Mega-Malls

Yesterday we said goodbye to Granny and Grandpa, who are off to Hong Kong for a week of sybaritic luxury with an old friend, then back to sunny England.

To ease the parting, Z and I made like Manileños. That is, we spent the day at the mall, shopping, scoffing junk food and abusing the free aircon.

Though I guess if I were really going native, I’d have stocked up on diet potions — enriched with L-Carnitine to help burn fat! — too. Or perhaps a diet coffee to accompany my chocolate brownie? That is, a calorie-burning coffee. Not a coffee with low-fat milk.

The Philippines is a nation where Kraft Cheez Whiz can feature on the health pages of a major newspaper –- as a recommendation.

And where Kraft’s chief nutritionist for Asia can tell a hack, presumably with a straight face, that said product, though packed with calcium and undoubtedly beneficial, does not quite contain every single ingredient required for a healthy diet.

On the plus side (or plus size, for that matter), buying clothes is not as fraught with anxiety as it is in, say, Cambodia, though if we spend more than another day here I’m going to grow back into my fat trousers.

It’s a funny old place, Manila. On arrival, flying through one sunset, landing into a second, then locating our cheap hotel some time after dark, when the back streets are at their least welcoming, it provoked nothing more than a desire to leave.

But now, we’re quite attached to it. The sauna heat wraps around you like velvet. The shaven-headed security guards who stand with automatic weapons outside Starbucks, carparks, ATMs, ticket offices, you name it, feel like Dixon of Dock Green.

The ubiquitous Karaoke-TV bars, go-go joints (Guest Relations Officers wanted, 18-26, ideally 5’3” or over, birth certificate and health certificate required), the constant hubbub of condo construction, all seem as much a part of local colour as the neon gilding the skyscrapers and the crazily-named jeepneys.

And, my lord, the malls are mega! As Vegas is to hotels, so Manila is to malls. Acres upon acres of aircon retail covering block after block of the city centre, surrounded by weirdly empty streets, and packed with junk food outlets of every conceivable variety.

The Philippines was America’s only colony, and it shows.

At Robinsons, a comparatively petite landmark mall which covers four or so floors of a block or two in Malate, Granny and Grandpa treated Z to the entire Artemis Fowl series. Then we headed to Glorietta in Makati, where we said our farewells, and watched them slide down the escalator, endeavouring not to think.

We started well, with a freshly-squeezed kiwi juice. But then it all went a little Supersize Me.

Breakfast was a chocolate doughnut in Starbucks. Lunch was dim sum — read, carbs, pork and lard — from a chain stall in Glorietta. For dinner, we progressed to Robinsons and value meals at Burger King.

After Z bought a lilo with his last three weeks pocket money, we caught Liam Neeson rolling out his Jedi master schtick as Zeus, Sam Worthington modelling one of the world’s all-time worst movie accents and Ralph Fiennes (Hades) being comprehensively outclassed by Natalia Vodianova (Medusa) in Clash of the Titans.

It was a 3D screening, so popcorn and soda were included. Obviously, we ate them. My cheese-flavoured popcorn, sweet, tangy and tartrazine yellow with only the most sickly hint of dairy powder, was wrong in so many ways that it was almost right (if almost certainly illegal in the EU). And Z, who normally only likes sweet popcorn, was converted to the Filipino take on salt.

This morning, we were both distinctly liverish. And I don’t think it was the movie. After all, I sat through Troy with no significant after-effects.

I say liverish. I mean, not nauseous, exactly. Not even queasy. More bilious. Unsettled. In need of non-chemical sustenance.

I guess it’s the Tagalog equivalent of une crise de foie.