In February 1983 I traveled to the Philippines to get married. INS denied my petition. A year later in February 1994, with my petition to reconsider still pending, I return to the Philippines. First visit the pages for the February 1983 trip. Same as on my first visit, I came down with diarrhea and fever - we didn't know to only drink bottled water back then - and spent a few miserable days laying in the hotel bed. Even on the flight home I was not ok. The PAL ticket - imagine entering all of these tickets by hand - and trying to read other people's handwriting? $600 was a good rate back then - but a bargain including a week at Silahi Hotel. This was because tourism dropped after Aquino assassination a few months prior. But convert to current dollars - amazingly - it is cheaper today even with spike in oil prices. 
Many of the photos are on Roxas Blvd. Here's how it was damaged in September 2011 by Typhoons Pedring and Nesat Storm surge from Manila Bay floods Roxas Blvd, now impassable 09/27/2011 The US Embassy on Roxas Blvd. appeared to TV news viewers like it had merged with Manila Bay Tuesday morning. Floodwaters had risen halfway up its front gate, perhaps four feet, by midmorning. Much of Roxas Boulevard was similarly submerged, as well as United Nations Avenue and other areas adjacent to the bay. A storm surge in the bay caused by Typhoon Pedring's ferociously strong winds, and not simply rainwater, could have produced the flood, according to DOST-PAGASA Undersecretary Graciano Yumul on Balitanghali.
Debris litter the scenic Roxas boulevard near a seawall in Manila after
Typhoon Nesat battered the capital and other
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