So I'm in the Philippines. Lots of small asian people running around, speaking a funny language. Their "buses" look like the love-children of a covered pickup and a short bus (see previous post for a photo). But my first question is, this is Asia? Really?
The first oddity is that all the signs are in English, but all the people I see are speaking Tagalog. I think most have a decent command of English, but it's hard to tell sometimes. This confusion of language is most notable when reading the local newspapers. By all appearances, they look just like American newspapers, with larger headlines. But when you sit down and read an article, it becomes apparent that these writers don't have the command of English I expect out of a published document. Everything seems peachy until you come up against a run-on sentence that would have had my 10th-grade English teacher seizing on the floor. They're actually kind of like The Washington Post now that they offered early retirement to all their copy editors.
What's truly odd to me, however, is the mall. There is an enormous one two blocks from here. Inside are enough restaurants that I could easily eat there twice a day and not eat at the same place twice. Most of the places there, you and I have heard of: McDonald's and Wendy's of course, but also a TGI Friday's, an Auntie Anne's, a Shakey's (there's a blast from the past), and I kid you not, a fucking Kenny Rogers' Roasters. I've never even seen one of those in the States. The Kenny Rogers and the KFC seemed the busiest- fried chicken must be big here. Add in the Gap, Nine West, Marks and Spencer, and Toys 'R' Us, and I feel right at home.
So seriously, this is Asia? Yeah, there are a lot of Chinese restaurants, but I can't tie anything I see to anything I ever imagined as "asian". Maybe world cities are becoming more homogeneous, but I could swear I was back in Latin America. It makes sense, in a way, as the Spanish first colonized the Philippines, and were quickly followed by the Americans. But I don't feel like I'm somewhere new. It just seems like another iteration of the dirty and poor Latin American cities I've been to. So maybe I should be asking myself instead, what hemisphere am I in?
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Yeah, I've always sort of thought of the Philippines as more of its own entity than part of the traditional homogenous view of "Asia". I imagine that, also because of the Spanish influence, it's the only Catholic country in Asia, although I'm talking out of my ass here. I'm sure it's been said that the legacy of centuries of American imperialism is a world full of semi-stable quasi-democracies fed by American fast food chains and populated by brown-skinned people largely indistinguishable to Americans. (Or something to that effect). I will admit that I know very little about the Philippines, other than that the language is Tagalog (not, as I once thought, "Tagalong," which in fact is a type of cookie), and that a popular food is adobo, which I may or may not have ever tried.
Speaking of which: Found any good food there? Other than Shakey's, I mean?
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