The Cubao Expo Adventure

By Micah Jao

         I’ve always thought antiques were interesting. In one antique, a piece of time is captured. A piece of history, a piece of life. May it be something as big as an old parchment or something as simple as an old record, each item holds a story. A story of the past, a reason why they are no longer common or present in our day to day lives. Now imagine many different antiques collected in one little room. Bits of time, all brought together by a group of people. Passed on from one to the other, each with a different story. That is an antique shop. Now imagine one area, filled with many of these rooms, each with different types of antiques all mixed together. That is the Cubao Expo. The Cubao Expo is an unexampled place in Manila with unique items and experiences to be found.

            

         From the introduction, it is clear that the Cubao Expo is an area full of antique shops. It is obvious why unique objects can be found, but why do we say that the Cubao Expo is a place where unique experiences can be found? Well, one reason would be that the trip to the Cubao Expo can be quite an adventure. If you are inexperienced with commuting, like me, riding the LRT can be quite a challenge. With all the twist and turns in the LRT station, finding the right train is a difficult task. I was fortunate enough to be accompanied by friends who frequented the train stations, and were able to navigate the tunnels with ease. 

        Once you have found your train the difficulty isn’t over, when the train arrives and the doors open, it’s a warzone. Passengers rush to get out while others fight their way in, hurrying to get seats and in the train before the doors close. Once you’re inside, you are sandwiched by a mass of people who may or may have not taken a shower that day, all the while clutching your belongings for fear of something being snatched or stolen. While the trip to Cubao Expo is not a very pleasant experience, I have to say that it is quite a memorable one.

            

        Once out of the train station, your adventure on foot begins. We exited the station into a mall and asked numerous guards for directions, all of them pointing us to different ones. We walked and walked for what felt like miles. We went from mall to mall, and street to street. It was quite a long trek, but once you see the Cubao Expo, the feeling of joy that overwhelms you as you realize you have conquered the journey and you are finally at your desired location, is amazing.

           

        When you arrive at the Cubao Expo, the first thing you notice is that there is nothing to do, but after exploring for a bit (which isn’t hard since its basically one U – shape) you realize that there are actually a variety of different things to do there. First and the most obvious, there were antique shops. We walked into the first one we saw. Don’t be put off by it’s small size, old smell, or dustiness. Once you get past it, you realize that there are a lot of interesting things there. I found a lot of vintage records, polaroids, and typewriters. I was drawn to how uncommon they were and the fact that they were cute to decorate with, while my companions were interested in the old magazines, decors and coke bottles. 

     Although Cubao Expo seemed like a place frozen in time, it was actually quite modernized. It had numerous shops, bars, and restaurants where a lot of people frequented. There were groups of people sitting and drinking at the bars, as though they do so every week. We heard bands playing, people singing, and food cooking. Although very quaint, it seemed to have it’s own crowd, and after a long day, we decided to join Cubao Expo’s crowd. We ate at the most normal restaurant we could find. The place was small, it could serve about 15 people at most, and the food was very simple. Tuna sandwiches, burgers, and pastas. You didn’t come to Cubao Expo for gourmet food. Although they do have one expensive restaurant there, which we weren’t able to try due to our student statuses but it seemed to be quite popular. The service was pretty slow but it was alright. It seemed to fit the old, sleepy atmosphere of the place. Old and sleepy, but at the same time full of life and movement. It’s quite a strange thing to experience

         If you’re looking for adventure, visit the Cubao Expo at least once, but at the end of the day, we came to realize that though Cubao Expo is a pretty quaint place we wouldn’t really plan to return in the near future.  Just make sure you do your research and go at a time where everything in the Cubao Expo is open because when we visited the area, many of the shops were closed, and that really hindered us from receiving the full experience. Perhaps if we were actual antique collectors we would visit again soon. Or Perhaps if we were in our Early 20’s or late 30’s it would be a nice place to visit. There were various bars in the area, which many young adults seemed to frequent, and many of the people looking at the antiques seemed to be in their late 30’s or older. So as for teenagers like ourselves, though we found a lot of cool things, many of the things at the venue were quite uninteresting to us.