“It is the new cockfighting arena,” says Walter, pointing to the impressive new structure, as he kickstarts his Kawasaki motorbike and begins the arduous task of negotiating numerous water-filled potholes that straddle the narrow roadway outside his home.

It is the rainy season in the Philippines and I am a passenger in his tricycle sidecar. We edge forward precariously: I cling to the rollbar cage half expecting to be ejected onto the muddy road to my right but, somehow, survive as we lurch towards the chaotic National Highway further along.

“I could walk this short stretch,” I say, but am advised to stay put.

“There are too many stray dogs and they carry rabies. If you get bitten, we will have to go to the hospital.” Time and money. I take his advice.

Walter pauses to contemplate the newly rendered white building and thinks for a moment.

“The government only concreted half the road which leads to our home,” he adds, “so residents at the far end, including me, have to get past these craters before the motorbike can pick up speed on the well laid section.”

There is little greenery in the area and locals have just lost their last trees to the new cockfighting arena. Sabong, the sport’s Filipino name, remains as popular now as it was in the 16th century when first witnessed by colonists but, in Taytay, it comes with a modern-day double-edged sword.

“Temperatures here can be high, sometimes reaching 40C+, so many locals now take advantage of the arena’s free aircon,” he explains.

But, at the end of each cockfight, hundreds of people, most in a car or on a bike, spill onto the tiny road that at one side, leads to Walter’s home, and the other, the National Highway.

“They have made our tiny street the principal exit for the arena so an already awful situation has been made so much worse, but what can you do?”

Manila has some of the worst traffic jams in the world, exacerbated by a combination of Jeepneys, tricycles, cars and lorries vying for space on a string of over-burdened highways, where pedestrians are second rate citizens and the promise of a Mass Rapid Transit system remains a distant dream.

Journey times are never quantified in miles or kilometres but always with two words: ‘with traffic’ or ‘without traffic’.

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• On their way to Taytay market
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On a good day the drive from Ninoy Aquino International Airport to Taytay is 40 minutes but, ‘with traffic’, it is not uncommon for the 16-miles to take a gruelling three hours.

“The local joke was always that the journey should only be made at certain times of the year: when boxing legend Manny Pacquiao was fighting or the Miss Universe contest was being televised!” grins Walter.

By now we are enjoying lunch in the luxury surrounds of the Peninsula Manila Hotel at the intersection of Ayala and Makati Avenues, once the scene of two military coups. It is a rare treat for Walter and his first lady, his wife of 46 years, Orsie.

It is a country that has been blighted by political instability but also one in which millions of ordinary people are required to survive a minefield of unaffordable healthcare, rising food prices and a political elite which seems content to do as it pleases. The gap between the haves and the have nots is palpable.

Walter has been a tricycle driver for 26 years and, during that time, has held several official positions within Manila’s huge Tricycle Operators Drivers Association (TODA).

“Taytay, as the country’s clothing manufacturing capital, is one of the most densely populated areas in the Philippines and has 125 individual TODA stations, each with 100-300 tricycle operators, not unlike a taxi rank.

“Each has a President of which I am one. However, at one point, I was over-arching President of not only all 125, but, for two years between 2022 and 2024, President of TODA Rizal with responsibility for overseeing some 100,000 tricycles across 11 towns; there are around a million nationwide.

“I could have gone further,” he muses, knowing that he always had the backing of his all-male driver colleagues. But, as Walter explains, it is an unpaid role that attracts a lot of work with zero pay!

These days the semi-retired father of seven, with his 70th birthday this weekend, hits the road for just three or four hours each day, usually between 6am and noon, to earn money for the day’s groceries.

It is hard won with journeys often only attracting a few pesos from paying clients and half a day’s work produces little more than £5 or £6.

But, with food prices climbing rapidly, it doesn’t go far, leaving the majority of families to fill their bellies with rice.

“I usually have two cups with every meal”, he tells me, “with a few viands,” the meat, seafood or vegetable dish that usually accompanies rice in most Filipino homes.

These days Walter, despite grandfather duties, makes time to watch the nationally televised corruption inquiry that has had millions of Filipinos glued to their screens.

Parts of Manila have been the scene of serious flooding in recent years and, in response, the government issued a series of huge flood prevention engineering contracts for implementation in and around the capital, only much of the work was never done and flood problems continue.

Politicians were accused of pocketing billions of pesos as part of an extensive bribery network. An inquiry was launched. One under scrutiny, London born business woman Sarah Discaya, appeared in a national TV documentary proudly showing off her fleet of luxury cars.

However, rather than increasing her popularity and profile, as she had planned, the documentary merely served to raise questions as to where all her money had come from and how she had funded her collection of supercars.

“Everyone knows that these ‘ghost’ contracts, worth billions of pesos, were paid for but many never happened or were sub-standard,” laments Walter, “and that the money went into the pockets of corrupt politicians.

"The flooding problems continue but no one will go to gaol. That, sadly, is the Philippines,” he adds, as if to say ‘there’s nothing that you can do about it.

I ask him what he thinks of former President Rodrigo Duterte, now in the custody of the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, where his trial for allegations of crimes against humanity and the alleged execution of drug criminals as part of a policy of extra judicial killings, is scheduled to start later this month.

“He was a strong man,” says Walter, “but that’s what the Philippines needed.

"When he was here the streets were safer and the criminals thought twice. I am a Duterte man. They wanted him out of the way. It was all politics.”

No more words were required and, as for ‘they’, he clearly meant Duterte’s political opponents.

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head at the suggestion that current President, ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, son of the infamous Imelda, equally famous for her 3,000 pairs of shoes, is a worthy successor to Duterte.

By now we are back at Walter’s home. The road was no less bumpy but it was still warm outside and the water-filled potholes were no worse.

His grandaughter Samantha walks in. She recently won a place at the prestigious Rizal Science National High School.

Her day is gruelling.

At 12 years of age, she gets up at 4am, returning home at 5.30pm after a day at one of the most academically challenging schools in the region: it is a feeder to UP, or the University of the Philippines, the country’s answer to Oxford and Cambridge Universities and a guarantee of a brighter future for those lucky enough to win a place. She yawns.

It is already 8.30pm and Sam has yet to finish watching Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean so that she can write a review for her following day’s English class. She looks exhausted but pushes on knowing that she carries the hopes of the entire family.

Samantha will be up at 4am once again, the following morning, but her ambitions to be a lawyer spur her on and the family supports her in every way they can, rice, viands, and grandad’s eternal promise of tricycle rides to all those places she may ever need to visit in her quest for success.

Life for the De Guzman family is tough but there’s a success in the family and, despite the politicians, hopes are running high.