour project established by the Heritage Conservation Society (HCS). As an activity for stimulating heritage awareness, the HCS organized weekly walks in Manila heritage districts. First conducted by professors or cultural experts, young guides eventually took over the activity.

The young guides enlivened historical fact with humor, communicated passion for urban built heritage and commitment to its preservation, made heritage alive with costumes, anecdotes, folk history and food that related to different historic quarters in the city.

Their lively walks gained instant popularity. Manilenos and expatriate residents stopped taking Manila for granted, rediscovered the wealth of texture in the city and became aware of the need for conservation.

The two leading Manila streetwalkers are Carlos Celdran and Ivan ManDy whose tours are booked solid. They have become cult heroes, darlings of local and international media.

The Time (Asia) Magazine featured Celdran recently: "If you take time to explore it, Manila pays rich dividends. One of the best ways to get to know the city is through the half-day walking tours given by the garrulous Carlos Celdran... [who] offers up rich narratives that are by turns gossipy (his account of Imelda Marcos' rise and fall is hilarious) and compelling (the description of a bombed-out Manila, at the end of World War II, is unforgettable). They're also filled with the kind of insight that only a native raconteur can provide."

Tours led by Celdran and ManDy change perceptions and alter perspectives. "I can't change the way Manila looks," Celdran admits. "But I can change the way you look at Manila."

Personalized tours are quickly becoming a new trend in Manila and other Philippine cities, giving the lesson that it is easier to change tourism perceptions from the ground up.

Local individuals, rather than the government, now provide increasingly viable models for community-based tourism programs, causing a shift in the cultural tourism paradigm.

In time, hopefully the new vision could evolve into a primary activity in the country's tourism program, one that instills a missing pride of place in the Filipino and gives the tourist a personal contact with Filipino culture.

Heritage watch

Carlos Celdran will introduce you to his idiosyncratic, vibrant, and surprising Manila. E-mail celdrantours@hotmail.com or www.cendrantours.blogspot.com Ivan ManDy tours you around the Chinese Cemetery in La Loma and makes Tsinoy taste come alive with food tours through Binondo. Visit http://www.oldmanilawalks.blogspot.com/

E-mail afvillalon@hotmail.com

2002-01-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

*Ehem* my 5 seconds fame...wohoo!

Eek! Me in my weekend element...

Pinoy Connection : Pound the Binondo pavement with the Chinatown kid
Posted 07:11am (Manila time) April 10, 2005
By Eric S. Caruncho, Inquirer News Service Editor's
Note: Published on page Q6 of the April 10, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

FORGET it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

That, at least, is what a lot of people seem to say when someone suggests going down to Ongpin St. for some Chinese food other than Chowking, to Calle Soler for a quick screw (at the hardware store, dummy), to the Chinese drug store for some liver and kidney pills or some brain tonic (God knows we could all use some), or just to get out of the mind-numbing routine of office-mall-house. But that would mean—gulp!—actually going to Manila. "You'd be surprised," says Binondo-born and bred Ivan Dy. "We all live in one big city, but we really live in our little villages. People from Alabang or Makati have told me that they've always wanted to visit Binondo, but they were scared to go."

What's not to fear? In many ways, Manila is still the middle-class suburbanite's nightmare. All the reasons they moved to the suburbs in the first place are still here: the teeming hordes of the great unwashed, the traffic, the noise, the pollution, the saliva...

But so are a lot of other things that you won't find in your average gated subdivision: history, culture, the throbbing pulse of modern urban life. Not to mention great food, fantastic bargains and a temporary escape from the cut-and-dried, predictable rut of office-mall-house.
Fortunately, for the timorous, there's one way to take that first step: take a guided walking tour.

On weekdays, the 26-year-old Dy is the operations manager of a Manila-based trading company. But on weekends, he dons his pigtailed silk cap and becomes-ta-da!-the Chinatown Kid. "I got the idea when I joined walking tours abroad, in Singapore, Shanghai, Montreal and Washington, D.C.," he says. "When you go on one of these tours, you get a different feeling because your guide is a native of that city and he's proud of his city."

Natural appreciation

When he got back from his travels, Dy thought similar tours would be ideal for helping people overcome their initial Manilaphobia. He had worked as a guide at the Bahay Tsinoy, a museum of Filipino-Chinese history and culture at the Intramuros. But nothing brought history to life better than actually pounding the pavements where it all happened. Having grown up in a neighborhood where people could still point out, say, the street where Rizal's mother lived, or the house where Antonio Luna was born, Dy had a natural appreciation for history on the hoof, as it were.

Last year, he put up a website: http://www.oldmanilawalks.blogspot.com/, where interested parties can sign up for one or more walking tours. Putting the actual walks together was the easy part, because it covers what is essentially Dy's own backyard. He put together three walks, with appropriately descriptive tags: "From Boondocks to Boomtown: A Chinatown Walk," "Power, Palace and A Shot of Beer: Poking Around Old Millionaire's Row (San Miguel)" and "Mounds, Magnates and Mausoleums: A Chinese Cemetery Walk."

"I was born and lived in Binondo until I was eight years old, then my family moved to Sta. Cruz," he says. "I was the fourth of six kids, and we lived in a typical Chinese compound where three families lived, so I grew up with grandparents, aunts and uncles and lots of cousins."
From an early age, Dy was already drawn to the old. "While other kids were playing with Transformers, I was reading history books," he recalls. "My dad encouraged me to read history and cultural stuff. Growing up in Binondo, a place which reeked of historical mementoes, my interest particularly zeroed in on the history of the Tsinoy community. Of course, the growth and evolution of the community had everything to do with Manila's, our country and our region's history so it was a natural inclination."

Dy attended high school at St. Jude's, which brought him to another historic district of old Manila, San Miguel. "In San Miguel, it would the antebellum mansions of San Rafael, Arlegui and Solano streets," he says. "I always get a kick when I show them the Abbey of the Montserrat (a.k.a. San Beda Church). It never fails to get 'oohs' and 'ahhhs.'"

Morbid interest

As for the Chinese cemetery, apart from the fact that some of his ancestors are buried there and the obvious morbid interest, Dy also finds it endlessly fascinating.
"What I particularly like about it is that it's one big architectural history book," he says of the numerous mausoleums and the styles in which they were built. "You'll find bahay na bato, over-the-top Southern Chinese temples, Art Deco, Neoclassical. There's even a turtle-shaped plot, and an ancient Chinese burial mound, which is very rarely found nowadays, even in China. The Chinese cemetery is also where you'll find the oldest Chinese temple in the Philippines-the Chong Hock Tong temple."

Dy says the Chinese cemetery is also uniquely Tsinoy: You won't find anything remotely similar on the mainland. The custom of building mausoleums, he says, is a cultural accommodation combining Chinese ancestor worship with the Spanish-Filipino tradition of honoring the dead on Todos los Santos.

"If you go to Paris, you visit Pere Lachaise; if you go to Washington, you visit Arlington; why not visit the Chinese cemetery?" he asks. But by far the most popular walk is the Binondo walk, because apart from seeing the sights, you also get to taste the tastes, because it is partly a culinary tour. "One my aims is to introduce people to the wide variety of 'Chinese-inspired' food in Binondo, and their significance to us as part of our culture," he says. "The eats that are part of my Binondo walk isn't your typical Chinese fare. Some of these joints are places which a lot of people in Chinatown grew up with, like mami at Ma Mon Luk. Some are restaurants with a cause, such as the Cafe Mezzanine-a restaurant run by a Binondo Volunteer Firemen's group. Still others are restaurants serving non-traditional fare, places which serve tea-cooked eggs, Hokkien-style fried rice (called kiampeng), Amoy-style hand-rolled lumpia, comida china or even Northern style dumplings."

The Binondo tour has its share of exotica and chinoiserie. One can enter a sidestreet and walk up to the Kuan Kong Temple, a Taoist place of worship dedicated to the God of War and Literature, where visitors can burn incense or paper "money" offerings, or have their fortunes told by shaking a bamboo cylinder of divination sticks. Or visit La Resurreccion, where workers still hand-roll chocolate tableas the old-fashioned way. The wet market, with its tubs of sea cucumber and picked mustard greens also holds its own fascination, as do the newsstands and video shops selling Hongkong movies and Cantopop CDs. "In all my tours, I make it a point to show people not just beautiful, architecturally-interesting places," says Dy. "I show them everything—even the not-so-pleasent ones. They may not be your ideal tourist sites, but these patches, like the esteros of Chinatown or the slums beside the Chinese Cemetery, are part and parcel of our city's evolutionary fabric, and they do have their own stories to tell too."
Speaking of evolution, Binondo itself is in flux as a new wave of immigrants comes in, drawn by the economic opportunities they see in Manila. Many of them speak Mandarin, rather than Hokkien, and are viewed with mixed feelings by the more established second- or third-generation Tsinoys. The "newcomers" come from a China that's very different from the one that the "oldtimers" knew. Standing on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, Binondo is an interesting vantage point from which to view Manila's emerging multicultural society.

This is all the stuff you'd miss if you stayed in the mall.

Says Dy: "I hope that those who join my walks leave with a lot of laughter, a satisfied palate, a better understanding of the Tsinoy community and an enriched appreciation of Manila-warts and all."
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For tour information, text 0917-3291622.