Metro Manila consists of I believe 17 cities, only one of
which is Manila. The central business district is Makati,
in which there are offices, shopping malls, the stock
exchange, and the Shangri-La, Renaissance, Peninsula,
Fairmont, you get the idea. If you saw only downtown, you'd
imagine a modern metropolis a la Singapore. Actually, to me
the vibe is similar to that I found when I first visited
Singapore and KL a couple decades ago.

The hotel I chose, after some research, the Guijo Suites
Makati, isn't quite in what people think of as Makati (it's
near the seedier part of Santa Ana to the north), but it's
convenient enough, and safe enough, and the accommodations
turned out to be fine. We were assigned to the newer
building of two, all the rooms having a decent window; the
major complaint about across the street was that some of
the rooms had inadequate windows.

The front desk staff were, even at a relatively late hour,
cheery and helpful. The digs were of a decent size, the
bathroom fixtures all worked, as did the air conditioning,
so pretty much all was fine. We shared a somewhat mildewed
bathroom, which, after a night of having the fan on and the
light on, pretty much cleaned itself up.

When we had installed ourselves and staked out territories,
the next order of business was to check out the lobby bar.

Prices were competitive (we found divey places during the
week that charged about 25% less, but they were pretty
scuzzy). San Mig pale and light were both 5% alcohol and
P60; Nottage Hill Shiraz was an absurd 1500 the bottle,
so lili did without, settling for Jack Daniel's at 200 a
shot plus extra for mixers. So it was easy to get modestly
buzzed for a modest amount of money. By the way, San Miguel
Pale tastes completely different here than in the US. I far
prefer the export product and in the future ordered the
light instead. In fact, several of the establishments we
later patronized served only the light.

Note to bargain hunters: the minibar San Mig light is P45,
though the regular runs 60 there.

--

Breakfast is included. It's adequate but sort of peculiar.

The constants are scrambled eggs, cereal and milk, breakfast
breads, coffee, water (iced or tepid), plain rice, and
substandard fruit - unripe pineapple and unripe watermelon.

The variables are soup, a pasta dish, and some protein.

On this first day:

Pumpkin soup was a medium-thin puree with probably a chicken
base; it was not bad at all, actually.

What was labeled as tomato mushroom pasta was essentially
plain spaghetti with butter and basil. Perhaps someone had
picked all the tomatoes and mushrooms out already.

Ham, gelatinized and tasteless, was there every day but one.

There was a beef sausage of an odd crumbly texture and
pretty much no flavor.

Enough to kick-start one's day.

I asked the front desk for a city map, which most reputable
hotels offer for free, and was told that I'd have to go to
the National Book Store in the mall district in downtown
Makati. I didn't want to brave downtown Makati without a map
so an Internet search yielded an outlet of what seems to be
the Barnes & Noble of the Philippines at the Cash & Carry
shopping center just a kilometer from the hotel.

It turns out that at morning rush this is quite a harrowing
kilometer, crossing a busy road with adequate but generally
disobeyed lights and then a large highway with little if any
guidance (but every couple blocks, there's a cop stationed,
so the more timid are occasionally given a chance).

The National Book Store has a whole assortment of maps and
atlases, so we got the Metro Manila Citiatlas by Accu-map
("18 years cartography excellence"), a pretty comprehensive
book covering the whole area. It turned out to be quite
worthwhile, for even though we mostly confined our
wanderings to Makati and two adjoining municipalities, it
was helpful to check out all the streets in our vicinity
and be reassured of exactly where we were.

Just for the sake of science, we checked out the food court
on the second floor, where among other promising places I
found Sisig Hooray, a stall dedicated to the proposition
that pig hash goes well with rice (it is traditionally eaten
straight up and washed down with beer). Turns out this
version was maybe the best I've ever had, atypical, though.
It had fewer naughty bits and more crunchy crackling, which
is points in favor in my book; also this dry preparation has
condiments mixed in to order (vinegar, soy, patis, hot
peppers, red onion, calamansi) so that instead of it sitting
around getting soggy it's a nice combination of crisp and
freshly softened. It comes with a big mound of decent rice.
I asked for double hot peppers, which got a dubious glance
from the attendant; it was enough, just barely. P65 for a
generous meal that could have fed two in a pinch.