A Manila Hospital Tour

Makati Medical Center, I believe, is the Philippines’ finest medical facility. I was caught off guard, as my introduction to a notoriously chaotic city was a hospital that on the surface appeared to possess as many western luxuries as you would get in an airport. There was wi-fi, Burger King, filtered water in the taps, comfortable waiting rooms and even a Seattle’s Best Coffee. It was nearly the first time we saw westerners that weren’t sex tourists.

We made our way to the lab, where I would get tested for malaria and Dengue fever. Maybe the proper procedure should have been to go to a doctor first and follow his instructions, but I was almost certain it was malaria, and if it wasn’t then I probably didn’t have much to worry about. When my number was called, I explained that I wanted to get a malaria test and a Dengue test. When they told me that for the two tests, it would cost me about $80, I reconsidered the Dengue test. I decided I would start with the $20 malaria test, and go from there. By the way, a malaria test at a hospital in Mali cost about $3, so I felt like I was getting a little ripped off for the five minute procedure.

After the nurse drew my blood, I asked her how long the results would take. She said that it took eight hours, and since they close at 5 PM, I would have to come back the next day. When I brought the news of the long wait to Lise, she was outraged. After all, it is malaria, not a head cold. She went. She went to the counter, bypassing the whole number system, and demanded to know why it would take so long to process my test results. (In Mali the results took about 30 minutes to an hour). She was told that I could get it processed in two hours if we paid an extra 50%. This seemed like a completely ludicrous way of conducting the business of medicine, but we didn’t have much choice. We anted up, and sat in for the wait.

I was still feeling somewhat feverish when I got my results. I was a little disappointed to find that I did not test positive for malaria, since now I didn’t know what was wrong with me and there was still a possibility of Dengue, which is no picnic either. I couldn’t afford the expensive test her, so we figured out where the public hospital was and got a taxi. It felt awkward to be taking taxis when I knew we could probably figure our way around with the public transit system, but Lise insisted this wasn’t the time to be penny-pinching.

Before we even reached the ER at Manila’s largest public hospital, we could feel the chaos. Family’s were rushing in or hobbling out around us as we approached. Outside the doors of the ER, dozens of people were sitting around at various stages of treatment. Some had bandaged wounds, while others were still waiting to be attended to. Sickness hung in the air. As crowded and overwhelming as it was, we were given attention almost immediately. As a young doctor came to ask me some questions, a body wrapped in gauze was carried out the front door next to us. A young nurse joined in and I was answering rapid-fire questions from two directions. They were collecting information about my symptoms while another person came to take the details about my name, address, etc. Somebody also seemed to be gathering information from Lise. I was kind of in a daze, trying to figure out which parts of my body were in the most pain, and whether I had experienced any congestion in my sinuses. Somebody came with a device to check my blood pressure, but did not use it for this purpose. They wrapped it around my arm extra tight, pumped it up as high as it would go and left it there for about five minutes. This is a quick and dirty way of checking for Dengue, I would find out. After taking off the device and examining my skin for small bumps, they determined that I probably didn’t have Dengue. In the end, there were probably four people, all medical students, working with us. The whole thing took about ten minutes. They told us that because my condition was too serious and they were (as always) so overwhelmed with patients that we would have to go to a different hospital. I didn’t mind this at all. This hospital was inundated ­with the poor masses that couldn’t afford better treatment. As much as I was on a budget, I knew that if I had stayed there I would have been taking the spot of someone in much more need than me.

So now, still hauling around ever-growing backpacks, we asked around for directions to another hospital. After a twenty minute walk, we arrived in the afternoon heat to a hospital that was somewhere between the opulence of the first hospital and the squalor of the public hospital. After speaking with a couple different nurses and doctors, they seemed unsure of what might be my problem. They insisted that I get a few tests done, including the Dengue test. They sampled my blood and urine, and then it was a matter of waiting for an hour. Although this hospital was not nearly as modern as the first one, it was far more personal and I felt the care seemed adequate.

I was actually kind of nervous when the nurse came to give me my diagnosis. I had expected the tests to be inconclusive, but they weren’t. I did not have dengue, but I did have a urinary tract infection. That was unexpected, as I didn’t know that would give me days of fever and muscle aches. They agreed it was odd too, since I hadn’t experienced any of the typical symptoms of this. Apparently it can be common for westerners when they come to hot and humid climates, especially if they are chronically dehydrated. They prescribed me some antibiotics, I paid my bill ($77? Not too bad) and sent me on my way.

Now we were on the hunt for a hotel room. We were close enough to the neighborhood with most of the cheap hotels to walk there. We ended up settling for a sleazy place with thin walls and dirty shared bathrooms at an unimpressive price. The neighborhood, being a major area for tourists, was less modest than what we were used to with a healthy red light feel. Our hotel was on the third floor of a building, and walking up the stairs we passed a girly bar advertising with skanky portraits of their lineup of dancers. Outside, there were swanky malls, western restaurants, a variety of bars, alongside tacky, neon-laden strip joints, thinly veiled brothels and over-sized karaoke clubs.

In the evening, we wandered around in search of the Philippines that we had grown to enjoy after dark, but it was nowhere to be found. The karaoke bars were big and showy, where customers would rent a private karaoke room and buy expensive cocktails. Basic eateries, food stalls and a humble, locally made videoke machine were nowhere to be found. We walked through the neon jungle for an hour, considering a splurge on Korean BBQ or Middle Eastern food. Everything was just too expensive, though. We finally found a guy with a food cart attached to a motorcycle. We bought some cheap noodles from him and headed in from our lackluster night in our lustrous neighborhood. On the way back, scantily clads from the strip joints called out to us from the entrances, trying to get us to come inside, while the occasional lady boy made passes at us.

The next morning, Lise was feeling in bad shape. She had a fever and muscle aches. So we packed our bags, checked out, and walked back to the hospital. Now that we had been to three of Manila’s hospitals, we knew the routine. After spending most of the day at the hospital, and going through various tests, it turned out that she didn’t have anything. The doctor couldn’t really explain what was giving her the symptoms, so he just gave her some paracetemol and told her to get some rest.

That evening we met up with Lewis, our couch surfing host from England. He was spending a few months in Manila for an internship with Unilever. He lived in a neighborhood much more of our taste than where we had stayed the night before. Plus, his three-bedroom apartment was far more comfortable than most any hotel room we had stayed in on the trip.

One of my major impressions of many British people, even the traveler types, is that they are exceptionally proper. Lewis was no exception. He dressed well, kept his shoes shined and his apartment tidy. Although we knew we were dirty, he still made us feel welcome. More importantly though was that beneath our contrasting appearances, we all had a similar thirst for adventures and rugged traveling.

He was brand new in the city as well, so when he was showing us around his neighborhood, he was still getting to know it. He showed us a place where he had enjoyed dinner the night before. It was a humble, hole in the wall eatery with a few plastic tables and chairs in front. They specialized in “silog”, the dish of rice, fried egg and some variety of meat. We chose our respective “silog”. I chose the classic, tapsilog. I had had this a couple times before, and was usually under whelmed. This time, though, something was different, and I was excited about Filipino food once again. The biggest difference was in the quality and rich flavor of the meat. Something about the simplicity of the rice and egg alongside it was enjoyable as well.

We wandered through various streets on the way back, getting a feel for the neighborhood that, for a big city, felt like a small village-like community. Many people were out in the streets, enjoying life and being friendly with each other. Just as we decided to find a beer to take back to the apartment, the rain came without warning. It poured so strongly that it didn’t make much sense to try to stay protected by storefront awnings. Five seconds of exposure would have you soaked to the bone.

After getting the beer, we passed a balut vendor. Now, balut has become quite famous as one of the world’s most…unique foods. For those that don’t know, it is a hard-boiled fertilized egg with a partially developed chicken fetus inside. Over the years I have built a decent resume of strange foods consumed. Bugs, bush meats, offal, unexpectedly fermented items, etc. This was a new step, though. For weeks I had been avoiding one of the biggest items on my to-do list in the Philippines. Knowing that there might be tiny bones or feathers in that little egg would be bad, but the juice that needed to be slurped out of the egg first truly terrified me. Worse yet, Lise said she would not join me on this culinary quest. I asked Lewis if he had ever tried balut. He casually said that he had the last time he was in the Philippines a year prior, and it wasn’t so bad. He was very casual about it and said he would try it again. I asked him about the juice that floats at the top. He said to think of it as chicken soup broth. Lise continued along as we walked up to the balut vendor. She didn’t want to see or hear it. A Filipino man had also arrived to have a snack, so we followed his lead. We punctured the top of the shell, and squeezed in a bit of the sauce that it came with. We knocked the egg back and sucked out the hot juice from the hole. He had been right. The juice was like a rich chicken broth. That was the easy part. Now we had to peel the rest of the shell off to reveal the horrific insides. I tried not to look (or think about) that recognizable shape of a baby chicken as I bit into it. There wasn’t much of a crunch, but it definitely did not have the uniform consistency of a hard-boiled egg. We chowed it down to the bottom, which was an inedible lump of cartilage. In the end, the flavor, to me, did not seem too far off than a regular boiled egg. It wasn’t bad at all, but the different texture would be something to get used to.