Month: December 2019

In the last post, I tracked this alignment from Nukuoro Atoll, in the Pohnpei State of the Federated States of Micronesia, through the island Republic of Palau, and into the Philippines where it goes through Samar and Leyte of the Eastern Visayas, and on through to Manila, the country’s capital.

The alignment leaves Manila, the capital of the Philipines, and enters the South China Sea.

Located between the Philippines and China’s island of Hainan, the Paracel Islands are a group of islands, reefs, and banks that are strategically located; productive fishing grounds; and which also hold reserves of natural gas and oil.

While they are controlled and operated by China, they are also claimed by Taiwan and Viet Nam.

This is Duncan Island in the Paracels on the left, compared with Koror seen previously in this series in the island Republic of Palau on the right.

The Paracel Islands are also the location of the Dragon Hole, or Sasha Yongle Blue Hole, the world’s deepest known blue hole at 987-feet, or 301-meters, deep.

Dragon Hole is called the “Eye of the South China Sea,” and is where the Monkey King found his golden cudgel in the 16th-century Chinese classic of Literature “Journey to the West,” with authorship attibuted to Wu Cheng’en.

Other blues holes include the Cenote Azul Balacar on Mexico’s Costa Maya, one of the deepest cenotes in the Yucatan, believed to be 295-feet, or 90-meters, deep…

…and Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, which is 80-feet, or 24-meters wide and deep. One of the most popular dive destinations in the United States, it is described as an artesian well with a constant in-flow of water that stays at a constant 62-degrees Fahrenheit, or 17-degrees celsius.

The Battle of the Paracel Islands was a military engagement between the naval forces of South Vietnam and China in 1974, and was an attempt by the South Vietnamese navy to expel the Chinese navy from the vicinity.

As a result of the battle, China established de facto control over the Paracel Islands.

Lingshui, in Lingshui Li Autonomous County, is in the southeastern part of Hainan, China’s smallest and southernmost province.

Nanwan Houdao Island Ecological Scenic Spot, better known as Nanwan Monkey Island, is adjacent to the Xincun Harbor in Lingshui.

Looking at the Google Earth Screenshot, there are sure some interesting-looking features in the landscape there….

The only way to get there is via a 2-kilometer, or 1-1/4-mile, long cable-way, the longest in China.

Nanwan Monkey Island, actually a peninsula, is a state-protected nature reserve for Macaque monkeys. This red sandstone feature at the entrance is called the Garden Gate…

…and here are some scenes from inside the reserve, like the nice stone wall here upon which the macaques sit…

…and the heated swimming for the macaques…

…and just the overall ancient stonemasonry appearance of the place.

We don’t recognize this as ancient stonemasonry because we are taught that all of this is a product of natural forces and geology.

There sure are a lot of reservoirs here in this part of Hainan Province!

Interesting to note the population density of Hainan is low compared to most Chinese coastal provinces, so high population is not the reason for the profileration of reservoirs.

Diao Luo Mountain National Park is on the alignment further up in Lingshui Autonomous County.

It is one of five tropical rainforest regions on Hainan.

Diao Luo Mountain is the location of the Fengguoshan Waterfall cluster, the largest in Hainan Province.

In order to view the falls, there are 1,700 steps on the trail leading to the waterfall cluster.

Wuzhi Mountain is up the alignment from Diao Luo Mountain.

Wuzhishan is the highest mountain in Hainan…

…and is also known as the Five-Fingered Mountain.

There are several minority ethnic groups on Hainan.

Two are recognized ~ one of these groups is the Li People.

The areas surrounding Wuzhishan are inhabited primarily by Li People, said to be the original inhabitants of Hainan, and the largest of the ethnic minorities there. Their tradition of making brocade is said to trace back 2,500 years.

The is the Miao minority ethnic group on Hainan. The Miaos are found through-out the southwestern provinces of China, as well is in Thailand, Laos, and Viet Nam, where they are known as the Hmong people.

They are also known for lively embroideries and brocades, as well as traditional silver ornaments that include traditional necklaces, bracelets and headwear.

There are two unrecognized minority ethnic groups.

The Muslim Utsul People, or Hainan Hui, are found in Sanya on the southern coast of Hainan.

We are told they are a Chamic-speaking people who came to Hainan by way of their Cham homeland in Viet Nam to escape the Vietnamese Invasion of 1471, when the Vietnamese completed their conquest of Cham with the sacking of Vijaya, the last Cham capital.

On the top left is a view of a temple framed by an archway in Vijaya, and on the top right is the Iron Pillar of Delhi framed by an archway in India.  It is famous for the rust-resistant composition of metals used in its construction. It is said to have been made 1,600 years ago.

On the bottom left is the archway framing the Baiturraman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh in Indonesia, which was hard hit by the Boxing Day Tsunami on December 26th, 2004, and the bottom right shows the archway framing the Hospicio Cabanas in Guadalajara, Mexico.

More on the Cham in Viet Nam and other places to come.

The other unrecognized minority ethnic group on Hainan are the Dan people, historically known as the “Boat People,” and “Gypsies of the Sea.” They live along the coasts of the southern China.

The Dan people are said to be traced back to 7,000 years ago to the Hemudu period, a culture that flourished in eastern China between 5,500 BC to 3,300 BC. This is a Hemudu site 22-kilometers, or 13-miles, northwest from Ningbo, and is called the birthplace of the Hemudu Culture.

At the same Hemudu site near Ningbo, you find this exhibit promoting the narrative that Humanity was really primitive back in those days, at the same time it was a megalithic culture….

From China’s Hainan Province, the alignment crosses into the Gulf of Tonkin.

While most immediately recognizable for the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Viet Nam War…

…you also find the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Halong Bay, which has approximately 1,600 islands and islets forming a spectacular landscape of limestone pillars…

…said to have been formed over 500 million years with very different geologic circumstances. Over the last 20 million years, these formations were said to have formed with a combination of thick limestone, hot and humid climates, and a slow overgrowth of the tectonic process.

Again, because we haven’t been taught that this could be anything other than natural, and that Humanity was functioning at a primitive level during so-called prehistoric & ancient times, we miss seeing the evidence that all of this could have been intentionally man-made, like this example on Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay of what appear to be huge masonry blocks and a built-in archway.

It’s not supposed to be there, so we don’t see it. We don’t even think it. And it is so old that there is an element of doubt about whether or not it is natural. I see examples of this type of ancient masonry worldwide.

Leaving the Halong Bay on the Gulf of Tonkin, just a quick stop along the alignment in the Thanh Hoa, the capital of Thanh Hoa Province, on the Ma River, 150-kilometers, or 93-miles, south of Hanoi.

I saw a trident feature off the Ma River between the Gulf of Tonkin and Thanh Hoa on the top, that reminded me of a similar trident-shaped feature I saw on the Brownsville Ship Channel that runs from the Gulf of Mexico at Port Isabel, Texas to Brownsville, Texas on the bottom.

Sites around the city of Thanh Hoa include the Ho Dynasty Citadel, the only stone citadel remaining in Southeast Asia, and said to have been a breakthrough in the construction at the time it was built in 1397 of stone citadels in Viet Nam. It was a declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011.

Yet the Ho Dynasty’s reign was said to be short, consisting of two emperors. Ho Quy Ly from 1400 to 1401, and his second son Ho Han Thuong from 1401 to 1406.

Here are some other sights around Thanh Loa.

Now that we are here in Viet Nam, I will bring up once again the Cham presence here…and in other places.

The Kingdom of Champa was said to have existed in Viet Nam from 192 AD – 1832 AD.

The Chams of modern Viet Nam and Cambodia are the remnants of the former Kingdom of Champa, and were said to have originated as an ethnic group of Austronesian origin in Southeast Asia and were accomplished seafarers that from 4,000 BC populated Southeast Asia.

Hinduism shaped the art and culture of the Champa Kingdom for centuries. While most Chams in Viet Nam today are Muslim…

…the Balamon Cham, are along with the Hindus of Bali in Indonesia, are the only two surviving indigenous Hindu people in the world outside of India.

I do not believe there was a divide between what are called religious faiths before the hijack of the time-line – I believe spirituality was all connected to the same original information about what Humanity was doing on earth to become re-connected with Higher Self.

Race and religion have been used to manipulate Humanity into dogmatic thinking since the occurrence of the hijack of the original positive time-line of Humanity.

This is a Cham head of Shiva said to have been made in 800 AD from an alloy of gold and silver…

…and a 9th-century statue from a Buddhist monastery in Indrapura, the Champa capital.

The Champa city of My Son is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was a religious center of the Cham, and flourished from the 2nd- to the 15th-centuries. In this first picture, you see a temple in the background, and huge megatlithic stonemasonry in the bottom of the picture…

…as well as a bigger view of the My Son temple complex here, again with the huge megalithic masonry seen in the middle of the photo.

Then there is the Ancient Khmer Empire of Cambodia.

How big of a stretch is it to see the word Khem related to Khmer, Cam, and Cham?

Ancient Khem is a shortened version of Ancient Khemit, the name we are told given to a technologically and spiritually advanced civilization that existed in a Golden Age that predated dynastic Egypt.

But could that civilization of Ancient Khemit existed worldwide? I think so.

This is a comparison of a solar alignment at Karnak Temple in Egypt on the left, and one at Konark Temple in India on the right.

Then there is Howard Crowhurst’s work documenting the geometry and astronomical alignments of Carnac in Brittany France.

Robin Heath has done field-work in Wales…

…to record the astronomical alignments…

…and geometric alignments in the landscape with sacred sites there.

The ancient name for Wales is Cymru.

So back to Southeast Asia, the Khmers of Cambodia were responsible for building the Hindu-Buddhist temple complex at Angkor Wat, the largest in the world.

Angkor Wat is located on an artificial island surrounded by a rectangular moat.

This is what happens at the main Temple of Angkor Wat on the equinoxes, the time of year when the sun crosses the plane of the Earth’s equator, and day and night are of equal length…

…and these are the Face Towers at the Bayon Temple, located within the Angkor complex.

The memory of these people has been erased from our collective memory, and replaced with a lot of mysteries. Who built these things? Why did they build them? How did they build them? These are conundrums that confound the constructs that guide our understanding of history.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that people from one holistic civilization of Master Builders were responsible for all of these amazing accomplishments, and not random civilizations doing their own thing independently.

My last stop for this post is Hanoi, the capital of Viet Nam in the Red River Delta.

Hanoi was founded as Thang Long, the capital of Imperial Viet Nam, in 1010, with the Thang Long Citadel said to have been built around that same time by the Ly Dynasty.

The Nguyen Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of Viet Nam, moved the capital to the Imperial City of Hue in 1802, in a walled enclosure within the citadel there…

…which has all the hallmarks of…

…a star city…

…like what is found in Lucca, Italy…

…and what used to be in Trujillo, Peru…

…of which this is all there is left of the walled points in Trujillo.

Thang Long was renamed Hanoi in 1831, and conquered by the French in 1873, and from 1883 to 1945 was the capital of French Indochina. We are told the French colonization made a lasting impact on the city’s architecture that is visible today through French-styled avenues, buildings and bridges.

Like the Hanoi Opera House, said to have been built between 1901 and 1911…

…the Hang Dau Water Tower, said to have been built in 1894…

…the Long Bien Bridge…

…a bridge used by the railroad, mopeds, bicycles, and pedestrians today.

This picture was said to have been taken after the completion of the construction of the Long Bien Bridge by a French architectural firm…

…between 1899 and 1902.

It is far easier to put a plaque on something than to build a massive engineering structure like this, with both steel and masonry.

We are told the plans were laid for a city-wide tramway system in Hanoi in 1894, but by 1899, advances in technology in those five-years made it possible to construct the entire system as state-of-the-art electric system instead of the steam-power which was originally planned…

…with construction of the first lines starting in 1900, and the first two lines being opened in 1901.

All four lines that were built over the years gradually either deteriorated or fell victim to modernization, we are told. This next photo was taken of traffic patterns in Hanoi in our day and age.

One more thing before I leave Viet Nam for Laos.

Hanoi was the site of the world’s fair in 1902 and 1903.

The year 1902 was the year Hanoi replaced Saigon as the capital of French Indochina…and the year of the opening of the Long Bien Bridge.

The Grand Palais was said to have been built specifically for the Hanoi Exposition in 1902.

The Grand Palais of the Hanoi Exposition was completely destroyed by airstrikes at the end of World War II because when the Japanese took over Viet Nam in 1940, at which time they based their military and supply in the palace.

In the next post, I will be tracking this alignment through the Luang Namtha Province of Northern Laos.

This is the second part of a series I started recently featuring the cities and places I found around the world in long-distance alignment with each other, starting from San Francisco.

I came into this level of awareness about the physical planetary grid system after I found a star tetrahedron by connecting cities in North America that lined-up in lines.

I believe this is the terminus of the planetary grid system, and that all of the physical infrastructure on the earth was laid out by the advanced ancient civilization according to sacred geometry .

Sacred Geometry is based on the Flower of Life pattern, which is the creation pattern of the Universe.

When you connect the centers of each circle, you find all the sacred geometric shapes are contained within it, including, but not limited to, the star tetrahedron.

There are many kinds of alignments and ley-lines, all connected to each other, so what I am going to share is one of the alignments emanating off of San Francisco.

I am picking up this particular alignment emanating from San Francisco where it goes through Nukuoro Atoll.

Nukuoro Atoll in the Caroline Islands is a municipality in the State of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia.

It is the second most southerly atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia.

Not sure what that whitish circle in the center of the atoll is, but this is what it looks like on Google Earth. At any rate, an interesting find.

It has a small population of under 500 people, with the capital of the municipality and center of population being Nukuoro Island.

The first sighting of Nukuoro by Europeans was recorded as by Juan Batista Monteverde in 1806. He was a commander of one of the frigates of the Royal Company of the Philippines.

The population is primarily involved in fishing, animal husbandry, farming taro and copra, and black pearl oyster farming.

This the Nukuoro Atoll public elementary school, a four-room schoolhouse for children up to the age of 14.

Older children must go to the island of Pohnpei to attend high school.

Pohnpei, also called Ponape, is the largest island in the Federated State of Micronesia.

It is described as a high volcanic island with a fringing coral reef.

The capital of Pohnpei State, Kolonia, is here.

I found what is called the Spanish Wall in Kolonia, which we are told was built in 1887 by the Spanish Administrators of Pohnpei, after an uprising by locals drove them onto a ship in the harbor.

Could this wall be all that remains of what once was a star fort?

Most of the Spanish Wall was said to have been taken down by a German administration that took over in the early 20th-century.

In the right background you see what is called the Catholic Bell-Tower.

It was said to have been built in 1909 by German Capuchin missionaries, when Pohnpei and the Caroline Islands were administered as part of German New Guinea.

I have seen similarly designed bell-towers in many, many places, including Furman University’s Bell-Tower in Greenville, South Carolina…

…and the bell-towers on Rab Island in Croatia.

Interestingly, this is a photo from Google Earth, where you have the Spanish Wall, German Bell Tower, Pohnpei Catholic High School, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic High School, what looks like a baseball field right next to the high school, and the Embassy of Australia all pretty much in the same place…

…and what looks like really interesting old infrastructure in the water between this part of Kolonia and the Pohnpei International Airport.

German New Guinea was part of the German Colonial empire, and existed from 1884 to 1919.

The Germans purchased the Marshall Islands from Spain in 1885, and the Caroline Islands, Palau, and the Marianas Islands from the Spanish in 1899.

In 1888, the Germans annexed the island of Nauru to the Marshall Islands protectorate.

Today it is the third smallest country in the world after Vatican City and Monaco.

Interestingly, at one time the island Republic of Nauru had was the second-richest nation in the world by GDP per capita from the mining of its phosphate reserves.

Phosphates are used in the production of phosphate fertilizer; calcium phosphate nutritional supplements for animals; and used to make chemicals for use in industry.

Back to the island of Pohnpei.

Palikir, the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia, is located on the island of Pohnpei.

This is what the city of Palakir looks like.

We are told Palakir was a tiny village of little consequence until the Federated States of Micronesia decided to convert it into their capital city which it was said to have officially become in 1989.

I will leave this picture of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic for comparison with Palikir.

Cesky Krumlov is described as one of the Czech Republic’s finest medieval towns, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Before I move on to the premier feature of Pohnpei, which is Nan Madol, let’s take a look at the three waterfalls on the island. Waterfalls are a signature feature of the worldwide grid.

First, here is a photo of the Liduduhnlap Falls, considered a twin falls which is located outside of the city of Kolonia, with what look like cut-and-shaped stones in the foreground…

…compared with one of my favorite waterfalls, the Gacnik Waterfalls in the Julian Alps of Slovenia, in particular for its similarity of the upper portion of both waterfalls.

Next, this is Sahwartik Falls, considered the highest falls on the island.

…compared with the Faipi Waterfall in Bangladesh.

And here is a picture of the Keprohi Falls on Pohnpei…

…compared with the Purakaunui Falls in New Zealand.

I have found a selection of the same models of waterfalls to choose from, from small to large, all over the world.

I believe that rivers and waterfalls signify something like Universal Energy Flows on the Planetary Grid system.

We can’t visit the island of Pohnpei without looking at Nan Madol, which is located adjacent to the eastern shore of Pohnpei.

There are massive buildings here, built on small rectangular artificial islands, situated on top of a coral reef and linked by canals.

It is estimated that 250 million tons of prismatic magnetized basalt went into the lincoln-log-like construction of Nan Madol, spread over 170 acres.

There are similar style basalt column constructions on the neighboring island of Kosrae, to the East of Pohnpei…

…like these on Lelu Island on Kosrae.

I first read about the island of Pohnpei, Nan Madol, and Kosrae several years ago, in a book by Frank Joseph called The Lost Civilization of Lemuria.

Mr. Joseph speculated that Nan Madol and Kosrae, constructed with prismatic basalt, magnetized in a highly unusual and unnatural manner, were part of ancient high technology.

This book on Lemuria was my first introduction to an ancient civilization in this part of the world, and it was very interesting to me.

It looks to me that when the so-called various colonial powers went exploring, they were going after and claiming very important places on the ancient planetary grid system in terms of technology and the resources there that could be utilized and monetized by the controllers of the new reset civilization.

Leaving the Nukuoro Atoll of the Caroline Islands, the alignment goes through Melekeok, a state of the Republic of Palau.

Melekeok is located in the central east coast of Babeldaob Island.

The seat of government of the Republic of Palau is located in Melekeok, and called Ngerulmud.

The government was said to have moved here in 2006 from Koror Island, which is the population center of Palau…

…and the capitol buildings were said to have been built in the middle of nowhere just prior to the time of the move.

The Badrulchau Stone Monoliths are located on the northern part of the island of Babeldaob.

There are 52 here, some of them weighing over 5 tons.

These monoliths are said to be made for a type of stone material not found here.

There are two waterfalls found on Babeldaob Island. One is the Ngardmau waterfall…

…and the other is the Ngatpang waterfall.

Palau was made part of the Spanish East Indies in 1574…

…and after Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the islands were sold to Imperial Germany in 1899 under the terms of the German-Spanish Treaty, and became part of German New Guinea until 1919, at which time German New Guinea ceased to exist after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles.

As mentioned before, the island of Koror is the population center of Palau.

There is a bridge connecting Koror with the island of Babeldaob.

Interesting to note what appears to be man-made channels here.

Here’s a view of the same place from a different angle.

This is the Palau Royal Resort in Koror, sitting on what appears to be an artificial island…

…made from old stone-work.

From the Republic of Palau, I tracked this particular alignment to the Eastern Visayas of the Philippines, between the islands of Samar and Leyte.

The earliest European expedition to the Philippines was led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in the service of the King of Spain in 1521. He made landfall there on Homonhon Island in eastern Samar at the mouth of the Leyte Gulf.

The next day, on March 13th, which was Easter Sunday of the year 1521, Magellan claimed possession of these lands for the King of Spain on what is believed to now be the island of Limasawa in southern Leyte.

Magellan and fourteen of his men died here shortly thereafter in the Battle of Mactan, which took place on April 27th of 1521 on the Mactan Island of Cebu.

This monument to Magellan was said to have been erected in 1866.

After Magellan’s voyage, five expeditions were sent to the islands.

In 1543, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos named the islands of Leyte and Samar “Las Islas Filipinas,” after Phillip of Austria, heir-apparent to the throne of Spain, who became King Phillip II in 1556.

This is a coin bearing an image of King Phillip II…

…a bust of King Phillip II by Pompeo Leoni…

…and a portrait that is typical of King Phillip II.

Is that the same guy? The bust and the coin of King Phillip II showing him having really curly hair and beard look more similar to each other than to the painting.. What’s up with that?

Cebu is the oldest city in the Philippines, as it was the first Spanish settlement and first capital city.

It is important to note that there was a star fort located in Cebu, called the Fort San Pedro.

It was said to have been built by the Spanish starting in 1565.

I think they were following the ley-lines, and star forts like Fort San Pedro were important components in the circuitry of the planetary grid system. They were prime targets in the hostile take-over for the control of this grid system.

Tacloban City on Leyte island is the regional center of the eastern Visayas of which Leyte and Samar are a part.

It is the capital of Leyte Province. The construction of the capitol building was said to have started in 1917 and completed in 1924. This is the building circa 1944…

…and today.

Directly adjacent to Leyte Island, Samar is the third largest island in the Philippines.

One-third of Samar is protected as a natural park.

…which reminds me a lot in appearance of Natural Falls State Park in Oklahoma, which I have visited.

The Maribut Marine Park is on Samar Island.

This is called Tooth Rock…

…and this is Madonna’s Cave at the Marine Park.

Biliran Island, northwest of Tacloban City, and just off the northern coast of Leyte, is one of the smallest and newest provinces of the Philippines.

A bridge and causeway connects Leyte to Biliran, via Poro Island.

The capital city and population center of Biliran is Naval, on the west coast of the island.

This is the new Catholic Cathedral of Naval – Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary. It was built in 1963 to replace…

…the old Catholic Cathedral of Naval, which was demolished to give way to the new building.

I have seen many, many examples of the same kind of symmetry and proportion between the archway and the perfectly-framed old cathedral in Naval all over the world.

Examples include the Hungarian Parliament as seen from the Fisherman’s Bastion in Budapest, Hungary…

…Oxford University in England…

…the Debre Libanos Monastery in Ethiopia…

…the Ecole Militaire seen through the arch of the Eiffel Tower in Paris…

…and the Gretna City Hall seen through the Jefferson Memorial arch near New Orleans, Louisiana, for just a few examples of many I have found.

I don’t believe for a moment that these effects were random occurrences. They were the products of an ancient advanced worldwide civilization that was all about aligning Heaven and Earth in the fullest expression of Human Potential that there has ever been on Earth, and which has been brutally suppressed since the original positive timeline of Humanity was hijacked by negative forces.

There are many rice terraces on the island of Biliran…

…as well as waterfalls…

…and Mainit Hot Springs. Like waterfalls, I find hot springs, and springs of all kinds, all over the planetary grid system.

Maripipi Island is just northwest of Biliran, and is considered a municipality that is part of the Biliran Province.

In 2015, its population was approximately 7,200 people.

One of its main attractions is Sambawan island, these days a marine sanctuary and popular dive site.

With the megalithic standing stones here, it looks like Sambawan Island served a much different purpose before.

Next we come to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and the most densely populated city in the world within its boundaries.

Manila, alongside Mexico City and Madrid, are considered the world’s original global cities, due to Manila’s historic commercial networks connecting Asia with the Americas.

We are told the Spanish city of Manila was founded in 1571 by the conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. He was the first Governor-General of the Spanish East Indies from 1565 to 1572.

The historic walled city part of Manila is called the Intramuros, said to have been established by the Spaniards in the late 1500s.

Apparently the Intramuros is a star fort.

This is a view of a street inside the Intramuros, with cobblestones, colonnades, stone masonry and balconies.

This is the inside of the San Agustin Church in the Intramuros, said to have been completed in 1607.

The first University in Manila, Universidad de San Ignacio, was established in the Intramuros…

…by the Jesuits in 1590. Who were the Jesuits? Who were the Jesuits, really?

The Pasig River flows through Manila, dividing into north and south sections.

Or is the river actually a canal, with its masonry banks?

This old post card shows the Jones Bridge and the Manila Central Post Office building.

The Central Post Office was said to have been built in 1926.

There was a streetcar system in Manila, called the Tranvias, construction of which was said to have been started in 1878, with the first line opening in 1882. This postcard was circa 1900, showing the contrast of the electric streetcar with the horse-drawn carriages.

By 1932, the city and suburbs were well-served by a network of 100-kilometers of track.

Then, in 1945, in the last months of World War II, the Battle of Manila brought destruction and havoc to the city of Manila and its rail infrastructure.

The Manila Tranvias fleet was damaged beyond repair, and abandoned immediately after the war. The rails were pulled up from the city streets, and surviving streetcars were hauled away and scrapped. This was the end of what had previously been considered one of the best street-rail networks in Asia.

I am going to end this post here, and pick up the alignment next in Lingshui on the island of Hainan, China.