Parts of Town

The tourist belt includes Intramuros, Ermita and Malate (districts of Manila proper) as well as parts of Pasay City and Paranaque, which lie along or just east of Roxas Blvd, the most representative thoroughfare of the metropolis.

Within the tourist belt, at or near Roxas Blvd, most of the five-star hotels are located. The center of the tourist belt is Er-mita. The main red light district is the so-called Mabini strip situated actually more along Del Pilar St than along Mabini St. In April 1988, Manila police chief General Alfredo Lim had initiated a drive to phase out bars and nightclubs from the tourist belt. For a few months, raids were nightly events. However, the fervor of the police died down by the end of 1988, and as of this writing (mid-1990) al-most all bars and nightclubs were still operating.

Ermita and Malate, the quasi extension of the former, used to be prime residential areas before WW II. Walking through Malate, one can still see many large colonial-style houses.

Intramuros

Intramuros is the old walled city of the Spanish colonialists (see sightseeing). It is a very small district, where many remains of Spanish times still exist or have been recon-structed. Since the Christian faith was brought to the Philippines, and up to this day, the central institutions of the Catholic Church, including the Manila Cathedral are located here. Intramuros was the site of a bloody bat-tle against the Japanese during the last world war, when much of it was destroyed. Its re-construction started in 1966. Just outside the walls is Club Intramuros, a golf course.

Downtown

The actual downtown of Manila lies north of the Pasig river and consists of the three districts of Santa Cruz, Quiapo and Binondo. There is no visible boundary between Santa Cruz and the other two neighboring parts. The area of Santa Cruz, therefore, may be roughly defined as located along Rizal Ave starting at the Pasig river and stretch-ing north a few kilometers. Rizal Ave is commonly called Avenida. Along Rizal Ave, there are several big department stores, scores of shops and some main outlets of chain-stores.

Escolta is a short but famous street in Sta Cruz and lies parallel to the Pasig river. Be-fore Makati became the financial center of the metropolis, Escolta was the prime location for banks. Just as Santa Cruz lies along Rizal Ave, so too, Quiapo is situated along Quezon Blvd. Quezon Blvd carries much of the heavy traf-fic between Manila proper and Quezon City.

Quiapo has its famous Plaza Miranda, in front of Quiapo Church. Once this was the site for most political rallies in the city. They stopped abruptly after the so-called Miranda bombing on August 21, 1972, when 10 politi-cians died and 60 people were in-jured. It is widely believed that this bombing was staged by the Marcos machine to give the President an excuse for declaring martial law which followed within a month, on Sep-tember 21, 1972.

Between Sta Cruz and North harbor lies Binondo, which is also called Manila's China-town. However, the Chinese populace is a very integrated part of the Philippines, and the Chinatown of Manila is not much different from other downtown areas.

The traffic in downtown Manila is north-south oriented with one important exception, Claro M Recto Ave, which runs from Divisoria market, just north of Sta Cruz to near Malakanyang Palace in San Miguel. When traversing Claro M Recto Ave through Sta Cruz and Quiapo, this avenue is interesting because there are so many movie theaters in a row. It could be called the cinema belt, but it is not. On the contrary, the area is called the univer-sity belt. Indeed, except for movie theaters, colleges and universities abound there. This might possibly explain why there are so many movie houses.

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