shopping

Manila Chinatown: The World’s Oldest

Posted on February 8, 2009

It’s Chinese New Year. Ongpin Street–the main thoroughfare of Manila Chinatown– is a traffic jam of shoppers weighed downed by their bags of tikoy (rice cake), ube hopia (taro pastry), and ma chang (meat-filled sticky rice).  Despite their heavy load, they continue to jostle, crane their necks and chirpily browse the sidewalks of trinket hawkers bargaining jade amulets, bracelets, and good luck charms in Fookien-accented Tagalog. Goldsmiths, vegetable vendors and traditional medicine sellers soon chime in. Beneath all the hullabaloo, atRead More→

Good Night, Bangkok

Posted on January 5, 2009

At the height of Bangkok’s anti-government protests that shut down the airports late November, I was given no choice but to spend the remainder of my second visit to this vibrant city gleefully basking in its wonderful fluorescent glow. Very eager to test the slow shutter speeds of my Horizon Perfekt, I wandered the ‘City of Angels’ camera-armed to discover a glimmering labyrinth as amazing at night as it is under the midday sun. As news of the local pandemoniumRead More→

Khao San Road (Bangkok, Thailand):

Posted on August 29, 2008

At the busy neighborhood of Banglamphu north of the Grand Palace is the famous backpacker’s Mecca: Khao San Road. Chaos is constant in Khao San, a pulsating plethora of multicultural, gastronomical and commercial life… true to the images swirling in my head as I read Alex Garland’s cult-classic-turned-blockbuster about a secret paradise called “The Beach”:  “The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok on Ko Sanh Road. The Ko Sanh Road was backpacker land. Almost all the buildingsRead More→

Neo Chinatown Mall

Posted on March 31, 2008

Something is dawning amidst the cogon grass and turbid canals of the Pasay-Parañaque reclamation area, south of Manila Baywalk. Something potentially more exciting than the concrete behemoth called Mall of Asia. Welcome to Neo Chinatown.  A complex of six clusters characterized by traditional Chinese architecture and adorned by red lanterns, this open-air mall promises to rival the shopping and leisure experience of Old Chinatown in Binondo, Manila. Of course, this synthetic landmark can never compare to lively Ongpin, with itsRead More→