Carlos befriends me at a cheap restaurant.
The food was cheap and more importantly, healthy.
His parents have kinda jived with me too.
Living next door on the pavement is a large family. In the alleyway around the corner are more poor families. The only furniture they have are carboard boxes flattened down on the pavement.
Leo the seaman told me that Aron and Rachel feed them every day, 'providing drinking water too.'
Leo says Aron use to be a seaman, 'now rents out rooms to seaman and runs a busy little restaurant and helps the poor out.'
Leo says he's waiting for a gig on a ship bound for Bangladesh.
'I'll find work for them here in the restaurant between jobs,' says Aron, who is carrying a baby.
'She's our good luck charm.'
Bella was handed to the family by a stranger, says Aron 'and now she's part of our family.'
One request, I say, before I leave. It's Jason Derulo. Rachel has my favorite song on before I can finish my cheap coffee.
Leo excuses himself. He's given me enough information to work with.
The music has stopped.
Aron says that many of the homeless have houses in the Provinces.
He says they come here because the money is bigger begging than working in the paddy fields in their hometown.
'And many of them are addicted to drugs.'
What about the new policy of killing drug dealers and users?
'They just don't care,' he says. 'They don't respect themselves enough to worry about things like that.'
Aron says, as a rule, he won't give food to drug addicts.
'They'll only stab you in the back once you cut them off,' he says.
He literally means stab in the back.
'These people are poor and resort to drastic means when they need their fix.'
He tells me of a recent snatching.
'They stole a Korean women's bag which had her passport in it.'
He says it just happened around the corner near the police station.
'It was early evening,' he says, and a dark spot, meaning, 'it wasn't lit up by street lights.'
He said she was lucky.
'They have been known to kill for less.'
And right in front of the coppers eyes?
'Yep.'
He won't leave his neighborhood, and if he wants to go to the Mall or a restaurant, he'll usually drive his car.
He says many of the homeless not only beg but collect boxes and bottles to make money for their next fix.
'Then they'll come to me and beg for a feed.'
He won't have any part of that. Only the real needy get his charity.
'I'll feed the families outside my shop once we close shop at 8 pm,' he says. 'I just don't see the point of throwing out the leftovers in the garbage when it can feed a genuine family in need.'
All he asks in return is respect and to sweep outside his shop occasionally.
I tell Aron about the massage guys down at Manila Bay who fucked up my back.
I can't walk very far now without feeling like I'm going to collapse.
'You are very lucky,' he says, 'it might have just saved your life.'
I was roaming far and wide before that, I said. A few streets I went down seemed very home boyish.
'Doubly lucky,' he says, 'not advisable to walk the streets that are paved with the poor. It's a statistics game, eventually, they'll get you.'
It's time to file, I tell Aron and Leo.
'And hopefully lift hearts,' says Leo.
Though the streets of Manila may seem mean and uncaring, there are little oases of kindness and compassion.
But on a bigger note, it seems killing off drugs users and dealers isn't deterring crime one bit.
'The streets are still as dangerous as before, ' says Aron who is bolting up the door of his restaurant for the night.
'Once they are closed, they are not open until the morning.'
