Cebu City at Night, Manila at Sunrise

 

Essay 3. CEBU CITY AT NIGHT, MANILA AT SUNRISE

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

My failure to take pictures of the city myself when our ship approached the Port of Cebu around 10 pm of March 22 was very disappointing. My cellphone needed to be recharged by then, but all the charging stations on the ship were full with passengers charging theirs. 

There are several photos of Cebu City on the internet, both during daytime and at night. Although they are perfect in every way, still, the awesomeness of the sight of the Cebu City coastline at night as seen by my eyes  wasn't quite captured. Missing in those night time photos are the hills of the city aglow with the lights from the numerous towers and condominium buildings that dot those hills. 

I, a native Manileño, was amazed. I never knew that Cebu City is now that modern and prosperous. It is Manila, Makati, and Baguio all rolled into one. But more amazed, I'm sure was my cycling buddy, Isko Dela Cruz, a 'genuine batang Hagonoy', who could only uttered the words, "Talaga palang progresibo ang Cebu." Isko, a 'super cyclist', brought his bicycle with him, and just rode it from Oslob to Cebu City on his trip home---a  distance of around 118  kilometers. That was to better explore perhaps the island and savor the city that had so dazzled him. 

On our return home, our ship arrived in Manila this time at daybreak. I last saw the port of Manila on board a ship in 2002. It wasn't at sunrise though. Maybe it was around late afternoon. 2002 to the present is a pretty long time. Sixteen years to be exact. Manila's skyline had undergone change. Where only low-rise buildings had stood before at the Tondo and San Nicolas areas---now, clusters of towers or high-rise condominiums can be seen beyond Manila's North Harbor. 

Those towers were a most telling counterpoint to the charmingly quaint art deco buildings of pre-war Manila. Escolta, Avenida Rizal, and Quezon Boulevard, are dotted with those buildings---reasons why, and witnesses to a time when Manila was being bragged about as the Paris of the Orient.Those art deco buildings are jewels that other Philippine cities don't have. They are reminders of Manila's storied past as the Philippines' premier city.

The North Harbor, among all ports I've been to, is dearest to me. Our first  house was just two streets away from the piers. My father and other Oslobanon relatives often took me to the piers on their way to the ships and boats where they worked. I was fascinated by the place, especially.by the ships docked there, all abuzzed with stevedores scurrying on wooden gangplanks carrying loads. But I was scared too. I can't help but feel anxious everytime a forklift with oversized two-prong lifting-fork approached.

North Harbor is now called.North Port. No mere cosmetic change, because things had drastically changed since last I was there. Everything seemed streamlined. Check-in procedures now resemble those being implemented at the airports---with all the x-rays, cameras, and security personnel being put to use. There was a time long ago when just about anyone can enter piers and board ships even without boarding passes. They just posed as companions of ship passengers. Vendors and even stow-aways can climb ships at will then. Nowadays, anyone who has no business in the place can no longer enter and linger inside the pier compound. Which is good.

A friend who was with us in Cebu remarked that Cebu City is not pretty. He was commenting on the Plaza Independencia area---just outside Cebu'City's equivalent of the Manila North Harbor---and Colon Street. Well, Plaza Independencia and its vicinity is 'Old Cebu', where the city's historic sites are, while Colon Street is recognized as the country's oldest street, comparable in its ambience to Rizal Avenue in Sta. Cruz, Manila. Not being uptowns, one should expect to see there outmoded structures grimy with age and sometimes neglect. If one wants the modernity and antiseptic neatness of Ayala and Ortigas Centers, Cebu City's Business Park is the place to go to.  

It was way off the mark therefore to describe Cebu's​ old port area as not pretty, especially when compared to what would greet ship passengers when they go out the gates of Manila's North Port. They'll be appalled I'm sure by the not-so-pretty dwellings that lined the road in front of the port up to this day. Even though the houses are concrete all right with many having three storeys or more, still, I don't consider them pretty. 

But there had been an improvement of sorts. Years back, there used to be a street just across North Harbor. That was Mabuhay Street. The block of houses on the western side of Mabuhay were all demolished to give way to the widening of Radial Road-10 (R-10). Mabuhay Street is no more. It is today just the easternmost lane of R-10. 

Now, that was truly an improvement because most of the houses demolished were definitely ramshackle. Just barung-barongs or hovels that may or may not be home to petty thieves. Anyway, the land on which these houses previously stood were all government property which the squatters had to vacate sooner or later in the name of progress. 

And that's what motorists driving along R-10 will see, a place bereft of squatters, because lining the east side of the road are concrete houses, many of them with three storeys, that are definitely better looking than the barung-barongs of old. My Tondo, the Tondo I grew up in is still overcrowded. But it is no longer squalid. It is slum no more.

(Photo above shows the port of Manila as seen from our approaching ship,)