The capital city of the Philippines is Manila. It is part of a large entity called Metro Manila. The easiest way of putting it is this: Manila is the beginning, Metro Manila is the result.

Metro Manila has 16 cities and 1 municipality. It has more than 10 million people living in it and I’m one of them. I live in a city called Mandaluyong where it’s highly accessible to shopping malls and Makati City, the country’s central business district.

With such a large land area, the question comes up:

What do I ride to get around Metro Manila?

There are private and public vehicles. There are metered taxis but it really depends on one’s budget to ride them. I have no car so I’m taking public transport. There’s something to remember about public vehicles. Words such as “ordinary” and “special” will come in handy as I mention a common transportation found within the islands—The Tricycle.

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This is a guest post by Gayle Pescud. Gayle lives and works in Bolgatanga, Ghana. She writes G-lish with her partner Godwin.

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I have absolutely no sense of direction. I mean, not a single cell in my body has any idea where it is once I turn a few corners, least of all my brain cells. As a collective, my brain cells throw their arms up and go on strike if I travel further than right, left, and right again. Game over.

So, I can only ever write a guide book for a country I have spent nearly four years traversing because it takes me this long to work out where I am and where I’m going—but when I work it out, I really work it out.

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No one feels the pulse of a city like its cabbies.

Beijing taxi ride: credit

Miao Wang’s film Beijing Taxi will show Beijing’s and China’s road to modernisation through the eyes of three Beijing taxi drivers: the jovial optimist, the young mother with a free spirit and the veteran driver with a lost youth.

The film (still in production) has also found an original way to fund itself. Beijing Taxi’s production will be financed by its own fans, in an online crowdfunding experiment (details here). Sponsors of the film get rewards (such as a signed DVD of the film) based on the amount of their donation.

The film will surely show some interesting and original perspectives on China’s rapid growth. But some of the cabbies’ comments could also be true of life in many cities around the world.

“Modern life demands more… life quality has improved… psychologically the pace of life is faster, there’s more pressure.”

Watch the trailer here

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A day in the life of 380 London taxis

No need to know Spanish to follow this video from Ciudad Bolívar in Colombia. We’re going on a moped ride to buy empanadas - hold tight!

Empanadas are eaten in Spain, Portugal and South America. Each country has its own version, but they are always made from dough with some kind of filling inside. Looks good?

Empanadas de atún - tuna fish empanadas from Argentina: credit

Do you like empanadas? What’s your favourite kind?

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Colombians eat pasta too
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Today we introduce another contributor, Marcel, with a great first post about the Next Big Thing in Dublin. In his own words:

Find Marcel on his personal blog King of Pain (in German and English) or at Dublin Community Blog where he is a contributor.

Ireland’s capital Dublin has recently joined the list of European cities to have its own bike sharing scheme, including Seville, Brussels, Nice, Paris, Cologne and many more.

Photo credit

There are 40 bicycle stations throughout the city. These are located in close proximity to each other, every station has a minimum of 15 stands and so there are a total of 450 bikes meaning that access to bikes is relatively easy - and it’s also quite easy to get around town. There are no reports about stolen or vandalized bikes yet, and I’ve seen many people using the bikes througout the city. You can find all necessary information on the operator’s website.

Photo credit

I think that theses bike rental initiatives are a really good thing, especially as most bikes are free to use (for a limited time though - the first 30 minutes are free in Dublin) and it’s a healthy way to discover a city. Depending on the local traffic that is - and it’s less exhausting to bike around in flat Dublin in October than in hilly Nice in the August heat.

Read more:
Which countries drive on the left? - it’s not just the UK
Australians get on their bikes
Irish blogs on Blogs of the World

The United Kingdom is well known for driving on the left side (or the ‘wrong’ side, depending on who you ask) of the road.

But the eccentric island is not alone. A surprising number of countries drive on the left. Many are former British colonies, but other countries including Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Guyana and Suriname also drive on the left.

The countries coloured in blue in the map below are all countries which drive on the left.

Map source: Wikipedia

The list of countries which drive on the left has been decreasing steadily. Sweden switched to right-hand driving in 1967, followed by Iceland in 1968 and Burma in 1970.

However Samoa is going against the trend. In this article, Salon explains that the government of Samoa wants to switch from right-side to left-side driving in order to import cheaper right-hand drive cars from Australia and New Zealand.

Changing driving directions is expensive and unpopular - think a whole country waking up to find its steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. But it seems the savings from avoiding expensive US car imports will justify the inconvenience.

Do you think more countries should drive on the right?

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Iconic Italian transport - Vespa, Cinquecento and a few buses as well.
A day in the life of 380 London taxis
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At PocketCultures we love hearing about what life is like in other countries. We’ve already heard from Japanese bloggers in Blogs of the World, so when Shane and Honor suggested this interview we thought it would be a good chance to look at life in Japan from a foreigner’s perspective.

Shane Sakata has spent over 5 of the last 15 years living in and around Tokyo and Honor Dargan has been in Japan for 8 years since moving there in 2001.

Here they talk about adapting to Japanese culture: getting used to personal questions, small apartments and even smaller grocery packages.

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