Manila - Day 1 (Part 1)

Friday, 10 February 2017

No Grab car in the morning! Had to make do with a taxi. Luckily the driver drove with some urgency and I reached the airport well within time. Flight at 8.20 a.m., landed in Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) at about 12.30 p.m. and took a Grab car to the hotel. They drive on the right side of the road. Remnants of Spanish and American colonialization, of course. Horrible traffic jam everywhere and the drive took more than an hour.

Manila is the capital city of the Philippines, founded on 24 June 1571 by Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi. Manila is the second most populous city in the Philippines after the former Capital Quezon City with a population of about 12.8 million people as at 2015.

The Kingdom of Tondo once ruled in the vicinity of Manila before it briefly became a province of the Hindu Majapahit Empire. During the Brunei invasion of the Philippines, Sultan Bolkiah of Brunei captured Seludong (a village in modern-day Manila) and renamed it Maynilà, a Tagalog term referring to the presence of the Nila shrub. Maynila was a vassal state of Brunei, established to overpower Tondo. Maynilà had been Indianized since the 6^th century. It became partly Islamic and Hindu-animist by the 15^th century.

In 1571 Spanish Conquistadors arrived from Mexico, from across the Pacific, and founded present-day Manila in what is today Intramuros. Spanish missionaries soon Christianized the city and incorporated Tondo under Manila.

Spanish rule in Manila and the entire Philippine archipelago lasted for over three centuries, until 1898. At different times during the long Spanish period there were local revolts, Chinese insurrections, massive pirate attacks, great earthquakes, Dutch raids and invasion attempts, and a British occupation of the city during their unsuccessful attempt to conquer the Philippines. Order was usually quickly restored and the city returned to the business of trade. In the 19^th century Manila was one of the most modern cities in Asia.

Before the Spanish–American War, Manila saw the rise of the Philippine Revolution. One of the national hero of the Philippines was Jose Rizal, an ophthalmologist and writer (among others) who contributed to writing propaganda in favour of the revolution against Spanish rule. Eventually he was arrested, tried, found guilty and executed by firing squad on 20 December 1896. This would be around the time of Jose Marti, who fought against the Spanish in the Cuban Revolution (a hero of Fidel Castro).

 Under the American rule following the Spanish–American War, the United States changed the official language from Spanish to English and made some changes in education, local laws and urban planning. Towards the end of World War II, during the Battle of Manila most of the city was flattened by intensive aerial bombardment by the United States Air Force. As a result, relatively little remains of Manila's pre-war and colonial architecture, although parts of the old walled city, Intramuros, still remain.