Labyrinthine, part 1

[pielcanela]

When I announced to my family and friends that the Philippines was on my list of places to see "for research," I was told it was a shame I was just going there to see the malls. I asked, "What else is there to see?"

The National Geographic reruns I grew up with depicted the Philippines as a country of oceans and forests teeming with all forms of life. All the latest guidebooks say those natural wonders are all but gone. Large companies have drained them of life to fuel their gigantic machines; even the human population participates actively in their destruction, in obeisance of the rules that the corporations have imposed on their day to day living.

In this, the Philippines is no different from many other Southeast Asian countries.

The "heritage sites" may still be there as tourist traps, but the majority of areas, urban or rural, have been eaten up by malls. It may seem strange for those of us living in more progressive countries, for such a consumer-driven business to become dominant in any economy: the only way to get to the top is if everyone is a buyer. But if everyone buys and no one produces, how can any business flourish?

This was never truly an issue in Southeast Asia; the malls there aren't just compendiums of shops, after all. They're massive real estate investments, office spaces, residential areas, in some cases even airports - they're entire cities unto themselves, growing in all directions. The buyers and sellers, thinkers and artists, creators and destroyers, all basically live in malls. Everything they do ends up contributing to the good of the mall.

Small wonder malls become pillars of the economy.

Understandably, mall magnates don't talk much about their methods, or their liabilities. A few scattered documentaries have been made speculating on the kinds of damage suffered by the people who have to live in the malls' shadows, as well as the unfortunate souls who have to live outside the malls. It has never been easy to find people to interview: many of the ones who allowed themselves to be interviewed, even under conditions of anonymity, were never seen again, and their relatives and friends denied knowing a single thing. It was as if they never existed.

I'm only one of many conducting independent research on "mall culture," I'm sure. But I do wonder if anyone else has gone as far as I have. I have never seen anyone write about it in this manner, though perhaps some are already working on long-term affairs that are going to turn into books someday.

I went into it on my own resources, without the backing or protection of any private or government entity. I can only talk about what I personally witnessed, and hope that's enough.




I had only intended to stay a couple of days. It was just to get a sense of what I wanted to write about. I had no intention of attracting attention by staying too long or giving too much away. Then, I planned on coming back later, hopefully after I've secured the funding for a book or documentary deal.

In short, I needed to be invisible, so I went as a tourist. As a tourist, I was only expected to spend.

I had even booked a few days off to see the "heritage sites" nearest the mall I wished to scout. As expected, they were overelaborate presentations of color and sound. Even the local residents wore brightly-colored clothes that looked as if they were only taken out whenever someone visited. All the fraud only served to make me more excited to escape to the gritty reality of mall life.

The mall I especially wanted to visit was the Mall of SEA - one of the oldest malls and certainly THE largest mall in the Philippines, located smack in the middle of the country's capital. I took precautions and went there only by private shuttle - traveling by bus, jeepney, train or any other open-air mode would expose me to air that foreign lungs are unable to take in, and diseases that would break down foreign immune systems in an instant.

The windows of the shuttle were darkly tinted, but even from there I could see the danger. A thick chemical mist hid nearly everything from sight. One could barely see anything, but it was clear enough that plants grew, nor birds or small animals. If there were any rivers or streams, they were packed with unidentifiable bits of garbage. I couldn't see what color they were.

To escape the toxic air, the citizens mostly stayed indoors. I heard that if it rained, people actually fled their homes, because the acid ate right through the buildings. Then they simply repaired the roofs and walls with any serviceable material they could pick out of the garbage dumps or polluted streams. The people living outside the malls here had not yet developed acid-proof roofing, like they did in Jakarta.

I also heard that the people who lived outside the malls were so dumbed down by the poison they could not help but ingest, that they could no longer innovate, and were in fact little more than mindless zombies. Starvation and/or long-term chemical poisoning had in some instances even warped their physiques. It was never said, but one presumes that the damage would persist through the generations.

It made me thankful that I couldn't see them. I thought I caught a glimpse of a crooked, bipedal creature lumbering through the mist, but the shuttle was moving too quickly.

The shuttle was mandated to be fast, going down a typical zero visibility, zero obstruction electric route. Mall services made certain that foreign tourists received all possible protection from the things that killed the Outsiders, as they were disdainfully referred to. "My parents were Outsiders," my shuttle attendant mentioned, but it was as if she made a mistake; she clamped her lips shut and would not speak to me again for the rest of the trip. However, she stayed warm and attentive and made sure my glass always had exactly a fifth of lambanog in it.

(It was bottled lambanog, by the way: watered down significantly and artificially flavored, with very little actual alcohol. Export quality. I could buy some of it at my local grocery shop, patented by the "Gardinos Group, Cebu City Philippines." Gardinos, as I remember, is the name of the largest mall complex there. My sister-in-law likes to use unflavored Gardinos lambanog for cooking pasta.)

One is not advised to try and look too closely at the areas outside the malls, lest it become obvious how horrid the living conditions there are. They are worse than slums, more akin to prison camps - but there have been many stories already told about Outsiders. Those poor unfortunate souls have been forgotten by their governments, condemned to empty suffering, in some cases considered less than human.

I had not come to see the Outsiders.

Shopping malls are gigantic oases in the middle of these seas of squalor. Many malls have atmospheric modulators set up around the perimeter, so that someone approaching from outside would see the mall surrounded by a sort of protective dome. The artificially generated cleaner air forms an intangible shield around the malls, keeping the chemical mist at a safe distance.

I estimated that the air became clearer around seven miles from the entrance to the main shopping area.

You would know if you have entered the mall perimeter because the mist in front of you would start to recede. You would start to see greenery, then lush, carefully manicured garden paths. You would be treated to a breathtaking illusion of nature - trees, flowers, ponds with cranes in them, the works. If you want to see local flora and fauna, the Mall of SEA grounds would be the best place for it.

Though there are no farmlands, of course. Farms were strictly restricted to the farming buildings: floor upon floor of transported earth, housing edible life. Irrigation was water sucked up through the same pipes that provided water to the rest of the mall, filtered from deep wells or the last remaining freshwater sources in the vicinity - anywhere it could be gotten or recycled. Food production in mall complexes was strictly regulated, much like everything else.

And no houses. All the housing in the mall perimeter was located in the residential buildings. If you were affiliated with the mall, you had no option.

You'd know you were approaching the mall itself because you would spot the skyline, the tight arrangement of buildings reaching up, up into white artificially generated clouds. You couldn't see the top of those buildings even if you were standing close to them. The tallest building has a height of 120 floors, the pamphlet says - the maximum available without putting the entire building at risk of toppling over at the smallest shift of the earth's mantle.

That was another thing I always found curious about Southeast Asian mall culture: earthquakes are far from uncommon in the region. In fact, quite a few malls have suffered considerable quake damage, but none of them shut down. They simply rebuilt and carried on. Some - not many - opted for experimental quake-resistant engineering. The status quo was unshakable.

The pamphlet also said that the center buildings of the Mall of SEA form a hexagon. There is a specific building exclusively for low and mid-level employee housing, another building for executive housing and high-end leisure facilities. I decided immediately that the low and mid-level employee housing building was on top of my to-see list.

And, of course, there is one entire building dedicated to living quarters for the rich - people who didn't need to earn their way to special treatment. These were the people who owned the mall, their families and friends, their guests. It was also touted as a five-star hotel that came with its own share of credentials.

Not even foreign visitors had easy access to this area. All I could afford was a guesthouse located at the B&B complex, and not a posh one at that. It wasn't just because I needed to stay incognito: I needed to stretch my limited budget as far as it could go.




As large as they are, the malls employ tour guides, complete with electric "eco-friendly" cars to help you go wherever you want - as long as it's within the tour circuit.

The tour circuit was not where I wanted to go. I'd already visited other Southeast Asian countries before the Philippines, and taken enough official tours to know that they are all the same: you're taken around the highlights and taken far away from the interesting places. The off-limit higher-end areas are only pointed out, and the employee housing units are not even referred to at all. If anyone asks, they are "residential areas", and nothing more is said.

I wanted - needed - to go to the shadowed corners, the areas that are not referred to at all.

The mall interiors are heavily guarded. However, the walkway toward the mall is a bit of a free for all. The armed guards at the great glass doors pay no attention to the hawkers who crowd the people stepping out of every mall service shuttle - especially the foreigners.

This is something the guidebooks mention only briefly, as mall magnates don't like to acknowledge this fact: many malls in developing nations do allow hawkers. They aren't beggars, as begging is a punishable offense in many mall complexes, but they do sell an assortment of things you could buy at a tiny fraction of their cost inside the mall - trinkets, homemade culinary delights, essentials like bottles of water or packets of soda crackers, handmade articles of clothing. Many of the hawkers were children, elderly folk or the disabled, unable to be employed in the mall, but no doubt attached in some way to an employee.

Perhaps mall magnates figure that allowing their lower-income residents a way to make money on the side would be a good way to keep them happy and performing well. A few trinkets here and there wouldn't hurt their sales, after all.

Hidden in the crowd are the shadier hawkers: the ones who sell full-price passes to the sanctioned drug dens, brothels and exclusive lounges. The advantage is not the price, certainly; you could get these passes in the mall. However, if you buy from a hawker, with cash, you would not have a record of the transaction. Nothing can be traced back to you. If you're visiting to get away with something decidedly illegal, you need to know how to spot the hawkers you need.

I'd had some practice. In Thailand, I was able to secure a hawker who took me around the low-income housing areas. He was friendly and accommodating enough, but illegal touring was dangerous work, and there were some activities he strongly objected to. I was not able to secure sleeping space in the low-income areas, for example, nor was I able to purchase anything in any location with a credit or debit card, as these were traceable. There was no wandering about on my own, especially not in the fancier locations, where I could be spotted, stopped and my identity could be checked at any time. And of course, buying items of dubious quality - such as street food or moonshine - in fact, anything that could potentially land a foreigner in the hospital district - was out of the question.

A hawker even suspected of giving out an illegal tour faced eviction. This, as far as the mall residents (or "Insiders") were concerned, was tantamount to a death sentence. On top of this, the foreigner who bought the tour would be held in detention. It would be like wandering into a nuclear testing ground, as one account told it - endless questioning and medical testing, to check for diseases he might have contracted or circulated within mall premises. A person caught wandering illegally, without going through the front door, was treated as a terror suspect or a carrier of a contagious disease, then gracelessly sent home. Neither fate was worse than the other.

I needed a hawker who was not afraid of all of this.

So I scanned the crowd. I didn't spot him at once. But when I did, I couldn't look away.

He was a boy of about 14, wearing sports shorts and a faded green t-shirt a size too big. Even at that tender age he looked self-assured, telling me to pick him. He said not a word and stood, looking straight at me, only from time to time jostling the other hawkers for elbow room.

I know what you want. I know where to take you. But more than that, he was telling me no other guide could do as well as he could. There were other, older guides there, people who were better-dressed and who spoke better English... but the teenager in the sports shorts and the t-shirt exuded more confidence than any of them did.

I indicated my interest with a slight nod. Without breaking my stare he returned the nod, then stepped forward through the crowd. He grabbed my arm.

"Over here," he said, and led the way. I followed.




Before anything else, he asked me for US$25 - half of the full cost of the tour. The deposit might have seemed pricey, but a $50 tour was still a much better deal than the $150 standard pricing for Manila malls. One knows how far foreign currency goes in Manila.

It also made me feel better to know that the deposit was consumable.

There was always a secret entrance - sometimes more than one. My guide's entrance was a service entrance, only for deliveries. I saw $5 of the $25 I'd given him slide discreetly into the hand of a guard.

Then we just strolled in. I won't deny that I was nervous. I had been expecting a more clandestine entry... perhaps involving a ventilation duct or a disguise, like how we did it in Thailand. We were walking straight into a warehouse, into the company of other people, legitimate employees of the mall.

My guide was walking straight-backed and at a leisurely pace. We garnered a couple of curious stares from the warehouse workers, but no one stopped us, no one even bothered to talk to us.

The roots of corruption run deep in some parts of the world, and I had no call to expect anything different from the heart of the Philippines. I did my best to seem as nonchalant as my guide was.

The inside of the warehouse was huge. I was reminded of a cathedral, or a massive train station. It was clearly a shared warehouse, with many different shop names on the boxes. This was already one of the areas tourists weren't allowed into. Security was supposed to be tight in places like this.

"I'm John," I said. I didn't give my real name.

He looked over his shoulder at me and asked, "What?"

"My name is John," I said more loudly. "What's yours?"

"Hisune," he replied after a pause, then he looked away again.

The pause told me it was a moniker, too. I wonder now if he knew I was lying about my name. Or if it was just standard practice to lie in his line of work.

"Do you like fantasy books, then?" I ventured. I stopped myself from asking, And does that make me Lord Valentine?

The boy shrugged. "I like everything." Ebriting - His accent was thick; English was clearly not his first language. "Me and my friends name ourselves after characters in books," he explained. "I have a friend who is a girl who calls herself Arya. And a friend who is a boy who calls himself Jean Grey."

"Do they work as guides, too?" I'd brushed up on the local labor codes, I knew it was illegal for boys Hisune's age to work. And so it was doubly illegal to hire them as illicit tour guides. He and other children his age should still be in school. However, I was not out to put an end to their livelihood; I was just curious.

"No," Hisune answered curtly. He swiftly changed the subject. "Do you already know where you want to go?"

He stopped walking and turned to me, and that was only when I realized we had come to a discreet nook between crates. There were no people to witness our conversation, nor any cameras in sight - in fact there had been no cameras anywhere in our route. He'd known where to take me.

Hisune was smiling. I only realized now that he had his guard up the entire time, since the moment we met. His relief was infectious; I couldn't help myself from smiling, as well.

I'd heard many things about "the Filipino smile," but I always found myself unprepared for the assault. Even with my disdain of the artifice in the "heritage sites," when someone smiled, I had to smile back. It was automatic, almost - a kind of Jedi mind trick. I had to stay vigilant everywhere I went, but I had to admit that this time it was a struggle.

"I was hoping you'd have an idea where I should go first," I told him.

"Ah," he said. He stared at me for a good long second, looking me up and down.

Then he beamed brightly and said, "I think you would like to see the low-level employee housing first. That will last us most of the morning, so we will have lunch there and move on. Okay? Is that okay?"

It was very okay. In fact, I'd been hoping for that, but I was also ready to submit to whatever my tour guide thought was right.