Recuérdame — remember me. Not a woman named Manila; the capital itself: Metro Manila, sixteen cities stitched by EDSA and appetite. I dreamed the place before I landed — YouTube walks, Mark Wiens at night on a laptop in Johor Bahru — and woke inside the dream in October 2024. This is the English memoir the three Burmese notebooks wanted: smell over snapshot, ferry over filter.
Before the flight: dreams and misfortune
The obsession started late 2023 — Manila walking tours until sleep borrowed the map. A friend who had lived in Mandaluyong advised that grid; I was pulled harder to Manila Bay, waterfront that felt like a nineties English ballad translated into humidity — melancholy without tragedy.
Health and calendars intervened; Bali took 2023 instead. By May 2024 I bought a ticket for October — four nights, five days — and booked Shell Residences in Pasay near the bay, then a cheap Makati room for the rest. Then travel comedy: iPhone screen spiderwebbed the morning of departure; I bought a budget Realme at a Cameron Highlands shop and flew anyway. The plane was three hours late; the Airbnb host cancelled at midnight; I crossed EDSA with luggage like a lost extra, paid walk-in rates on a side street off the avenue I did not yet know was famous, and slept angry.
Manila Bay and first light
Morning was buffet downstairs and sun that bites. I swam anyway — rules be damned — then walked toward SM Mall of Asia: globe rotunda, Ramen Nagi in the belly, then the bay path I had rehearsed in dreams. The water was beautiful beside cargo and office towers; shanties and a boy diving from a bridge reminded me poverty sits beside postcard. Past Philippine Navy fences and the US embassy I rested at Rizal Park — Yangon's People's Park ghost — and refused a horse carriage to Intramuros because I wanted the LRT instead: United Nations station, EDSA, Pasay, coins heavy in pocket.
That first evening the bay bars were American decades in amber — seventies and eighties band posters, expats and dollar accents, locals mixing in. I ate Igado and watched the MOA Eye turn; Catholic country, visible queer life, heat that does not apologize. I slept with more route than receipt.
Ferry to Binondo
Chinatown was act two. My hotel sat near Guadalupe ferry station; Google said Binondo was reachable by river — joy for someone who loves Bangkok boat commutes. The Pasig answered with smell: what's that? — sewage, diesel, green-brown honesty. Staff laughed: the ride is free. I waited forty minutes, bought street pizza and siomai for less than a dollar, boarded the only obvious foreigner on a working-class boat.
For an hour it was purgatory — heat, stench, nap denied — then the river cleared near Malacañang Palace, villas on the bank, sky opening. I disembarked at Escolta and walked into Binondo, the world's oldest Chinatown: hardware under colonial arches, char siu and dim sum steam, Lucky Chinatown Mall glitter. Myanmar's Chinese streets echoed; Spanish names on Chinese shops under Filipino sky.
From Binondo a pedicab to Intramuros — Jesus sticker on the dash, fear quieted — then Fort Santiago and the memorial to the Manila massacre. At dusk the Pasig from the fort was wide and clean, wind replacing stink. Manila Cathedral had closed; I ate at La Cathedral café instead, rooftop view, romance with humidity. Move It, not GrabBike, back to Makati; a massage where I fell asleep and woke at 11:30 to staff saying Thank you, Po — Filipino respect for elder, not Confucius. Midnight hotpot buffet closed the night.
Venice in the tropics
Another day a taxi dropped me at Venice Grand Canal Mall — Asia's Venice joke, gondola props, peri-peri chicken that tasted like Yangon's Yankin Road franchise years — homesickness lunch. Upstairs a small chapel cooled the day: empty, stained glass, a Buddhist visitor grateful for shade without membership. I walked McKinley Hill's polished streets, embassy quiet, then one narrow alley down into a barangay where basketball and school dance rehearsals happened twenty meters from wealth — Metro Manila's vertical justice in one afternoon.
BGC: city of tomorrow
I hired a motorbike toward Bonifacio Global City — BGC — through alleys the driver said tourists rarely see. A hill, then suddenly skyline: glass city, Bonifacio High Street parks, banks and telcos, expats walking dogs like Singapore. Pink Moovr e-scooters lined the path; I could not ride — GCash verification stalled on a foreign passport — and watched someone else rock the future while I stayed pedestrian.
BGC also sells guns legally — real firearms in a shop window, guards with shotguns at building doors — a culture shock after Southeast Asian soft borders. The contrast was the lesson: from barangay alley to BGC tower in one ride, poverty and plate glass separated by a climb and a policy.
Poblacion, Spirit Library, Cinco de Mayo night
Evening shifted to Poblacion, Makati's old barrio turned nightlife spine — Jollibee first, Jurong East memory, then go-go bars and costume parties where Spider-Man and Captain America drank like it was normal. I found The Spirits Library behind a bookshelf door: speakeasy, Filipino history in cocktails, classical records, bottles shelved like literature on a ladder you climb to pour.
Leaving, I got lost and stumbled into a street festival — Jose Cuervo sponsorship, tequila in plastic cups, a DJ booth splitting the avenue, mariachi arriving, stilt walkers, comedians, stars hidden on lampposts for free pours. It was Cinco de Mayo — Mexican victory remembered in Spanish diaspora Manila, though the calendar said October and my body said tequila. I photographed a banner that read Recuerdame, 5th Mayo and laughed: remember me, indeed. Foreigners and locals shared the block; tattoo parlours overflowed; joy was loud and uncomplicated.
Back at the hotel I bought balut — duck embryo courage — sniffed, failed to finish, showered, slept the fiesta off.
Last bowl: bulalo and departure
Final day hungover from celebration I ordered bulalo via Grab — beef marrow soup, sour calamansi, skull-deep cure — and ate slowly in air-conditioning while the sun scraped the window. Bone marrow melted on the spoon like apology from the city.
At the airport the queue was human and patient without automated lanes. Four hours in the air; home past midnight. The 2023 dream had landed; the 2024 body had paid for it in sweat, smell, ferry penance, and one Cinco night that was not on any itinerary.
Recuerderme
Manila does not need me to call it beautiful. It needs witnesses: bay at dusk, Pasig at noon and atoning hour, Binondo at hunger o'clock, chapel when heat wins, BGC when the future pretends poverty is elsewhere, Poblacion when Mexico meets Makati on a lost corner. The three Burmese notebooks said မှတ်မိနေမည် မနီလာ — I will remember Manila. English steals the spelling: Recuerderme Manila. Remember me; I remember you.
I flew out with more smell than photograph, more route than checklist — enough for a prelude before the nomad year would begin.