Manila People

Some More Shots of Manila

1. The five us finally reunited in Rizal Park, central Manila after various journeys and adventures. Front, from left, Kelsey, Kelly, Helen, and Kirsty.

2. The Manila fire department gets ready to head out on shift New Years Eve 2006. The guys told me that this was the worst night for fires in Manila as the poor in the slums started alot of fires. I know that some of these guys will probably die this year doing their job. I wish them all the best and I hope that God watches over them in thier task.

3. Dr. Rizal is the Phillipino most responsible for the countries liberation from four hundred years of Spanish oppression. He was a freedom fighter and a doctor who was executed for consipiring against the Spanish crown in 1896. On the one hunred and tenth anniversiry of his death this huge flag flew at half mast above his shrine in Rizal Park, a huge expanse of green that is Manilas answer to central park.

4-5 Just some pictures of some street children. They may not have ever touched a computer or seen an I-pod but they love a camera. Even in the depths of their poverty they still wanted their picture taken.

Manila Fireworks

Manila Fireworks 1.1.07

The mayor of Manila reached in to his slush fund to find ten million pesos to give us and the locals a fantastic display of fireworks to welcome in the new year. Sorry about the poor quality of the shots. My little point and click camera was not up to the task of taking night fireworks shots.

On the Loboc River

On the Loboc River

Nuts Huts sits on the Loboc River a milky jade coloured strip of water that winds its way lazily through the center of Bohol from the Chocolate Hills to the ocean. I was lucky enough to swim almost every day in its cool waters and travel for many hours along its palm shrouded banks, watching the world go by as coconuts splashed in the water.


1. The Loboc in the early morning

2. The great Vietnam war movie Apocolypse Now was filmed in the Phillipenes. When I saw this view from a boat one morning I could almost feel the Viet-Cong watching me from the banks of the river.

3. The Loboc at mid-day you can see the way the river is a milky jade colour from all the clay that the island sits on.

4. Some boys on a bamboo raft, the chief method of transportation on the Loboc

5. The Loboc river with the sun coming up

Intramuros, Manila Set Two

A few more shots of Intramuros-

1. Hows this for a setting for a wedding reception. Seats for a hundred guests in the courtyard of a three hundred year old house in the heart of Spanish Manila.
2. A week old kitten finding safety in a hole in the masonary of the city walls
3. An alter boy getting ready to serve at a wedding at the church of San Augestin
4. Guns along the walls. They fought the British in 1762, the Chinese rebellion in 1765, and countless attacks by pirates and locals all trying to rid the Phillipenes of Spanish rule.
5. The church of San Augestin and the Manila Cathedral from the city walls.

Intramuros, Manila Set One

Intramuros, Manila

Intramuros is the old Spanish heart of Manila. Heavily bombed during both the Spanish American war of 1898 and during the battle of Manila at the end of the second world war it has lost alot of the buildings that once graced its cobblestone streets but if one is listens ery carefully in the deepest corners of the citidal one can imagine that they are in Sevilla, Madrid, or Cordoba.

Pictures
1. Street kids playing along the four hundred year old walls of Intramuros
2. Walking along the walls of the inner sanctum I was able to snap this shot with no cars or people around. Having been through Espana a little when I was younger I felt just like I was back in Barcelona.
3. Lovers taking a break from reality in the ramparts.
4. Probably the coolest golf course that I have ever seen. Club Intramuros winds its way along the old moat of the city, its eighteen holes go through the walls and battlements of the citidal.
5. The Church of San Augestin, the oldest church in the Phillipenis, the seat of Spanish power for almost four hundred years it was built in 1520 and still operates as a place of worship for the upper class of Manila. In the square in the front of the church where I am taking the picture from the Spanish Inquisition reached even this far corner of the globe as heritics were burned at the stake here.

Flowers in the Phillipenes

Flowers
Just a few pictures of some really pretty flowers that I saw in various places around Bohol. Remeber this is winter so just imagine what the bloom is like in the spring and summer!

Bohol Churches

Bohol Churches

The Spanish made their mark in many ways on this archepligo that stretches over seven thousand islands. Along with pestilance, slavery, and oppression, they gave the Phillipino people an overwhelming desire to love God. The Catholic religion is so strong here, every motor vehicle seems to have some sort of slogan on it asking some saint or holy figure to watch over the driver, the vehicle, or both.
The churches that were built around the islands by the Spanish are all old. The church in Loboc were I celebrated Christmas mass was just being finished as the British were facing defeat at Yorktown in 1781, and this was a fairly young church by Phillipino standards. The churches at Albuqurqe and Blaycon were older dating from the early part of the seventeenth century, before the pilgrams who landed at Plymouth rock were even born.
The following pictures are just five of the many I took of churches around Bohol. They are mostly built of either coral or the native limestone and all are showing the ravages of being in the tropics, yet, in their age, they still serve a puropse. Every day they are still filled with the faithful coming to Mass, Communion, and Confession with Phillipino priests saying the sacred Mass in the native Tagalong langauge.
It is a exquisite site to see these almost mystical monuments to Catholicism, even to a cynic like myself. To me, a pretty much lapsed Catholic, it has almost made me want to start attending Mass again.

Pictures-
1. The church in Loboc were I went to Christmas Mass. It was packed when I arrived for the midnight service as the world famous choir of Loboc sang hymes from on top of a sagging balcony.
2. The black Jesus from inside the Loboc church. Outside, in the back, there is also a black Madonna.
3. The inside of the church at Balycon. Even with the paint peeling after three hundred years the magic of the sacristy still shines through.
4. A front view of the church at Albequrque, the second oldest stone church in the Phillipenes, built in 1589
5. The archway connecting the church and rectory of the Balycon church with the afternoon light shining through. I met a man named Jorge here who gave me a great insiders tour of the church. He told me that his great grandfather had been chrisitned by the last Spanish priest left in Bohol in 1898 and his family told stories about how their ansectors had helped to cut the stone that the church was made from.