Ghost Town

Returning for yet another stopover in Manila, we were warmly greeted back at the Makati Shangri-La. The receptionist even remembered where we had been for the last two weeks, and asked if Keith had enjoyed the diving. Simple but impressive service.

With a morning to kill before our flight to Langkawi, Malaysia, we headed over to a graveyard. But the Chinese cemetery in Manila is no ordinary burial site. It's a little town with streets and houses, albeit the houses are family mausoleums.

The Chinese believe in ancestor worship and regularly pop out to the cemetery to spend some time at their dear-departed's gravesides. To make their visits more comfortable, they have built family crypts with all mod cons, like kitchens, toilets and even air-conditioning.

We thought we'd left the Grim Reaper behind when we headed off to the airport that afternoon. That was until we saw the breaking news of the massive earthquake in Japan on the TV in the departure lounge. As the announcer predicted a tsunami in the Pacific Islands, we were incredibly relieved to have left them 24 hours earlier, but were concerned for those still there.

The aerial footage of the devastating wave sweeping through the city of Sendai, was horrific. We had seen a Chinese ghost town that day, but a Japanese one was being created before our eyes. Our thoughts go out to all those affected by this dreadful natural disaster.