Mark was stationed in Okinawa for a while, but knew very little of what happened during World War II in the Philippines, so we started off the next day by getting a Grab to the American Cemetery, and to quote Wikipedia “it has the largest number of graves of any cemetery for U.S. personnel killed during World War II.” The museum inside was jammed full of information and we slowly went through every panel, trying to read and absorb as much of the information as possible. I visited the cemetery last time but was still unaware of the Bataan Death March and some other horrific facts, war sure is an ugly thing. Slowly Mark started to understand more about this nation, once run by Spain, then was attempted to be colonized by the Americans, had a Japanese invasion, and was finally recognized for their independence on July 4, 1946 by the United States. This interesting mixture of cultures has made them one of the highest number of Roman Catholics in the world, a bunch of Spanish words in their dialect (even more as you go further south) and a love of the English language and culture, particularly American.
After soaking up as much information as possible, Mark and I exited the premises and walked around Makati / Taguig. Makati is the business district located to the east of Manila, it’s much cleaner, and the sidewalks actually resemble something like what an American might imagine a sidewalk to look like. Mark found a Lawson’s Mart that reminded him of Japan and went in and piled up some snacks, causing the cashiers to come forward and giggle as they talked English to the tall white man unfamiliar with how to pronounce the foods he was procuring. We walked around and saw many fancy cars for sale, and walked through a giant outside mall that had only foot traffic, filled with all the brands you’d typically see in the United States. We tried to meet up with some of my friends near Luneta Park, close to Intramuros, but possibly due to the Jeepney strike, we were unable to get picked up by a Grab for somewhere around two hours. We got dropped off at Luneta park and we walked around and I was still in awe at the number of humans out and about, enjoying being outside, playing, and listening to Christmas music. We walked back to Greg’s after we were done wandering the park.
Continue to the next page for additional photos from the day