The (touristy) red light district

My Australian colleagues have been to Manila a few times recently. They’ve developed a ritual to eat at the Filling Station each trip. It’s an over-the-top shrine to a sort of 1950s America that probably never existed.

My verdict? Atmosphere 14 out of 10… more kitsch than should be possible in one place. Food meh… I like diner food and this was ok, but that’s as far as I’d go to recommend it. But dinner out with your workmates is always fun no matter what, and we had sampled plenty of Filipino cuisine at other meals, so there was something to be said for comfort food.

The restaurant is just at the edge of the Makati bubble. Inside the bubble is lots of foreigners and lots of money. An American can walk down the street in relative security. Outside the bubble, it gets grittier.

It turns out that the restaurant is on P Burgos Street, a well-known red light district… so our group of five were enthusiastically offered massages and other unspecified services by an array of girls and boys. The restaurant is in the same building as a hotel, and the rates were helpfully displayed in the men’s room. 30 minutes and up…

I’m sure there’s a lot of poverty and diseases and debts and addictions and exploitation behind that whole scene. But being inside the bubble, and out on the street (definitely not legal like in Amsterdam), all the problems are scrubbed and hidden, so it was almost carnival-like to walk through.