Shopping Malls in Metro Manila

I’d learned a fair bit about Spanish colonialism in Intramuros, but hadn’t realised that the Philippines had been a US colony for so long. In spite of it being independent of the US since 1946, I found the American influence is still very obvious today. English is widely spoken, most signage is in English and US brand names and chains proliferate. And like Americans, Filipinos sure love their malls.

I soon came to see the attraction. When it’s hot and humid outside, they’re just the ticket. The air conditioning is bliss! Even His Lordship, who is usually allergic to shopping for anything other than food, took the opportunity to duck out of the heat in Manila’s SM Megamall.

The scale of it is, well, off the scale. Apparently, it has a capacity of four million people and it’s not even the largest mall in the Philippines! Apart from the mind-boggling choice of shops and restaurants, for me, it was a feast of weird and wonderful sights too. I was mesmerised by the numerous arcades, the like of which I had never seen in Europe. They have a highly complicated system of playing with tokens, winning tickets, then redeeming the tickets for prizes which had my head in a spin.

Dogs are obviously allowed in the mall too – seemingly as long as they wear nappies. Mad stuff!

I was amused to see that the Megamall even boasts its own ice skating rink. I had seen an indoor ice skating rink in Montreal, but I had never seen ice skaters wearing summer dresses, skirts and shorts before. As the majority of them were, naturally enough, not particularly proficient, they had a tendency to fall. Again and again and again. Ouch!!

In spite of the air-conditioning, I often saw people – well-dressed and of all ages – dropping off to sleep all over the place. In Europe, I imagine that anyone sleeping in public is assumed to be either homeless or drunk. Here, it appears, they’re simply tired.

To be honest, I found our mall visit pretty exhausting myself. Afterwards, I was sure that His Lordship could never be persuaded to set foot in another one. But when he heard about the Venice Grand Canal Mall, his curiosity got the better of him. After having visited the real thing a few years ago, he just had to see the Filipino version.

I loved it, what fun! It really is a mini Venice, complete with Venetian-style architecture, the Grand Canal of course, with gondolas and singing gondoliers, those famous bridges… and there’s even a replica of St Mark’s Campanile.

I had to laugh when I read in the advertising material that ‘the Piazza even offers pigeon feeding activities’. You’d probably get arrested for feeding the pigeons in the real Venice!

In the course of their wanderings, the Oldies noticed a sign mentioning mass times in the mall chapel. Curious, they made their way to the mall roof to investigate. This is quite a ‘chapel’! It was large as many a church I’ve seen in Europe and beautifully built, with no expense spared.

I knew that Catholicism is very strong here, having already spotted umpteen tell-tale signs – religious statues everywhere, everything from Jeepneys to ice-cream carts sporting religious slogans, and even a quote from the bible in an advertisement for a children’s vitamin drink – but I’d never seen a church in a shopping centre before.

I did another double-take when the Oldies popped into the Vista Mall in Taguig for a bite to eat one Sunday. An altar and rows of chairs were set up in a corridor between the shops, and a mass attended by hundreds of people was underway.

Either there are not enough churches in the city to go around, or shoppers like to get their shopping and mass taken care of all under one roof. Now, that’s an interesting take on a ‘one stop shop’.