Why did we make a stop to travel to Manila Philippines on our international gap year, given that it sucks? It’s a good question and I probably need to remind myself of why, because I keep asking the question, why are we here? Currently we are in the thick of our stay at Urban Deca Homes Ortigas, about half way through our time here. In between suffering our crammed condo, creepy dudes asking BC which unit we’re staying in, and shitting our guts out, I started legitimately questioning what benefit this is providing.

In part, reminding ourselves of why we bothered stopping here is to remind ourselves of why we went on this gap year.

Original Gap Year Planning

Manila was penciled into our financial planning for gap year from nearly the beginning. With Guam being the genesis of the whole year, both Japan and the Philippines were early candidates for next locations. Manila was easy to get numbers for on numbeo, so it was always just there on our list. We didn’t necessarily intend to end up in Manila proper, it was more of a placeholder and a guide for our numbers. Our ideas of where to go in the Philippines ranged from nice beaches, to cool mountain towns like Baguio.

Typhoons and Pivot

While we were in Guam, the Philippines got hit with an unnatural series of natural disasters. This included an earthquake in Cebu City, and back to back typhoons (Kalmaegi and Uwan/Fung-Wong). This impacted multiple potential destinations including our top choice Baguio.

At this point we thought about skipping the Philippines entirely, because the thought of staying in Manila (which was not severely impacted) sounded beyond boring. There was literally nothing we wanted to see here. Intramuros would be ok to see, and so would the Mall Of Asia, but those didn’t seem worth the stop. We were seriously considering going straight to Vietnam.

Why We Went To Manila

Ultimately enough reasons began to accumulate that we kept the Philippines on the list, and settled for Manila since it was minimally impacted by the various natural disasters.

Flight Costs

As we looked at tickets directly to Vietnam from Guam, we noticed the cost was equal to a ticket to Manila and a ticket from Manila to Vietnam. The stop in Manila was essentially free.

People

We still thought it would be a great experience to mingle with the people here. English is an official language, and staying at a place like Urban Deca Homes Ortigas would provide countless encounters with the locals. This decision has played out in reality; we have had more interactions with locals than all other locations combined.

Cost Of Living

Manila may end up being the lowest cost place we visit this entire year. That in itself provides benefits, allowing us to spend more on other legs of our journey. There may not be much interesting to do in Manila, but that cost savings will allow us to do many interesting things in more interesting places.

Interesting Aspects

There are certain interesting aspects of Manila. It is the most densely populated city in the world, and I think living in that can be an experience worth having. We will come out of this gap year having lived in the most populated city (Tokyo) and the most densely populated city (Manila).

An Exercise In Suffering

In order to truly enjoy anything in life, it requires suffering. I don’t say that trying to be a philosopher, it’s just an unfortunate fact of the way brains work. Due to hedonic adaptation, if you experience nothing but comfort and convenience, that will become your baseline and not provide you any additional happiness over time.

Each year in CO I perform a hedonic desensitization when I go elk hunting. In the high mountains in late fall, it gets brutally cold. Sleeping in a tent when it’s below zero provides no way to escape the cold. It’s miserable while you’re trying to sleep, and it stays that way except for the moments during the day where you hike hard enough to finally get warm just for that brief time that you’re moving. Trying to change clothes at night and clean myself leads to Parkinson’s level cold shakes, and that cold never truly leaves until the next day’s hike. Returning home after several days of this makes me feel like I’ve won the lottery for the next month. Our house is amazing, our bed perfect, the food incredible, the lack of shivering appreciated.

I view Manila as the same hedonic desensitization tool that we can use on this gap year. The following unscientific graph shows our anticipated enjoyment throughout southeast Asia and beyond with and without a stop in Manila. Manila is going to provide us a new perspective and baseline of happiness in Vietnam and Thailand. The green line (with Manila) is far more interesting to live. Even the low point in Manila is more interesting than living life at a straight line five, not really enjoying anything, and not experiencing any suffering.

Parting Thoughts

We genuinely are not enjoying our time here. That’s ok and will serve us well on the gap year as a whole. Back in CO, every day of our life was virtually identical. Our happiness was never up and never down, which is not a good way to live in my opinion. A big part of why we did this gap year was to mix up life and experience the highs and the lows, knowing that you can’t have one without the other.