Some day soon it will tumble down. A team of controlled demolitionists will pack it tenderly with a lethal injection of dynamite sticks and nitroglycerin satchels, then “hit the button.” It’ll disappear in seconds, the whole damn thing reduced to a dusty cloud of pulverized concrete and glass, and who cares anyway.
Who cares anyway? Who cares about Mandarin Oriental Manila, opened in 1976, closed in 2014, still standing on the corner of Makati Avenue and Paseo de Roxas, disgraced, a relic of yesteryear’s laughable notion of luxury, nothing left but a stain of 38-year-old residue from the naked building’s stripped logos. It’s still clear enough, that logoed residue, to make one wonder what’s going on here.
“Whoa, weird,” one might say, looking up at the ghastly apparition. “Is that the Mandarin Oriental? Is it still open?”
No, Mandarin Oriental Manila is not still open. It closed last year, in 2014, after a run of 30-plus years in which such esteemed human beings as Tom Cruise and Chuck Norris once paid for the privilege of checking in. That’s all you really need to know about Mandarin Oriental Manila–Tom Cruise and Chuck Norris stayed there, motherf*&ker.
Not together, mind you, which is to say not together in the same room, as far as we know. They were just guests, esteemed guests but, sadly, the beds in which Cruise and Norris once slept, and the toilet seats on which their supple cheeks once kissed, and the fine cutlery which graced their beautiful mouths once upon a time–“I want the truth!” said Cruise; “My turn to teach,” said Norris–are lost forever.
But all is not lost.
All is not lost, for we know that the Mandarin Oriental Group is not finished in Manila, no, no, no, not finished, not when the wealthy are getting wealthier and there’s a wealth of money to be made in Makati’s luxury sector. We know that in 2020 Mandarin Oriental will return with a 275-room “mixed-use development” that will be “positioned as one of the leading luxury hotels in the Philippine capital.” We know it will be “in keeping with the Group’s well-recognized, luxury hospitality brand,” and we know that Cruise and Norris would be welcomed back, because why wouldn’t they be?
We know that it will be a big deal, in 2020, when the Mandarin Oriental Group unveils its new, “contemporary” mixed-use development across the street from where its old, “dated” luxury hotel once stood. A ribbon will be cut, men in suits and women in skirt suits will smile and clap, and a celebrated human or two will lend their “star power” to the opening ceremonies.
Press releases detailing this luxurious, mixed-use development will be spammed, and “travel bloggers” with a notable “following” will be hosted, for the purpose of review. The “bloggers” will effuse about the “clean lines” and the “drinks program.” They’ll note that “foodies will swoon” over cuisine revealed in many beautiful pictures, and reviewed in blog posts containing opinions that are the travel bloggers’ own. “Digital nomads” will be invited, as well, and perhaps even a writer or two, assuming that dying, miserable breed still exists in 2020.
We know that in 2020, when the Mandarin Oriental Group makes its “much-anticipated” return to Manila’s luxury sector, we will all be a little older. Some of us will be happier, and some of us will not be; you might be wealthier, and I may be poorer. Who’s to say? One thing to which we can all look forward, however, is the debut of The Mandarin Oriental Manila in six short years’ time–that’s going to be a great day.
Long before that–long before the digital nomads and the travel bloggers and the celebrity humans unify to convince you that you’re missing out on something that you’re really not, at least not at that price–the old abandoned building once called The Mandarin Oriental Manila will come tumbling down.
In time we’ll forget that it ever stood there at all, and who cares anyway.
