The Manila of Old

Manila is beau­ti­ful. Believe it or not. I went on the tour of Car­los Cel­dran and it made me real­ize how impor­tant it is for us Fil­ipinos to have an under­stand­ing of the glory days of our past so we know what we were capa­ble of, so that we know what we can be capa­ble of becoming.

This is partly a nos­tal­gia trip. and partly an indict­ment of the things we have done as a coun­try and as a peo­ple over the past fifty years. I hope we are shamed enough to do some­thing about it. We have the capac­ity and the poten­tial to be great once again.

This is Avenida. Notice the clean­li­ness and order. Nobody’s wear­ing slip­pers. San Miguel was num­ber one. And they’re still num­ber one till now because Fil­ipinos are brand loyal.

Notice the streets and side walks: streets were “shiny”, much like the streets of Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong today. Peo­ple were dis­ci­plined. They walked on the side walks and not on the streets. Every­thing was clean because stores cleaned their own mess.

It was a “walk­a­ble” city. Peo­ple can walk and not be afraid of get­ting mugged or poi­soned by the pol­lu­tion in the air. Manila (and the philip­pines) was truly “pearl of the ori­ent”. Oh, and I love how fash­ion­able our peo­ple were. We could rival Europe.

I didn’t know our jeep­neys were that small. Hehe. Den­cia’s was famous for Pan­sit Mami. Mami sold for P1.50. Coca cola sold for 10 cen­tavos, sar­sa­par­illa was 5 cen­tavos. Dencia’s was very near Vil­lalo­bos and Carriedo.

Manila was just beau­ti­ful. Look at this aer­ial shot.

This is Dewey Boule­vard (what is now Roxas Boule­vard) from above. Envi­ron­ment was just so clean, air was refresh­ing, and take a look at the sea. Pretty right? Some parts of the world are still as clean as this.