Field Trip

With Shelly working from home today, I had a day with the car, so I headed into Manila heading, eventually, to run a couple of errands and do some of the touristy things that Shelly had no interest in.

After doing the work I needed to do, I headed to Makati and parked the car near the Metro Rail Transit System's Ayala Station. (There's a photo of the station at this link, by the way.) I had no particular destination in mind, but hadn't ridden the Manila mass-transit system yet, and thought I should take a ride from one end of EDSA to the other. I took a brief stop to shoot a couple of photos at the Araneta Station.

Outside the Philippines, Araneta Coliseum is perhaps best-known for hosting the 1975 Muhammed Ali-Joe Frazier "Thrilla in Manila." It's also known as the largest indoor facility in all of southeast Asia. Several months ago, we went to the wet market that's at the lower right of this photo. For the unitiated, a "wet market" is the place to buy your meat, fish and vegetables if you want to avoid paying supermarket prices. Do to my wife's background in the meat business, I am prohibited from shopping at these places, as the meat is generally plopped into an unchilled pile, then cut atop a wooden cutting board with a knife that isn't cleaned between customers.

Just for the sake of completeness, here's a shot from the other side of MRT's Araneta Station. With the MRT ride taken care of, I was off to the Museum of the Central Bank of the Philippines, popularly known as the Money Museum. We tried to visit once before, but the museum is only open Monday through Friday. Getting through the imposing gates of the Central Bank compound was easy -- the guards asked me if I had a valid ID, but didn't want to see it -- and the musem itself was interesting, if you're into the history of money.

For example, did you know that in 1998, President Joseph Estrada issued, in honor of the Philippine Centennial celebration, the largest legal tender note in the world? It's worth P100,000 -- about $1,925 -- and measures 8.5 x 14 inches, the same size as a sheet of legal paper. The bill features his swearing in ceremony, and is certified by the Guiness Book of World Records as being the largest in the world, topping, according to the museum, the 1 Quan note issued by China in 1368. Only 1,000 of these bills exist, so grab yours now, fold it up and stuff it in your wallet.

The P200 note -- a bit less than $4 -- debuted in June 2002. Not to be outdone by the man she replaced, new president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had her father, former president Diosdado Macapagal, on the front, and her swearing in ceremony on the back.

Money in the Philippines vividly illustrates the close relationship between the Philippines and the United States. This P10 note from the 1930s features George Washington (the note is "payable in silver pesos or legal tender currency of the United States"). And the current P100 note actually has the American flag on the front, in a depiction of the July 4, 1946, ceremony when the Philippine flag went up over Manila, and the U.S. flag came down for the last time, making the Philippines truly independent.