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The worst thing about the Philippines for me was the heat, I was a pale kid coming from Cleveland winter into tropical 100 degree heat. And the place smelled terrible, sewage, garbage, pollution. There were pollution level indicators the size of billboards all over downtown, they were all so dirty that none of them worked anymore. Like you need an indicator to tell you the pollution is bad when it hurts to breathe. I started smoking and inhaling through my nose just to kill my sense of smell so I could go where I needed to without throwing up.
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The best part of the Philippines is the price of liquor. I could go to a bar, have four or five drinks to get myself going, and my tab would be about $2. I started walking around shooting, later I had Rudy, my parent's driver, take me around. He told me about the society and culture, giving me an overview of the city's history and day-to-day life, which helped accelerate my photographs. He also showed me where to score bottles of whiskey for less than $5, and when he knew I was getting pretty far in the bag he'd start singing along with Creedence Clearwater Revival at the top of his lungs as he drove. He drove me all over Manila, got me rides on homemade push-carts that run on railroad tracks, took me to villages where I was told I was the first white person that had ever been there, haggled the price of stuff I wanted to buy, showed me what streets not to walk down, watched out for kidnappers, and kept cops looking for bribes, off my ass. Whenever anybody asked him what I was shooting for he'd say, "CNN. Top Secret. Very Important."
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