Cebu City Part 3: The Carbon Market

The Carbon Market in Cebu City has everything that makes the Philippines fascinating about it. It's a colourful, cramped maze of dirty alleyways and piles of strange and delicious looking food filled with exotic smells and the occasional stench. Children and livestock wander the narrow paths between the stalls and the vendors observe you as you pass but never stare, just shout the occasional "hello". It's an intensely foreign feeling and you know that you are thousands of miles from home but nobody makes you feel out of place. It feels like a place that could absorb you but as you come out the other side you realise that you have not been absorbed. For that, you would need more time, always more time.

It's a place where the pictures tell the story best, so here are some of the best pictures (with thanks to my friends, who actually remembered to take their camera!)