Manila, the Philippines: If you saw The Bourne Legacy film, the one which did not star Matt Damon, you know part of the story was set in Manila. You saw reeking squatter slums and huge manufacturing plants.
Industrial/slum Manila does exist, no lie. You should not conclude the entire city of 16 million is like the squatter shacks you saw in the film. We visited for the first time today, Halloween Day, and we saw maybe 100 high rise apartment buildings and skyscrapers.
Another thing I’d not have predicted, English is everywhere. Yes, there is another official language - Tagalog - but in a country with over 100 languages, what they have in common is the colonial language - English. This is likewise true in India.
An English-only speaker could live in Manila very comfortably without learning more than a handful of Tagalog words. The signs are all in English, including street signs.
You’d need to train your ear to filter the sometimes heavy accent. English appears to be near-universal, though perhaps not so much in rural areas.
I could imagine an American expat living very comfortably in Manila, someone who likes city living. Urban is not my cup of tea, as longtime readers know.
Rural here might be too rustic for my taste. I like reliable electricity and running water clean enough to brush teeth with.
BTW, we dodged the worst of that typhoon, it went north of Manila. I saw zero damage today from the heavy rains they got from the fringes of the storm. We actually had very nice weather today, warm and muggy but not unpleasantly hot. Maybe we’ll have calmer seas headed east about 1000 miles to Guam.
