Upon arriving in the Philippines, we spent two days in Manila recovering from our 26-hour travel time. The first day was just spent hanging out, the second touring the island of Corregidor.

This photo purports to suggest the traffic in Manilla, a city of 18 million people, but it doesn't begin to get at the congestion, chaotic driving habits and intensity of getting around the city. It's just that the only time we were off the bus where we might shoot a city scene happened to be mid-day, a fairly low-key window of time.

Having said all that, perhaps it's fair to point out that everyone seemed to be remarkably patient about dealing with the chaos. There apparently are very few accidents.

I'll explain what this is and why it's such a crummy picture later on.

Corregidor is an island in Manila Bay that commands the entrance to the harbor. Thus it represented a strategic point in defending the city and the American military made it an important base of operations in the Philippines.

The ferry that took us across the 45-minute journey.

On the island, we rode on tour buses that were designed to resemble the trolleys that moved people around the island before World War II - trolleys often compared to the streetcars of San Francisco.

Before the war, Corregidor was considered to be a plum assignment - beautifully landscaped, nice buildings, its own golf course. At the same time, its weaponry was somewhat antiquated - cannon dating back to the 19th Century.

This photo from the museum shows one of the barracks from before the war.

When the Japanese attacked, their artillery barrages ravaged the island. This is a similar barracks as it remained after the battle.

For a long time, the ruins were simply left abandoned and the forest enveloped the infrastructure. Eventually, the Philippine government recognized the island's historic value - clearing forest, building memorials and creating an historic site for visitors to tour.

While they cleared the forest, they didn't restore the bombed-out ruins.

These are tree roots that once enveloped the structure.

I confess that, while I knew vaguely about Corregidor, it never dawned on me that it was an island of artillery emplacements (most depictions of Corregidor seemed to center on life in the tunnels). We visited several of the artillery batteries, including Battery Way, named after an army officer.

All in all, there were 23 batteries on the island, encompassing 56 coastal guns and mortars. The Japanese had boasted that they would take the island in five days. In fact, it took them five months.

The mortars of Battery Way played an important role in the defense of the island. For one thing, they had the advantage of being able to be rotated 360 degrees. This meant they could place fire on Japanese landing sites on the island as well as on ships in the bay.

You can still see that shrapnel damage the guns themselves and the surrounding walls took from Japanese artillery barrages.

A rifled barrel.

Closer.

An ammo bunker at Battery Way.

This coastal gun at Battery Hearn was higher up on the hill. As I recall, they said it wasn't very effective, since it couldn't rotate too much. But a photo of Japanese soldiers standing on it celebrating their victory was fairly widely distributed.

The weapons at this battery were "disappearing guns;" After they were fired, they dropped down out of sight to be reloaded.

We got off the bus to visit the Pacific War Memorial and museum.

This sculpture was designed to suggest a flame. Actually, it wasn't clear to me what the flame represented.

The memorial itself includes a spot where the sun shines through an opening in the dome at noon every May 6 - the anniversary of the surrender.

This statue pays tribute to the American and Filipino defenders of the island.

We also visited the old Spanish lighthouse, climbing to the top.

Running through the central hill on the island was the Malinta Tunnel.

Although it was a shortcut between sections of the island, it also encompassed a complex series of side-tunnels that enabled it to serve as headquarters, hospital and refuge for the defenders.

A light and sound show depicted the areas of the complex as we walked through the tunnel.

This side-shaft led to the 1,000-bed hospital.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur was directly ordered by the President to leave the island before its surrender. This is the dock from which he and his party departed on a squadron of PT boats.

After we had finished our stay at the Atlantis resort at Dumaguete, we had a day to kill in Manila before boarding our double red-eye flight home. So we got on a bus for a tour of the city.

This is the U.S. Embassy, overlook Manila Bay.

This is the memorial to Jose Rizal, considered the "George Washington" of the Philippines. An intellectual, poet and author rather than a military leader, he is considered a hero for creating a national consciousness for the Filipino people during a time when the Spanish treated them as subhuman. Taken prisoner by the Spanish, he was executed on this spot in 1896. Sometime later, his body was moved and interred here.

We visited Intramuros, the walled city within Manila built by the Spanish as a power base.

One structure within Itramuros was Fort Santiago.

We went in.

Jose Rizal was held prisoner in the fort and was marched from there to his place of execution. His route is marked by bronze footsteps embedded in the pavement.

These grates open onto old Spanish dungeons in the fort. During World War II, Filipino and American prisoners were held there and tortured by the Japanese.

The entrance to the dungeons.

This cross is a memorial to the 600 Filipinos and Americans killed in the dungeons.

We also visited Manila's oldest cathedral.

While we went inside, it wasn't through these doors. Nice doors, though.

The things I most wanted to photograph to exemplify Manila were Jeepneys, buses that abound in the city, looking like something out of the movie Mad Max. Often, they have a rope or bar in place of a driver's-side door. They're descendants of vehicles originally built from old jeeps. Each is uniquely individual, gaudily painted and appear to be made of spare parts. Just because they have a Mercedes Benz hood ornament, for example, doesn't mean they have any Mercedes Benz parts.

Alas, the only time we were out on the street with a chance to photograph them directly was at mid-day - a dead period for Jeepney travel. I had to settle for shooting through our bus' window later in the afternoon, which yielded really crummy shots. These were the best of them.

In a city in which traffic is a nightmare, they constitute an icon for Manila.