Week 2 -- Routine Play

Every day I wake up at 8AM, stretch, do pushups, shower, dress, take a multivitamin, and eat a bowl of substitute Cornflakes in RGHB-fortified milk. I live on the 8th floor of the Park Regent condo complex on de la Costa Street in downtown Makati City, Metro Manila, Manila, PI. Bob is my bodyguard, shown to the right. I pay $150 a month to have him after 5PM. When he was younger, he was a sergeant in the Philippine army, and has since guarded everyone from the son of President Estrada to the 5-year-old daughter of the country’s richest citizen. If Bob is around, he will take me down in the elevator and drive me three blocks to our office tower. On the way we will pass about ten security guards holding everything from military shotguns to M-1 machine guns. If he’s not around, I have to walk. Bob always carries a Hungarian-made sidearm and a radio, which he claims he can use to get every guard on the street to start shooting at whoever is bothering me. I asked Bob what he would do if someone tried to start a fight with me at a bar, and he said “shoot them in the legs immediately.” Apparently Philippine law is a little more punitive than back home.

One of Bob’s most valuable functions is that he is able to indicate whether or not a girl I am interested in is a transsexual. I wont escape embarrassment by saying that its often very hard to tell here, and commonly Filipinos will provide horror stories of an American friend ending up in bed with a “vampire.” I generally check with Bob when a girl approaches me. Thumbs down means we hop bars or he tells her to get lost. I asked Bob what the transsexuals want from straight guys, and he said it's a kind of sport for them. The Pinoy call all transsexuals “gays” – homosexuals who don't genderbend are “respectable gays” – lesbians are “dykes”. The uneducated Pinoy (including most servants) also seem to refer to blacks as “niggers” or “negros”. Yay for the third world.

Speaking of bars, let's talk about Greenbelt. Greenbelt is currently the trendiest area in Manila, containing hip bars like Ice, Temple, Absinth, and Havana. The hotspot seems to rotate every few years from Greenbelt to Eastwood to Fort Bonifacio to Malate and back again. Malate has been compared to the Castro district of San Francisco, whereas the others are more upscale. All contain essentially the same mix of bars – the college hotspot (Temple), the trendy EuroAmerican-style club (Ice), the punky druggie roost (Absinth), and, of course, the whore-packed dive filled with old white men (Havana). In its defense, Havana has cheap drinks and is pretty clean. They have a good Salsa band and the guard at the door kicks transsexuals out, so you don’t have to worry about getting vamped. But, as I said, it’s packed with whores and dirty old men. The D.O.M. mostly keep to themselves; they seem to be made up of investment bankers and industry managers who were unlucky enough to land a stint in Manila rather than Hong Kong. They sniff a lot of coke and spend most of their time talking to the whores and drinking scotch.

Temple is probably my second favorite spot. On the north wall is a huge golden Buddha that serves as the bar. There is a balcony that goes along the 2nd floor around the dance floor, and which opens into a smoking-room where most of the cool crowd hangs out, playing cards and writing text messages. The security here is excellent – they actually had the balls to tell me not to dangle my San Mig over the edge of the balcony. Temple is great fun. Ice is too expensive and is more crowded than a Kappa Sig foam party, but it’s the only place I’ve found that plays rap music. Most people who go to Ice seem to be foreigners who haven’t figured out that it sucks, or vamps looking to prey on said foreigners. I met a bunch of U.S. marines here who told me that it’s easy to get laid if you have dough, but they ran out a few years ago. Absinth is risky unless you are gay.

Across the street from Greenbelt, on a plane of its own, separated from the masses, is V-Bar. V-Bar is Manila’s equivalent of Studio 54. It is difficult to express how cool you must be to enter V-Bar and actually have a good time. Most people seem to be basketball players (flashbacks from SAE) or wearing Lakers jerseys and sideways hats. The chicks are ALL models. ALL. I counted more hot girls here than anywhere else I have ever been.

Models turn out to be flighty creatures with uncertain goals. They are the only girls here – and praise the powers of Jebus for this blessing – that dance in American style (actual physical contact between partners). They don’t seem to want money, and they don’t seem to want to have sex. I watched one of the most famous actors in the Philippines get smacked down by a girl in V-Bar last night. It was painfully cruel. Mostly it seems like they just want to dance and look hot, which they do a good job of. I watched one girl slice her leg open on a shard of broken glass, bandage it up with napkins and her gum , and keep on dancing while one of the Low and Miserables mopped up the blood on the floor. I sometimes wonder if V-Bar pays these girls just to hang out there and never leave.

I apologize for not taking pictures of more interesting stuff (people with guns, hot girls, flashy cars, suitcases of coke). Will try to snap some good ones tonight. Here are:


palm trees outside my place





a transvestite or a model?





Tagi Tai volcano (there's a golf course up here too)



Bob’s report on my activities for the first week (partly censored)
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