Living in the Streets

We stayed at Mommy La and Daddy Lo's place in Pasay. They have a cool house out the back of a multi storey hotel on a busy road. The house is actually quite big and has several units attached to it. The Kingdom Hall used to be here as well but apparently was unusable after the hotel was built as the foundations got badly damaged.

While there are many middle class people (someone must be spending their money in all the mega malls and did someone say its the texting capital of the world?), mixed in amongst all you see some pretty poor people living as squatters on the sides of buildings or on the streets. I saw one person washing themselves on the street and you see some building fires to cook their food on the side of the road. These people seem to live in very basic houses which are cramped and have basic facilities.The population density in Manila is very high. BUT! I must add at the same time as Jaymie informs me some living in these areas have many mod cons, i.e. cell phones, etc. So I guess it can be a little confusing as to much little/much people have here materially. I saw a guy coming out of one of these areas dressed like a million dollars so who knows....maybe he spends all his money on clothes ;)

By no means does this represent a majority of the people here but I guess the poor ones just stand out.

However, people here are very industrious in the way they earn money. People will do just about anything on any scale to earn money. As an example, you will find corner shops everywhere. Little stores which in effect are tiny shop fronts who will sell a small number of goods. Chips, drinks and a few other items accessible and displayed only by a small window at the bottom of a small unit where the family lives. In other examples you will find walking down the streets, are people selling fruit in a wheel barrow or cooked food almost like what you would find at a carnival. Pretty cool though. Means you dont have to walk more than 100m to get an ice cold Coke :)

You're never far from a paper or a cigarette while waiting in traffic.