A Great Sprawling Shithole

The writer Paul Theroux suggests that there is dishonesty in claiming that we don’t have judgements.

After almost two years living here, I’m sitting in my perch in the sky with my gorgeous 30th floor view, above it all, thinking about Manila.

I just finished reading Chuck Thompson’s Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, a book that seems to be his way of letting off steam after the confines of writing for travel magazines. He has a lot to say about the travel writing industry. He says that for the most part, travel writing is dull, adjective laden, and without an authentic point of view, driven by the demands of “editors, publicists, marketers and various snake-oil merchants who run the travel trade”. All travel magazines exist to sell product and the writing reflects this. He blasts the lazy writing with its phrases, euphemisms and cliches – “hip, hot, happening, meander, luxuriate, magical, nestled, mouthwatering, pamper, sun-drenched, undiscovered”.

His rants are amusing and quite true. The New York Times articles are among the worst in my opinion. Containing nothing that can’t be found elsewhere, most of the time they don’t read like the writer actually went there and to top it all off, at the end of piece, they tell you where to stay, hotels which invariably happen to be the most expensive places in town. He has a point.

Thompson then spends the rest of his book telling the travel stories he wants to tell. He has an entire chapter on the Philippines and references it a few other times. He says that Manila is one of his favorite cities in the world even though “conditions there can be as bleak as anywhere”.

This gets my attention. Favorite cities???

He then says

…Manila is one of the great sprawling shitholes of Asia, a reeking mess of poverty, traffic, smog, crime, corruption, and filth. Bursting with people who somehow maintain a bulletproof optimism in the face of decay, disorder, and daily tragedy, these are frenetic slum-cities where anything, from blow jobs to military coups, can happen at any time. Cities that you love just slightly more than you loathe.

Now I have no personal knowledge of the availability of blow jobs in Manila and the Philippines has nothing on Thailand when it comes to coups but otherwise I agree with him, up to the comment about “loving” it.

I love my life here but I can’t stretch that to say that I love Manila. We live in the best part of town, in the best condominium in the city and have a very comfortable existence but I also have eyes to see…and much of this city is indeed a shithole.