This is where my mother's wake and funeral services was held. Staff were all friendly and very…read morehelpful... from the office staff to their maintenance staff. Doing business with them was a breeze from our phone call to get a quote all the way through closing. They have someone in the office 24hours to attend to your questions and needs. They ask the right questions to help you and walk you through what you need or what may need in case you forgot to ask anything. They have a variety of chapels available for what you may need. Some are a little outdated and need some TLC but they are all clean & presentable (at least the ones we have seen). Staff are quick to respond when you have a request for service. For a fee, a priest can also be requested if you are unable to find one. Be ready to pay in cash for a request to extend past the 5 days on your contract. Overall, we had a great experience with them. And would recommend them to anyone.

The memory of how I ended up here is very painful to recall. I was on holiday in Siem Reap,…read moreCambodia with my cousin and her boyfriend. During lunch after doing a tour on the Ton Le Sap Lake, my cousin's boyfriend starts breaking down. He had just read a text on his cellphone and I knew immediately what had happened. HIs mom had been ill and he had been hesitant about going on the trip. Now she was gone. When we flew home the next day, we parted in the morning and I met him here that evening for his mom's wake. I had never been here previously so I didn't know what to expect. It turned out to be a decent funeral home. It was clean, there was an elevator, and everything seemed to be organized.

For casual photographers or random tourists looking for new and more interesting subjects to shoot,…read morevisiting the Manila Chinese Cemetery is a nice exercise. It's not as morbid as it sounds, it isn't in poor form, and the practice is not as uncommon as you'd think. Things of interest are the Chong Hock Tong Temple, the Martyr's Hall or Liat See Tong, the Ruby Tower Memorial, and the Carlos Palanca Memorial or Tan Quien Sien. There are plenty of other interesting mausoleums as well, like the famed mami magnate Ma Mon Luk (yay for alliteration!). Most of the bigger mausoleums have caretakers living inside, complete with airconditioners. Bicycles can be rented on site so you can roam around and explore. You can visit all year round, but it is best to go right after All Saints' Day, as there are still plenty of candles and flowers to add drama to your shots.

A tour of a cemetery has the word "morbid" written all over it but I'm willing to make an exemption…read morefor the Chinese Cemetery. This is a cemetery worth visiting because it provides visitors a glimpse into one facet of the Chinese culture of Manila. My lola used to be buried here before we moved her to be with my lolo in another cemetery. You need to prove your Chinese lineage to earn the right to be interred in the Chinese Cemetery. It's walking distance from the Abad Santos station of the LRT so getting there won't be a problem. My advice is to head to the admin office first. They will give you a map of the cemetery and also provide some inside scoop on which mausoleums you should visit either because they are beautiful or really weird. You will see people loitering near the gate and most of them offer their services as tour guides. For adventurous ones like myself, just roam around and discover the cemetery for yourself. BTW, the cemetery looks small when viewed from the LRT station but it is sprawling. Get ready for some serious walking. They have all kinds of tombs and mausoleums here. Some look like the temples you see in the movies while some looked like fortresses. They also have varied designs, from the minimalistic to the ornately decorated. Some have appliances on them like home theaters or air conditioners. You'll see tombs with sofa sets and restrooms. They said that a few even have bath tubs or jacuzzis. The best day to go here is during sundays since it's the day that most families choose to visit their dearly departed. Which means that you can peak at some of the tombs that are normally closed on weekdays. It's just sad to see some tombs that were desecrated. Their gravestones filled with graffiti or shattered. I even saw one that was cracked open with the coffin exposed to the elements. I sure hope the administration will be able to do somthing to protect and preserve this unique cemetery.

One man's grave yard is another man's tourist destination. That sounds like a grim and odd thing to…read moresay, but isn't it true? How many ancient tombs and burial places have you visited in your life? Pretty sure it's a none-zero number. It feels normal when we're doing the visiting, but what about when our own dead become the attraction? That's pretty much what is happening to the Chinese cemetery. More than once I've seen foreign tour groups there, curiously ooohing and aaaahhing at our strange mosuleums. It feels normal for me, since I've been going there since I was little, but I suppose I can imagine how foreigners (and even non-Chinese locals) could find the practice of building little houses for our dearly departed as something worth seeing. It's certainly a quirk of our Filipino Chinese culture, and I wonder how the place will be remembered in a hundred years.