Toughest Place to be a Bus Driver

       One of the visiting researchers here sent us a link to a BBC movie about a London bus driver who comes to Manila to learn how to drive a jeepney. We highly recommend watching it both because it’s a great hour-long piece but also because it gives a slightly better idea of what our life is like here. While we haven’t been to Tondo, the neighborhood shown here where people are eating re-cooked leftovers, much of the rest of the film is very familiar. For example, our neighbors have spent the past few months adding another floor to their home to get some more space. Keep in mind that a few things the film can’t really capture are the heat and the quality of the air, especially when you’re sitting on the road stuck in traffic beathing in exhaust. Also, that traffic is like this six days a week since Saturday is a work day.  Of course, it also doesn’t quite show  the incredible hospitality of so many people we’ve met or some of the wealthier parts of Manila, such as Makati or Fort Bonifacio. This film definitely captures what much of Manila is like, though. We don’t ride jeepneys too often since we normally take the train or pay more for a taxi, but we’ve been on them enough to agree that the drivers are virtuosic in their simultaneous navigation of traffic and exchange of pesos (Watch video below or here).