Our flight to Manila was entirely misleading. We rode on a huge airbus, a Cadillac of an airplane. Everything felt first class. The only hint of what lay ahead was the service. Our stewardesses were notably normal - I mean, they were fast and efficient, but only barely civil. After months of totally servile Southeast Asian stewardesses, waiters, etc., the Philippine Airlines stewardesses seemed downright weird. "Fish or chicken!" they yelled at each of us.

I'll try to be brief about the airport nightmare. After a perfect landing, instead of pulling up to the terminal, our plane stopped on the tarmac, and several hundred of us passengers had to wait in line for a single bus to shuttle us to the terminal. Immigrations was awful. About 1,000 of us stood shoulder to shoulder for nearly an hour, waiting to see one of about 10 immigrations officers. Luggage claim was even worse. Everyone jammed right up to the luggage carousel and made of point of touching every passing bag. Our bags and bikes didn't arrive for about half an hour after we cleared immigration!

Finally, to our horror, we saw that our bikes were on the luggage carousel too, crashing around with all the rest of the luggage. The baggage handlers had carried the bikes from the plane to the luggage claim area, but instead of setting them on the floor, they threw them on the carousel. I thought of scenes from Batman where Batman looks like he's going to die as he's tied onto a log headed into a sawmill.

Eric says he nearly accidentally killed a woman who refused to step aside as he tried to wrestle our bikes from the carousel.

(Lesson for other Manila-bound cyclists: our bikes got trashed partly because we didn't take the time to remove pedals or turn the handlebars or release the shift cables. We had faith that since the airline didn't ask us to do these things, they would be careful with our bikes. Instead, after making us remove all the air from the tires, they took joyrides on our bikes, which may have hurt the rims. One of Eric's rims was already cracked, and we were planning to replace it anyway, but I'm sure the last joyride didn't help.)

The airport experience taught us about two important things in the modern Filipino culture: guns and elbows.

Guns are everywhere. When we got off the shuttlebus, a stewardess stood at the head of our line, holding up a Ziplock with three pistols, and giggling. We later figured that passengers had checked these guns before taking off and were supposed to collect them. Later, in Manila, we saw "No Guns Allowed" signs in the theaters, restaurants and shops. No one actually checked us for guns, but nearly every store had an armed guard at the entrance. Some wore pistols. But one guy at McDonald's carried a gun with a two-foot barrel and a pistol handle. The guys at banks carried automatic machine guns. I can't walk down the street without wondering who around me is armed. I haven't seen this many guns since I went to Mexico in 1988 during an oil strike; just about everyone there was carrying a double-barreled shotgun.

I know America has lots of guns and they are easy to get. But it seems scarier here. Since the security guards, who probably don't get paid much, are carrying huge, serious looking guns. What happens when that guy at McDonald's has a bad day?

Now for the elbows. A lot of people like to push in Southeast Asia, but this is the first place I've ever felt a lot of elbow action. Several people elbowed their ways past me in the mob at immigration and later, in any other line I happened to stand in. Eventually I had to start elbowing back. I used my elbows twice in my first two days here, which is two times more than I've ever used them in my life.

Before I tell you how disappointing Manila was, I should say, the Philippines was great as soon as we got away from Manila and former military bases. You can read about that later.

Manila was depressing. We rode our bikes in from the airport and saw a lot more poverty than we've seen anywhere, even in Indonesia, which is technically one of the poorest nations on the planet right now. Like most big cities, Manila had its share of litter, dust and heavy traffic and smog. But it also has lots and lots of kids on the streets. We saw naked five-year-old kids running barefoot across the road. As we neared our hotel in the Ermita tourist district, we rode through slums that reminded me of San Francisco's tenderloin-lots of poor, very skinny and surly looking people hanging around on dirty streets, while a few well-dressed people walked by.

The only bright-looking thing about Manila were the Jeepneys (jeeps) refinished with shiny metal (tin?) and covered with day-glo neon decals. Usually there are two forward-facing seats up front, and then two long benches in back, where the passengers face each other. Most of these Jeepneys are public buses, but many are private family cars. They have signs like "God Bless our Trip," "Forgive Me," "Cruz Family," and (usually on a mud flap) "Keep Distance." They have lots of lights and are absolutely beautiful. I hope my next car is a Jeepney.

Our hotel, Malate Pension, was like a little oasis. We convinced the armed guard to let us roll our bikes into the lobby, and then got a cheap ($12) fan-cooled room which actually never got cool, so several nights I woke up well past midnight to take a shower to cool off. We stayed there four days, catching up on sleep, our journal and errands. In our runs around the city, we found lots of email cafes (if you're in Manila check in Megamall and other large malls), and lots of malls. I tried some bibingka (a Filipino dessert) somewhere, and it wasn't anything like the bibingka I used to get in my neighborhood in San Francisco. (I remember a thick sweet rice cake covered with some kind of caramel goo; we got a much healthier yellowish cake, not made out of rice at all). While we were lazing around we saw Lost in Space, which Eric had been dying to see. (Eric: Even in the theater we couldn't forget we were in Manila. The movie stared 15 minutes EARLY and families came and went all during the movie, even in our "premiere class" (balcony) seats).

Next: Prostitutes in the City of Angels