Manila has become our new staging post a cheap QANTAS flight there and a very cheap separate QATAR business class to Doha and onwards. I am of a vintage to see the late, great Muhamed Ali in his prime. His prematch pressers were legendary and none more so than his 1975 title bout against Joe Frazier that he dubbed the “Thrilla in Manila”. He taunted Frazier with the quip that the fight would be “a Killa and a Thrilla and a chilla when I get that gorilla in Manila”. To this day any mention of Manila brings to my mind that encounter.
This time our flight is broken with an overnight stay so I take my life partner to the old city, Intramuros for the morning. Built by the Spanish in1571, it now is a walled suburb within the greater Manila. Initially all habitation was within these walls and Fort Santiago provided the military security.
The Spanish held the city and Phillipines until they lost the Spanish America war in 1898. Intramuros was the centre of the Philippines Commission of USA and became the headquarters for the Phillipines American fleet. The Japanese invaded in 1941 and prevailed until the American forces retook Manila but not before the Japanese massacred 100,000 Phillipinos in February 1945 in a bloodthirsty orgy of violence that defies belief and description. Children and babies were bayoneted. There were beheadings and pack rapes, no-one was spared. The Japanese then sealed intramuros and burnt it to the ground.
The reconstructed Intramuros today is a pretty neighbourhood with copious greenery, the fort and the walls persist and buildings churches and cathedral have all been rebuilt.
There is a poignant corner of Fort Santiago dedicated to Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Phillipines. He was a writer, scientist and ophthalmologist whose writings inspired Phillipines nationalism against the then Spanish colonial masters. He was tried for sedition and executed in 1896, aged 35 years.
