“I bet you didn’t think your day would turn out like this,” Georgie the Porgie declared, settling onto a piano stool and pushing back his cap. Hell no, I muttered as three old nuns shuffled between me, the piano and a bold mural of Mary cradling baby Jesus: I hadn’t expected my day to be anything like this.

 

One! Two! Three! Four! Georgie dramatically bounced his foot off the piano pedals, swung his elbows wide and belted out “Let it be, let it be! Let it be, let it beee…” This Beatles rendition – by a quirky tour guide in a Catholic church in the middle of Asia – was altogether quite unexpected. Considering my calesa (a horse-drawn carriage) was waiting outside the church this day was, to quote Alice, becoming curiouser and curiouser.

 

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Manila, it turns out, is utterly captivating and thoroughly bizarre. Who would have thought that someone called Merry Christmas would have served delicious Spanish churros with my morning coffee. Or that Casio would have driven me across town in a converted Jeep named “Immaculate Conception”. Or that what is now Philippines’ oldest golf course was once a defensive moat, filled in and grassed because it attracted too many mosquitoes. (The crocodiles, Georgie said, were sold off to become shoes and handbags. Perhaps he was joking.)

 

Philippines’ capital city is often written off as too congested, too overpopulated*, too polluted and altogether too large. It’s true: Manila is all this. The city itself is just 35 square kilometres, but 16 cities have now sprawled into Metro Manila, a daunting 638 square kilometre urban jumble and it’s impossible to tell where one city begins and the other ends. Unless you’re in Intramuros – and this is where Manila’s soul seeps in.

 

Translated from Spanish, intramuros means “within the walls” and that’s exactly what this historic district is: a walled city. Built by the Spanish in the early 1600s to protect the very centre of their empire in Asia, the wall contains an enchanting district of colonial buildings and Catholic churches; a striking cathedral, remnants of cobbled streets and a sturdy fort. Parts of this once-grand area have crumbled into decay: the roots of fig trees strangle brick walls and nests of power lines criss-cross over the higgledy-piggledy homes of some of Manila’s poorest residents. But also there’s a sense of resilience here. Within its walls, Intramuros holds a tragic history of betrayal, murder and sheer pride.

 

To begin to understand Intramuros you need to know this: Philippines is a wonderful confusion of cultures collided by time and politics. Guide and performance artist Carlos Celdran – who has a penchant for controversy and a scathing take on his country’s history – put it this way: “Think of Hawaii and Mexico,” Carlos explained as he pushed a pair of bunny ears onto his head. “Now think of them having a lovechild with a whole lot of Chinese restaurants. That’s us. That’s Philippines.” (Then he’d handed me a pair of ears: “Can we take a quick selfie?”.)

 

For centuries Filippinos have been tossed between the whims of foreign rulers, picking up the quirks that have shaped their hybrid culture. After a long and intricate history with Indian, Sumatran, Chinese, Japanese and Malay traders, kings and sultans, the islands were colonised by the Spanish, who ruled for 333 years. Once they’d lost interest the Americans bought the islands in 1898 for $20-million (the same amount it cost them to build Manhatten’s New York Public Library in that same year, Carlos pointed out). After Japanese occupation during World War II, and after America bombed Intramuros into a pile of rubble (yes, it was “their” city at the time), they handed the islands back to the people, and Philippines gained its independence in 1946.

 

For decades dust gathered around the ruins of Intramuros, until the early 1980s when then-First Lady Imelda Marcos (she of the thousands of shoes) set up the Intramuros Administration to restore what was once the heart and soul of Manila.    

 

Although Plaza Roma is beautifully kept and the Manila Cathedral was once “kilometre zero” for Philippines, it seems that all roads in Intramuros lead to one place: past the stately Baroque-style San Augustin church (the location for many wedding photographs) to the manicured gardens of Fort Santiago. Catch a ride in one of the district’s creaky cycle rickshaws and your “driver” will likely wax lyrical about “our national hero”, who spent his last night in the fort before being executed. Here, there is now a shrine and museum dedicated to the life of Jose Rizal, often referred to very respectfully by Filippinos as “our national hero”, a gentle artist, writer and ophthalmologist whose writings inspired an anti-colonial revolution during Spanish rule.

 

It’s a tragic, tangled history within the walls of Intramuros – and yet life here is quirky; bright. On the streets you can buy ice-cream and halo-halo, a wild Filippino desert of shaved ice, evaporated milk, jelly, syrup, fruit and even sometimes beans and cheese. Red and yellow bunting – the colours of the Spanish flag – adorn some of the churches. Residents in the poorer parts joke that they live in the USA: the United Squatter Area. Rickety rickshaws blast songs from Celine Dion and murals showing national pride cling boldly onto remnants of walls. What at first glance is an interesting mix of forgotten grandeur and urban decay is actually a vivacious city where almost anything is possible… including being serenaded in a Catholic church by a man called Georgie the Porgie.

 

 

* According to London’s Global University, Manila has 15,617 people per square kilometre. Greater Sydney, according to the Australian Bureau of Stastics, has 380 people per square kilometre.